Billboard’s Fan Army Face-Off is back for the summer of 2022.
We’ve come a long way. When it started, 64 artists’ fan armies entered battle to find out – whose fan base is strongest? Now, eight fiercely devoted fan armies remain – the Elite Eight for 2022.
After a few close showdowns in the semifinals, the following fan armies have emerged victorious: Adele, BTS, Ariana Grande, SB19, SEVENTEEN, Stray Kids, Taylor Swift and TOMORROW x TOGETHER. The final eight voting began Tuesday, June 28 at 12:00 p.m. ET and continues through July 5, 12 p.m. ET. After that, the final four showdown begins.
Who will make it to the next round? Vote below to make your voice heard. Past winners include Super Junior’s E.L.F (victorious twice), T-ara’s Queens (victorious three times) and BIGBANG’s VIPs.
Check out the final eight matchups below and vote for your favorite in each bracket.
Jury deliberation is underway in the federal court case against state representative Tricia Derges.
Derges, who represents Missouri’s 140th district in Christian County, faces charges of COVID-19 fraud, wire fraud, illegally prescribing drugs and making false statements to investigators.
The late-night talk show is currently shooting in London, which holds special memories for the young singer-songwriter, considering it was the site of her first-ever headlining show, which was at the 130-person Courtyard Theatre back in July 2017. (Host Corden was even able to produce a poster promoting that very show, depicting a very blonde and very teenage Eilish staring off into the distance.)
“I remember pulling up to the venue, and it’s this, like, tiny little door. Like, you would never even know, it says ‘The Courtyard,’ and there was this girl standing outside and she was with her mom,” she recalled. “And I pulled up and she kind of looked at the car funny, and I remember thinking, like, ‘That’s weird. Who is that? Like, why would there be somebody standing there?’”
As it turned out, the young girl happened to be the very first person in line for Eilish’s show, and was more than thrilled to run into the then-15-year-old rising star. “It was really magical,” Eilish said. “And that night, it was just the most amazing thing. I think we only had, like, seven songs total … We played every single song we had written, my brother and I. And I remember the crowd of 100-and-something sang along to ‘Ocean Eyes.’ … And then after the show, I went outside and I met every single person that came to the show.”
While that meet-and-greet full of hugs, pictures, and ‘thank yous’ took two hours, it would be impossible for the “Everything I Wanted” singer to do the same thing after the shows she’s playing these days, such as headlining Glastonbury for more than 200,000 people last weekend along with Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar.
“I really miss meeting everyone,” she said, leading Corden to quip, “If you tried to hug everybody at Glastonbury, you’d still be hugging people when, like, the headline act is happening the next Friday.”
Eilish is also currently wrapping up the European leg of her world tour in support of her sophomore album, Happier Than Ever. Next, she’ll play shows in Antwerp, Belgium; Berlin; and Zurich before heading to Asia, New Zealand, and Australia.
Watch Eilish’s sweet trip down memory lane with Corden below.
How you like that! BLACKPINK has become the first musical act to reach the 75 million subscriber mark on YouTube, the video platform confirmed to Billboard on Tuesday (June 28).
The K-pop group — consisting of Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa — earned the title of most subscribed artist on the platform in September 2021, when BLACKPINK surpassed the 65.5 million mark, taking over the lead from Justin Bieber.
“Our BLINKS contributed a lot to this achievement,” BLACKPINK said in a statement at the time. “We will continue to bring positivity and great energy through our music videos.”
Canadian superstar Bieber is still in second place, with 69.3 million subscribers. K-pop supergroup BTS is in third with 68.7 million followers. Rounding out the top five are Marshmallow with 55.4 million, and Eminem with 52.4 million.
The climb to 75 million subscribers has been relatively quick for BLACKPINK, who made their debut in 2016. By March 2019, they had already become the first K-pop group to reach 20 million subscribers. A little over a year later, in July 2020, they became the sixth musical act to surpass 40 million followers. And as previously mentioned, they were on top by summer 2021.
BLACKPINK has also set several other notable YouTube records. In November 2019, they became the first K-pop group to have a music video — “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” — reach the one billion views mark on the platform. (It’s currently on the verge of reaching two billion, boasting an impressive 1.8 billion views.) Then the video for “How You Like That” arrived in June 2020, earning a mind-blowing 86.4 million views in the first day, making it the biggest music video debut ever at the time.
