The beginning of 2026 has been dominated by 2016 nostalgia, but on Billboard.com, we’re supersizing it and going back to 2006. We’ve already looked back at some of the most iconic songs and trends from that year, but now, we’re looking at the biggest concert tours from 20 years ago.

The touring industry of 2006 was quite different from the current landscape. In the last two decades, ticket prices have surged and Boxscore chart-toppers have diversified, but there are some constants, as Kenny Chesney, Pearl Jam and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, among others, continue to rank among the biggest acts on stage well into the 2020s.

Beyond the top 10, Mariah Carey landed at No. 25 on The Adventures of Mimi trek. That tour supported the previous year’s The Emancipation of Mimi, which famously returned Carey to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with the decade’s biggest song, “We Belong Together.” Ranked by gross revenue from ticket sales, that tour’s $26.4 million take, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, wouldn’t have cracked the top 100 in 2025.

Though a near-constant presence in the upper reaches of this decade’s Top Tours ranking, Coldplay was, respectably, No. 19 in 2006 in the middle of Twisted Logic Tour. On the Music of the Spheres World Tour, the band has been in the top five of the year-end list consecutively from 2022 to 2025, topping the tally for each of the last two years.

While concert grosses have ballooned over the years, ratings for network television have shrunk. Back in 2006, American Idol was the biggest show in the United States, hovering around 30 million viewers per episode. Its annual spinoff tour featuring that season’s top contestants was a consistent draw, ranking at No. 13 with $35.3 million and 647,000 tickets sold over 59 shows.

Keep reading for more info on the top 10 touring acts of 2006, according to Billboard Boxscore’s year-end chart from 20 years ago. The figures below only account for the shows these artists played in the 2006 chart year. Some of these tours began in 2005 or continued in 2007, building upon these grosses and attendance figures.

Just missing out? Billy Joel and Rascal Flatts at Nos. 11 and 12, respectively. The former grossed just under $50 million and the latter barely surpassed one million tickets sold — 1,000,036 to be exact.


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For the first time in two-and-a-half decades, Dogstar — the alternative rock band that counts actor Keanu Reeves as its bassist — is on a songs-based Billboard chart.

“All In Now,” the lead single from Dogstar’s upcoming album of the same name, debuts on the April 4-dated Mainstream Rock Airplay chart at No. 36, marking the band’s second appearance on any song ranking and first in more than 25 years.

In 2000, “Cornerstore,” featured on the trio’s sophomore album Happy Ending, spent nine weeks on the since-discontinued Modern AC Airplay chart, peaking at No. 32 that September.

Afterward, Dogstar — which also features vocalist-guitarist Bret Domrose and drummer Robert Mailhouse — broke up in 2002, but reconvened in 2020, eventually releasing the album Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees in 2023. The LP reached multiple Billboard charts, paced by a No. 6 peak on Vinyl Albums and a bow of No. 19 on Top Album Sales.

In addition to its presence on mainstream rock radio stations, “All In Now” is also bubbling under the Alternative Airplay chart.

Dogstar was formed in the early 1990s in Los Angeles, at which point Reeves had already become a well-known actor in films such as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its sequel. Mailhouse also has multiple acting credits of his own; in fact, both he and Reeves appeared in 1994’s Speed, while Dogstar itself was featured in 1999’s Me and Will.

All In Now is due for release on May 29 via the band’s own Dillon Street Records.


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J. Cole’s keeping his hoop dreams alive. The Dreamville rapper has signed a contract to play in the Chinese Basketball Association this season with the Nanjing Monkey Kings, according to ESPN‘s Shams Charania.

Charania reports that Cole committed to play “a few games” for the Monkey Kings last year, and his deal is essentially him fulfilling that promise.

Billboard has reached out to Cole’s reps for comment.

It’s not J. Cole’s first stint in professional hoops. Back in 2021, he suited up for the Rwanda Patriots in the Basketball Africa League and then headed north to play for the Scarborough Shooting Stars in 2022 in the Canadian Elite Basketball League.

Cole played high school basketball at Terry Sanford High School in Fayetteville, N.C., and he joins a roster that includes former American college players such as Brady Manek (University of North Carolina), Jaylen Hands (UCLA), Richard Solomon (California) and Parker Jackson-Cartwright (Arizona).

Footage of Cole attending the Monkey Kings’ game on Thursday went viral. While Cole didn’t play in the game as he gets familiar with his surroundings, he interacted with plenty of fans and a clip emerged of him signing a 2014 Forest Hills Drive 10th anniversary vinyl.

“China, what’s the world. This is J. Cole, Cole World. I’m excited to be in the vicinity,” Cole said in his first post on the Chinese social media platform Douyin.

