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Billie Eilish had some choice words for tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Earlier this month, Musk, 54, won a shareholder vote that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth US$1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. More than 75 per cent of voters approved the plan as shareholders gathered for the annual meeting.
Following the reports, Eilish, 23, took to her Instagram stories on Nov. 13 and referred to Musk, who is already the richest person in the world, as a “f—ing pathetic p—- b—- coward.”
The Ocean Eyes singer shared infographics originally posted by My Voice, My Choice suggesting what Musk could do to help global crises with his vast fortune.
“Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire here’s what he could do with it,” the first photo read.
The next slides suggested ways that Musk could help assist the world, including “end world hunger” and “choose to spend $40 billion every year to end world hunger by 2030 or provide universal safe clean water for $140 billion for the planet for the next seven years.”
@BillieEilish/Instagram
The following slide said that Musk could “save all 10,443 Critically Endangered species” by paying “$1-2 billion annually to bring all of them down to Endangered status.”
The last slide suggested that Musk could pay $53.2 billion to “rebuild Gaza and the occupied West Bank according to the EU.”
“Although the UN predicts this could be upwards of $70 billion for Gaza alone. If he wanted to spread the wealth, and aid further, he could also rebuild Ukraine and Syria at a cost of $793.2 billion,” the post read.
@BillieEilish/Instagram
In her final post, Eilish wrote: “etc…. f—ing pathetic p—- b—- coward.”
@BillieEilish/Instagram
Musk has not publicly responded to Eilish’s comments as of this writing.
Eilish’s criticism of Musk comes weeks after she suggested billionaires need to donate more when she accepted the music award at this year’s WSJ Magazine Innovator Awards in October.
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“We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than, kind of, ever, especially in our country,” Eilish said to an audience that included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, as well as Star Wars creator George Lucas.
“I’d say if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things, maybe give it to some people that need it,” she added.
Late-night host Stephen Colbert introduced Eilish on stage at New York’s Museum of Modern Art by announcing that she would donate $11.5 million of the proceeds from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour to causes dedicated to food equity, climate justice and reducing carbon pollution.
In accepting the award, the Bad Guy singer added a polite-but-direct call to others in the room, saying that a lot of people, especially in the U.S., could use some help right now.
“Love you all, but there’s a few people in here who have a lot more money than me,” she said, as the room erupted in applause. “And if you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? And no hate, but give your money away, shorties.”
— With files from The Associated Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
A man charged at Ariana Grande while she walked the yellow brick road carpet at the Singapore premiere of her new movie Wicked: For Good on Thursday.
In footage of the interaction captured on TikTok, the man appears to have jumped over a barricade as Grande signed autographs while walking along the carpet at Universal Studios Singapore, alongside co-stars Cynthia Erivo, Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum.
The man then sprinted over to Grande and threw his arm around her, jumping up and down excitedly while waving at the crowd. Erivo quickly intervened, pulling them apart just before security stepped in and escorted him off the carpet.
Grande looked visibly shaken in the video and took a deep breath as Erivo hugged her once the man was gone.
The man, identified as Johnson Wen, calls himself a “prankster” on his TikTok account, where he shared the footage.
“Dear Ariana Grande Thanks for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You #wicked,” Wen wrote in his caption.
Wen recently stormed onstage and put his arm around Katy Perry during a concert in Sydney, Australia, in June.
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Perry was performing her hit song Hot N Cold at the Qudos Bank Arena when Wen rushed onto the stage and began dancing beside her.
The 41-year-old singer looked visibly shocked in a video shared to social media as the man tried to put his arm around her and jumped up and down on stage — similar to his actions with Grande.
Wen then started dancing by himself after Perry spun around to distance herself from him and continued to sing. As he performed the “floss” dance move, security approached him from both sides and escorted him off stage.
“There’s never going to be another show like this, so just enjoy it, Sydney,” Perry said into her microphone as security grabbed the man. “What the hell is going on?”
