Lorde has called out Robert Kraft following the Ed Sheeran, Macklemore tour controversy, sporting a “Free Palestine” jacket at a concert and tagging the billionaire in a photo of the outfit.
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In a Monday (Oct. 5) post on her Instagram Story, the pop star showed off the one-of-a-kind piece she wore for her Austin City Limits set two days prior, which she hand-decorated with messages seemingly in her own handwriting. The bottom trim of the jacket displays the largest lettering, which reads: “FREE PALESTINE!!!!!!” in all caps.
“@mr.robertkraft,” Lorde typed in a large callout positioned over the photo.
Billboard has reached out to Kraft for comment.
The not-so-subtle dig comes after Kraft involved himself in the supporting lineup on Sheeran’s ongoing Loop Tour. After Macklemore chanted “Free Palestine” and showed visuals of the violence in Gaza at his first two opening sets on the trek in early September, the CEO — whose Kraft Group owns Gillette Stadium — rallied other stadium owners to bar Sheeran from performing at their venues unless he dropped the rapper as opener.
The British singer’s concert promoter in the U.S., Messina Touring Group, ended up terminating its contract with Macklemore, who then donated the $1 million he’d made from the short-lived stint to Palestinian aid. In solidarity, all of Sheeran’s remaining openers — Finneas, Aaron Rowe and Lukas Graham — subsequently dropped out of the Loop Tour.
Amid the public back-and-forth between Sheeran, Macklemore and himself, Kraft also announced plans to pledge money to humanitarian organizations in Gaza and stated, “This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf … but that advocacy should not come at the expense of the Jewish community.”
In lieu of his previous commitment to Sheeran’s tour, Macklemore is now in the process of planning his Free Palestine Tour, which will raise money for Palestinian aid and make stops in Dublin, London and Paris. He recently announced that the exhibition “sold out immediately.”
Macklemore hasn’t yet announced the artists joining him on the string of benefit performances, but Lorde would certainly make sense as part of the lineup. The singer has long been vocalizing support for Palestinians, and — almost exactly a year prior to ACL — she chanted “Free f–king Palestine!” at her Ultrasound World Tour show at Madison Square Garden while singing “Team.”
ADÉLA is aware that there’s some irony to “Ain’t in LA,” the breakout single from her September debut album, PRIMA.
Of the 2010s-esque pop anthem that rejects the romanticization of fame through the bold declaration that the City of Angels isn’t all that, the 22-year-old Slovak star giggles when she notes that “Ain’t in LA” was, in fact, recorded in Los Angeles. “I was kind of fatigued with celebrity culture,” she says, smirking before acknowledging another underlying contradiction. “Then I have a song called ‘Nicole Kidman.’ ” (Both have since reached the Billboard Hot 100, with the former becoming her first-ever entry in August and later reaching No. 27 on the chart dated Oct. 3, while the latter surged to a No. 11 peak the same week.)
Most ironic, though, is that ADÉLA herself has become one of the stars she shrugs away from idolizing on “Ain’t in LA.” Growing up thousands of miles away from the Hollywood sign in Bratislava, Slovakia, ADÉLA spent her childhood studying American pop stars and had posters of Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande and Britney Spears adorning her bedroom walls. She’s only ever wanted to be a performer, she says, and has put in the work to back it up: For years, she trained as a ballerina by day and took lessons to learn English at night.
ADÉLA photographed on September 18, 2026 at Brooklyn Steel in Brooklyn.
Luisa Opalesky
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In 2023, she got her biggest chance to join their ranks, competing on HYBE x Geffen’s Dream Academy, the YouTube competition series that led to the formation of KATSEYE. After her elimination, she pursued a solo career, releasing heart-racing dance-pop singles such as “Homewrecked” and “Superscar” in 2024 and signing with Capitol Records the following year. Then, this spring, she opened on tour for Demi Lovato.
The momentum snowballed into July single “Ain’t in LA,” which combined with a standout debut at Lollapalooza in August, further stirred anticipation for the rising pop star’s PRIMA. And with that hit in tow, plus “Nicole Kidman” — released as the project’s fourth single the same day it arrived in full — the album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 4. This year alone, ADÉLA has accumulated more than half a billion global on-demand streams, according to Luminate.