Though the group has been quiet as of late on the new music front, Jennie hinted in a May interview with Rolling Stone that fans may be seeing and hearing from them soon. She subtly teased, “These days, because we’re preparing for a comeback and planning our tour, I think every day, ‘OK, how do I prepare myself for my next busy two years?’”
As large swaths of the country audience indulge in ‘90s country flashbacks, Hailey Whitters’ first radio single, “Everything She Ain’t,” offers an amalgam of throwback ideals.
The bridge’s “girl-next-door” message is in the same vein as the plot of The Judds’ “Why Not Me”; Ryan Tyndell’s hard-coated harmonies contrast with Whitters’ ultra-female sound the same way that Robert John “Mutt” Lange’s background vocals complemented Shania Twain’s classic leads; and Whitters’ own voice is frequently compared to The Chicks’ lead singer, Natalie Maines.
“Everything” benefits, Whitters believes, from its status as a late addition to her album Raised. “This song was one of the absolute last songs we cut,” she says. “To be completely honest, in my mind, my record was done. I don’t want to say I was half-assing this, but I was like, ‘I don’t really know what this is gonna be right now.’ So I think I was just kind of not putting as much pressure on it, or on myself, as I maybe would have.”
“Everything She Ain’t” was low-pressure from its inception on March 2, 2021, at Little Louder Music, where Tyndell (Eric Church’s “Springsteen,” Keith Urban’s “We Were”) is signed. They spent the bulk of a writing session with Bryan Simpson (Blake Shelton’s “A Guy With A Girl,” Joe Nichols’ “Yeah”) working on a different song – “a spaghetti-western idea,” she recalls – but it was kind of heavy, and once they put it aside, they wanted to lighten the mood.
“Sometimes you try to reverse the world, spin the world off its axis,” Simpson notes. “And sometimes you’re just trying to write something fun to sing that’s playful. That’s taken me 20 years to get okay with, by the way.”
Whitters blurted out the hook – “I’m everything she is/ And everything she ain’t” – and Tyndell latched onto a chord progression with a descending bass line. They messed with the format for a bit, but no more than about 30-40 minutes. Since it was the midst of the pandemic and schedules were loose, they were able to reconvene a few days later, and it lent some time to play with it a bit more.
At home, Tyndell developed the opening lines of the chorus: “The whiskey in your soda/ The lime in your Corona/ Shotgun in your Tacoma.”
“I do remember sitting in my living room looking out the window and seeing my Tacoma in the driveway, and just kind of spitting out a few of those lines,” he says. “I just did a little voice memo of what I had, and then we all got back together and picked what we liked, kind of just compared notes and and then went from there.”
Tyndell would also originate the follow-up line, “Little Loretta to your Hank” – a reference to Country Music Hall of Fame members Lynn and Williams. Simpson lobbied to change it, with “Audrey to your Hank” recognizing the woman who inspired many of Williams’ heartbreak classics. Audrey is a name that many country fans, particularly in younger demographics, may not recognize.
“There’s a little country music history,” Simpson says. “There’s an opportunity to dig in and pay attention to a huge instigator in his career.”
“It’s not Johnny [Cash] and June [Carter],” Whitters adds. “It’s not like all the sweet relationship stories that you hear throughout country music. It’s got a little bit of fight in it.”
They crafted the opening verse as a putdown of the male character’s current girlfriend – “She ain’t a peach you oughta be pickin’” – setting up the chorus’ role as a celebration of all the singer’s positive possibilities. And by the second verse, the protagonist spies the couple dancing in a bar, continuing her dismissal of the other woman while maintaining her self-confidence. Before they finished, they developed a short bridge, too, taking one last shot to say the girlfriend is “all wrong for you” while fitting in that “girl-next-door” phrase.
“If this was a paper, that would be the thesis statement that you start with,” Tyndell says. “We didn’t want to lose it.”
Even with the bridge and an instrumental solo, “Everything She Ain’t” still lasted a scant two-and-a-half minutes. “It’s short, it’s easy to love, it’s like ice cream,” Simpson notes. “It’s sugar-sweet the whole way through – not sugar-sweet lyrically – but it definitely has that [appeal], with her voice being so punchy on it.”
