Donald Trump is continuing with his campaign against Bruce Springsteen, who recently kicked off his tour in Minneapolis and tore into the American government on stage, leading the twice-impeached POTUS to unleash yet another fiery post on Truth Social.

On Thursday (April 2), Trump wrote, “Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon, has long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

“The guy is a total loser who spews hate against a President who won a Landslide Election, including the popular vote, all Seven Swing States, and 86% of the Counties across America,” he continued. “Under Sleepy Joe and the Dems, our Country was DEAD, and now we have the ‘hottest’ Country, by far, anywhere in the World. MAGA SHOULD BOYCOTT HIS OVERPRICED CONCERTS, WHICH SUCK. SAVE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY.”

Billboard has reached out to Springsteen’s rep for comment.

The Boss played his first Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour show in the Minnesota city on Tuesday (March 31). He made was sure to address the importance of the night’s setting during the show, reminding the crowd how federal troops had “brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis” in reference to how ICE officers shot and killed civilians Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January.

“Their bravery, their sacrifice and their names will not be forgotten,” Springsteen said on stage.

Elsewhere in the show, the rocker reportedly condemned Trump’s “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous” administration.

This isn’t the first time the president has gone on a tirade against Springsteen. The White House similarly called the E Street Band leader a “loser” with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in February after Springsteen dropped a song protesting ICE called “Streets of Minneapolis.” Trump has also personally gone after Springsteen on Truth Social a number of times during his first year back in office.

You might remember Teddybears’ “Cobraystle” from 2006 alt rock radio, but it’s more likely you remember the song from the many other places it existed that year, and for years thereafter.

A synch juggernaut of late ’00s, the Swedish trio’s dancehall meets indietronica ass-shaker was used in commercials for everything from KFC to Volvo and in a long list of movies, television shows and videogames — including, but not limited to Date Night, Grey’s Anatomy and FIFA 06.

“It was a snowball effect,” Teddybears’ Joakim Åhlund tells Billboard. “Once it happened once, it started happening more. In some cases I’m sure it was our manager or someone at our record or publishing company pulling strings to get our songs that attention, but I haven’t really done anything except make the actual music.”

Whoever was pulling strings on behalf of Åhlund had been doing commendable work. The “Cobrastyle” phenomenon happened not long after “Jerk It Out” by Caesers, a band then known as Caesars Palace and also featuring Joakim Åhlund, was also widely synched in ads for Coca Cola, Nivea, and iPod Shuffle, with the silhouetted ad it soundtracked for the latter becoming synonymous with the famous ad campaign. Then, 25 years after it’s original release, Teddybears’ 2006 Iggy Pop collab “Punkrocker” was also used in last year’s Superman, a synch that gave it an 18,468% streaming surge last summer.

“When the Superman thing happened and we started hearing that song again, I was like ‘This is actually a really good song still,’” beams Åhlund.

Teddybears – brothers Joakim and Klas Åhlund and Patrik Arve – formed as a hardcore band in Stockholm in the early ‘90s, releasing its debut album in 1993. “Cobrastyle” first came out on the band’s fourth album, 2004’s Fresh, and in 2006 music from that album and 2000’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was amalgamated into the band’s first album released in the U.S., Soft Machine. The project contained two new tracks along with 12 older songs, including “Punkrocker” and “Cobrastyle.” The latter song gained further ubiquity when Robyn released a cover of it in 2007. “We’ve been good friends with Robyn for a long time,” says Åhlund. “[The cover] was kind of a natural thing for her to do, because it’s kind of a family thing.”

The Soft Machine release in conjunction with the Robyn cover and all the “Cobrastyle” synchs (along with general acclaim for the album) made Teddybears a presence in the U.S., where the group toured, played Coachella in 2007, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and played “Cobrastyle” with Robyn on The Late Show with David Letterman.

“We were big in the very small country of Sweden,” says Åhlund. “We sang our music in English, and we were always thinking about an international audience. So it was good to reach out beyond the Swedish borders, which we did with Soft Machine. It was fun to be on Jimmy Kimmel’s show and have people in the U.S. and the whole world know about us.”

