Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” is No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart for an 11th consecutive week on Friday (May 30). In the 2020s, only one other song has enjoyed a comparable run at the summit: Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits” […]
Justine Skye is beginning her next musical era with a fresh sound and a new label home: on Friday (May 30), the singer-songwriter released “Oh Lala,” a thumping dance collaboration with Kaytranada that re-imagines her R&B aesthetic and kicks off her stint at Warner Records.
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“I’m so excited to be part of the Warner family,” says Skye, who previously spent time signed to Atlantic Records and Republic Records, in a statement to Billboard. “From the beginning, they’ve truly seen the vision for this new era of my music and have been incredible partners in bringing it to life. ‘Oh Lala’ is a reflection of that creative freedom and support. The track builds a world where tempo and dance are the leading force.”
The Brooklyn native released her debut album, Ultraviolet, in 2018, and the Timbaland-produced Space & Time followed in 2021. As “Collide,” her 2014 collaboration with Tyga, was going viral on TikTok in 2022, Skye was already considering her next sonic pathway, with a desire to incorporate faster tempos in her studio output.
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“After going through so much emotionally, I hit a point where I just wanted to feel good again,” she explains in a press release for “Oh Lala.” “For me, that happened on the dance floor, being carefree with like-minded people — whether in Brooklyn, L.A., or Ibiza. I wanted to make music that matched that energy. Something sexy, something free, something that lets you forget everything but the moment you’re in.”
The “Oh Lala” music video was filmed at the famed (and now shuttered) Brooklyn nightclub, Paragon, with Kaytranada appearing alongside Skye. The new single was first teased in Nike’s new Air Max campaign featuring the singer.
Skye is being supported by both Warner and the label’s flagship dance imprint, Major Recordings. Her in-the-works label debut is being A&Red by Ericka Coulter (svp, A&R, Warner Records and GM, Free Lunch Records) and Chris Morris (svp, A&R, Warner Records).
It’s a Tuesday evening in May at Nightbird Studios, the recording complex nestled within L.A.’s Sunset Marquis. Within this infamous hotel rock and roller hotel, where Keith Richards once got behind the bar and poured drinks during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, Anyma is tinkering away on a new album intended to end the current phase of his career.
A space packed with production equipment is certainly like a second home to the artist, but for him this place must also feel relatively mundane, given how much time he’s recently spent at Sphere. During a 12-date residency spanning this past December, January, February and March, the Italian American producer became the first electronic artist to headline the Las Vegas venue.
While already a longtime star of the global underground via his solo work and previously as part of the duo Tale of Us, this high-profile gig naturally pushed the producer to a new level of ubiquity, with his name suddenly alongside fellow Sphere residents including U2, the Eagles, Dead & Company and Phish. When asked how life is different now than it was on Dec. 26, the day before his residency started, he’s forthright.
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“Well,” he says in his thick Italian accent, “I’m less stressed.”
But those who’ve witnessed the not casual themes of heaven and hell, creation and destruction, humanity and transhumanism woven into his Sphere show and other previous visual output are right to assume the artist born Matteo Milleri is a deep thinker. Tonight, posted up on the couch in the studio’s dimly lit lounge, his webby tattoos peeking out from the sleeves of his hoodie, he elaborates on how the Sphere experience did, in fact, change him. And in fact, he’d hoped it might.
“I think if I would feel the same, it would not be a success for me,” he offers. “Because I put my ideas out there, so that they reflect back on me once they’ve been absorbed by the world. For me as an artist, it’s very important to feel like I’ve changed, evolved, improved my craft.”
Anyma is talkative, polite and emits a sense of gravitas while talking about his work, altogether seeming older than his 37 years. He began the Anyma (pronounced “ah-nee-ma”) project in 2021, fusing the work with both tech and lofty ideas about humanity, spirituality, technology, the past and the future. This Friday (May 30), Anyma releases The End of Genesys, the third and final LP in a trilogy, following 2023’s Genesys and 2024’s Genesys II.
This new music, Anyma says, “was scored to the Sphere opera movie, so it was really written with a very big inspiration.” The tens of thousands of people who saw the show witnessed this inspiration in wild and often surreal visuals that depicted scenes of space, verdant forests, deserts, burning cities and a pair of recurring characters — a human man and a chesty cyborg who who meet in various landscapes, with him eventually plugging a heart into her chest, a moment that drew cheers.
