Halsey’s full-length debut album BADLANDS is back in the top 10 on multiple Billboard album charts following its 10th anniversary reissue. The 2015 set was reissued on Aug. 29 in multiple deluxe formats and reenters the top 10 on Top Album Sales (No. 5), Top Alternative Albums (No. 6), Vinyl Albums (No. 4), Catalog Albums (No. 9) and debuts in the top 10 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums (No. 7).

All versions of the album, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes.

In the tracking week ending Sept. 4, BADLANDS earned 17,000 equivalent album units in the United States, of which nearly 12,000 are in traditional album sales (about 9,000 in vinyl purchases).

BADLANDS is one of three reentries in the top 10 on the Top Album Sales chart, joined by Sabrina Carpenter’s emails i can’t send (No. 6) and Charli xcx’s how i’m feeling now (No. 8). Meanwhile, the only debut in the region is Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend at No. 1.

Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album (TEA) units and streaming equivalent album (SEA) units.

At No. 1 on Top Album Sales, Man’s Best Friend arrives with 224,000 sold in its first week (the third-largest sales week of 2025 and Carpenter’s best sales week ever). Stray Kids’ KARMA falls to No. 2 (with 53,000, down 82%) after debuting atop the list a week ago. The KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack climbs 5-3 (15,000, down 19%), Deftones’ private music dips 3-4 in its second week (13,000, down 80%) and emails i can’t send reenters at No. 6 (11,000, up 1,766% after a new vinyl variant was released).

Laufey’s A Matter of Time falls 2-7 in its second week (11,000, down 84%), Charli xcx’s how i’m feeling now reenters at No. 8 (9,500, up 2,613% following the release of a fifth anniversary color vinyl variant), KATSEYE’s Beautiful Chaos surges 20-9 (9,000, up 81% following a restock of certain editions of the album at retail) and Carpenter’s chart-topping Short n’ Sweet jumps 30-10 (9,000, up 115% in the wake of Man’s Best Friend’s arrival).  

What would rap be without iced-out grills?

New York City jeweler Eddie Plein is often credited with inventing the gold grill as we know it back in the ’80s. His early handiwork was most notably sported by Bronx rapper Just-Ice on the album cover of his sophomore project Kool & Deadly released in 1987. Plein then took his Eddie’s Famous Gold Teeth operation south to Virginia, then finally settling in Atlanta, where the gold grill has become a Southern staple. During the early 2000s, Paul Wall and his business partner Johnny Dang picked up where Famous Eddie left off and took the gold grill to another level, with the duo still being the go-to jewelers for custom grills nearly two decades later.

Wall sat down with The Art of Dialogue recently and told a story about how he ended up on Nelly‘s hit record “Grillz” and revealed it all started with the St. Louis rapper getting tricked into purchasing a custom grill that he thought was made by Dang. The Houston rapper explained that he received a call from T.I. while the Atlanta rapper was on tour with Nelly and told Wall, “Yeah, man, I see my boy Nelly got a grill from you.” However, he recalled being “confused, ’cause I’m like, ‘Man, I never met Nelly a day in my life. I’d love to make him a grill,’” and asked Tip what he was talking about.

He then explained that it was a jealous rapper that was trying to creep into his and Johnny’s grill business that sold one to Nelly. “‘You want a Paul Wall grill? Yeah I’ll get you a Paul Wall grill. A Johnny? I’ll get you a Johnny grill,’” he said of other rappers that were also trying to sell grills during that period. “What they mean is the Paul Wall-style grill or a Johnny-style grill. So that essentially is what happened. It was another person who was selling grills who basically went to Nelly and was like, ‘Hey, wanna get you some Paul Wall grills?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I want some Paul Wall grills,’ and they got him some grills but they weren’t Paul Wall grills. It was in the similar style, but they weren’t the same.”

Eventually, Wall ran into the St. Lunatics at a hotel in New York, who then put him in touch with Nelly after learning that his grill wasn’t made by Johnny Dang. He then said they decided to gift him a custom grill so he could see the difference between their work and the competition. “It was a helluva investment, because, let me tell you, that was hands down the most expensive grill we made to that point and it was a walking billboard, and as soon as Nelly got his grill he was like, ‘Hey, I love my grill. I got this song I’m doing. You wanna get on it?’”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

“Grillz” hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100, was nominated for best rap performance as a duo or group at the 2007 Grammys and further popularized the dental jewelry, making a custom grill from Paul Wall and Johnny Dang a must-have status symbol.

You can watch the full story below.

Accomplished steel guitar player and producer Robby Turner, who has played with artists including Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, The Highwaymen and Chris Stapleton, died Thursday, Sept. 4, at age 63.

Turner’s son Bobby Turner confirmed the passing of his father on social media, writing, “We’re sad, but we know he’s walking without any help, and he’s no longer in pain.”