Police in New South Wales told NBC News that the man had been arrested and charged with two offences, including entering enclosed land and obstructing a person in performance of work or duties.
Wen hasn’t just approached Perry and Grande; he’s shared previous videos of himself running onstage during The Weeknd’s concert in Melbourne last year and running onto the field at the FIFA Women’s World Cup final in 2023.
He also interrupted events during the Paris Olympics and the men’s Cricket World Cup in Melbourne in December 2024.
WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images
When asked how he keeps getting past security after the incident, Wen told Australia’s 9News it was “Magic. Just kidding, I’m just too quick.”
Wen said he has racked up an estimated $20,000 in fines over his stage-invading antics.
“I’m planning to like quit forever because you get in way too much trouble for it,” he added.
It’s not immediately clear if he’ll face charges for the incident in Singapore.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
James Van Der Beek is parting ways with some of his Dawson’s Creek memorabilia amid his cancer battle.
The 48-year-old actor, who has been battling Stage 3 colorectal cancer, is selling several items from TV teen drama Dawson’s Creek and movie Varsity Blues in a partnership with auction website Propstore, where interested buyers can place their bids.
“I’ve been storing these treasures for years, waiting for the right time to do something with them, and with all of the recent unexpected twists and turns life has presented recently, it’s clear that the time is now,” Van Der Beek told Propstore in a statement.
“And while I have some nostalgia tugging at me as I part with these items, it feels good to be able to offer them through Propstore’s auction to share with those who have supported my work over the years.”
Van Der Beek, who starred as Dawson Leery in the hit show, is auctioning off items including wardrobe, props and set pieces, like Dawson Leery’s flannel, the necklace he wore in the series before he gifted it to Joey Potter (Katie Holmes) and Van Der Beek’s chair back from the set of the series.
Propstoreauction.com
The items will go on sale through Propstore’s annual Winter Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction, running from Dec. 5 to Dec. 7.
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All of the proceeds from the items sold will go to Van Der Beek to help “with the financial cost of fighting cancer,” People reports.
Van Der Beek first revealed that he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer last November in an interview with People.
“I have colorectal cancer. I’ve been privately dealing with this diagnosis and have been taking steps to resolve it, with the support of my incredible family,” the star told the publication. “There’s reason for optimism, and I’m feeling good.”
The actor did not give further details on his diagnosis, but shared in an Instagram post: “I’m in a good place and feeling strong.”
“I’ve been dealing with this privately until now, getting treatment and dialing in my overall health with greater focus than ever before,” he continued on Instagram. “It’s been quite the initiation, and I’ll tell you more when I’m ready.”
In the post, he said he decided to make the announcement before he’d planned, explaining that while he wanted to talk about it “at length” with People, another publication was getting set to run the story.
“That plan had to be altered early this morning when I was informed that a tabloid was going to run with the news,” Van Der Beek wrote.
An increasing number of younger people are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer in Canada and the United States — even though overall cases and deaths have fallen in recent years.
According to a 2023 study from the American Cancer Society, one in five cases diagnosed in 2019 were in people under 55, almost double the rate of 11 per cent in 1995.
It’s a similar situation in Canada, where colorectal cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.
Colorectal cancer starts in the colon or rectum, which are part of the large intestine, and can also spread to other parts of the body.
Unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, smoking and alcohol consumption increase the risks for this type of cancer, but family history is also a contributing factor.
— With files from Global News
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Prince William made a surprise appearance on Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday night to show his support for contestant Robert Irwin.
The Prince of Wales, 43, popped in unexpectedly during the 20th anniversary episode of the competition dance show to share a few words of encouragement with Irwin, an Earthshot Prize ambassador for William’s environmental initiative, which aims to find innovative solutions to repair and protect the planet.
Irwin, 21, told his dancing partner Witney Carson that he was supposed to be in Brazil for the Earthshot Prize awards in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 5 but he had to tell William, “Sorry, I can’t make it. I’m still here.”