For Anyma, the project was a natural extension of his longtime goal of creating something different in the live electronic world. “The reason why I went into the production of the visual experience was because I don’t really feel much from live events,” he says. “Of course, the underground dance stuff is great, because that’s its own thing. I’m talking about the big concerts, the big festivals, the big productions. For me, even with the technology and the budgets available, I just went home with my ears hurting. It’s difficult to even grasp an artist’s perspective when the production is overwhelming.”
His goal was to make a more intentional visual presentation that “you can just basically augment your purpose and your art with it… That was the whole idea behind everything.” In this way, Sphere was simply the most powerful tool for him to express ideas he’d long been considering. (Having a pre-existing visual identity also helped the team save money on the Sphere show’s mighty production costs.)
“Of course I’m happy it ended in Sphere,” he continues, “but it was supposed to exist even on its own on a world tour. I want people to think and to like, feel, you know? Maybe go home the next day and reconnect with a loved one or something, because they were moved.”
His goal for for The End of Genesys is roughly the same. But while anyone who saw the Sphere show has effectively already heard the album, listening to these 15 tracks in your headphones — with no eye-pummeling visuals or seats shaking in time with the kick — is a different experience. Separated from its corresponding visual identity, the ears better grasp the music’s nuances.
The project includes several marquee collaborations, with the album’s banger of a lead single, “Hypnotized,” featuring vocals from dance icon Ellie Goulding. “Taratata” features previous collaborator and fellow tech enthusiast Grimes, “Human Now” has Empire of the Sun’s always-heady Luke Steele, and other songs recruit 070 Shake, Rezz, Sevdaliza and Yeat.
Anyma’s music has historically existed in the heavy and often cinematic realms of melodic techno, a genre that’s bubbled up in popularity in the broader dance scene over the last few years, a trend that’s partially a function of the success of Anyma and Tale of Us. (The topic of the duo is off limits, although Anyma’s agent, CAA’s Ferry Rais-Shaghaghi, told Billboard in February that “both guys are super-focused on their solo projects right now.”) But via the collabs and song structures, The End Of Genesys often adopts a more pop lean. This was kind of the point.
The previous two Genesys albums came at “a transitional part of my career, when I was still trying to understand how to crack the code with pop, electronic and dance,” says Anyma. And now? “I feel like I did it.”
“It’s the final evolution of the sound,” he says, “with the best artists I know, most of whom are my friends. It’s inspiring that I could connect all my knowledge and influences into a record and make it contemporary and potentially timeless. That’s not up to me, but I think some of this record is really timeless, and that’s what really exciting.”
Balancing all of these factors was tricky he says, “because these days people want very simple things on the dance floor, social media needs to be fast and that’s what’s really resonating with the younger generations.” He instead aspired to make music in the grand tradition of artists like The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and Massive Attack who made songs, he says, “that you could kind of vibe and dance to, but you could also sing. It was one cohesive artist statement with an edge of the rave culture behind it.”
Anyma
Courtesy of BT PR
The music will serve as material for Anyma’s many upcoming DJ sets, with his summer shows happening largely in Europe. The run includes an eight-week residency at Ibiza’s newest venue [UNVRS], a 15,000 capacity mega-club tricked out with a ton of technology.
He describes these upcoming performances as encompassing two worlds. The first is “DJ curation, longer sets, community and more forward thinking, exciting music… Then the big headline stuff and the bigger shows are more of a spin-off of the last act of Sphere, that aesthetic and those sonics.” He also says some of the new visuals will be AI-driven, with the use of AI currently a major focus of his work.
With all of these huge projects and big ideas, it’s hard to imagine Anyma in Netflix and chill mode, although he says it does happen. He’s based in Ibiza, where he enjoys the quiet of the farmland and the goats and the sea. Vacation for him is staying home, watching TV, listening to music and exercising for at least an hour a day, a habit that techno legend Sven Väth encouraged him to adopt. (“He saw me on tour and was like ‘You look a bit tired,’ and I was like, ‘You look great.’”)
But after the intense demands of Sphere, he says the most straightforward form of relaxation currently on his calendar is “going back to being a normal DJ.”
“This has been years of my life, of thinking, of my philosophy in the show. But creatively I also need to take a break — no artist creates just because there’s a screen. I don’t think I can’t do anything meaningful that way.”
