Author: Rap Hooks

Awards shows are, by their nature, a competitive format, but when the Country Music Association reached a milestone with its 50th annual awards in 2016, the organization projected a spirit of unity with an intricate single that debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart dated Oct. 8, 2016.

“Forever Country” brought together 30 former CMA award-winners in a four-minute mash-up of three classic songs: John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” Billed as Artists of Then, Now & Forever, the individual acts recorded their parts separately, cutting their vocals with producer Shane McAnally (Lady A, Kacey Musgraves) in Nashville when it fit their schedules. Video director Joseph Kahn captured most of the visual content in front of a green screen over three days during the CMA Music Festival that June.

Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert were the first two recorded, with the likes of George Strait, Trisha Yearwood, Blake Shelton, Martina McBride and Carrie Underwood adding their voices as the project developed. Randy Travis, who was three years removed from a stroke, appears only in the video.

MCA Nashville released “Forever Country” on Sept. 16, 2016, and the video premiered four days later on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars ahead of its two-week reign on the chart.

In addition to topping the multimetric Hot Country Songs, the single led both Country Streaming Songs and Country Digital Song Sales, while also rising to No. 32 on Country Airplay. On the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, it hit No. 21.

The following spring, the CMA clip earned the video of the year award from the rival Academy of Country Music.

ABC airs the 60th CMA Awards on Nov. 18 from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

“Take Me Home, Country Roads” cowriter Bill Danoff marveled to Billboard in 2017 about “Forever Country. “When I saw it,” he said, “Brad Paisley, who’s from West Virginia, singing my song … beautiful.”

Olivia Rodrigo has long professed her love for The White Stripes, and now, she has one of Meg White’s most iconic clothing pieces to prove it.

The pop star revealed in her The Hollywood Reporter cover story published Wednesday (Oct. 7) that she spent an “exorbitant amount of money” on the elusive rock drummer’s vintage white dress featured on the cover of the duo’s Elephant album, which reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200 in 2003. Julien’s Auctions shows that the same dress went for $25,600 during a “Music Icons” sale in May.

“Maybe if I do Daisy Chain in the winter, I can wear it,” she told the publication after explaining that she’d wanted to debut it during her set at her inaugural charity festival in August, but it was “too f–king hot.”

Rodrigo has been a devoted White Stripes fan since childhood, running a fan page on social media for the duo and at one point having “Jack White’s biggest fan” in her Instagram bio. She met Jack for the first time in 2022, writing on Instagram at the time, “Got to meet my hero of all heroes today. Still crying.”

They’ve kept in contact since, and Rodrigo helped induct The White Stripes into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by performing “We’re Going to Be Friends” with Feist at the 2025 ceremony. This past April, she revealed that Jack left her a sweet note backstage at 30 Rock ahead of her first time hosting Saturday Night Live. It read: “Kill it kid.”

“I love Jack White. He’s, like, my hero,” she told Jimmy Fallon at the time while recalling the gesture. “He’s the coolest guy ever. Wonderful person. Always stands up for what’s right … He sent me a text and he’s like, ‘Look up!’ Like, ‘Keep your head up. You’re gonna find something.’”

“She’s very cool, very real and very much a lover of music,” White said of Rodrigo in 2022. “She’s also introducing another set of youth to the love of vinyl records as well. Respect.”

See Olivia Rodrigo’s THR cover below:

Stray Kids are heading to your local cinema screens next month with Stray Kids World Tour ‘RUN IT’ Live Viewing, which will bring their global tour to movie theaters with a one-off live broadcast from the Tokyo Dome in Japan.

The screening will take place on Nov. 7 and tickets for the worldwide event will go on sale here at 10 a.m. ET on Oct. 14, with fans encouraged to sign up now for event alerts; broadcasts in select territories will be delayed to accommodate local time zones.

According to a press release, “True to the tour’s title, RUN IT captures the group’s drive to push into bigger worlds and bolder stages. Captured live from Tokyo and broadcast into cinemas worldwide, this live viewing event lets STAY everywhere share in the scale, spectacle, and raw energy of Stray Kids’ live performance on the big screen.”

“We look forward to bringing Stray Kids’ electrifying world tour to movie theaters worldwide,” said Marc Allenby, CEO of Trafalgar Releasing in a statement. “Following the incredible success of their cinema release earlier this year, this live broadcast from Tokyo Dome gives audiences across the globe another exciting opportunity to experience Stray Kids in their local cinemas.”

Stray Kids — Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin and I.N. — just wrapped a pair of shows in Mexico City on Sept. 25-26 as part of their STRAYCITY festival tour of Colombia, Argentina and Mexico. Before the Tokyo shows (Nov. 6-8), they will touch down at Kyocera Dome Osaka in Osaka, Japan on Oct. 24.

Last week, Stray Kids joined BTS in announcing that they do not plan to submit any of their music for consideration at the 2027 Grammy Awards. The boy band’s label, JYP Entertainment, did not elaborate on why the eight-piece group was skipping its Grammy submissions, but it appeared like it could be a response to the Recording Academy’s recent roll-out of a best Asian pop music performance category. In July, BTS announced that they would not be participating in next year’s Grammys — despite having a huge year with three-week Billboard 200-topping album ARIRANG — in protest of the awards “being divided by region or language.”

