In addition to being a bustling bar, Tex-Mex restaurant and venue, Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa on downtown Nashville’s Broadway strip also serves as a de facto Museum of Miranda. Artifacts from the country superstar’s career punctuate the place — including the birdcage she sang from in the 2019 video for “Bluebird,” one of her seven career Billboard Country Airplay chart-toppers.

Though the second floor only has a photo of the birdcage, she tells me the real thing hangs from the ceiling by the performance space on the third floor. Does anyone ever try to sing from it? “I’m sure they have, late at night,” she deadpans. “That’s why we hung it from the ceiling.”

Though Lambert and I are having late-morning drinks (a Tito’s and Topo, her go-to), she’s not quite kicking back. Lambert has a well-earned reputation for hard-edged, hard-living Texas outlaw songwriting, but she’s down for some glam when necessary — in today’s case, some significant beauty prep before we even meet — though in typically practical fashion, she’s scheduled other video interviews for later today to make the most of it.

“I have to sit in the hair-and-makeup chair for two and a half hours; I want to make it worth it,” she explains. “[Female country artists] have two and a half hours of hair and makeup before we do anything. Boys don’t have to do that!”

That work ethic, combined with her strategic efficiency, should come as little surprise to those familiar with the veteran singer-songwriter’s career and catalog. Lambert’s 20-plus-year career has taken her from Texas breakout phenom and critics’ darling to country radio fixture and award-winning machine to now not-quite-elder stateswoman, as the 42-year-old has become both a mentor and trusted collaborator to the next generation of hitmakers. At a point when some veteran artists in her position might happily ease into the legacy era of their career, Lambert is as furiously and smartly prolific as ever, with 2026 shaping up to potentially be one of the biggest years of her career — and a totally different kind of big than her 2016 or 2006.

As Lambert has evolved, the one ceaseless constant has been country music. While she’s sometimes rocked harder than the rockers or struck more iconic poses than the pop stars, she has remained proudly, resolutely country throughout.

“I definitely do not take it lightly that I am a representative of country music,” she says. “I am a country singer-songwriter. That is who I am. That’s what I’ve always wanted to be. There wasn’t ever really a question in my mind of like, where I fit in in a genre or what I wanted to do. It was country music, period, the end … It’s a huge honor to be one of the ones that’s been representing [it] now for over 20 years.”

And while Lambert is too active and relevant for any talk of her passing the torch, sharing the glory with the next generation of country artists, particularly other women, has become a major priority for her. No recent accomplishment exemplifies this better than her work as co-writer/producer of Ella Langley’s smash hit, “Choosin’ Texas,” for which Lambert just won the Academy of Country Music (ACM) awards for song and single of the year.

“What I’ve done is try to use the knowledge that I’ve gained by being in the industry for over 20 years to really lift up the younger generations coming up and trying to be there for them and answer questions,” she says. “Sometimes I know the right way to do it, because I did it wrong.”

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Lambert has been a country mainstay since 2005, when she parlayed being a finalist on reality TV competition Nashville Star into a deal with Epic Nashville and released her debut album, Kerosene. Commercial success came slowly, but the album and the blonde Texan firestarter behind it — a prodigious singer­-songwriter with the rare combination of toughness, smarts, sensitivity and blinding star power — proved unforgettable.

That debut and its even more accomplished 2007 follow-up, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, sold well and established Lambert as a year-end-list favorite, but mainstream country audiences weren’t totally on board. “I hadn’t had radio success, and I hadn’t really stepped into my headlining [status] — like, I just needed to take it up a notch,” Lambert recalls.

She did just that with her third album, 2009’s Revolution, which secured her foothold at country radio, first with the RIAA multiplatinum-certified “White Liar,” and then with the Country Airplay-topping ballad “The House That Built Me,” now a signature song of hers. Revolution kicked off Lambert’s greatest period of Nashville success, with her next two albums (2011’s Four the Record and 2014’s Platinum) generating six top 10 Country Airplay hits between them.