Under president/CEO Ben Vaughn, Warner Chappell Nashville consistently dominated country music publishing. In 2024 alone, WCN was crowned publisher of the year at the SESAC Nashville Music Awards and at the BMI Country Music Awards (for the fifth time).
But all those accolades aside, Vaughn, who died Jan. 30, stood out due to his respect for and belief in songwriters. With an unwavering confidence in those he worked with at WCN, Vaughn guided them to where they needed to go creatively and professionally.
To honor his memory and his love of songwriters, Billboard has created the Ben Vaughn Song Champion Award, presented to an artist who uplifts songwriters just as Vaughn did.
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The first recipient is Little Big Town, whose relationship with Vaughn, Billboard’s 2020 Country Power Players Executive of the Year, goes back more than 25 years to when it was just a nascent band and Vaughn a Belmont University student running Scott Hendricks’ Big Tractor publishing company. “We all were kids,” LBT’s Karen Fairchild recalls. But even then, Vaughn had a way of connecting with songwriters. “He just was always so vibrant, and his personality just always so encouraging.”
Years later, shortly after Vaughn moved to WCN in 2012 following a long stint at EMI, LBT’s publishing deal at WCN was set to expire — and the band was determined to leave. “Ben was like, ‘What would it take? Let me take you to dinner and let’s discuss,’ ” Fairchild remembers. “Ben and [then-Warner Chappell Music chairman/CEO] Jon Platt reworked our deal, but Ben was definitely the catalyst. He was our champion. He had our catalog there and he believed in all those songs. People can sign you and be vacant, and Ben was never that guy.”
“He listened to our hearts and to our music and said, ‘I’m going to give this band what they deserve,’ ” LBT’s Kimberly Schlapman recalls. “He made us feel so good because he gave us value at Warner Chappell, not only as an artist but as songwriters. We felt like he wholeheartedly had given us his endorsement, his adoration and respect. We never thought again about going anywhere else.”
Vaughn took a hands-on approach in helping the group find outside songs for its fifth album, 2012’s Tornado, which included “Pontoon,” LBT’s first platinum single. It marked the first time the quartet, which also includes Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook, worked with noted songwriters Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird and Barry Dean. “He was always sending songs and [suggesting] collaborations and asking who we wanted to write with,” Fairchild says. “Just an encourager creatively, giving us renewed hope, and that’s very, very important when you’re diving back in and making a record.”
Vaughn frequently sent the band members songs from writers they hadn’t previously worked with, including “Next to You,” which opens LBT’s 2020 Grammy Award-nominated album, Nightfall. “ ‘Next to You’ was a total Ben moment,” Fairchild says. “Ben sent it to me first and said, ‘Listen to this song. You’re gonna die.’ It was some L.A. writers that we wouldn’t have known, but he just heard all the harmonies and he’s like, ‘This is going to be so epic.’ It was the cornerstone of Nightfall.”
Vaughn also suggested that Fairchild and Schlapman write with the Love Junkies (Hemby, Liz Rose and Lori McKenna), who penned some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Sober” and “Girl Crush.” “He always encouraged us to write with them because he loved what those three ladies and Karen and me were doing together,” Schlapman says. “He has a huge hand in that relationship.”
At Billboard’s Country Power Players cocktail event on June 4, the group will perform “Rich Man” in tribute to Vaughn. “Ben was rich in so many ways,” Schlapman says, “and he gave away his richness to others through his kindness and his encouragement and his love.”
Accepting the award is bittersweet for the band members, but they’re honored to pay their respects to Vaughn’s legacy. “I hope his family knows what an indelible mark he has left on all of us,” Fairchild says. “Just what a good publisher, friend and human he was.”
Vaughn “elevated the entire town,” Schlapman says. “He made the songwriters shine, and especially in this day when they don’t get nearly the credit and the money and the accolades that they deserve, he made them feel like superstars. He made everybody believe in themselves because he believed in them and the power of their music.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Gelo is ready to stamp his rookie of the year season with a slam dunk. The “Tweaker” rapper announced on Thursday (May 29) that his debut album, League of My Own, is slated to arrive on June 27 via Def […]
In “The Stars Behind the Stars” franchise, Billboard Latin and Billboard Español editors share stories that have yet to be told, directly from those who aren’t often in front of the spotlight. Think “todo lo que no se ve detrás de cámaras,” or “everything that happens behind the scenes.” These unsung heroes are essential to an artist’s team and its foundation. Today, we highlight Felix “FeFe” Burgos, who has been Rauw Alejandro’s choreographer since 2017, and is behind the Puerto Rican star’s Broadway-inspired Cosa Nuestra Tour.