Tyndell oversaw the demo, supporting Whitters’ fluid vocal with an almost-folky acoustic guitar and commanding snare programming that included two-beat rhythms after key phrases to give it just a little more strength. The demo wasn’t completed, though, when Whitters and her husband, producer Jake Gear, got caught up on the day at home. So she sang “Everything She Ain’t” a cappella, and they ended up throwing in short hand claps in the spots where Tyndell was emphasizing those two-beat rhythmic phrases.
Since Raised was mostly completed, they cut “Everything” as a loose demo at Sound Emporium on April 21, 2021, mostly to see what they might be able to make of it. Gear applied more country instrumentation, with fiddler Eamon McLoughlin, steel guitarist Russ Pahl and Bryan Sutton doubling on acoustic guitar and banjo. That brought out the Natalie Maines aspect in Whitters’ voice, and the descending progression has been compared to The Chicks’ “There’s Your Trouble” — though it’s only the arrangement that creates that impression, as the melody is nothing like “Trouble.”
“We’re aware of the similarities,” Gear says. “Especially with everybody being so trigger-happy on these copyright lawsuits, we’ve had those conversations, and we purposely made sure and double-checked before committing anything to a final mix.”
“You can’t choose what the tone or timbre of your voice is,” he continues. “If you grew up listening for 15 years to the Dixie Chicks – who were influenced by a lot of other people that Hailey is also influenced by – yes, she sounds like Natalie.”
Gear provided some additional dressing by hiring Mike Rojas for an underlying organ sound, having drummer Jerry Roe sprinkle in some percussive elements, and getting Roe and Midland drummer Robbie Crowell to record the hand claps. Crowell also dropped in a guiro – the fish-shaped percussive instrument – for extra texture at random locations.
“It’s hilarious that he’s credited on the song, because it literally took us about 30 seconds to record it,” Gear says. “I probably could have played it, but I wanted a real drummer with pocket and timing to be able to do it. So we had him play.”
Ultimately, Songs & Daughters label execs loved “Everything She Ain’t,” and it was upgraded from a demo to a master. Parent Big Loud released it country radio via PlayMPE on June 1. It charted even before its official add date, and ranks No. 56 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart dated July 2, in its eighth week on the list.
“The world is heavy, and it was heavy when we were writing this and it’s gonna continue to be heavy,” she reasons. “I’m not trying to change anyone’s life. I’m just trying to make someone’s day. I feel like this song does that in two minutes and 30 seconds.”
Selena Gomez isn’t backing down when it comes to her stance on reproductive rights. And in red carpet interview for the second season of her Hulu series Only Murders in the Building on Monday (June 27), she wanted men to know that they shouldn’t either.
When asked by Varietyabout an impassioned message she tweeted Friday (June 24) — the same day the Supreme Court ended nearly 50 years of a woman’s right to abortion access by overturning Roe v. Wade — the 29-year-old star was quick to respond with what she thinks Hollywood can do to help in the fight for women’s healthcare. “It’s about voting,” she told the publication.
“It’s about getting men — men needing to stand up and also speak against this issue. It’s also the amount of women that are hurting. I’m just not happy and I hope that we can do everything in our power to do something to change that.”
Gomez’s tweet had included a link to Planned Parenthood’s webpage of abortion-related resources, with the “Let Somebody Go” singer writing: “Watching a Constitutional right be stripped away is horrific. A woman should have the right to CHOOSE what she wants to do with her own body. End of story.”
“I am fearful of what will happen to those without the necessary means to have access to a safe, legal abortion,” she had added.
Back in May, Gomez also became one of several influential artists to sign her name in support of Planned Parenthood’s #BansOffOurBodies campaign alongside Miley Cyrus, Camila Cabello, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes, Megan Thee Stallion, Halsey, and more.
“We are Artists. Creators. Storytellers,” read the campaign endorsement, which ran in The New York Times following an unprecedented leak of the Supreme Court’s draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. “We are the new generation stepping into our power. Now we are being robbed of our power. WE WILL NOT GO BACK — AND WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN.”