“She’s become somebody everybody really wants to root for,” co-manager Sam Jacobson from Good World Management says. “I think people got into the lore and realized, like, ‘Oh, s–t, she really built herself from the ground up and got herself to America, and [“Ain’t in LA”] is a song that speaks to her mom and her family and to everybody else who has big dreams.’ It’s an amazing message that a lot of people can relate to.”
Before the studio session that led to its creation, ADÉLA couldn’t stop thinking about her roots, especially after coming across an old photograph of her mom as a teenager — who also once dreamt of moving to L.A. and making it big — sitting in front of her own collection of pop-culture posters.
After hours spent working on different material, ADÉLA, still with the photo in mind, asked the room — which included co-writers Theron Thomas, Blake Slatkin, Dylan Brady and Billy Walsh — if they could try one more idea. “Ain’t in LA” came together effortlessly from there (the picture even inspired the lyrics, “Madonna on the wall next to Destiny’s Child”) with Thomas contributing the special ingredient: a chopped-and-screwed intro that calls back to Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” which he also co-wrote back in 2013.
“We were definitely talking about that 2010s feel, and I told them how much I’d love to [emulate it],” ADÉLA recalls of the similarities to Cyrus’ hit. “I was also listening to a lot of early A$AP Rocky. Something about that era excited me. I was, like, ‘We need to bring that back.’ ”
Luisa Opalesky
Releasing the song, however, came with a little more friction. After noticing an overwhelmingly positive fan response to her performing the then-unreleased track on tour with Lovato — in pointe shoes, a nod to her upbringing — she wanted to drop it as a single right away. But her team was uncertain.
“I remember I had this feeling, like, ‘Man, this song means so much to me,’ ” ADÉLA recalls. “I called [Jacobson], and I was like, ‘I made this song. No one’s that stoked about it, but I’m super stoked.’ ”
“I don’t think it was a debate over the song [itself],” clarifies Good World founder and co-manager Brandon Creed. “[It was] more rollout tactics and what’s the right timing and what’s going to come after. The rollout game has changed. There’s a lot of debate and discussion around every move.”
Ultimately, ADÉLA’s team chose to trust her instincts — and it has paid off big time. Since its official release, the track has been used more than half a million times on TikTok by fans across the world, including one posted by none other than Kidman, who paired her first-ever video on the app with the track. The actress has also sung ADÉLA’s praises since the confidence-boosting namesake track arrived in early September.
“It’s just wild watching [her] movies, being like, ‘This person, for some reason, is doing charity work and supporting me,’ ” ADÉLA jokes. “The fact that she embraces me is such an honor — I have trouble processing it still.”
Luisa Opalesky
“Ain’t in LA” is at the heart of ADÉLA’s ongoing tour through North America and Europe, which finds her in and out of regular nine-hour rehearsals, on top of constant press. She’s come a long way since her Dream Academy exit, at which point she tearfully shared a vital message to other KATSEYE hopefuls, as captured in the Netflix docuseries Pop Star Academy. “If you get it, that’s great, but you don’t need it. You’re great on your own.”
The fact that ADÉLA’s chart success now exists alongside KATSEYE’s is just the latest piece of proof that she was right in that moment — not that she needed vindication. “I never in my mind doubted that it would happen,” she says assuredly. “I don’t know if that’s conceited to say, but … I feel like I have heart, and I have something to say.”
A version of this story appears in the Oct. 3, 2026, issue of Billboard.
ADÉLA is aware that there’s some irony to “Ain’t in LA,” the breakout single from her September debut album, PRIMA.
Of the 2010s-esque pop anthem that rejects the romanticization of fame through the bold declaration that the City of Angels isn’t all that, the 22-year-old Slovak star giggles when she notes that “Ain’t in LA” was, in fact, recorded in Los Angeles. “I was kind of fatigued with celebrity culture,” she says, smirking before acknowledging another underlying contradiction. “Then I have a song called ‘Nicole Kidman.’ ” (Both have since reached the Billboard Hot 100, with the former becoming her first-ever entry in August and later reaching No. 27 on the chart dated Oct. 3, while the latter surged to a No. 11 peak the same week.)