But with her acclaimed 2016 double album, The Weight of These Wings, Lambert’s country radio success became more erratic; none of its singles hit Country Airplay’s top 10, and in the decade since, she’s only reached it twice as a lead artist.

“When you start off young and things are working … eventually, something’s not going to work at some point,” she says now, remembering how even her first Revolution single, the solo-penned “Dead Flowers,” stalled on the charts before “White Liar” offered her chart redemption. “I think the first loss is the hardest. Like, ‘Nobody likes my song, my single dropped off the chart, my ticket sales are s–t…’ I needed to learn the lesson of, like, move on to the next. That’s happened so many more times now that I’m like, ‘Oh, whatever, y’all pick another one.’ ”

Even as Lambert’s radio dominance has become less consistent, she’s remained successful in other ways. Each of her five solo albums between 2011 and 2022 reached the Billboard 200’s top five and was nominated for album of the year at the ACM Awards. (She has won the category a record five times in her career and is the most decorated artist in ACMs history, with 35 wins, not counting honorary awards.) She’s also been nominated for the Grammy for best country album (including her 2026 nod in the rechristened best contemporary country album category) five times in the last decade alone, including her second win in 2020 for Wildcard. And throughout her career, Lambert has been one of the few mainstream country artists to receive consistent critical acclaim from non-country publications; indie tastemaker Pitchfork named The Weight of These Wings one of its top albums of the 2010s.

“You got to draw your own map — at least that’s what I felt like I had to do for my career,” she says. “I had hits that weren’t even singles. I had singles that were not hits. I had some amazing opening slots for some really amazing tours. I had some shows where it wasn’t my best show. I was on the journey, and I’m thankful for all of the moving parts of it — because it taught me to pivot when I need to pivot and to not get stuck in [thinking], ‘I need a hit song,’ or ‘I need to sell this many tickets,’ or ‘I want to sell this many records.’ ”

“I think that now she is more open, and she can kind of do whatever she wants,” says Crystal Dishmon, Lambert’s co-manager (with Marion Kraft) since the artist made a handshake deal with her in 2010, as she has with her entire inner circle. “She doesn’t necessarily have to prove herself. And, you know, I think there’s freedom in that … Now, she can kind of color with all the colors in the crayon box. And let’s see where it takes us.”

“Make your art,” Lambert concludes. “Go make it, and then do the work after to get it out there to the people. That’s the other part, you know? The art part is the fun part.”

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In 2026, Lambert’s map has led her to not just the biggest hit of her career, but the biggest hit of the year so far. It just happens to not really be her song.

“Choosin’ Texas,” the breakout smash for country sensation Ella Langley, is rapidly becoming the kind of hit without chart precedent. It not only sped to the top of Country Airplay and Country Streaming Songs but has also topped the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks and counting, becoming the longest-reigning No. 1 for a woman country artist in the chart’s 68-year history.

And Lambert is involved in the game-­changing smash not just as an oft-cited influence and door-opener for Langley — the two duetted on Lambert’s “Kerosene” at the 2025 ACMs — but also as a co-writer, co-producer, backing vocalist and music video co-star. She even helped provide the “Texas” in its title; Langley recently told Billboard that Lambert’s own story of once getting pulled over in a car with her pet kangaroo — and what she imagines the cop’s reaction must have been — inspired the song’s “She’s from Texas, I can tell…” hook.

“It was not on my bingo card for ‘Choosin’ Texas’ to take over the world,” Lambert says. “I love that song, and it so feels like such a part of me. I’m from Texas, and it was one of those things where we just wrote this song we really loved, and all of a sudden… I’ve never seen anything like it. So when Ella calls and is like, ‘What does this mean?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. You might need to call Taylor Swift right now [and ask her], because this is, like, that kind of big.’ ”

For Langley, Lambert’s support and guidance have proved invaluable. “There’s not a rule book to this job,” Langley says. “So [it’s helpful] to be able to have someone like her to ask questions [like], ‘Should I be doing this?’ She’s like, ‘Hell yeah, you should be doing this!’ It’s just a cool time for the both of us.”