“We’re missing you, Robert,” William said in a video message. “Whilst your twinkle toes are going off elsewhere, I need you down here.”
William told Carson that she needs to “get him in as much glitter as you can.”
“Guys, you’ve got a seriously good chance of winning it,” William said during the FaceTime call. “So, just the best of luck on the show.”
“I can’t believe he just said my name,” Carson said.
Irwin went on to say that he was dedicating his foxtrot to Leona Lewis’s Footprints in the Sand to his sister, Bindi, 27.
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“We are doing this dance for Bindi, and we are doing this dance for Prince William, so let’s not mess this up,” he said.
Bindi had danced to the same song during her time on Season 21 of DWTS, which she won alongside professional dancer Derek Hough.
“A part of me healed that day. So now I hope that Robert gets that same experience,” Bindi said.
At the end of the number, Bindi joined her brother and Carson on stage and they wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders before kneeling as scenes of their childhood with their late father, Steve Irwin, were projected onto the ballroom floor.
Irwin and Carson celebrated after receiving their perfect score of 40 for their dance to the song, honouring his late father.
Irwin shared the dance on Instagram, with the caption, “Tonight was healing. This dance was emotional, beautiful and so deeply meaningful. I carry Dad’s legacy with me in everything I do, and it was a privilege to dedicate our foxtrot to him.”
“Thank you @bindisueirwin for inspiring us with your freestyle to this song, and thank you @witneycarson for once again choreographing such a beautiful story through dance and for creating a space for me to convey raw emotions that I’ve never gotten to share before,” he continued.
“I’m a proud Wildlife Warrior, and I’ll always carry on my dad’s mission. I’m so grateful that I can do that in the ballroom.”
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Sean “Diddy” Combs is participating in a drug rehabilitation program in prison that could help reduce his sentence by a year, his spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said.
The program is offered at Fort Dix, the federal prison complex in New Jersey where Combs will serve his sentence.
Combs is “committed to sobriety, focused on healing, and trying to set an example for others,” Engelmayer told the New York Times.
“Mr. Combs is an active participant in the Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) and has taken his rehabilitation process seriously from the start,” Engelmayer said. “He is fully engaged in his work, focused on growth, and committed to positive change.”
Combs has been sleeping in a nine-person room within a unit that houses around 200 people and he currently works in the chapel library, Engelmayer added.
On Friday, a report from TMZ claimed that Combs had been caught in prison drinking homemade alcohol, which Engelmayer denied.
Combs’ official X account also shared a statement denying the allegations on Monday, saying, “The rumors claiming Mr. Combs was caught with alcohol are completely false. His only focus is becoming the best version of himself and returning to his family.”
In an Oct. 6 filing, Combs’ legal team requested that he be placed at “FCI Fort Dix for RDAP purposes and any other available educational and occupation programs” in order to “address drug abuse issues and to maximize family visitation and rehabilitative efforts.”
The news of Combs’ participation in the rehabilitation program comes two weeks after his prison release date was revealed following his sentencing.
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The 55-year-old disgraced hip-hop mogul was originally scheduled to get out of prison on May 8, 2028, but the date has now been changed to June 4, 2028, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online database.
On Oct. 3, Judge Arun Subramanian sentenced Combs to just over four years in prison and a fine of US$500,000, the maximum possible, for his conviction on federal prostitution-related offences. He will also be under five years’ supervised release after his time in prison is served.
In his ruling, Subramanian said that “a history of good works can’t wash away the record in this case, which shows that you abused the power and control over the lives of women who you professed to love.”
“You were no John,” he added. “You were more than that, even if your currency was satisfying your sexual desires instead of money.”
Subramanian said a substantial sentence is required “to send a message to abusers and victims alike that exploitation and violence against women is met with real accountability.”
Federal prosecutors had asked that Combs, 55, be sentenced to at least 11 years and three months in prison. Combs’ lawyers urged the judge to sentence him to no longer than 14 months, which would have resulted in his near-immediate release, as he has already served nearly 13 months in a Brooklyn jail.
