The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated Oct. 11, we look at new sets by several major artists, all getting in before the biggest pop star in the world sounds perhaps the final buzzer for 2025 next week.  

Doja Cat, Vie (Kemosabe/RCA): Doja Cat has become one of the defining pop stars of the 2020s without a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200: Her career-best to date is still the No. 2 peak of 2021’s Planet Her, blocked from the top spot by Tyler, the Creator’s Call Me if You Get Lost. Still, she’s scored two No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100, and nine top 10 hits — including a pair from her previous album, 2023’s more hip-hop-focused Scarlet: the chart-topper “Paint the Town Red” and the No. 7-peaking “Agora Hills.”  

Doja’s latest set, Vie, eschews the rap focus of Scarlet a bit for a brighter, more ‘80s-hued pop sound — exemplified by the lead single “Jealous Type,” which she opened the MTV Video Music Awards with in September. Released on Friday (Sept. 26), the 15-track set is light on special guests, but does include one big-name feature in pop/R&B superstar SZA, who appears on “Take Me Dancing,” a sort of unofficial sequel to the pair’s Planet Her teamup, the Grammy-winning crossover smash “Kiss Me More.” (Another big name, Jack Antonoff, is a major presence in the album’s writing and production credits.)  

The album is available for purchase in eight vinyl variants and two CDs — with one signed option in each format — as well as in a CD boxed set (with a signed CD and branded T-shirt), standard and deluxe iTunes versions (the latter with bonus videos), and a cassette.  

It will need to do robust sales numbers to challenge for the No. 1 spot, because the streaming tallies its songs have posted so far have not been massive: As of posting, Doja only has one song in the top 100 on the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart, and zero in the top 100 on Apple Music’s real-time lasting. With the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack still pulling weekly numbers in the low six digits — and Scarlet bowing with 72,000 units two years ago — it may be tough for Vie to get over the top.  

Young Thug, UY Scuti (YSL/300/Atlantic): The rapper born Jeffery Lamar Williams II was a regular presence atop the Billboard 200 albums chart at the turn of the 2020s, even topping it twice in 2021 alone (with his solo Punk set and his Young Stoner Life: Slime Language 2 full-label effort). But in the four years since then, he’s gone to jail, fallen out with his former partner-in-rhyme Gunna and made more headlines for being at the center of public messiness than for anything he’s done with his music.  

Young Thug is looking to change the narrative with the release of UY Scuti, his first full-length since 2023’s Billboard 200 No. 2-peaking Business Is Business. The set is consumable in 20- and 21-track editions on streaming and digital retailers, with a pair of digital-only 22-track archive editions also offering an exclusive bonus track each. Multiple vinyl, CD and CD boxed set editions are also available.

The set features such big names as Lil Baby, 21 Savage, Travis Scott, Future and even current Billboard 200-topper Cardi B as guests. However, like Doja’s Vie, Scuti has yet to produce a major breakout streaming hit – after a strong Friday start, only opener “Ninja” ranks in the top 100 on Apple Music’s real-time chart (as of Wednesday), and it’s only No. 104 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA — and the set has also been attracting as many headlines for its controversial album cover as for any of its songs.  

Mariah Carey, Here for It All (Mariah/gamma.): The most chart-accomplished artist with a new album out this week is certainly Mariah Carey, who has topped the Billboard 200 six times — although not since 2008, when she last visited No. 1 with her E=MC2 album. Still, Mariah has at least hit the top 10 with every studio album, and has reached the top five with each of her four full-lengths since ‘08.  

That last streak may be in slight jeopardy with the release of Here for It All, her first new album of the 2020s, which will have to do most of its damage in sales, without much to talk about in the way of big streaming numbers. But it should sell fairly well, with help from a trio of alternate variants each on CD and vinyl (two with different covers, one signed), as well as two cassette editions and a deluxe download edition, the latter with an exclusive bonus track.  

IN THE MIX 

Olivia Dean, The Art of Loving (Capitol/Polydor): One artist who is doing just fine on streaming — and better every week — is U.K. singer-songwriter Olivia Dean, whose global breakthrough single “Man I Need” climbs to No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. It should shoot up even higher next week following the release of The Art of Loving, which is also available on seven CD variants, and already appears on its way to a second breakout hit, “So Easy (To Fall in Love).”  

P1Harmony, Ex (FNC Entertainment/Hello82): South Korean pop group P1Harmony has already visited the Billboard 200 once this year, reaching No. 23 on the chart with May’s Duh! EP. The sextet is on track to do even better with September’s five-track Ex EP, helped by a whopping 17 CD variants, as well as six vinyl variants, all with collectible items (some randomized) inside the packaging. 