Listen to what Selena Gomez had to say about the reversal of Roe v. Wade below:
.@SelenaGomez on what Hollywood can do in light of #RoeVsWade getting overturned: “It’s about voting, it’s about getting men — men needing to stand up and also speak against this issue. It’s also the amount of women that are hurting. I’m just not happy.” https://t.co/jLjwaGfpcApic.twitter.com/gsvN27UYFi
Morgan Wallen achieves his sixth No. 1 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart as “Wasted on You” ascends to the top of the list dated July 2. In the tracking week ending June 26, the song gained by 4% to 29.4 million in audience, according to Luminate.
Wallen wrote the song with ERNEST, Josh Thompson and Ryan Vojtesak.
Concurrently, “Wasted” rules the multi-metric Hot Country Songs tally for a seventh frame. It corralled 12.2 million U.S. streams (up 2%) and sold 5,000 downloads (up 13%) in the week ending June 23.
The 29-year-old Wallen, from Sneedville, Tenn., last led Country Airplay with “Sand in My Boots” for a week in February. He first topped the survey with “Up Down” (featuring Florida Georgia Line) for a frame in June 2018 and reigned again with “Whiskey Glasses” for three weeks starting in June 2019, “Chasin’ You” (one week, May 2020) and “More Than My Hometown” (one, November 2020).
Meanwhile, “Wasted” parent set Dangerous: The Double Album leads Top Country Albums for a record-extending 63rd week, with 52,000 equivalent album units (up less than 1%).
Notably, “Wasted” will be promoted to pop and adult pop radio beginning July 11.
Concurrently, ERNEST’s “Flower Shops” (Big Loud), featuring Wallen, pushes 19-18 on Country Airplay (7.9 million).
‘Make’-ing Headlines
Luke Combs’ new single “The Kind of Love We Make” blasts onto Hot Country Songs at No. 2. It drew 11 million streams and sold 12,000 downloads in its first full tracking week. On Country Airplay, the song, which Combs co-wrote, climbs 18-15 (9.5 million, up 8%).
The song opens at No. 1 on both Country Streaming Songs and Country Digital Song Sales, awarding Combs his fourth and eighth leader on the respective lists.
Combs rolls up his 16th Hot Country Songs top 10 overall and makes his second-highest debut. “Forever After All” became Combs’ fourth No. 1 when it debuted atop the survey dated Nov. 7, 2020, for its first of 10 weeks on top. The song dominated Country Airplay for six weeks starting in June 2021, becoming Combs’ 11th of 14 consecutive career-opening No. 1 singles, a record streak that his latest could extend.
“Make” is the lead single from Combs’ album Growin’ Up. Released June 24, the 12-song set will impact the Top Country Albums survey dated July 9.
Also notably, the track tallies the second No. 2 debut on Hot Country Songs in as many weeks, following Bailey Zimmerman’s “Rock and a Hard Place” on the list dated June 25. (It ranks at No. 12 on the July 2 ranking.)
Two Guys and a ‘Bar’
Chris Young scores his 17th Country Airplay top 10, as “At the End of a Bar,” with Mitchell Tenpenny, who adds his second top 10, lifts 11-10 (14.9 million, up 7%). The pair penned the song with Chris DeStefano.
For Young, “Bar” follows his duet with Kane Brown, “Famous Friends,” which became Young’s 10th Country Airplay No. 1 and wrapped as the top title on the 2021 year-end Country Airplay chart.
“Bar” is Tenpenny’s first Country Airplay top 10 since his first of six entries, “Drunk Me,” which hit No. 2 in December 2018. Meanwhile, his latest solo single, “Truth About You,” rises 15-14 (9.9 million, up 11%).
Depeche Mode co-founder Andy Fletcher’s sudden death on May 26 at the mere age of 60 shocked the band and fans around the world. Now, Martin Gore and Dave Gahan are sharing Fletcher’s cause of death at the behest of his family.
“As you can imagine, it’s been a strange, sad, disorienting few weeks for us here, to say the least,” noted their statement, which was posted to the band’s social media pages on Monday (June 27). “But we’ve seen and felt all of your love and support, and we know that Andy’s family has too.”
“A couple of weeks ago we received the result from the medical examiners, which Andy’s family asked us to share with you now,” Gore and Gahan’s message continued. “Andy suffered an aortic dissection while at home on May 26. So, even thought it was far, far too soon, he passed naturally and without prolonged suffering.”
The two remaining members of the celebrated synth-pop band noted that there “was a beautiful ceremony” in honor of their late friend in London the week before, and that beautiful memories of Fletcher were shared. Gahan and Gore also thanked fans for their “outpouring of love” for their fellow co-founding member, and how it “means the world to all of us.”