While addressing the judge, Combs thanked Subramanian for “giving me the chance to finally speak up for myself,” as the former rapper did not testify during his trial.
“One of the hardest things that I’ve had to handle is having to be quiet. Not being able to express how sorry I am for my actions,” Combs said in his statement to the court.
“I want to personally apologize again to Cassie Ventura for any harm or hurt that I’ve caused her – emotionally or physically.”
Combs called his conduct “disgusting, shameful and sick.”
“Because of my decisions, I lost my freedom, I lost the opportunity to effectively raise my children and be there for my mother,” Combs said. “I lost all my businesses, I lost my career, I totally destroyed my reputation.”
Combs said he’s “lost my self-respect” and has been “humbled and broken to my core.”
“I hate myself right now. I got stripped down to nothing,” Combs said. “I want to apologize to my seven children. Y’all deserve better.”
The sentencing marked the conclusion of Combs’ New York trial, which began on May 5.
Combs’ legal team filed a notice of appeal on Oct. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from the Oct. 3 judgment. Details of the appeal have not been made public other than the legal filing.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
It was a shipwreck so notorious, it inspired what many critics and listeners agree is one of the greatest songs of all time — a song that helped solidify its legend.
Fifty years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a brutal storm on Lake Superior while sailing from Superior, Wisc., to Detroit. The entire crew of 29 men died in the Canadian waters.
A year later, the disaster was immortalized by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot when he released “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which became an unlikely hit single in 1976 and remains popular to this day as both a totem of culture in Canada and the source of online memes.
“There were about 6,000 commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes between 1825 and 1975. Everybody knows one, and it’s because of the song,” said John U. Bacon, author of the new book The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The scale of the wreck itself also makes it stand out, historians say.
The Edmund Fitzgerald remains the largest ship ever to sink in the Great Lakes, which was a particularly booming industrial region in the mid-20th century following the Second World War, when hundreds of commercial vessels ferried raw materials in-between booming port cities on both sides of the border every year.
Before it sank, the over-200-metre-long freighter spent 17 years carrying taconite ore, a low-grade iron, from Minnesota mines to steel mills in Detroit, Toledo and other ports.
Sailors on the Great Lakes have regularly had to contend with fierce weather, something with which residents in those cities are all too familiar. As Lightfoot’s song underscores with its repeated references to “the gales of November,” the month brings particularly strong storms.
“The Great Lakes are more dangerous than the Atlantic Ocean, and it’s not even close,” said Bacon, who talked to former Fitzgerald crew members as well as the families of over a dozen of the shipwreck’s victims for his book. “Those guys (former sailors) told me that again and again and again.”
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Part of the reason is the combustible mix of incoming Arctic air with still-warm lake water and humidity left over from the summer months, experts say, as the seasons shift.
“It’s that clash in temperature that creates these strong Great Lakes storms,” Global News chief meteorologist Anthony Farnell said.
“These storms cut from the Gulf of Mexico in the south right up into the Great Lakes, and that can lead to a very low barometric pressure and rather intense winds and waves in November.”
The 1975 storm that sank the Edmund was particularly intense, Farnell noted, with near-hurricane force winds of over 100 km/h and waves as high as 11 metres.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had one at at that level,” he said.
That shared experience of intense weather is part of what has bound people together on both the Canadian and American sides of the lakes, said Dan Rose, the collections coordinator at the Great Lakes Museum in Kingston, Ont.
He specifically pointed to the so-called White Hurricane of 1913, which struck around the exact same time of early November and hit the region with powerful blizzards, killing more than 250 people and blanketing cities from Toronto to Cleveland with snow.
“I think there’s just something that is so unifying about enduring conditions that are that treacherous and that trying, and being able to look across the water at our neighbours and say, ‘Geez, isn’t it great that we were able to bear down and endure these trials and tribulations?” he said.
“It really drives home how unifying it is to just face things head on and work together to solve a problem.”