With more than 20 dance numbers, 10 actors and dancers and a full live band onstage, Rauw Alejandro’s Broadway-inspired Cosa Nuestra Tour is unlike anything you’ve ever seen in a concert setting. And that’s exactly what they were going for, says Felix “FeFe” Burgos, Rauw’s longtime choreographer.
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In Cosa Nuestra, which is divided into four acts, there’s acting, singing, interludes, a master of ceremony – a masterclass in showmanship that Burgos also hopes will inspire a new generation of dancers and performers. “Latinos, we can also do that,” he says. “We can give a good show and be top performers, too.”
Burgos — who has worked with a roster of superstars that includes Chris Brown and Jennifer Lopez — met Rauw Alejandro in 2017 when the hitmaker took one of his workshops. There was an immediate sense of trust, Burgos remembers. “It has evolved to the point where [Rauw] asks me to do a song and if he doesn’t like something, he has the trust to say, ‘Can we change this, can we change that?’ And I’m 100% open to hearing his suggestions also.”
The complex dance numbers — which help tell the story of Raúl (Rauw) and María (think West Side Story) in the Cosa Nuestra show — were conceptualized by Burgos, alongside his wife Denise Yuri-Disla, also a choreographer. Both are from Puerto Rico, where they began dancing to the beat of congos and maracas. Learning to dance was almost like a rite of passage for them.
“The number for ‘Carita Linda’ was inspired by my wife’s dancing in school as a little girl. When she saw that number come to life, it took her back to those days,” Burgos says. Then there are other dance numbers that were inspired from a scene in The Lion King, or even Daffy Duck from Looney Tunes. “Wherever my mind wants to flow, I let it.”
Below, Burgos talks about executing Cosa Nuestra, the importance of a tour like this, and how family parties in Puerto Rico ignited his love for dancing.
Before we get into the specifics of Cosa Nuestra’s choreography, what’s it been like for you to see it come to life?
It’s a sigh of relief. A lot of the numbers were already done but they were for festival runs. So we had to change a lot of the choreography that was already done and adjust it to the new [Cosa Nuestra] tour format. The old choreography did not fit with the theme. So, when we first started, [Rauw] came into the room, he was like, “Yo, you need to have everything done in three weeks before we go to Vegas for production rehearsals.” We had to get done 20-something numbers — and that includes everything from acting, to transitions, lighting, him performing — we had to get everything done for Vegas in just a few weeks.
How many dancing numbers did you have in the festival run?
Well the festival performance is like an hour show, hour and a half at most. It went from that to a two hours and 30 minutes show, because it has a lot of performances in it. The dancers are constantly onstage, so we had to choreograph everything — thankfully, we have a good cast of dancers who are super professional and are able to pick up stuff really quick. That helped us out a lot.
Rauw’s Cosa Nuestra is very much like seeing a Broadway musical, where every element comes together to tell a story. Was there any hesitation about the format?
There was no hesitation, we were super onboard with it. Rauw and I usually talk about what our next six years will look like or what his next album will look like. So, during Saturno, when we were rehearsing for that, we were already talking about this tour.
First thing, we knew we wanted a band incorporated. We were super excited when they came up with the whole concept. The most challenging part was making a Broadway musical feel like a concert and for people to feel connected to the artist and at the same time it be an engaging story. At the end of the day, we wanted to create something that no one in the Spanish-language industry had ever done. On the American side, I think it’s a very small number of people — maybe like Madonna and Lady Gaga — who have done something similar to what we did.
How many dancers in total and have you worked with them for a long time?
We work with five guys and five girls. And then we have swings — and what they do is, they learn different people’s tracks, and if someone gets injured, they come in for that person. They have the hardest job. We have two mains, and they are extremely professional — from day one, they were already learning each other’s tracks. This group of dancers is the one we normally book. We’ve been working with them for a lot of years.
You’ve been working with Rauw for a while now. Can you talk about how that partnership has evolved since the first time you worked together?