But by design, the world only ever knew Teddybears to a certain extent, given that its three members always performed and appeared in promotional materials wearing giant teddy bear heads. “We didn’t want to be famous,” says Åhlund. “And it was great, because even at peak Teddybears, I could still just ride the subway with my kids and nobody knew who I was.”

Naturally, the Iggy Pop association helped raise the band’s visibility, with the “Punkrocker” collab coming about after the band’s manager did more string-pulling.

“Sooner or later, we found someone who knew someone who knew him, and we just got in touch” says Åhlund. “We were like, shocked and of course overjoyed and surprised when he answered at all, and that he answered that he wanted to do it was crazy.”

Klas Åhlund and Arve recorded the song with Pop in Miami, and weeks later all three Teddybears  filmed the music video with him in New York. “He was such a gentleman,” Joakim Åhlund recalls of the shoot “He had a bad boy rumor, perhaps not entirely undeserved at the time — and I didn’t expect him to be an animal or something, but he was a very dignified and at that time an already little bit elderly gentleman who was so eloquent, well-spoken, soft spoken and nice to everybody on the set.

While “Punkrocker” wasn’t written with Pop in mind, “it’s almost like it was,” says Åhlund. “It’s a song that’s perfect to be sung by him. He does it with this soulful voice with these echoes of experience in it. There’s not many in this world that could deliver it with such dignity and credibility.”

25 years after the song’s release, the song’s Superman synch was, as Åhlund tells it, a fluke that happened after the film’s music supervisor saw it on their Spotify dashboard. “He just liked it. It was a complete coincidence.”

Ten years after the last Teddybears album, 2016’s Rock On!, Åhlund and his bandmates see each other frequently in Stockholm, but have no current plans to record another album together. “I don’t feel like the world’s waiting for one, to be honest.” The bear masks are tucked away at a Stockholm storage facility, coming out for the occasional live gig.

Meanwhile, Åhlund is currently touring with his band Les Big Byrd, which is on the road supporting Brian Jonestown Massacre. Åhlund also plays free jazz and runs a small record label. The band’s members have also worked with myriad pop royalty, with Joakim Åhlund producing Charli xcx‘s 2013 “You (Ha Ha Ha)” (with Charli later interpolating “Cobrastyle” for her 2023 song “Speed Drive”) and Klas Åhlund producing music for stars including Britney Spears, Madonna, The Weeknd and Robyn, including much of her newly released album Sexistential. Åhlund reports that Arve “has like 15 different bands and projects.”

Looking back at the Teddybears’ era-defining mid-’00 run, Åhlund is satisfied. “We didn’t sound like anybody else or try to sound like anybody else, and to me it still sounds good today.

And while he jokes that the Superman synch helped him buy “a couple more Lamborghinis,” the reality is that despite all the success and the synchs, his lifestyle has always been pretty lowkey. “I live in an apartment in Stockholm city. I don’t even have a driver’s license. I ride a bicycle.”

 
 

Chance The Rapper and Jason Moran will be delivering special tribute performances at The Gordon Parks Foundation Annual Awards Dinner and Auction, honoring boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

The gala is set for May 19 in NYC at Cipriani 42nd Street, and tickets are available, starting at $2,500. Proceeds from the evening will benefit the next generation of creatives through educational programming, fellowships, scholarships and prizes courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation.

“To be recognized in a space honoring Gordon Parks and Muhammad Ali is humbling. They told the truth through their work, and that’s always been the goal of mine too,” Chance tells Billboard. “The tribute to Ali is really about honoring that spirit and showing gratitude to his legacy.”

Chance is also among the list of honorees for the night, which includes Elizabeth Alexander, John Legend, Henry Taylor and Lonnie Ali (representing Muhammad Ali).

“It is an honor to work with The Gordon Parks Foundation because Parks truly understood the psyche of the musician,” Jason Moran adds to Billboard. “His sensitivity, not only with his camera, but with his ear.  He knows exactly when to snap the shutter, which informs the way he composes his music as well.  For Parks, the eye is also the ear, and the ear informs his eye.”

