Nearly two years after their engagement, Sara Bareilles and her longtime love actor Joe Tippett are married. The couple announced the happy news on Tuesday morning (Oct. 7) in an Instagram post featuring snaps from the nuptials and the caption, “We did a big thing. I will just say I love this man and I love the community who came to hold us up. I am feeling so lucky and so grateful. ❤️.”

In the accompanying photo roll the happy couple are seen sharing a sweet kiss from what looks like a woodsy, backyard affair, with the Mare of Easttown actor wearing a white shirt with a burgundy tie, dark green dark vest and matching slim pants and brown boots and Bareilles, 45, holding a bouquet and wearing a floor-length ivory gown with a high thigh slit and plunging neckline. A candid shot captures Bareilles with a wide smile standing under a grove of flowering trees, followed by one of Tippett, 43, appearing to smile back at her while dressed in his three-piece suit.

Even the couple’s cute pooch got in on the action, as evidenced by a snap of the black and white dog walking down the aisle in advance of Bareilles while decked out in a miniature tuxedo.

In a separate post, Tippett is seen hugging and staring into his beloved’s eyes through a window, followed by a video of the pair talking and snogging, with their intimate conversation muted by the glass partition. “Marrying My Best Friend Today,” Tippett wrote on Saturday (Oct. 4), which appears to be the day they tied the knot. “May We All Be So Lucky.”

They got plenty of good wishes from their celeb pals, including Hilary Swank (“Congratulations, you two beauties!”), The Paper comedian/actor Alex Edelman (“SARAAAAAAAAAAA”), fellow musicians Brandy Clark (“Big congrats!!!!! You both look beautiful ❤️❤️”), Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles (“So beautiful!!!! The wedding and the people and the Love!!! ❤️”) and John Legend (“Congratulations! ❤️❤️❤️❤️”) as well as Reese Witherspoon, who added, “AHHHH! I love this love story.”

According to People, the couple met in summer 2015 while working on the musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 movie Waitress, with Bareilles writing the score for the musical that earned her a Tony nomination and a Grammy for best musical theater album; they got engaged in January 2023.

In a post announcing the engagement news, Bareilles wrote, “Yes to marrying this man. It’s an easy, earned, relaxed YES. @joetipps you are exactly who I want. The more I know you the more I know I love you…and you have introduced me to parts of myself I was afraid to love. And now I love ME more because of you. So really this is all about me. Just kidding. What a gift you are. Let the games begin. Onward into absolutely everything with you.”

Practice makes perfect, even for the pros. In honor of Wicked: For Good coming soon to theaters, Ariana Grande has shared a clip of one of her early rehearsals with Cynthia Erivo on the set of the films, giving fans a peek at how they brought fan-favorite song “Popular” to life on screen.

The video posted to Instagram on Monday (Oct. 6) opens with the two leading ladies sitting side by side on a prop bed. “Locked timing, take 1,” Grande — wearing a pink sweater to match her character, Glinda — tells the camera.

The pop star then proceeds to sing a few bars of “Popular,” her version of which appears in the first Wicked film and soundtrack. As she performs, she practices wrapping a pink sash around her costar before humorously pushing her costar down onto the bed when Erivo tries to get up.

“That’s the bit,” Grande says after snapping out of Glinda mode, with director Jon M. Chu exclaiming from behind the camera, “That is the timing, locked in!”

“tickets on sale in two days @wickedmovie for good,” she captioned the clip before revealing how long ago she and Erivo practiced the sequence. “(rehearsal, september 2022).”

The video shows just how meticulous the Wicked team was when choreographing the musical numbers for the films, with Grande and Erivo performing those same movements as rehearsed in the final cut of “Popular” for the first movie. This November, the saga will come to an end when For Good hits theaters almost exactly a year after Wicked premiered in 2024.

The R.E.M. Beauty founder has been open in the past about how seriously she took preparations for Wicked, from extensive voice lessons to dance rehearsals. “I started training every single day with my vocal coach for two-and-a-half, three months before my first audition, and my acting coach,” she said last year. “I just wanted to be prepared to use any tool needed whatever was asked, I wanted to be able to drop in and do it and really become [Glinda].”

Watch Grande practice “Popular” with Erivo below.

Mariah Carey’s new studio album Here for It All crowns four Billboard album charts (dated Oct. 11), including Top Album Sales, and gives the diva her 19th top 10 on the overall Billboard 200 as it arrives at No. 7.

Here for It All launches with nearly 47,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending Oct. 2, according to Luminate, with traditional album sales comprising 39,000 of that sum. In addition to its No. 1 bow on Top Album Sales, the set also leads Top Current Album Sales, Top R&B Albums and Independent Albums. Here for It All is Carey’s first independently released project after a career within the major system. It’s also her 16th studio album and first studio set since 2018’s Caution.

On the Billboard 200, Carey achieves her 19th top 10 as Here for It All enters at No. 7. Carey becomes only the third woman with at least one new top 10-charted album in the 1990s, 2000s, ‘10s and ‘20s, following Madonna and Shania Twain. Carey made her debut in 1990 with her self-titled release, and it was the first of her nine top 10s in the ‘90s. She then logged six top 10s in the 2000s, three in the ‘10s and now Here for It All in the ‘20s.

Here is a recap of all 19 of Carey’s top 10s on the Billboard 200:

Title, Peak Position, Peak Year

Over on the latest Hot R&B Songs tally, three songs from Here for It All dot the ranking: “Play This Song” (featuring Anderson .Paak) debuts at No. 11, “Sugar Sweet” (featuring Shenseea and Kehlani) rises 19-17 and the album’s first single, “Type Dangerous,” reenters at No. 24. Meanwhile, Carey collects her first entry on the Hot Gospel Songs chart, as the Here for It All cut “Jesus I Do” (featuring The Clark Sisters), enters at No. 5.