What excites Lambert most about the track’s success is that, unlike most country songs that have reached this kind of crossover stratosphere, it’s done so without making any obvious concessions to the pop market, a culmination of pop (and streaming) audiences’ 2020s embrace of all things country. “It’s country as s–t!” she summarizes. “It’s throwback country. Ella’s influences are very much ’70s and ’80s country, and that’s what we were going for. And I feel like more ears are on country music now because of it. I’m so thrilled about that.”

The artistic and commercial megasuccess of “Choosin’ Texas” also led to Lambert co-­producing and executive-producing Langley’s ensuing ­Dandelion album, which has turned into one of the year’s biggest releases, topping the Billboard 200 for two weeks. Though Lambert has written for other artists before — including scoring a Hot Country Songs No. 1 with the world’s biggest country artist as a co-writer on Morgan Wallen’s 2022 single “Thought You Should Know” — sitting in the producer’s chair for another artist is new for her; after all, Lambert only officially slid into that role for her own albums starting with 2022’s Palomino.

“I’ve never had a record in the world that I was just a co-producer, not the artist — so Dandelion has been a pretty cool feeling,” she raves of Langley’s recent full-length. “I was texting Jon Randall, my best friend and co-producer, like, ‘I’ve never known the feeling that this is before, just having a beautiful masterpiece in the world that I got to have a hand in doing that doesn’t say my name on the front.’ It’s really a crazy feeling and I love it.”

As involved as she’s been with Langley’s recent successes, Lambert is quick to clarify that she sees herself as “really just kind of a hype girl” for the rising star. “I’m either talking her off a ledge or hyping her up, because she knows exactly what she wants,” she explains. “We’re girls; we talk each other off the ledge all the time.”

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The energy that “Choosin’ Texas” has injected back into Lambert’s career as a recording artist is also palpable. As Dandelion hung around the Billboard 200’s top five in May, it was joined by Kacey Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere, which features a duet with Lambert on perhaps its buzziest track, the Tejano-flavored reconciliatory singalong “Horses and Divorces.”

“She was like, ‘I know we’ve had our times where we just have drifted apart… careers went separate ways, marriages, whatever… The two things we have in common are horses and divorces,’” Lambert recalls of Musgraves’ pitch for the duet. “And she said, ‘I want to write it with you and Shane McAnally and put it on this record.’ And I was like, ‘Damn right, we’re doing that.’ ”

Lambert is also now back with her own new single — the irresistible “Crisco,” which she calls “one of the most fun songs I’ve ever recorded,” and whose discofied groove and “Southern Nights”-name-checking lyrics explicitly call back to the days of rhinestone bell bottoms. “Country music ebbs and flows, and there has been a ton of overlap [with disco] over the years,” Lambert explains. “There hasn’t been a surge of it in a while, so I hope I’m inspiring people to remember that part of country music that we all love so much.”

The single is also Lambert’s first release since signing with the Nashville-based MCA label, following a two-year run on Republic. “When I started my career, I told my manager I wanted a 50-year career. I’m over 20 years in and still have a lot of fire left in me,” she says. “Having my label in Nashville focused on continuing to elevate my music and career was important to me.”

Her many music projects as a performer and collaborator barely scratch the surface of what Lambert has going on in 2026. There’s her responsibilities at Big Loud Texas, the label imprint she founded with Randall in 2023 — which has already had breakthrough success with singer-songwriter Dylan Gossett — and her MuttNation foundation, which supports the adoption of shelter pets, her “other passion besides music.” And of course, you can occasionally find her tending bar — unofficially — at Casa Rosa.