That bond was only reinforced by the Edmund Fitzgerald disaster and the shared love of Lightfoot’s song, Rose and other historians said.
The Edmund Fitzgerald’s legacy also endures with the improvements to shipping safety and weather tracking on the Great Lakes spurred by the investigations into the sinking.
That’s also partially due to Lightfoot, whose song Bacon said “embarrassed” the shipping industry into action.
RJB
Farnell said forecasters can now see major storms approaching days or even weeks in advance, giving shippers plenty of warning. Ship captains are also less willing to venture into heavy storms just to make it to port on time, and have more advanced navigation and location beacons onboard in case disaster strikes.
To this day, not a single commercial freighter has sunk in the Great Lakes since the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Yet historians still make a point to honour those past shipwrecks.
“We use the sinking of the Fitzgerald to bring attention to all the other sailors who have lost their lives on the Great Lakes,” said Billy Wall-Winkel, field curator of the Detroit Historical Society, which hosted several events and exhibitions to mark the 50th anniversary of the wreck leading up to Monday’s annual Lost Mariners Remembrance.
“We want to celebrate the people who built the country, rather than just the people who designed it or paid for it.”
The harrowing story of the Fitzgerald is only part of why Lightfoot’s song continues to endure today for both Canadian and American listeners.
At nearly six minutes and with no chorus, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” relies on a repeating, circular melody that allows Lightfoot to lay out the history of the Great Lakes and that one fateful night in great detail.
“It’s mesmerizing,” said Maria Virginia Acuña, a music history and musicology professor at the University of Victoria who primarily studies early modern musical theatre, and who listened to the song for the first time after being asked to discuss it for this story.
“It’s soothing, but it’s also sad and tragic, like a lament … but the repetition captivates us and turns this historical event into something much more accessible and universal.”
Acuña, who grew up in Argentina, said her Canadian-born husband told her “how important this (song) is and how it’s a big part of our culture.”
The song, which hit number two on the Billboard 100 and number one in Canada in 1976, was given another boost of popularity after Lightfoot’s death in 2023. The artist himself said it was the song he was most proud of.
“It has a timeless quality to it,” Acuña said. “And I think like with all music, we take songs at different moments in our lives and they acquire new meanings.”
In the past few years, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” has inspired countless memes on TikTok, Reddit and Instagram. The “gales of November” lyric in particular has been used to refer to everything from the overwhelming power of nature to seasonal depression to the lengths one will go to get to a girlfriend’s house, connecting a new generation of listeners to the iconic story and song.
People online have also marveled that the wreck happened a relatively short time ago, instead of the 1800s or early 20th century — or even that it happened at all.
“It not just Gen Z — even boomers have said they had no idea,” said Bacon, who added he’s not surprised why the story of theEdmund Fitzgerald continues to attract new generations of listeners and readers.
“I think it’s also something just truly fundamental and elemental about human nature. Humans in a boat fighting the elements for their lives has captivated us since Noah’s Ark. So that’s not new, and we’re still fascinated.”
It’s the international competition that brings Euphoria to its audience and let its participants Rise Like a Phoenix, and there’s the possibility the Eurovision Song Contest could soon include Canada in its ranks.
It wasn’t a big-ticket item, but the Liberal government’s 2025 budget included a line on the CBC that said it’s working with the public broadcaster to explore participation in the popular song contest.
Eurovision has been around since 1956 and is organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union. It features acts from multiple countries in Europe, but also a few from abroad, such as Australia.
The campy-style song contest has sometimes been called Europe’s version of the Super Bowl, with hundreds of millions of viewers globally.
“We want Canadian culture on a global stage,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday. “Best culture in the world, best music in the world, I think Europe deserves to see it too.”
Carney is a fan of the popular song content.
Canadians have competed in the contest in the past, with Celine Dion winning it for Switzerland in 1988. That same year, Lara Fabian, who became a Canadian citizen in 1995, represented Luxembourg and came in fourth place.