Team general manager Zhen Wang posted a clip picking up Cole from the airport and explained why he wanted to bring the superstar rapper into the fold. Essentially, they had dinner together in the U.S. at some point last year, and Cole professed his hopes to continue chasing his dreams in basketball.

“[J. Cole] coming to China can really raise the CBA’s profile on a global scale,” Wang said. “Since he’s the minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets, we’re hoping that through his position, he can maybe help more of our domestic players get opportunities to train and play in the U.S.”

The 41-year-old’s next opportunity to suit up and make his debut comes on Saturday (April 4), when the Monkey Kings take on the Jiangsu Dragons.


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British songbird Olivia Dean has had a wild year. Between her best new artist Grammy win in February to her successful pushback on Ticketmaster to cap resale prices for her upcoming debut North American arena tour, the London-bred singer has a lot to reflect on.

That’s exactly what she did in a cover story for ELLE magazine’s Women in Music issue, where the “Nice to Each Other” star mused on her big Grammy night and riding high on charts around the world thanks to her breakthrough hit, the Billboard Pop Airplay No. 1 smash “Man I Need.”

Less than a week after taking home the coveted prize she told the magazine that she couldn’t believe this is her life. “My heart is extremely full in a way that is kind of hard to even describe. I did not think that was going to happen. I can’t lie to you. I’ve never won an award for music before,” she said of the highest accolade she’s received so far for her acclaimed sophomore full-length album, The Art of Loving.

She said the win over a ridiculously stacked roster of nominees including Addison Rae, Alex Warren, KATSEYE, Leon Thomas, Lola Young, sombr and The Marías was all the more surreal because of her vantage point at the show. Watching Lauryn Hill participate in the all-star tribute to D’Angelo — Hill won best new artist the year Dean was born, 1999, and the singer’s middle name is Lauryn in tribute to the Fugees legend — all she could think was that it was “all the most serendipitous full-circle moment. I was just at home in London a couple of weeks ago on my sofa. Then suddenly I’m holding a Grammy, and Queen Latifah’s looking at me.”

And though she has a great crew of friends and family that keep her grounded, Dean revealed that she’s also learned the value of not letting the outside world shape how she feels about herself. So, after the Grammys win she deleted all her social media apps.

“I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while,” she said. “Even though the love has been overwhelming, even that is not healthy sometimes. I don’t think you’re supposed to know everyone’s opinion about you. And I’ve decided I want to live in sweet ignorance.”

After achieving the hard-won crossover in the U.S. that so many British artists dream of, Dean is also conscious of making sure her fans are able to come along for the ride. When the tickets to her first North American arena tour sold out so fast many of her day one fans couldn’t beat the bots to get seats, she demanded that Ticketmaster refund fans who were overcharged by resellers and cap prices going forward.

“There is no way that I’m going to get up on that stage and sing my heart out while somebody sits at home and makes $500 or $600 off of me and you,” she told the magazine. “I want people to be able to afford to come to the show. I don’t think you need to be someone who’s got loads of money to enjoy your favorite album. Full stop.”

The singer also sat down for one of ELLE’s AMA lightning rounds, saying “Nice To Each Other” best represents her as an artist because is paints her as “fun, flirty and cheeky,” with an overall message of joy and positivity. Her earliest music memory was the animated 1995 Disney film Pocahontas, specifically the ballad “Colors of the Wind,” with Dean recalling how she would sit in front of the TV and watch it over and over until her mum and granny got sick of it.

Describing the moment “Man I Need” hit the top of the Pop Airplay chart in the U.S., Dean said she was at the airport about to hit the road in the U.S. on Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet Tour having a pint and did a little cheers to celebrate her milestone. And, like a lot of fellow music nerds, she said her dream collaborator is Stevie Wonder.

Dean’s The Art of Loving North American tour will kick off on July 10 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

Watch Dean’s ELLE AMA below.


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BTS’ “SWIM” isn’t just No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated April 4 ­— the song also represents the band’s top-charting song yet on Billboard’s Streaming Songs tally, as well as its best debut on Radio Songs.

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As previously reported, “SWIM” accrued 25.8 million radio airplay impressions, drew 15.3 million official U.S. streams and sold 154,000 in the week ending March 26, according to Luminate, begetting its No. 1 bow on the multimetric Hot 100, BTS’ seventh ruler.

With 95,000 of those sales via digital downloads, “SWIM” starts at No. 1 on the Digital Song Sales chart, BTS’ 13th to do so. But that stream count also puts the track at No. 2 on Streaming Songs, higher than any of the group’s singles had been previously.