Former NFL star and activitst Colin Kaepernick will be a presenter alongside Darren Walker, Hank Willis Thomas, New York Times critic Salamishah Tillet and artist/photographer Deana Lawson.

It’s a star-studded group of co-chairs for the event that includes Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, Spike and Tonya Lee, Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor, Anderson Cooper, Malcolm Jenkins, as well as Crystal McCrary and Raymond McGuire.

The 2026 gala marks 20 years of celebrating the visionary photographer, Gordon Parks, through The Gordon Parks Foundation.

“Music played such an important role in Gordon’s life — he was a musician and celebrated composer as well as a photographer and filmmaker,” The Gordon Parks Foundation’s executive director Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. said in a statement. “To celebrate our 20th anniversary, we are thrilled that Chance The Rapper and our inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation Music Fellow Jason Moran will each pay tribute to the legacies of Gordon Parks and Muhammad Ali by performing on May 19. They both embody Gordon Parks’ belief that art can change the world.”

Hailee Steinfeld and Josh Allen are parents! The couple announced the birth of their first child on Thursday (April 2).

In a post titled “Special delivery” on her Beau Society newsletter, the singer-actress shared the news on Substack. “Our baby girl has arrived!!” she wrote. “We’re feeling incredibly grateful and blessed and savoring these early moments.”

She added, “Thank you so much for the love and well wishes.”

The pair’s first child arrives less than four months after they announced they were expecting in December. At the time, Steinfeld and the Buffalo Bills quarterback shared a joint video on Instagram showing off the Sinners star’s baby bump in the snow. In January, she stepped out at the Golden Globes with her “newest plus one” — as she wrote on Instagram with photos of her pink gown — and in February, she gave followers an update with a photo of herself sitting on a kitchen island with her bump on display, giggling with Allen.

Steinfeld and the football pro first started dating in spring 2023. They tied the knot in May 2025, just a few months after Allen proposed in November of the year prior.

The Pitch Perfect 2 alum has released several batches of music over the years, notching five entries on the Billboard Hot 100 since debut single “Love Myself” reached No. 30 on the chart in 2015. Her EP charted on the Billboard 200 that same year.

She’s also worked on music for a number of her screen projects, including four-time Oscar winner Sinners, for which she contributed the track “Dangerous.” She told Billboard a year ago, “Blending music and acting like this feels like the fullest expression of who I am. It’s rare to have a project that lets you show up completely — and Sinners gave me that.”

Saweetie is taking her talents to the IDL. While she won’t be competing in the International Dance League, the Bay Area native is set to perform at the league’s inaugural event in New York City on May 2.

Tickets to the Hammerstein Ballroom competition are available on the IDL website for $44.99 to $64.99 plus taxes and fees. The event will bring six teams from across the globe, boasting various styles, to compete for the top spot.

“Movement is alchemy. You take something you feel, something you can’t even name, and you turn it into something people can see and feel across the world,” Saweetie said in a statement. “That’s what these dancers do. That’s what I try to do with music. IDL is putting both of those things on the same stage and I’m here for it.”

Clashing culture, competition and community, the six dance teams heading to NYC include Brotherhood (Vancouver), Quick Style (Oslo), Jam Republic (Singapore), GRV (Los Angeles), Royal Family (Auckland) and 1Million (Seoul).

“Dancers have been choreographing to Saweetie’s music for years. There’s a reason for that, the music moves,” said Connor Lim, cofounder and CEO of IDL, in a statement. “Having her halftime our first event in New York felt like a natural fit, the music and the moment line up perfectly.”

Following New York City’s season kickoff, the IDL will be making stops in Vancouver, B.C. (May 23), Sydney (June 20), Seoul (Aug. 1) and Los Angeles (Sept. 20).

On the music side, Saweetie hasn’t released a single yet in 2026. Back in August, the “My Type” rapper dropped her Hella Pressure EP.