“I just want to be open and kind of let the universe bring to me what’s supposed to happen,” Lambert says. “And just let the world tell me the direction I’m supposed to go — rather than being so set on something. Because I think that that’s why I got here, is because I was like this,” she says, pantomiming uptightness. “But now I’m like, ‘What are y’all doing? Let’s create something together.’ ”

Additional reporting by Jessica Nicholson.

This story appears in the May 30, 2026, issue of Billboard.

It’s late May, and the official launch of Billboard‘s Song of the Summer race is just around the corner. Many of this year’s likely frontrunners have already been established — with more sure to join them in the weeks to come with the release of much-anticipated new songs and albums — as some longer-shot artists are also starting to show themselves as good value bets. And while plenty of new names and faces look to be elbowing their way into the discussion, some older artists are showing up in the mix for the first time in years — some even doing so posthumously.

On this week’s Pop Star Performance Review episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we do our best to size up what is sure to be a very heated race for the 2026 Song of the Summer crown. Host Andrew Unterberger is enjoyed by AJ Marks of r/Popheads and the Main Pod Girl podcast to run down the most obvious inner-circle contenders in the discussion, while also giving some dark-horse picks currently a little more on the fringes, and naming some personal favorites who aren’t particularly close to the discussion just yet, but who we’re pulling for just the same.

Along the way, we also answer all of the most pressing questions about Song of the Summer 2026: Is “Choosin’ Texas” still somehow the song to beat? Will any of the 42 Drake songs on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 stick around long enough to be a major factor in the discussion? Are we sure to hear from Morgan Wallen at some point in the race? Are we miscasting Olivia Rodrigo as a Song of the Summer-type artist? How might Zara Larsson or Kacey Musgraves be able to elbow her way into the race? Can Charli xcx dominate the summer discourse for the second time in two years? And perhaps most importantly: Does the Song of the Summer really still mean what it used to, anyway?

Check it out above, along with a playlist of some of our favorite Song of the Summer not-quite-contenders discussed in the episode, and please subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom.

And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:

Transgender Law Center

Trans Lifeline

Destination Tomorrow

Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe

Human Rights Campaign – In Your Area

It’s been a while since a duo has truly shaken up the pop, R&B and hip-hop scene in one fell swoop — and Saint Lucia’s Lu City is aiming to do so with an unmistakably French Caribbean twist.

Comprised of two homegrown musicians — singer Ryie, born Tyler Ryie Auguste, 30, and rapper LUJA, born Jean-Atem Farah, 29 — Lu City consciously operates in the footsteps of the culture-steering musical duos and groups before it. The duo’s catalog, anchored by two studio albums, trades on the suave swagger and sing-rap balance of OutKast, the genre fusion of early Black Eyed Peas and the moody 2010s brand of R&B that buoyed Majid Jordan. The template is familiar, but Lu City innovates by injecting every aspect of their sonic and artistic profile with the rhythms, lingo and feeling of Saint Lucia — and several other West Indian cultures.

At the encouragement of the King of Soca, Machel Montano, the duo named themselves after their affectionate nickname for their home country. “The same way we Drake calls Toronto ‘The 6,’ we call Saint Lucia ‘Lu City’ in our songs,” LUJA tells Billboard, just a week after the duo’s mainstage performance at the 2026 Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival. The OVO crew is a major influence on Lu City; LUJA grew up studying 50 Cent, Lil Wayne and Eminem but has been rocking with Drake “since 2009,” while Ryie remembers going from OutKast, Chris Brown and Miguel to Partynextdoor, who he calls his “favorite R&B artist.”

Growing up obsessed with music, both members of Lu City knew that field was their calling — it was just a matter of getting there. Their first stop? Saint Lucia’s Rodney Bay back in 2012. “Our manager, Eliot Bailey, owned a lot, and I used to walk around singing,” recalls Ryie. “He heard me one day, said I had a really good voice, and gave me a beat to see what I could do with it. The very next day, I wrote a song to the beat, brought it to him and he signed me.”