Most ironic, though, is that ADÉLA herself has become one of the stars she shrugs away from idolizing on “Ain’t in LA.” Growing up thousands of miles away from the Hollywood sign in Bratislava, Slovakia, ADÉLA spent her childhood studying American pop stars and had posters of Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande and Britney Spears adorning her bedroom walls. She’s only ever wanted to be a performer, she says, and has put in the work to back it up: For years, she trained as a ballerina by day and took lessons to learn English at night.
In 2023, she got her biggest chance to join their ranks, competing on HYBE x Geffen’s Dream Academy, the YouTube competition series that led to the formation of KATSEYE. After her elimination, she pursued a solo career, releasing heart-racing dance-pop singles such as “Homewrecked” and “Superscar” in 2024 and signing with Capitol Records the following year. Then, this spring, she opened on tour for Demi Lovato.
The momentum snowballed into July single “Ain’t in LA,” which further stirred anticipation for the rising pop star’s PRIMA. And with that hit in tow, plus “Nicole Kidman” — released as the project’s fourth single the same day it arrived in full — the album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 4. This year alone, ADÉLA has accumulated more than half a billion global on-demand streams, according to Luminate.
Kacey Musgraves is taking “Uncertain, TX” back to its roots — and across the border. The Golden, Texas-raised superstar has released an entirely Spanish-language version of her Middle of Nowhere standout, joined by Intocable, the música tejana legends formed in Zapata, just across the Rio Grande from their Mexican sister city, Guerrero.
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Unlike the Willie Nelson-featured original, this re-recording is sung entirely in Spanish, with Intocable bringing its characteristic norteño/Tejano punch to the song’s country-and-cumbia foundation. It also marks Musgraves’ first fully Spanish-language recording.
“Having a song with the legends of Intocable is such a thrill for me,” Musgraves said in a statement. “As a Texan, I am proud of the cultural melting pot that makes our state so great and this collaboration is such a fun example of that.”
The original “Uncertain, TX” debuted at No. 50 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with 2.4 million U.S. streams and helped Middle of Nowhere debut at No. 2 on Top Country Albums, according to Luminate.
Meanwhile, Musgraves is bringing her 34-date Middle of Nowhere Tour home to Texas, with stops in Houston, Austin and Dallas before continuing across North America through Oct. 27. The tour has already included sold-out shows at Chicago’s United Center and New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
Alice Cooper has written a third memoir to set the record straight — or as straight as it can be.
“Oh, there was a time we never would have done this book ’cause we never would have broken the mystique of Alice Cooper,” the shock rock Rock & Roll Hall of Famer tells Billboard about the new Devil On My Shoulder (Da Capo), which publishes on Tuesday (Oct. 6). “I’ve rarely allowed facts to get in the way of telling a good story.” He even acknowledges in the new book’s preface, “I’d go as far as to say I’ve been the most outrageously unreliable interviewee of all time, weaving a tangled web of embellishments and exaggerations as I went along…until even I couldn’t separate fact from fiction.”
But this time, Cooper says, “Now we’re not trying to build a career anymore. I want people to see the fact that, yeah, this band really went through a hell of a lot to finally make it … I don’t mind decorating a story, but 90% of these stories are true.”
The 445-page Devil On My Shoulder follows 1976’s Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper, which he dismisses as “a drunken rant,” and 2007’s Alice Cooper, Golf Monster, which blends biography with his passion for the links but offers a generally more coherent, detailed and trustworthy account. “Nobody really pushed Me, Alice,” he notes. “Nobody pushed Golf Monster. They were kind of OK, and they were fun. But this was the book we actually took a lot of time on. I spent five hours a day with [co-author Daniel Richler] just trying to remember stories and actually admitting that, ‘OK, that might be wrong, but I remember that this did happen — I don’t know exactly how it happened, so I’ll just tell you my version of it.’
“I think any book that you read that’s an autobiography is what probably happened, not really what did happen. If you remember what you said to somebody 50 years ago, I challenge that. The best you can do is (write) what you remember and make it fun, ’cause to me, honestly, that’s what a book like this should be. It should be fun to read.”