Henry Walter may be seated in a spacious Los Angeles recording studio, but he’s still having audio trouble. A full digital workstation sits about five feet behind him as he scoots around the room on a swivel chair, trying to fix the feedback coming from his laptop. “I haven’t opened Zoom in, like, a month,” he says with a sigh as he presses a few buttons on his keyboard. Once he finds the problem, he triumphantly puts his hands in the air. “I think we did it.”

There’s a charming bit of irony in watching one of the most prolific and successful producers in the music industry fumble with his audio output. Since starting his production career in 2008, Walter — better known by his moniker, Cirkut — has been behind some of this century’s biggest hits, helping to write and produce massive singles for Rihanna, Kesha, The Weeknd and dozens more throughout the 2010s. Today, the 39-year-old Grammy-winning producer’s sonic soundscapes score music by a slew of contemporary artists, including Jungkook and Latto’s Billboard Hot 100-topping collaboration, “Seven”; Charli xcx’s “360,” “Rewind” and “365”; and even Rosé and Bruno Mars’ “APT.”

“I think new producers and artists are inspired by his work, especially right now,” says pop singer Kim Petras, who collaborated with Cirkut on “I Don’t Want It at All,” “Can’t Do Better” and the Hot 100 No. 1 Sam Smith collaboration, “Unholy.” “He’s kind of a master at electropop. I think people are going to be inspired for a while by him.”

And on his latest collaboration, Walter hit an even loftier high. “I still kind of pinch myself,” he says with a grin of co-producing most of Lady Gaga’s lauded 2025 album, MAYHEM. “Like, ‘Wow, I helped produce a Gaga album.’ It’s really cool and I’m really proud.”

The feeling is mutual. Gaga, who co-produced the project alongside Walter, Andrew Watt and her fiancé, Michael Polansky, says she was astounded by Walter’s skill in the studio. “He has this incredibly positive energy that makes a beautiful space for songwriting and production,” she tells ­Billboard. “On the musical side, it was his intuition about production that struck me the most. Cirkut is incredibly gifted as a programmer. His technical proficiency is astonishing but also extremely musical — his musicianship is so well-­rounded and rich.”

But the electropop gems he crafts now are a far cry from his humble origins. Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia — which he affectionately describes as “not exactly a mecca of music” — Walter’s friends were hip-hop heads. Some were DJs who would invite a 14-year-old Walter over to watch them spin and scratch their records on Technic 1200 turntables. “I saw that and I was like, ‘I need whatever that is. I need to do that,’ ” he recalls.

In his adolescence, Walter became fascinated with “deconstructing songs and learning what makes them tick,” listening to as many CDs as he could and trying his hand at minor DJ gigs for school pep rallies, dances and a small school radio show. When he turned 18, Walter moved to Toronto, seeking out a career as a hip-hop DJ and discovering other sonic worlds in the process. “You’d go out for the night and you’d hear dancehall, soca, reggae, hip-hop and just all this incredible dance music,” he says.

The Toronto club scene helped cement Walter’s fascination with electronic music. By 2008, he formed indie electronic trio Let’s Go to War, and on the suggestion of fellow dance duo MSTRKRFT, he met with music attorney and record executive Chris Taylor, who subsequently signed the act to his label, Last Gang Records. As the group began to work on its album Karmageddon, Walter and his bandmates also started making production packages on the side. Taylor compiled the threesome’s beats onto CDs and sent them to songwriters in his orbit — among them Nicole Morier, who decided to write a song to one of their beats during a session with Britney Spears.

The result was Spears’ “Mmm Papi” off her No. 1 album Circus. It earned Walter, through Let’s Go to War, his first production credit for a mainstream pop star. While he remains awed by the “luck” that got his name in Circus’ liner notes, he also cringes as he reflects on the song. “I kind of just hear a person who didn’t know what he was doing,” he says with a laugh. “In all honesty, I didn’t know how to produce songs back then.”

Still, his work caught the attention of hit-maker Dr. Luke, who reached out within a year of Circus’ release to sign Walter to his burgeoning publishing label, Prescription Songs. At first, Walter worked remotely from Toronto, where he opened Dream House Studios with producer Alex Bonenfant and his former bandmate Adrien Gough, whom he worked with on the song “High for This” for an up-and-coming R&B artist called The Weeknd. After a few years of operating as Cirkut, Walter left Toronto for Los Angeles and, under the tutelage of Luke and the other songwriters on the prestigious label, began creating a career for himself. “I was given the opportunity to work with a ton of writers and artists who I wouldn’t have had access to previously,” Walter says. “It’s where I really cut my teeth and learned to produce pop and not just make beats.”

Over the next few years, Walter helped pen seminal No. 1 hits like Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Maroon 5 and Cardi B’s “Girls Like You,” ­developing his reputation in tandem with his production philosophy: to steer the ship without taking up too much space for himself. “I want to be able to lead the room and lead it to a good place,” he explains. “My duty as a producer is to see through the song and make sure it gets to the best place possible while also not making it about me. It’s about the artist and the song.”