We met in 2017 and I remember because there was this picture of us from the day we started working together. I feel like our partnership got developed from a standpoint of trust. I came from working with a ton of artists, like Chris Brown and J.Lo, I had already been dancing and teaching classes for a really long time. So, when we first met, he took my workshop and there, he developed a sense of trust, because he knew I had the experience.
It evolved to the point where he asks me to do a song, and if he doesn’t like something, he has the trust to say, “Can we change this, can we change that?” And I’m 100% open to hearing his suggestions also. I have also seen his growth and I abide by the growth. I don’t treat him how I treated him in the very beginning, I understand his artistry. I told him, “When you grow, I grow and we’re going to respect each other.” There’s some things that don’t need to be said.
Felix “FeFe” Burgos
Felix “FeFe” Burgos
What does your day-to-day look like today?
I used to teach in the United States, Europe and Puerto Rico. Now, I don’t teach as much because I’m so busy. Before I used to teach a whole lot more classes and workshops and would meet a lot of people like that. Right now, I’m preparing for the closing show of a convention where I taught. I’m also in conversations about Rauw’s shows in Puerto Rico, we have to book a whole bunch of people, there are many surprises that will happen.
We also have a choreography on the Shakira tour. We choreographed the “Te Felicito” number, and she does it on her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran Tour. That’s something cool to have there. After that, who knows? God always provides.
Where does your inspiration come from for these dance numbers?
I get all my ideas while in the car driving and listening to the songs. I pull from a lot of different things, from cultures, movies. I’ll let certain movies or people inspire my way of movement.
Can you give me an example?
There’s a number in Cosa Nuestra called “IL Capo,” which is the second number. “IL Capo,” believe it or not, was inspired by The Lion King. There’s a scene in the movie where Scar is singing and a bunch of hyenas join him and start doing this marching choreography, the whole entire number was based on that part of the movie.
Wherever my mind wants to flow, I let it. There’s this one clip of Daffy Duck that I saw somewhere and I liked how he was doing certain movements, so I was trying to get it humanly possible for a dance number. I like watching cartoons, and a lot of my inspiration comes from that. And the number for “Carita Linda” was inspired by my wife’s dancing in school as a little girl. When she saw that number come to life, it took her back to those days.
What or who inspired you to start dancing?
We used to have a lot of family parties when I was a kid. If it wasn’t at my house, it was at my uncle’s or my grandparents’ house. Every weekend with guitars, congas, maracas, and through there, we developed that sense of entertainment and dancing. My dad was actually a huge inspiration. He inspired me to continue on this path as a dancer. He danced in the clubs, he had a crew in Puerto Rico. He got me into it. I was 5-6 years old and I’d watch my dad do dance moves and I’d follow him.
At 18 years old, I moved to New York and that’s when I started taking [formal] dancing classes. In New York, I got a crew that trained me. My mentor showed me how to properly glide and all of that stuff. The one thing I would say always helped me is that I always had rhythm. I already had that in me.
What was your big break?
I had been booking spot dates with artists, really small artists, maybe six dates in total. My first big break dance wise was in this show called VH1 Divas and there I worked with a choreographer called Fatima Robinson, that was my first big break in dancing. Touring wise, it was with Cheryl, one of the winners of X Factor in Europe. That’s when I first performed for arenas. Then I got to work with artists like Selena Gomez, Chris Brown and Jennifer Lopez.
Any final thoughts?
I hope that kids or teenagers who go to a Cosa Nuestra show are inspired by Rauw and think, “I want to do that when I grow up.” I hope that a new star is born from this. And that they bring it back to the Latin side, and let people know that Latinos, we can also do that. We can give a good show and be top performers, too.
Felix “FeFe” Burgos
Felix “FeFe” Burgos
After six long years and four album re-records, Taylor Swift has finally won back control of her masters. But what does that mean for the long-awaited, highly anticipated Reputation (Taylor’s Version)?
In a letter on her website announcing that she’d finally been able to purchase back the rights to her first six albums from Shamrock Capital Friday (May 30), the pop star addressed just that. “I know, I know. What about Rep TV?” Swift began in her note.
“Full: transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it,” she continued. “The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it.”