La Zarra, who was born in Montreal, represented France in the 2023 contest and came in 16th with her performance of Evidemment.
Carney has been doing outreach to numerous countries in recent months as Canada looks to like-minded trading partners amid the trade war with the U.S.
Dean Vuletic, a historian of the Eurovision Song Contest, told Global News he was not surprised that Canadian budget included a line about the competition. He noted that joining the contest has been something discussed by Canada since Australia joined in 2015.
“Canada is a country that is close to Europe, culturally, politically, especially the countries of the European Union,” Vuletic said. “We’re talking about the EU member states which are the core of Eurovision and they’re the ones that Canada is looking to develop closer ties with considering the current situation in the world.
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“I think this is also a way for Canada to strengthen its connection with the European Union, even though Eurovision isn’t officially connected to the European Union … This is a way for Canada to demonstrate that it is closely tied with the European Union, that it shares the values of the European Union.”
Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told Global News Europe is open to the idea.
“This was something that was asked by the people who participate and I think it’s a platform for Canada to shine,” Champagne said Tuesday.
Joining Eurovision was previously considered by CBC/Radio-Canada in the past but was determined to be prohibitively expensive.
There have been plans to launch a televised singing contest in Canada that would send the winner to Eurovision, similar to how other contest countries choose their entry.
Lindsay Cox, co-chief content officer at Insight Productions in Toronto, told The Canadian Press that their original plans for an English-only program were scrapped in favour of a “bilingual-hosted show.”
Since the budget announcement, Cox said “ongoing conversations” have been taking place with the CBC, but did not provide more detail.
The big question, according to Eurovision expert Karen Fricker – if Canada gets in the contest – is there enough appetite to watch?
“It’s super fun to watch, but would there be interest in it?” wondered Fricker, an adjunct professor of dramatic arts at Brock University in Niagara.
Fricker told Global News the contest has become highly popular for various immigrant and diasporic communities, with some bringing their own nation’s broadcasts into their home and, in turn, watching the competition.
In addition, youth culture got into the contest during the COVID-19 pandemic, while some in the LGBTQ2S community have called it the “gay Olympics” — the winner of the 2024 contest, Nemo, identifies as non-binary while JJ, the 2025 winner, identifies as queer.
Fricker noted that Australia’s decision may lend to Canada’s as well.
“The decision was made that because Australia is very much a country of immigrants, as is Canada, in addition to have First Peoples, they have really, really built a following in Australia,” Fricker said. “So that when Australia then got the opportunity to compete, it made so much sense because there was so much excitement in the public. Here (in Canada,) that would need to be built, I feel.”
—with files from Global News’ Touria Izri and The Canadian Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Starting in the late ’70s, hip-hop and rap ascended through popular culture, mostly in America but also in other countries.
Then, in 1990, a breakthrough. Hip-hop and rap tracks began infiltrating the Billboard Top 40, and for the next 35 years, we saw dozens of these songs reach official hit status. By the end of the decade, hip-hop/rap had supplanted rock as the nation’s cultudral driver when it came to music. It seemed unstoppable. America would forever be a hip-hop nation.
This month, however, a surprise. For the first time since 1990, the Billboard Top 40 was devoid of any hip-hop and rap.
What happened? Does this mean it’s on the decline and on the way out? Well, no. The genres are very alive and well. Its absence has more to do with the way charts are compiled these days than the popularity or strength of the songs.
Charts are the way the music industry keeps score with itself. The higher a song or album rises, the more opportunities for hype. Radio play increases, sales go up, and more people stream the songs. And at the end of the year, the record company executives measure themselves against each other over who had the most high-charting singles and albums.
And it used to be so simple. Charts were compiled based on sales and radio airplay. In the streaming era, there’s a complicated weighting system that tries to convert digital music consumption into old-school sales. One modern metric is the Track Equivalent Album (TEA). Under this formula, 10 digital song sales from the same album equal the sale of one album, thereby unifying digital sales with physical ones.