The philosophy has stuck with his artist collaborators. Petras fondly remembers not just the “fun” atmosphere Walter creates in the studio, but the skills he employs to perfect the final product. “He has an amazing brain for melody and production, of course, but he’s also probably the best and fastest vocal producer I’ve ever worked with,” she says. “He just has an incredible ear for pop vocals and pop melodies, and I’ve learned so much working with him.”

After leaving Prescription Songs in 2018 to strike out on his own, Walter leaned on his industry contacts for new work. He collaborated with Watt on Spears and Elton John’s 2022 single, “Hold Me Closer,” and when Watt subsequently asked if he would be interested in working on a new Gaga project, Walter leaped at the opportunity. “I tried not to go in with any expectations because I hadn’t met her before,” he says. “There’s always an initial phase of feeling each other out, figuring out if you vibe with them. Either you have chemistry with someone or you don’t, and I’m glad that we did.”

According to Gaga, that studio chemistry with Walter came quickly. “The first song we worked on together was ‘Vanish Into You,’ which started out as just an analog synth Moog bassline, and as the song took form, his sonic choices for the drums struck me ­instantly,” she says. “We hadn’t spent a lot of time together, but he was naturally drawing upon all our musical influences … right away, I heard the Justice influence, the Franz Ferdinand coolness, The Cure’s vulnerability and softness. We were just an instant match.”

Walter credits Gaga’s singular vision for MAYHEM — which she describes as a mix of “well-written pop songs” and creating “free space to try different sounds” — as the driving force behind the final product. “She’s intentional about everything while also being humble in the sense that she’s willing to say, ‘OK, we tried that, it didn’t work,’ ” Walter says. “Her musical taste is broad, and she would know the exact reference to help us unlock something.”

That collaborative spirit let Walter leave his mark on MAYHEM while still making an album that is unquestionably Gaga’s — something they both say its single “Abracadabra” exemplifies. The songwriting process for the album’s breakout hit started with the track’s grinding post-­chorus breakdown, which Walter had created on a whim. “That was just a 30-second, very incomplete beat I had made, but when Gaga heard it, she was like, ‘Wait, what was that?’ ” he remembers.

Gaga recalls that same moment with a sense of awe at how Walter didn’t just create the song’s sound but also specifically tailored it to her. “That moment that he played [the post-chorus] was powerful, sort of like a dare, as if he were secretly saying, ‘You know what you need to do,’ ” she says. “That is a beautiful feeling with a producer, when you know they’re excited to hear what story you will tell together and you feel an urge to rise to the occasion.”

That’s not to say that creating MAYHEM was all business. Walter recalls creating “Killah,” the ­electro-funk standout featuring fellow producer Gesaffelstein, in a session where Gaga let loose in a way he wasn’t expecting. “There’s that part in the bridge where she lets out this long scream, and we were all sitting there like, ‘Holy s–t!’ ” he says. “We even put a track in the song where we just put up a mic in the room while we were all yelling and laughing because that vibe was infectious.”

It’s easy to see why, even with only about a decade-and-a-half spent actively working in the music industry, Cirkut ranked No. 4 on Billboard’s Top Producers of the 21st Century on the Hot 100 chart, only behind veteran hit-makers Max Martin, Luke and Stargate and outpacing world-famous production stars like Jack Antonoff and Benny Blanco.

Yet when asked if he would be interested in receiving the same kind of household recognition as someone like Antonoff, Walter hesitates. “It’s a balancing act. Of course we all want recognition for what we do, but I also value my privacy,” he says. After a beat, he gestures to the well-appointed walls of his workspace. “Honestly, I just feel like my place is in the studio,” he says, smiling. “I like being here and making things that people love.”

This story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.

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This isn’t a drill. The Wicked sequel, Wicked: For Good is just a month away. What better way to prep for the highly anticipated film than to go shopping for a good sale?

Following the box office success that was Wicked, Wicked: For Good will hit theaters Nov. 21, 2025, just one day shy of the one-year anniversary of the film’s first half. The sequel was first announced on X back in April from director Jon M. Chu’s “OzPhone.” The filmmaker wrote, “With more space, we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys of these beloved characters.”

Following the cheeky post, fans and followers of the franchise were treated to a trailer on June 4, sharing first looks at Glinda and Elphaba’s journeys following the very dramatic “Defying Gravity” sequence and a hefty cliffhanger folks were left with in part one.

To prep help you prep for the film’s arrival, we’ve gathered a few sale Wicked-themed dolls available right now at Walmart. From Glinda to Elphaba, these dolls are dressed true to the film, down to their little plastic shoes, and come with accessories galore. If you’re looking for a gift for the Wicked fan in your life, or you’re adding to your own Wicked collection, you’ll find something you’re bound to like. Keep reading to shop sale Wicked dolls from Mattel.