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For those reasons, Swift says she “kept putting it off” when it came time to re-record Reputation. Now that she owns the masters to the original album, she doesn’t technically need to remake it — but she did add, “There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
After releasing new versions of her Fearless, Speak Now, Red and 1989 albums over the past few years, Reputation was one of two albums left for her to re-record in the series of six LPs she’d made while still signed to Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group. One of the biggest feuds in music history erupted into the court of public opinion in 2019 when Borchetta sold the company — along with Swift’s catalog — to Scooter Braun, something the “Fortnight” singer called her “worst case scenario” due to Braun’s “incessant, manipulative bullying” she accused him of directing her way over the years.
Her catalog has since traded hands a couple of times, and Swift has kept fans on their toes with the unveilings of each Taylor’s Version album — each of which has featured a handful of “From the Vault” tracks written in years past that were never previously released. Besides Reputation, the only other album she still had left to re-record was her 2006 self-titled debut, about which she wrote in Friday’s letter, “I’ve already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now.”
“Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about,” she wrote of Reputation and Taylor Swift. “But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”
It’s around 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, a few hours before Riley Green’s Duck Blind will open, and its eponymous proprietor is giving a tour of his Nashville bar and restaurant. The multistory complex in Midtown features a few private areas where the singer-songwriter and his friends can hang, including a small lounge that doubles as a podcast studio and a cozy outdoor porch with recliners where Green intends to hold screenings of some of his favorite movies, like Tin Cup, Secondhand Lions and Bull Durham.
Though he’s only 36, Green laments that the younger generation, raised on TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, doesn’t have “the temperament to sit down and watch Shawshank Redemption. And because they don’t, they’ll never be decent people,” he says. That’s a strong indictment and he’s kidding — but only slightly: “You don’t think that at some point in your life you’re a better person because you watched that movie?”
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The get-off-my-lawn rant is ultimately good-natured; Green admits he’s a bit of an old soul, which he credits to his upbringing in Jacksonville, Ala. (population: 15,000). “The majority of my [youth], all four of my grandparents I saw every day. My great-grandmother was alive until 2020,” he says. “I think that’s where I get a lot of the more traditional values.”
A nostalgia for simpler times is reflected in Green’s back-to-basics country sound and in many of his songs — most notably his 2019 triple-platinum smash, “I Wish Grandpas Never Died.” (Though both had died by the time he wrote it, he gave his two grandfathers songwriting credits “as a sign of respect,” he says.)
But in the past year, Green has also leaned into his playful, romantic side — and it has kicked his career into overdrive. His flirty duet with Ella Langley, “you look like you love me,” which recalls classic country songs from the ’70s and ’80s like Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” and George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with its spoken interludes, won musical event of the year at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards and three trophies at May’s Academy of Country Music Awards, including single of the year. Green admits he wasn’t sure the track (on which he’s the featured artist) would do well, but it reached No. 1 on Country Airplay and No. 30 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. “I thought the talking verses were probably too traditional to be a big hit on country radio,” he says, “and I’m so glad I was wrong.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
With fans looking at him in a new light, Green and his camp smartly followed “you look like you love me” (and its sultry video) with “Worst Way,” a sly, sexy song with an even steamier video that plays up Green’s leading-man charisma (and re-creates a love scene from Bull Durham).
Though he played guitar in high school, it wasn’t until Green was in college at his hometown’s Jacksonville State University (where he was also quarterback on the football team) that he got serious about music. He started playing four-hour shifts in local bars and restaurants, filling his sets with covers of songs like Jamey Johnson’s “In Color,” which he still plays every show. (In a full-circle moment, Johnson will open for Green on tour this fall.) But Green didn’t rely on outside material for long. “I never thought of myself as a great singer, [but] I knew how to entertain people,” he says. “When I started writing songs, that was how I saw I could set myself apart from somebody who was more talented as a singer or player.”
While Green writes with many top-tier country songwriters, some of his most acclaimed and diverse songs were penned solo, including “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” “Worst Way,” “Don’t Mind If I Do” (another Langley duet) and “Jesus Saves,” about a homeless veteran. “From a songwriter standpoint, Riley has really embraced his versatility,” says Jimmy Harnen, president/CEO of Green’s label, Nashville Harbor/Big Machine Label Group. “He’s at the point in his career where he’s not afraid to express what he’s feeling and seeing around him.”