Billboard also has Streaming Equivalent Sales (SEA). This measurement counts on-demand plays of a song through Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and all the other platforms. If 1,500 songs are streamed from the same album, that counts the same as an old-school sale of an album. Radio airplay plus sales and TEA and SEA are supposed to give the industry an accurate and complete picture of how a certain release is doing.
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Put this all together and we have a chart compilation situation that is vastly different from what late broadcaster, Casey Kasem, used to count down every weekend. There’s plenty of gamesmanship happening.
When Taylor Swift puts out an album, like her latest, The Life of a Showgirl, Swifties buy up all the available physical copies of the record. There’s the standard vinyl release and seven additional variants, each with its own artwork and on various colours of vinyl. No Tay-Tay collection is complete without all of them, and each sale of a variant counts as an individual sale. Talk about juicing the numbers.
Swifties also stream her music by the tens of millions, increasing the SEA units for The Life of a Showgirl, pushing the album even further up the charts. And because streams also factor heavily in compiling the Billboard Hot 100 (which, of course, includes the official Top 40), Swift dominates. For the week ending Nov. 8, the performer has three songs in the Top 10 and 12 in the Top 40, leaving just 28 spaces for everyone else.
Other artists are currently benefiting from the current chart rules. HUNTR/X (Huntrix), the fictional girl group from KPop Demon Hunters, is a streaming sensation with four songs in the current Top 40, leaving 24 spots — 23, if you count the song released by Rumi, Jinu, EJAE and Andrew Choi, the human voices behind HUNTR/X.
Then there are the Saja Boys, the fictional boy band from KPop Demon Hunters, who hold down two spots of their own.
Add in Morgan Wallen (two songs), Chris Brown (two songs) and Sabrina Carpenter (two songs), and there are only 17 spaces up for grabs. Those are divided up among pop artists like Olivia Dean, Alex Warren, Justin Bieber, Benson Boone, Tate McCrae and Kehlani.
Michael Jackson also made his annual appearance with Thriller (No. 32), which is always big around Halloween. There was only one debut last week, and that’s Love Girl from Megan Thee Stallion, which is more smooth R&B than anything else.
There’s another factor, too. Billboard just changed the rules regarding eligible songs. Luther by Kendrick Lamar and SZA was kicked out of the Top 40 after 46 weeks, including 13 weeks at No. 1. Why? Because it didn’t stick at No. 25 or higher after its 26th week on the chart. Boom. Gone. The song is now deemed “recurrent,” a radio term for a big hit that’s still popular after an extended period of time but no longer current. No Luther, no hip-hop/rap in the Hot 100.
Have your eyes glazed over yet? If they have, I don’t blame you. I do this for a living, and I’m having a hard time staying awake.
Remember all this the next time someone tells you that Taylor Swift is bigger than The Beatles. When they were around, Billboard operated its charts much differently. Comparing The Beatles’ chart performance to Tay-Tay’s is silly since the rules are vastly different. It’s not just apples and oranges. It’s apples and mushrooms.
Does this mean that hip-hop/rap is on the way out? Hardly. It’s a quirk of the mathematics involved in compiling charts, combined with the phenomenon of Taylor Swift and KPop Demon Hunters.
YoungBoy Never Broke Again; BigXthaPlug and Ella Langley are rap tracks bubbling under at the moment. They’ll probably advance upwards as Tay-Tay and the Demon Hunters are streamed less, and hip-hop/rap will return to the Top 40.
Anyone who grew up with Top 40 radio in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s was exposed to a wide variety of sounds and genres. Not so much anymore, right? The Billboard charts may matter less than they ever did.
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Haq also stars Emraan Hashmi opposite Yami, produced by Junglee Pictures, Baweja Studios, and Insomnia Films, and directed by Suparn S. Varma, Haq is now running in theatres.
Read our Review of the film: Haq Movie Review: Yami Gautam and Emraan Hashmi Excel in This Compelling Film
Also Read: Yami Gautam and Aditya Dhar tied the knot in an intimate ceremony