Soon after, a mutual friend introduced Ryie to LUJA, who sold him on a three-minute voice note of him rapping over Kendrick Lamar’s “Look Out for Detox” instrumental. “Eliot hung out with my older cousins and uncles, so when Ryie sent him the voice note, he was like, ‘That’s the Jean that I see in Rodney Bay drinking rum at 16 years old? He raps? And at this level?’” LUJA remembers with a laugh. “I was graduating that same week [with] no plans to go to university because I never liked school, so I signed to Eliot.”

By 2017, Ryie and LUJA participated in Digicel’s inaugural Music Academy (essentially a massive three-day writing camp set in Jamaica), where Montano served as celebrity mentor and pushed them to officially join forces as a duo. Their debut single, a collaboration with Montano titled “Let It Go,” arrived the following year, with their debut studio album, Lucidity, landing in 2022 via the King of Soca’s Monk Music label. Between Lucidity, 2024’s I Miss You, and the smattering of standalone singles in between, Lu City have crafted a genre-traversing catalog that spans R&B, soca, hip-hop, Afrobeats, bouyon and even zouk — but it’s all grounded by their impressive ear for melody, penchant for kwéyòl lyrics and the winning combination of Ryie’s honeyed falsetto with LUJA’s nimble flow.

Below, the rising Caribbean pop duo looks back on its early breakthrough moments, previews its upcoming EP and talks linking up with iShowSpeed on-stream.

Do you guys remember your first foray into songwriting?

LUJA: There was an English assignment that we had to write a story [for] based on a personal matter, and what I did was so well-written, I remember my whole family being in tears. I have a Syrian background, so I wrote something about what was going on there at the time. It touched my family so much that from there, I knew writing was something I had to do forever. When it comes to my music, I don’t write anything. I punch in, take a second to think, and then spit another line.

Ryie: I’m more of a story-driven writer; 99.8% of everything I write is reality. Either I want it to happen, or it has happened. I believe the stuff you write and say will actually come to fruition. You have to be very careful about what you put on a record. I also remember my dad giving me Michael Jackson’s Dangerous CD when I was around seven years old, and from then on, I just wanted to sing. I started mimicking different artists until I grew into my own.

How has the Lu City sound evolved over the years?

Ryie: We started off in R&B and rap, and then the sound grew into Caribbean pop. After that, we moved into Afrobeats because I used to listen to a lot of Wizkid and admired how he would mix his native tongue with English. But my parents always played zouk music, so we started incorporating that and bouyon as well.

Would you guys ever dedicate entire albums to different genres? Kind of like how Drake did with Iceman, Maid of Honour and Habibti?

Ryie: We would love that. We have a new EP coming that’s like that. We also have a single coming on June 4 with a pretty sick up-and-coming artist…

What do you consider your first local hit? Would you say it was “Sa Ka Fête?”

Ryie: Yeah, it was “Sa Ka Fête.” We started working on the song in Jamaica and finished it in Saint Lucia with the help of Shontelle and our producer, Shaquille “Delete” Wilkinson.

LUJA: I remember Ryie saying, “Yo, we need to do something that represents Saint Lucia and our sound,” so we made “Sa Ka Fête.” That was the first song we did, blending our cultural sound with the other styles we’re fans of. And we continued that with “Movay.” On this EP we have coming, we’ve decided to surprise people; there are certain genres that [day-one fans] want us to explore again, and we’re doing it on this project. It’s our most diverse one to date.

Your debut album, Lucidity, dropped in 2022. What were your biggest takeaways from that experience?

LUJA: When I look back on that project, every single song was its own life form. Because it was our first project, we put in more energy than we had for anything else.

Ryie: We really took our time. And that’s always our goal: to make something that lasts instead of rushing. It’s easy to vibe out and make a song in the studio because we can write any genre of music, but it’s more special when we take our time to really craft the song.