BMLG founder and CEO Scott Borchetta recalls a conversation he had with Green two years ago that helped focus the artist for the future. “He said, ‘I’m writing so much and I need to get it out.’ So we set it up to where he could go into our studio anytime he wanted to just start letting all of this music out, and then that led to trying some different production styles. We really focused on his vocals more than ever and had him try a couple different things. And through this, I think he discovered a new voice and discovered his own attractiveness and sexuality, and that wasn’t there when we signed him.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
Billboard’s 2025 Country Power Players Groundbreaker, who had never been on a plane before he signed his record deal with Nashville Harbor in 2018, is now expanding his audience beyond America. He opened for Morgan Wallen in front of 50,000 people at London’s BST Hyde Park last July 4, played several shows in Australia in October and headlined a string of Canadian dates this spring. He jokes that Canadian fans were severely disappointed that his Instagram-famous dog, Carl the Cowboy Corgi, didn’t tag along: “Everywhere we went, in my meet-and-greet people would come in, they’d be looking at my feet to see if he was there. They didn’t care about me at all.”
Carl and Green’s other two dogs were at his 680-acre Alabama farm, which Green only managed to visit five times last year. His trips there could become even less frequent. “Riley called me about a year ago and asked about Tim McGraw and how did Tim [get into acting],” Borchetta says. “That’s something that he is going to spend some energy on, and I think we could see another gear with him in that space.”
“When things are going well, you’ve got to go. ‘Make hay while the sun is shining’ is what Granddaddy would say,” Green says. “And I feel like that’s where I am. Things are going really well.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Donald Trump is on a pardon spree and incarcerated former Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight thinks Sean “Diddy” Combs could be the next celebrity on the president’s list to snag a get out of jail free card. In a new special edition of Laura Coates Live: Diddy on Trial, CNN chief legal analyst Laura Coates interviewed Knight from prison to get the one-time Combs rival’s take on Diddy’s New York sex trafficking and racketeering trial.
Knight’s name recently came up during testimony in the trial by Combs’ longtime girlfriend, singer Cassie Ventura, who told jurors about a 2008 incident in which Diddy abruptly left one of their “freak-off” sex sessions after learning that Knight was having dinner at a nearby diner in Los Angeles. “I was crying,” she said. “I was screaming, ‘Please don’t do anything stupid,’” she said she told Combs, who reportedly left he house in a black SUV with a security guard and multiple hand guns to seek out Knight, who had already left.
Knight and Combs famously squared off in the so-called East Coast/West Coast rap battles of the mid-1990s that came to a head with the still-unsolved murders of Death Row’s Tupac Shakur in 1996 and Bad Boys’ Notorious B.I.G in 1997.
Now, though, Knight is speaking out from federal prison in San Diego and he appears to have softened his stance on his one-time sworn enemy. “I mean, anytime somebody is fighting for their life and they have kids, you still got to show some type of, you know, sympathy for them. He might have allegedly did a lot of things but I don’t want to see the children locked up, you know, because when a man in prison or a woman is in prison, so is their family, you know,” said Knight of Combs, a father of seven.
Knight also said he was not surprised to hear about the over-the-top, drug-fueled sex parties at the center of the Combs case, saying that when he signed artists to Death Row it was all “weed, weed, weed, weed,” which turned to “doing powder cocaine” when those acts graduated to major labels. “Once you open that door up and play with the devil, you’re going to become the devil. So that’s when a lot of the problems came in. I’m quite sure for puffy and everyone else,” Knight said.
And while Knight managed to work in on one of his long-held complaints about how camera-loving Combs conducted his business as a label boss at Bad Boy — “I believe that as an executive or a record label owner, you supposed to make them the star. Once you start trying to be the star, that’s when the problem come in” — in the end he thinks his one-time enemy will walk free.
“I don’t feel that the prosecution wanted that bad, because a lot of stuff they had on him, they left out. It don’t seem like they really coming down hard at them,” Knight said about his opinion of the prosecution’s laying out of their case so far. “If he get convicted — if Puffy get convicted, Trump’s going to pardon him,” Knight predicted. “Trump is a president that stands up and do what he wants to do, and he’s going to do what he feels is best. So Puffy has nothing to worry about.”