Universal Pictures’ Wicked: For Good Deluxe Elphaba Doll

$16 $43.19 63% off

Buy Now at walmart

An Elphaba doll with a movie-inspired costume and accessories.

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Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Well, whichever witch you are, this Elphaba fashion doll is sure to please. Retailing for $43.19, the toy is equipped with a true-to-the-movie gown with textured, striped black and white cape. You can further accessorize Elphaba’s look with an accompanying broom, hat, satchel and boots. The doll’s long, dark tresses are braided down her back.

Universal Pictures’ Wicked: For Good Deluxe Glinda Doll

$16 $43.19 63% off

Buy Now at walmart

A Glinda doll with a movie-inspired costume and accessories.

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Like the movie’s depiction, this Glinda fashion doll is all about glamour. Currently on sale for $16, the doll is dressed in a pink and sparkly, multi-layer ruffled organza ball gown featuring a form-fitted bodice. Accompanying accessories include her magic wand, dazzling tiara and heels which can be added or removed at will. Each addition aptly complements Glinda’s movie-accurate ensemble. If you or your loved one is a fan of Ariana Grande’s portrayal of this beloved character, you’ll want to add to cart now.  

Universal Pictures’ Wicked Glinda at Shiz University Fashion Doll

Buy Now at walmart $15 $15

A fashion doll of Glinda.

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If you’re a fan of Glinda’s Shiz University uniform, you’re in luck. Mattel created a doll depicting Glinda in her “fashion-afied” school uniform just for the fashion-forward folk. The doll is currently on sale for $15 at Walmart and comes dressed in a blue striped asymmetrical dress with pink butterfly accents throughout. To further dress up the doll, you also get a pink school bag and Shiz textbooks, making the collectible both stylish and studious.

Universal Pictures’ Wicked Madame Morrible Fashion Doll

$20.25 $26.99 25% off

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A fashion doll of Madame Morrible.

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This Madame Morrible Fashion Doll is a Walmart exclusive, and it’s one you won’t want to miss out on. Retailing for $20.25, 25% off, the doll depicts the polarizing Madame Morrible in her signature Shiz headmistress uniform, which is an extravagant floor-length gown fixed with a stand-up collar. The doll’s film-accurate platinum hair is pinned back in an intricate updo. On the accessories front, this doll comes with a gold necklace, a hairpiece accessory and snazzy gold wedged booties.

Watch the Trailer for Wicked: For Good Below

Pop and R&B icon Janet Jackson extends her Billboard Hot 100 chart history into a fifth decade via her feature on Cardi B’s “Principal,” which debuts at No. 92 on the list dated Oct. 4. Jackson joins Cher and Madonna as the only women to have new Hot 100 hits in five distinct decades.

Thanks to “Principal,” Jackson lands her first Hot 100 credit since “Made for Now,” a 2018 collaboration with Daddy Yankee, and has now charted in every decade since the 1980s.

“Principal” traces its Hot 100 entrance largely to 4.9 million official streams in the United States for the Sept. 19-25 tracking week, according to Luminate, with a small assist from 1,000 sales downloads and 725,000 radio audience impressions.

The Cardi B-Jackson collaboration appears on Cardi B’s new album, Am I the Drama?, which debuts at No. 1 on this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart.

As pop-music fans might suspect, “Principal” features a sample of Jackson’s “The Pleasure Principle.” The Control single climbed to a No. 14 high in August 1987, helped by its music video with a well-remembered dance routine that won an MTV Video Music Award for best choreography at the 1988 ceremony.

The youngest of Joseph and Katherine Jackson’s children, Jackson made her Hot 100 debut in December 1982 with “Young Love,” which reached a No. 64 best the following month. After early show-business exposure as an actress, she pivoted to music with her self-titled debut LP in 1982 and its follow up, 1984’s Dream Street. Both had modest commercial results, but her star exploded with her third album, Control, which topped the Billboard 200 and sparked six top 20 Hot 100 hits, including “The Pleasure Principle” and her first of 10 No. 1s, “When I Think of You.”

Of Jackson’s 42 Hot 100 career hits, here’s their breakdown by decade, based on each track’s chart debut:

By entering the Hot 100 for a fifth different calendar decade, Jackson joins Cher and Madonna as the only women to achieve the feat with new material. The former diva’s ledger stretches six decades, from the 1960s to 2000s and the 2020s, while the latter legend shares Jackson’s 1980s-2020s run.

Among all women, Brenda Lee has also appeared on the Hot 100 in five distinct decades, but not with different recordings. She debuted songs in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, while her holiday staple “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which first charted in 1960, has re-entered annually since 2014.