When the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted seven new members on Monday (Oct. 6), it honored a diverse group that included four artist-writers and three dedicated composers.

That blend is appropriate — in modern-day country, the majority of hits come from getting an artist in a room with people who make a living strictly by writing.

It’s a different world since the turn of the century, when the two worlds combined less often. Songs were primarily developed by professional songwriters, and the artist’s job was often to find the material that best fit their specific voice and beliefs. 

The entrants this year include artists Emmylou Harris, Jim Lauderdale and Brad Paisley, who is receiving his 2024 induction after requesting a deferment. The late J.J. Cale — best known for penning Eric Clapton’s “After Midnight” — is the fourth artist who will be honored, selected as a legacy submission.

The full-time writers include Steve Bogard (“Carrying Your Love With Me,” “Praying for Daylight”), Don Cook (“Brand New Man,” “Lady Lay Down”) and Tony Martin (“Just To See You Smile,” “Baby’s Gotten Good at Goodbye”), who says no matter what artistic talents people bring to the process, everyone is a writer when the words are paired to music.

“Once you’re in the little square room, you’re just trying to come up with the best song,” Martin notes. “Even the artists will become [full-time writers], too.”

Still, artists are more involved than ever in that process. On Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Sept. 26, 16 of the top 20 songs featured both an artist and full-time writers among the credits. Three titles were created strictly by writers, and one song, Riley Green’s “Don’t Mind If I Do,” was authored by an artist working alone.

Those numbers were significantly different 25 years ago. On the chart  dated Sept. 30, 2000, artists and full-time writers co-composed just six of the top 20 tracks. Eleven were fashioned exclusively by full-time writers, while three songs — Toby Keith’s “Country Comes to Town,” Travis Tritt’s “Best of Intentions” and Vince Gill’s “Feels Like Love” —were the result of an artist writing in seclusion. 

There are several reasons for that change in authorship. The most obvious is financial: Songwriting provides an additional revenue stream for artists, many of whom operate at a loss before they reach headline status. But artists seem to increasingly want their songs to reflect their real lives. Barbara Mandrell and Crystal Gayle — classic country artists who never wrote any of their own hits — were known to tell interviewers that they were simply playing a part when they sang about cheating or heartbreak. Current country artists —  who interact more frequently, and less formally, with their fan base through social media — are more intent on releasing music that fits their realities.

“I’ve written with a couple of artists that really weren’t writers, but I would get their ongoing approval as we went along,” Cook says. “That kind of helped form the song — ‘Yeah, I’ll sing that,’ ‘That sounds like me,’ ‘That doesn’t sound like me.’ That’s, to me, as good as co-writing. I mean, you’re leading me to where you need to go with the song. And that’s fine.”

The presence of an artist can also shape the musical components of a song. An appointment with Carrie Underwood is more likely to yield a piece with an expansive melodic range that builds to a crescendo during the final 30-60 seconds. A write with Morgan Wallen will probably result in a more linear melody and conversational phrasing. 

Full-time writers have their own financial realities in mind as they navigate careers that are unpredictable and insecure — they’re more than happy to follow an artist who’s decisive about their brand.

“After you’ve written a lot of your songs — the songs that you want to write from your heart — then it ends up sometimes you just got a toolbox,” Bogard says, “and you want to make the other person’s songs the best songs they can be: the most commercial, the most heavy, the most heartwarming.”

Some relationships between a writer and a specific artist are crucial. Mike Reid, a 2005 inductee in the Nashville Songwriters Hall, racked up 11 Ronnie Milsap hits during the 1980s, including “Stranger in My House,” “Inside” and “Lost in the Fifties Tonight (In the Still of the Night).” Bob McDill, a 1985 Hall inductee, landed 14 Don Williams hits, exemplified by “It Must Be Love,” “If Hollywood Don’t Need You” and “Good Ole Boys Like Me.” Dean Dillon, who entered the Hall in 2002, has logged 16 George Strait hits.

Cook amassed 10 Brooks & Dunn hits, though he wasn’t simply adapting his skill set to the duo’s brand. The initial writing, he argues, established their sound and identity.

“Brooks & Dunn were not Brooks & Dunn until we wrote eight songs for their first album,” Cook recalls. “And the reason we wrote them is we couldn’t get anybody to play us their best songs because they didn’t know who Brooks & Dunn was. So it was a blessing that we had to sit down and figure it out.”

Artist co-writes tend to be hit-and-miss. If the song is tailored to one particular act who ultimately passes, it may not connect with a different artist. By the same token, fitting a song around an artist’s life gives it a greater chance.

“We had a song with Dierks [Bentley]called ‘Long Trip Alone,’ and it had a line that he knew his wife would go crazy [over], ‘Rest beneath your smile,’ ” Bogard recounts. “So that song was a lock instantly because he said, ‘Cassidy is going to love that line, and we’ve got to finish this song.’ Every day is different.”

Ultimately, this year’s Songwriters Hall mix of artist-writers and full-time writers reflects a mutual need that’s developed in the creative community. Artists’ schedules are jammed — they can use every bit of help they can get. Writers, in the digital era, need hits more than ever since album cuts don’t generate income. Crafting the song to an artist’s abilities is advantageous.

“You like to think that you’re in the room because they like something that you do,” Martin says. “I’ve written with a lot of really good writers who are great singers but don’t necessarily have record deals, and the artist loves their singing, loves their melodic instincts, and so they’re there for that reason. You’re just looking for those creative wins that bring something new.”