THE BIG STORY: If you want to predict the music industry’s next big copyright lawsuit, look no further than the YouTube comments.

Many months ago, when Olivia Dean’s “I’ve Seen It” hit the video site, more than a few commenters said they heard something they’d heard before: “The chorus reminds me a lot like ‘just the two of us,’” one wrote. “I can’t help thinking about ‘Just the two of us’,” another added. “Strong ‘Just The Two Of Us’ vibes,” yet another listener said.

It turns out they weren’t the only ones to hear it.

A new lawsuit last week, first reported by Billboard, claims Dean’s song stole key elements from the iconic 1980 song “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers. Filed by the late singer’s publisher against Dean’s label (Capitol Records) and publisher (Sony Music Publishing), the case claims the overlap between the two songs is “obvious and inescapable.”

The lawsuit is a big deal because Olivia Dean is a big deal — a true breakout over the past two years behind smash singles “Man I Need” and “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” off a hit album, The Art of Loving, that’s spent 52 weeks and counting on the Billboard 200. And she’s not accused of borrowing from some unknown song — “Just the Two of Us” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has appeared in countless movies, ads and TikToks over the years.

Do they really sound so alike? Go listen for yourself here. And for more on the lawsuit, including access to the actual complaint filed in court, go read our full story here.

You’re reading the Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. To get the newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday, subscribe here.

Other top stories this week…

-Michael Smith, a North Carolina musician who used AI songs to steal $8 million in royalties, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in a first-ever criminal case over streaming fraud.

-A lawsuit against distributor SRG/ILS Group over royalties to Erica Campbell’s latest gospel album quickly ended in a settlement, less than a month after it was filed.

–Oasis filed a lawsuit against its longtime former sound engineer Huw Richards to block his looming auction of a trove of unheard recordings valued at more than $2 million. And it worked.

-A closely watched hearing in the legal battle between Dolly Parton’s estate and the late singer’s nephew was pushed back two weeks to give the man more time to hire attorneys.

–The Game sued Universal Music Group over claims that it failed to properly promote his 2022 album Drillmatic — Heart vs. Mind, causing the record to suffer “diminished commercial performance.”

-A week after Jay-Z’s rape accuser recanted her accusations, a California appeals court refused to rehear his case against the attorneys who filed it — but cleared the way for a lower court to do so.

–FKA Twigs moved to end her lawsuit against Shia LaBeouf after she said the actor agreed to void a non-disclosure agreement she claimed was illegal.

-The Mechanical Licensing Collective’s lawsuit against Pandora is headed to a jury trial after a judge said he didn’t have the time to sift through “corpulent” case file of more than 7,000 pages.

–Lil Durk may have been acquitted of ordering rival Quando Rondo’s murder, but he’s still facing a second trial, on a racketeering charge, that is now scheduled for next summer.

-Techno star Sara Landry sued her former management company The Night Department over claims that it kept using her name even after she fired the firm last year for “betraying” her trust.

-Sean “Diddy” Combs was ordered to repay $478,000 in legal bills incurred by NBC in defeating the mogul’s unsuccessful defamation lawsuit over a 2025 Peacock documentary.

-An Austrian judge ruled that one of the men convicted of planning a foiled terrorist attack at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stop in Vienna cannot sue Disney for showing his home in a docuseries about the tour.

-A former housekeeper mauled by a 200-pound dog at Chris Brown’s house accepted a reduced $9.5 million verdict — down from the original $13 million — rather than risk a new jury trial.

-The New York attorney general sued the organizers of an upstate EDM festival over accusations they “failed to issue a single refund to consumers” after canceling the event due to a permitting dispute.

Tim McGraw shared a loving tribute to his wife, fellow country icon Faith Hill, to mark the couple’s 30th anniversary on Tuesday (Oct. 6). “30 years, today. 30 years of our marriage. That day, October 6, 1996, under an old locust tree(I think) in my Aunt’s backyard in Rayville, Louisiana, I stood there and watched my future walk towards me with the sweetest man I’ve ever known, her father Ted,” McGraw wrote on Instagram in a post accompanied by footage of the two from over the years accompanied by his 1999 homage to eternal love, “My Best Friend.”

“In front of our closest family and friends, I was bound to the most beautiful soul. A lady that was glowing in my eyes, expanding my heart, and giving me all the love she had. I was and still am bewildered by her capacity to love, forgive, nurture and be full of joy and laughter,” McGraw, 59, continued.

“She is a gift to the world for sure, however, for us, we get Her, all of her. And I (and my girls) know who is ours, completely. It’s difficult to describe what she means, she is the center of gravity to my life and our girls lives and anyone who knows Audrey Faith McGraw. “

The couple share three daughters, Gracie, 29, Maggie, 28 and Audrey, 24.

McGraw ended the post with a poem-like homage to his wife:

“I love you baby
You are my best friend 
My lover
My wife
My shelter in any and every storm
And the sunrise afterwards
Many more sunrises and sunsets 
Many more beautiful memories to come
I am a fortunate man”

McGraw will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on Oct. 18 during this year’s Medallion Ceremony as the 2026 Modern Era inductee, honoring artists at least 20 years after their achieved national prominence.