Gore and Gahan concluded, “Andy, you’ll be missed, but certainly not forgotten.”
Ahead of revealing Fletcher’s cause of death, the band invited fans — on behalf of Fletcher’s wife Grain and children — to make a donation in memory of their late band member.
“Andy passionately supported Teenage Cancer Trust over many decades after being introduced to it by its founders,” an earlier post on the band’s Instagram account explained. “Alongside Andy and Grain’s personal relationship with TCT, Depeche Mode became massive supporters of the charity and raised huge sums of money with the help of their amazing fans around the world.”
The statement went on to share that Teenage Cancer Trust remained “very close to Andy’s heart,” and noted, “we could not think of any better way to honour his memory than to raise money in his name and help to support teenagers and young adults battling cancer.” The fundraiser has brought in just over $41,600 at press time.
Fletcher, who had been with the band since its formation in 1980, was a utility player for Depeche Mode over the years, with Gore as the main songwriter, and Gahan as the frontman. He filled in on bass and synth as needed — particularly during live shows — served as a tiebreaker between Gore and Gahan, and also dealt with the band’s business and legal responsibilities.
Some wondered what his role was in the Grammy-nominated band over the years, but Fletcher got in on the fun too. He noted in 1989’s 101 documentary, “Martin’s the songwriter … Dave’s the vocalist … and I bum around.”
The track, released via Combustion Masters/Sony Music Nashville, debuts at No. 89 with 6.8 million U.S. streams (up 29%) and 700 downloads sold (up 16%) in the June 17-23 tracking week, according to Luminate. It concurrently rises 24-20 on Hot Country Songs.
“The last few months have been a wild ride,” Kent tells Billboard. “The way people have responded to the music is completely changing my life. It’s been humbling to see ‘Wild as Her’ continue to grow and accomplish new things. Stoked to see where it goes from here!”
Though it’s his first time reaching the Hot 100, the 28-year-old Oklahoma native had previously made a dent on Billboard’s charts in 2015-16 as a finalist on the eighth season of The Voice. Three of the songs he performed on the show hit the Hot Country Songs chart: his cover of Garth Brooks’ “To Make You Feel My Love” reached No. 44 in April 2015 (marking his first appearance on any Billboard survey); his version of Jason Aldean’s “Why” reached No. 49; and his update of of Bad English’s “When I See You Smile” reached No. 38. Kent was then billed on the chart under his full name, Corey Kent White.
The following year, Kent’s LP Long Way reached No. 42 on Top Country Albums and No. 19 on Heatseekers Albums.
“Wild as Her” marks Kent’s first chart appearance since 2016, and his first as a Sony Music Nashville signee.
Kent is currently on tour with Eli Young Band, following stints opening for Chase Rice and Parker McCollum.
While Dove Cameron‘s acting career skyrocketed due partially to her roles in the Disney Channel comedy series Liv and Maddie and in the Descendants films — she revealed in a new interview that she doesn’t feel like she ever fit in with past Disney stars.
“I never had that moment where I was like, ‘I’m a Disney girl,’” she told the LA Timesthis week. “I never looked at Miley [Cyrus] or Demi [Lovato] or Selena [Gomez] or Zendaya or Bella [Thorne] or anybody — Hilary Duff or anybody that came before me — I never looked at them and thought, you and me — same.”
She added that she was “always the strange outlier who doesn’t belong and who will never fit in. I had huge imposter syndrome.”
“So I don’t really look to anybody else for a roadmap,” she continued. “I mean, this whole narrative that I was on Disney and then found my way out with a pop song, it was a total f—ing accident.”
Cameron’s 2022 hit, “Boyfriend,” gave the star her first top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, as the sultry track peaked at No. 16 on the tally dated June 11, 2022. She also climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart (dated May 14) to become the top emerging act in the U.S. for the first time.
The singer came out as bisexual while hosting an Instagram Live session in 2020, but toldGay Times that “queer” is the label that best describes her identity.
“Every song of mine is a queer song because I’m a queer artist,” she told the LA Times. “Does that mean that every song is ‘I am G-A-Y?’ No. I think there’s gonna be a lot of room in my artistry to talk about things other than that I love women”