Alice vs. Alice
For Devil On My Shoulder, Cooper particularly enjoyed a device suggested by Richler — who also co-wrote Rush bassist Geddy Lee’s best-selling 2023 memoir My Effin’ Life — which was to engage the “real” Cooper (born Vince Furnier) in periodic oral dialogues with the Alice Cooper alter ego he created. The two spar in spirited, quick-paced exchanges dotted throughout the book, with the Cooper character questioning the accuracy of his creator’s tales and the real-life Cooper alternately pushing back or conceding the points, often grudgingly.
“I like the confrontation of Alice and me,” says Cooper, who learned to separate himself from the character after becoming sober during the mid-‘80s, overcoming alcoholism and a near-fatal crack cocaine addiction. “I think it’s a really clever way to do this. One of the reasons I love the title is because, to me, everybody’s got the devil on their shoulder, and he’s always whispering all the wrong things to do. You talk to somebody and they go, ‘I was gonna do this, but all of a sudden I did this, and it was the wrong thing to do.’ Well, that’s the devil on your shoulder, saying, ‘Y’know what? This is the better idea.’ You go ‘Yeah,’ and then you go, ‘Why did I do that?’ That’s the thing that connects everybody.”
Devil On My Shoulder is certainly the most detailed account of Cooper’s “eviloution,” from growing up in Detroit through the original Alice Cooper band’s formation in Phoenix, its time in Los Angeles and subsequent rise to notorious — and often reviled – superstardom with horror-show onstage theatrics and Billboard Hot 100 hits such as “Eighteen,” “School’s Out” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” He leaves some of the legends dangling – maintaining that “I still don’t know who had the chicken” that he threw into the audience at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival in 1969 — while he comes clean about others, including the mundane origins of the Alice Cooper name.
“The real story at the time was not as good as the one that was a like … the reincarnation of the witch and the Ouija board and all of that,” he says. “I just said, ‘Look, it’s a better story.’ What we learned at that point was you didn’t have to (say) it, you just have to not deny it.”
The memoir also details Cooper’s crippling, career-stalling struggles with substance abuse during the late ‘70s and goes into depth about his subsequent re-embrace of Christianity and his current beliefs and practices. “I have no problem with that,” he says. “I think people have this thought that Christianity is worshipping the church, where, really, it’s a one-on-one relationship with Christ, and church is where you meet. It’s something I truly believe — and it doesn’t mean I can’t play Alice to the hilt. It’s easy to turn it on, turn it off; as soon as the curtain comes down, (Alice) is gone.
“I always talk about how, if you go through the Bible, God always chose people that nobody else would have chosen. He always chose what I would call the wrong people. Paul was the one who was in charge of getting rid of Christians, and he ended up being the No. 1 apostle. And (God) chose David, who was the least of the brothers, to be the king of Israel. And then all of a sudden he lets me start the Solid Rock (Foundation, in Arizona) and it really helps teenagers. I was the same guy whose albums were being burned on The 700 Club.
“When I got sober I got straight, and I came back to what I believed. And I didn’t have to give up Alice. Your lifestyle is not what you do on stage. If I did Macbeth it would be the same thing. It’s playing a character.”
Three Albums on the Horizon
Cooper also writes extensively about the original Alice Cooper band, which formed during 1964 as the Earwigs and before splitting up in 1975, in the wake of the Muscle of Love album. Cooper, bassist Dennis Dunaway, guitarist Michael Bruce and drummer Neal Smith reunited for their 1999 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction (guitarist Glen Buxton passed away two years prior) and released a reunion album last year. Cooper took the others’ perspectives into account (Bruce and Dunaway have both published their own memoirs) for Devil On My Shoulder as well.
Courtesy Grand Central Publishing and Da Capo
“It was more like a separation than a divorce,” Cooper recalls. “There was never any bad blood, never any lawsuits or anything like that. That band had finally reached its (end). (Dunaway) thought I had left the band for money, and that was not it at all. What I didn’t want to see was Alice Cooper dying, which was starting to happen around Muscle of Love. They wanted to make their own albums, and I walked away from it. When I said, ‘I’m gonna do my own project (Welcome to My Nightmare),’ it was a huge gamble. We had no idea it was gonna be that big of a hit. But it worked, and we just continued down our (separate) paths.”