BTS’ previous best on Streaming Songs, “Dynamite,” debuted and peaked at No. 3 in 2020. It’s also the band’s longest charting song on the survey to date, logging 15 weeks, with two of those spent in the top 10.

BTS first appeared on Streaming Songs in 2017 via the one-week appearance of “DNA” at No. 38.

As for Radio Songs, “SWIM” starts at No. 18, well ahead of its previous top bow, “Butter,” which began at No. 39 in 2021. The group’s top peak remains “Dynamite,” which roses as high as No. 10.

That Radio Songs debut is thanks to bows of No. 16 on Pop Airplay and Adult Contemporary, No. 19 on Adult Pop Airplay and No. 35 on Rhythmic Airplay. It even earned a No. 27 debut on Latin Airplay thanks to spins from predominantly Spanish-language stations that report to the panel, BTS’ first appearance on the list.

“SWIM” is the lead single from ARIRANG, BTS’ 10th studio album, which concurrently bows at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.


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In addition to being one of the most accomplished artists on the planet, Taylor Swift is Travis Kelce‘s wifey — regardless of whether they’ve made it legal yet.

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On the latest episode of the New Heights podcast posted Wednesday (April 1), the Kansas City Chiefs tight end and brother Jason Kelce chatted with Jerrod Calhoun — head coach for the University of Cincinnati basketball team — about college sports. At one point, Travis told the show’s guest, “Man, you’re getting me fired up right now, coach.”

“I think I got like one semester left of eligibility, coach,” continued the athlete, who played both football and basketball when he was an Ohio high schooler.

“Hey, we’ll get you a good NIL deal,” Calhoun quipped in response. “You gotta ask your wife.”

Travis didn’t skip a beat. “Exactly, yeah,” he said before pretending to call out to Swift off camera. ‘Sweetie, I’m going back to school!”

The 14-time Grammy winner and Grotesquerie star have been engaged since August. At the time, the pair shared photos from the proposal — for which Travis secretly set up an enchanted rose garden right outside their home — and wrote, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

Ever since, Swift and Travis have been tight-lipped about the details of their wedding, prompting fans online to regularly speculate on whether the pair have already tied the knot privately. But there are at least a couple of things we know about their big day, with the Eras Tour headliner previously revealing that she plans on having a massive guest list and that Ed Sheeran will probably want to perform at the reception.

Watch Travis react to Swift being called his “wife” below.


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This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2006 Week continues here with our list of the year’s best deep cuts — our staff’s favorite ’06 album tracks that were never released as official U.S. singles. (See our picks for the 100 best singles of the year here.)

After a couple years that had been defined by massive album releases from the likes of Usher, Kelly Clarkson, Green Day, Kanye West, Mariah Carey and 50 Cent — albums that sold millions, contended for Grammys and spawned more than a few hit singles — 2006 took things a little slower on the blockbuster front. There were certainly a couple notable ones: Justin Timberlake ruled over the year with his FutureSex/LoveSounds, and while its singles rollout didn’t go quite as smoothly as its predecessor, Beyoncé’s solo sophomore set B’Day would ultimately generate its own fair share of hits. But they were more the exception in a year where the biggest singles were a little more all over the place, rather than being concentrated to a handful of bountiful LPs.

Instead, the most important album releases of 2006 tended to tell us a little more about where music was going next. Even though their respective stateside breakthrough hits wouldn’t come until 2007, U.K. singer-songwriter phenoms Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse got on pop fans’ (and pop critics’) radars with a couple widely acclaimed projects. My Chemical Romance and TV on the Radio would bring greater ambition and wider scope to emo and indie rock, respectively, with big implications for both genres in the years to come. Clipse, Ghostface Killah and the sadly late J Dilla were shrinking the distance between hip-hop’s mainstream and underground. And down in Nashville, a rising country singer-songwriter by the name of Taylor Swift introduced herself to the rest of the world for the first time.

Find our preferred non-singles from all these artists and many more favorites from 20 years ago below, in Billboard‘s list of the 40 best deep cuts of 2006.

Olivia Rodrigo fans won’t be sad at all to hear this news: On Thursday (April 2), the singer announced that her highly anticipated third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, is dropping this summer.

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Sharing the album’s dreamy cover — a photo of Rodrigo leaning backward on a swing, backdropped by a pale blue sky — the Grammy winner wrote on Instagram, “my third album ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’ is out June 12th.”

“I am so proud of this record and I can’t wait for you to hear it,” she continued. “available for preorder now!”

On her website, a number of various vinyls, CDs and cassettes of the album are available to purchase, as well as signed copies featuring a photo of Rodrigo frolicking through a grassy field at night while wearing a sheer pink dress.