Trump has been on an unusual pardon spree lately, springing convicted felons and fellow former reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley this week, in addition to rapper NBA YoungBoy, after earlier including Lil Wayne and Kodak Black in a massive 143 pardon/commutation spree at the end of his first presidential term. To date, Trump — who in May 2024 became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony — has not publicly commented on the Combs trial to date.
Coates also asked Knight the billion-dollar question everyone is asking: will, or should, Combs testify in his own defense? “He probably was advised not to, but I feel if he do tell his truth, he really will walk,” said Knight. “He can humanize his own self and a jury might give him a shot. But if they keep him sitting down, it’s like he’s scared to face the music. He just have his faith in God, pull up his pants and go up there and tell his truth.”
Testimony in Combs’ trial continued on Friday (May 30) with the jury hearing from a former personal assistant (referred to by the pseudonym “Mia”), who said that she suffers from “severe complex PTSD” as a result of working for Diddy.
Watch some of Knight’s interview below.
Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Miley Cyrus finds new pop beauty, Lorde upends expectations and Tate McRae revs up for F1. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Miley Cyrus, Something Beautiful
Drawing upon classic pop influences while also letting her freak flag fly, Miley Cyrus offers a singular accomplishment on Something Beautiful — moving on from 2023’s Endless Summer Vacation, which included the biggest hit of her career in “Flowers,” with her most satisfying front-to-back listen to date, unbothered with trying to recreate radio success but still finding revealing hooks along the way.
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Lorde, “Man of the Year”
In the past, Lorde has liked to preview a new album with an uptempo lead single and a ballad-leaning follow-up — think Melodrama with “Green Light” and “Liability,” or Solar Power with the title track and “Stoned at the Nail Salon” — but “Man of the Year,” which comes after the fleet-footed “What Was That,” is actually a red herring, starting off as a sparse reflection over bass plucks but then widening its stance, and ending with a fuzzed-out boom.
Tate McRae, “Just Keep Watching”
Continuing a year in which she’s leveled up as a pop star — as well as a week where she earned her first career Hot 100 chart-topper, alongside Morgan Wallen on “What I Want” — Tate McRae hops into the F1 soundtrack mobile with “Just Keep Watching,” a fast-moving club track with the type of quick-twitch percussion that could inspire more kinetic choreography if McRae incorporates the song into her live show.
Leon Thomas, MUTT Deluxe: HEEL
“MUTT” may have marked Leon Thomas’ arrival as a compelling new voice in popular R&B, its host album of the same name was just as sumptuous as its standout hit; now, MUTT contains even more acrobatic vocal takes by Thomas on its deluxe edition, which includes team-ups with Kehlani and Big Sean, as well as engrossing new solo cuts like “HEEL” and “NOT FAIR.”
Mt. Joy, Hope We Have Fun
The 2020s have seen indie rock quintet Mt. Joy continuously graduate to bigger touring venues, culminating in a Madison Square Garden headlining gig on their last live trek — and instead of simply acting as another excuse for the group to hit the road, new album Hope We Have Fun translates the band’s live energy to the studio, with songs like “Highway Queen” and “Pink Lady” jangling forward with blissed-out style.
Clipse, “Ace Trumpets”
In the 2000s, Virginia hip-hop duo Clipse would regularly release Pharrell Williams-produced bangers that made their listeners scrunch up their noses in delight; then, Malice quit music to explore religion, and his brother Pusha T moved on to solo stardom. Now, Clipse (and Pharrell) are back, recapturing the magic on “Ace Trumpets,” the head-knocking first track from long-awaited new album, Let God Sort Em Out.
Ava Max, “Lovin Myself”
Across pop hits like “Sweet But Psycho,” “My Head & My Heart” and “Kings & Queens,” Ava Max has prioritized electro-pop fun while offering a streak of self-empowerment; new single “Lovin Myself” doubles down on the second half of that equation, with the singer declaring, “I don’t need nobody, I’m lovin’ myself!” as warm synths rain down on her voice.
Editor’s Pick: Yeule, Evangelic Girl is a Gun
If Yeule’s 2022 album Glitch Princess was their critical breakthrough, Evangelic Girl is a Gun is the first time we receive a full glimpse of the daring singer-songwriter: the hyperpop from years past has morphed into trip-hop, alt-rock and affecting balladry, but across the most vulnerable lyricism of Yeule’s career, they still toss out mesmerizing pop ideas, as their song craft serves as a foundation for their roaming spirit.
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