Cooper – who recently joined country singer Cody Jinks on a spiritually themed new single, “Moving Mountains” — will celebrate Devil On My Shoulder‘s publication with a pair of events on Oct. 7 in New York City and an Oct. 8 appearance at NYC Comic Con on Oct. 8, in an interview moderated by Steven Van Zandt. He then heads to the U.K. for eight book events before heading back to begin what he says will be the final leg of his Alice’s Attic tour on Oct. 27 in Clearwater, Fla. Some other North American book events are also being considered.
In November, he’ll again team with illusionist Criss Angel for six more Welcome to Our Nightmare shows at the latter’s theater in the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino. “It’s fun to do because it’s something we totally understand,” Cooper says. “Our band understands the theatrics and how it works with the music. We did a lot of rehearsal for that show because if you’re in the wrong place you’re gonna get barbecued; there’s fire coming out of the floor. It’s a rock concert but it’s also all of this magic that’s woven in, and it looks like it belongs. It’s not forced at all.”
Cooper is open to doing more of the shows as well. “I will never say, ‘That’s the end of it,’ because we can plug into that show any time, it doesn’t matter…a year from now, whatever. If (Angel) says, ‘You want to do six more shows,’ then, yeah, no problem, ’cause now we know what the show is. We’re very adaptable.”
Cooper is currently writing for three different recording projects: an album of his own; one with the all-star Hollywood Vampires, which toured in Europe this summer; and another with his original Alice Cooper bandmates to follow up last year’s The Revenge of Alice Cooper, their first together in 52 years. “I told those guys, ‘Just keep writing. We’ll get together and figure out the best songs and go in and get it done,’” Cooper says of the latter.
“I’ve got these three albums that are swirling around in my brain right now,” he says. “When I get the call, when (producer Bob) Ezrin says, ‘OK, you’ve got to work on this’ or that, we’ll go in and do it.”
Alice Cooper’s book events for Devil On My Shoulder:
Oct. 7: New York City, Barnes & Noble, 46th & 5th
Oct. 7: New York City, Strand Books, Union Square – Interview/Q&A moderated by Anthony DeCurtis
Oct. 8: NYC Comic-Con, Javits Center – Interview/Q&A moderated by Stevie Van Zandt
Oct. 11: Cardiff, Wales, New Theatre – Interview/Q&A moderated by Claire Sturgess
On new song “Cleveland!,” Taylor Swift gives her critics express permission to hate all they like on her, but Chrissie Hynde has only positive things to say about the pop star and the track.
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In a Friday (Oct. 2) post on Instagram, The Pretenders frontwoman gave fans an update, a chunk of which was devoted to Swift’s loved-up Ohio-themed The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore track. “I was thrilled to hear Taylor Swift’s new song, Cleveland,” Hynde wrote. “Now there’s a girl who stays on the cutting edge….in fact, she might be the only person in history who has actually written a song about Cleveland.”
“Although come to think of it, I did commemorate Cleveland on my first album in the song, Precious,” she continued. “Perhaps Taylor is trying to get a leg up in her career by emulating yours truly…… although I strongly suspect it has more to do with her new hunk of a husband, a Cleveland native.”
“Cleveland!” is indeed quite transparently about Swift’s spouse, Travis Kelce. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end was born and raised in the Cleveland Heights area, and the song’s lyrics find the 14-time Grammy winner singing about exploring the city with him while blocking out the rest of the world’s negative opinions. Plus, the “Cleveland!” music video features home footage of the couple driving in the car together as Kelce gives Swift the grand tour.
The track is one of four new songs Swift dropped at the end of September as part of her Showgirl deluxe, which propelled the project back to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for its non-consecutive 13th week on the Oct. 10-dated chart. Regardless, “Cleveland!” was always destined to be a smash hit in Kelce’s heart, with the football player calling it “a banger” on a recent episode of his New Heights podcast.
“Either way, hats off to Taylor for commemorating Akron’s main competition…. Cleveland Ohio,” Hynde added. “I certainly have myriad recollections of adventures in Cleveland.. it’s a hell of a town.”