Rodrigo last dropped an album in 2023, topping the Billboard 200 with Guts. The album spawned Billboard Hot 100-topping lead single “Vampire” and served as the basis for the artist’s Guts World Tour. The majority of the trek ran from February through October 2024, with Rodrigo also playing shows throughout the first half of 2025.

Before Guts came Sour, the debut album that launched Rodrigo into superstar status. The project also topped the Billboard 200 and spawned a number of Hot 100 hits, including No. 1s “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U.”

The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series alum has been teasing OR3 for some time, revealing some of the juiciest details in a British Vogue cover story. She told the publication at the time of the interview that the LP is full of “sad love songs” based on her realization that all of her “favorite romantic love songs were beautiful because they had a tinge of fear or yearning in them.”

“[I thought] that the second I’m in a really great relationship, I’m gonna start feeling good about myself, and this stuff is going to fall into place,” added Rodrigo, who was most recently linked to actor Louis Partridge, at the time. “But it just doesn’t work like that.”

See Rodrigo’s album announcement below.


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With BTSARIRANG, the K-pop cornerstone act’s first studio album of new music since 2020, the group further imprinted its stamp in Billboard’s chart record books.

The set stormed the Billboard 200 dated April 4, becoming BTS’ seventh No. 1, with the largest week for an album by equivalent album units earned among duos or groups: 641,000 in the United States March 20-26, according to Luminate. (The chart began ranking titles by equivalent album units in December 2014.) Vinyl sales of ARIRANG accounted for 208,000 — the largest sales week for an album by a duo or group since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991.

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The LP’s lead focus track, “Swim,” concurrently lapped the competition on the Billboard Hot 100, launching at No. 1. It likewise became BTS’ seventh leader on the chart and sixth to debut on top, the most such entrances among duos or groups.

Thanks to those starts, BTS became the first group to debut an album and song atop the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously multiple times, with ARIRANG and “Swim” joining  Be and “Life Goes On” in 2020.

On the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, BTS became the first act to claim the entire top 10 (and top 13) simultaneously, thanks to ARIRANG’s songs, led by “Swim.”

Plus, “Swim” extended BTS’ mark for the most No. 1s, 13, on the Digital Song Sales Chart among duos or groups. On World Digital Song Sales, “Aliens” invaded the top spot, becoming the group’s record-extending 43rd No. 1; no other act has a double-digit total. The septet adds three entries on the survey, upping its total to a leading 161 appearances overall.

In honor of BTS’ chart-topping return, below is a rundown of each of OT7’s career No. 1s on the Billboard 200 and Hot 100.


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King Princess must be feeling fantastic.

Billboard can exclusively reveal that the singer-songwriter is a cast member of the upcoming stage production of Girl, Interrupted at The Public Theater in New York City. This will be the artist’s theatrical debut.

Previously adapted into a 1999 film of the same name starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie (the role for which she won the best supporting actress Oscar), Girl, Interrupted is author Susanna Kaysen’s bestselling 1993 memoir. Girl, Interrupted follows Kaysen during an 18-month stint in a psychiatric hospital as she navigates her new life among the other patients and the doctors on staff. The stage production’s book is penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok and will feature original music by two-time Grammy winner Aimee Mann. King Princess will play Lisa, a fellow patient at the psychiatric hospital. Jo Bonney directs with choreography by Sonya Tayeh.

The complete cast of Girl, Interrupted at the Public Theatre is Leela Bassuk (Understudy), Ta’Rea Campbell (Valerie), Gabi Campo (Tori), Juliana Canfield (Susanna), Eileen Doan (Understudy), Mano Felciano (Man/Musician), King Princess (Lisa), Gunnar Manchester (Understudy), Mia Pak (Grace), Katherine Reis (Daisy), Anna Roman (Understudy), Sally Shaw (Polly), Emily Skinner (Dr. Wick), Rachel Stern (Understudy) and Lauren Jeanne Thomas (Judy/Musician).

Though this is King Princess’ theatrical debut, this is not her first time acting. The Brooklyn-based musician made her screen acting debut as a series regular on the second season of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers and appeared alongside leads Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the Oscar-nominated 2025 film Song Sung Blue. King Princess will next appear alongside Julia Fox, Este Haim and Maya Hawke in the upcoming romantic comedy One Night Only, written and directed by Will Gluck (Easy A, Friends With Benefits).

The stage production of Girl, Interrupted will begin performances in The Public’s Martinson Hall on Wednesday, May 13. The show will officially open on Thursday, June 4 and run through Sunday, June 21. Tickets are available for purchase now on The Public’s website. The National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City (NAMI-NYC) will join forces with The Public Theater in support of this production, including a post-show talkback during June.