LUJA: We had people on that album who we were literally fans of. Kalash was, and still is, a god to us, and he was on “Asé”! Our debut album was one of the biggest moments of our career to date. Everyone on that project was someone we listened to on a daily basis: Jahyanai, Bamby, Jozii, etc.

What’s your creative process like?

Ryie: Sometimes we work separately, and sometimes we work together. I mainly like to be alone to catch the Holy Spirit when I’m writing. It sounds crazy, but that’s how I get the best results, because I’m not distracted.

LUJA: At first, all our studio sessions were together. We learned each other to the point where we don’t need to be in the studio at the same time anymore because we know each other’s process so well. I know Ryie is very hands-on with the beatmaking, and I’m more on the engineering side. We work much faster now because of that.

What are the biggest challenges you guys have faced during your journey in the music industry?

LUJA: The music industry is the hardest thing. A lot of people might disagree, but our challenges were very rough. All you need is one song, right? We were independent for 99% of our career, so we did literally everything ourselves to become one of the biggest names in the French Caribbean. It was just me, Ryie, Eliot and Delete doing everything, so it was very challenging — especially when you’re not making money. You don’t make money until you start doing shows. And everything costs money, so that was very rough.

Ryie: There was no blueprint for us in the music industry. Nobody’s ever really done what we’re doing from the Caribbean and taking it worldwide. Even Rihanna — they took her from the Caribbean, brought her to the States and made her a pop icon. It’s never been done before, and we’re still working on it.

What are your long-term goals? How do you define success?

Ryie: Take over the world.

LUJA: We might not be the best at everything, but we are the best at what we’re very good at. And that’s making good music, being passionate, never getting sloppy and elevating our sound. That is an appreciating asset in music if you want to go down in music history. We just want to be respected musically.

What was it like linking up with Speed on stream?

Ryie: He’s very fast, too fast for me! I’m a calm, chill guy.

LUJA: Speed has the most energy I’ve ever seen. We didn’t just run up on him; we got a call, but I’m not allowed to give details. We’ve had brief moments with him, but this one ended up being so beautiful and organic. We’re not the most sociable when you first meet us, but if you know us, we funny as hell, bro. All we do is laugh and joke, so when we linked up with him, it just clicked.

What else can we expect from Lu City in 2026?

Ryie: A lot of videos and a lot of content. More performances, too. And more interviews! We’ve been working on this EP and getting ready.

LUJA: Just know that this EP is just the beginning of a new chapter. It’s not gonna be our peak moment. This is our [Batman Begins].

Not too long ago, Riley Green started registering at hotels under a pseudonym. His fame had simply reached the level that necessitated it — but the move hasn’t come without some hiccups. Take this past March, when he was on tour in Australia.

“I locked my key in my room. Luckily, I had clothes on,” he recounts. “I went downstairs and [the front desk clerk] said, ‘We need to see your ID.’ I said, ‘I don’t have it. It’s in my room and it’s not going to [match] what’s on the room.’ ” Green takes a beat before deadpanning: “So I sleep outside.”

He’s clearly kidding about the last part. But the story illustrates just how crazy Green’s life has become since his flirty duet with Ella Langley, “You Look Like You Love Me,” came out in June 2024, followed by his smoldering “Worst Way” (with a correspondingly steamy video) and then another Langley duet, “Don’t Mind If I Do.” All three reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, and they transformed Green, voted People’s Sexiest Country Star Alive in November 2025, from a highly successful artist best known for plain-spoken songs celebrating traditional values into a shooting star — now with a catalog that has earned 5.9 billion on-demand official streams in the United States, according to Luminate — and the internet’s country boyfriend.

“It was a perfect storm of him being completely on his A game with his writing, his artistry and his looks, and having this pop culture moment with Ella,” says his longtime friend Carly Pearce, whose own alluring duet with Green, “If I Don’t Leave, I’m Gonna Stay,” is out now. “People were wrapped up in ‘Are they together? Are they not?’ He was just ready.”

Read the full Riley Green cover story here.