Known as the “Man of Steel,” Turner played on projects including the 1976 album Wanted! The Outlaws, from Jennings, Nelson, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser, which spawned the Jennings/Nelson hit “Good Hearted Woman” and became the first country album to become certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Turner also recorded and toured with country supergroup The Highwaymen (Jennings, Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash) and contributed to the group’s 1990 project The Highwayman 2 and their 1995 album The Road Goes On Forever. He contributed to several of Jennings’ albums and became the Country Music Hall of Famer’s primary steel guitar player until Jennings’ death in 2002.

In 2019, Turner was honored as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Nashville Cats series. During his interview for the series, he said of working with Jennings, “Waylon never really told us what to do…we just played until he smiled.”

Turner contributed to albums by Tanya Tucker, Randy Travis, John Prine, Marty Stuart, Jim Lauderdale, Loretta Lynn, Travis Tritt, The Oak Ridge Boys, and more recently, projects from Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson and Colter Wall, playing on Stapleton’s CMA Awards album of the year-winning projects Traveller and From A Room: Volume 1, Simpson’s High Top Mountain, and Wall’s self-titled album. He also performed with artists including Johnny Paycheck and The Chicks.

Turner was surrounded by music from an early age; his parents Doyle and Bernice Turner were part of Hank Williams Sr.’s Drifting Cowboys from 1946-1948.

During the Nashville Cats series, Turner also spoke of why he loved both recording steel guitar in the studio and also playing onstage. “It was part of my learning process,” he said. “I had to. I wasn’t going to just fall right into the studio. [Steel guitar player, known for his work with George Jones, Tammy Wynette and others] Pete Drake, my mother would take me by there and drop me off at Pete’s place…when I was younger, [steel guitarist, known for work with artists including Dolly Parton and Charley Pride] Lloyd Green and Pete Drake owned the radio…Pete asked me when I was 12, ‘What do you want to be? A session player or a road guy, play with artists live?’…I thought about it and the next couple of months when I was down there…I said, ‘I want to be able to do both. I want to play on records and I want to produce records…I’ve had recording equipment since I was nine years old…I want to do both, but I really want to concentrate on studio stuff.”

Of performing with The Highwaymen, Turner said, “That was the greatest band that you could ever ask to play with…the American rhythm section and those four guys. Sometimes I would literally pinch myself, it was like a dream…it was one of the highlights of my life.”

Along the way, Turner also released his own projects, including 1996’s Man of Steel and 1998’s Steel Country.

Jennings’ son, musician/producer Shooter Jennings, wrote in tribute to Turner on X, “So sad to hear about Robby Turner. A once in a lifetime talent and the funniest guy I ever met. What a player. Was lucky to have toured and recorded with him many times. Rest in Peace, Robby.”

The 2025 MTV Video Music Awards was the top-rated entertainment program of the night, hitting a six-year viewership high. The show was seen by more than 5.5 million viewers, between its broadcast on CBS, simulcast on MTV and streaming on Paramount+.

This marked the first time the VMAs have aired on CBS, which could use a major pop music franchise. CBS will lose the Grammy Awards, which it has aired since 1973, after the upcoming 68th Grammy Awards telecast on Feb. 1. (In October 2024, The Recording Academy announced a new 10-year global deal for The Grammys to be exclusively simulcast on ABC, Hulu and Disney+ beginning in 2027.)

LL COOL J hosted last night’s VMAs. He previously co-hosted the show in 2022. (He also hosted the Grammys five times from 2012-16.)

Here are selected ratings highlights about the 2025 VMAs:

On social media, the 2025 MTV VMAs set new records as the most viewed and most engaged VMAs in history.

Ratings Source: Nielsen Time Adjusted Live+SD Fast National Data including Out-of-Home Viewing

Critics generally praised the show. Billboard’s Joe Lynch wrote: “Hosted by LL COOL J, the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards were one of the best VMAs in recent memory, a smart mix of newcomers who brought their A-game (and inventive visuals) and veterans who demonstrated why they’ve lasted in the game so long.” Lynch particularly praised the performances by four of the hottest female singers in pop (Tate McRae, Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga and Doja Cat) as well as the salute to the late Ozzy Osbourne.

Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger also generally liked the show, though he thought it sometimes lavished attention on legacy acts at the expense of contemporary stars. “Those contemporary artists were there on Sunday night (Sept. 7), and basically in full effect — superstars who’d already made their share of VMA history, and rising hitmakers who already seem poised to potentially do so in the future. And yet it could be easy to lose track of them with all the stage and screen time given to legacy artists. … It felt like a missed opportunity to really showcase the present and future, and finally let the past take a bit of a backseat.”

The 2025 VMAs were produced by Gunpowder & Sky. Bruce Gillmer, Den of Thieves co-founder Jesse Ignjatovic, and Barb Bialkowski were executive producers. Alicia Portugal was co-executive producer. Jackie Barba was executive in charge of production. Wendy Plaut was executive in charge of celebrity talent. Lisa Lauricella was executive in charge of music talent.