Category: Music

In early June, Miley Cyrus released her Something Beautiful film, which features footage of the pop star rolling around on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as a nod to Track 9 on the accompanying album, “Walk of Fame.”

Now, Cyrus is getting her very own star on the iconic Los Angeles stretch — a full-circle moment that she says is has been decades in the making. Taking to X on Wednesday (July 2), the singer-actress announced that she would be receiving her own tile on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, writing that she feels “honored” by the recognition.

“When I first came to LA from Nashville as a little girl, my family would stay at a hotel on Hollywood Blvd, and I would go on late night walks with my dad [Billy Ray Cyrus] when no one would recognize him,” she gushed. “We’d have the gift shops to ourselves & buy knock off Oscars and Marilyn Monroe merchandise. To now be cemented on this legendary boulevard, surrounded by the icons who inspired me, feels like a dream.”

“This moment will live forever, thank you to everyone in my life who made it possible,” Miley added. “I am grateful to share this star with you.”

The Hannah Montana alum’s addition to the Walk means that her name will appear alongside countless other legends on the strip, including Michael Jackson, Elton John, Carole King and more. The 2025 inductee class also includes Josh Groban, Demi Moore and Molly Ringwald, as announced Wednesday.

Miley’s honors come at a fitting time, considering the way she incorporated the Walk of Fame into her Something Beautiful visual album, which dropped May 30 and debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. For the accompanying film, the musician shot scenes on the actual Hollywood Walk in the middle of the night, getting on her hands and knees on various celebrities’ stars and ultimately contracting a strange virus in around her knee.

“The doctor goes, ‘Do you have any idea why you would have such a brutal infection on your kneecap?’” she recalled of the experience to Jimmy Kimmel in May. “To have a surgeon look at you and say, ‘Yuck’ … Like, they open up cadavers, they see inside the guts of humans, and they’re looking at me telling me I’m disgusting.”

See Miley’s post below.

Being part of the Back to the Beginning festival — Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne‘s final live performances — on July 5 in Birmingham, England, will be special for the myriad musicians involved. But Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo has a different stake in the proceedings.

Trujillo served as Osbourne’s bass player from 1996 to 2003, when he joined Metallica. He co-wrote songs for 2001’s Down to Earth and recorded fresh bass parts for 2002 reissues of Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, and introduced his signature, sumo-like “crab walk” stage move while playing Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” with Osbourne. Trujillo also co-wrote four songs on Osbourne’s Grammy-winning 2022 album Patient No. 9, and played on seven of its 13 tracks. And the bassist was part of the all-star performance for Osbourne’s induction last October into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame.

“I’m always there for Ozz,” Trujillo tells Billboard. “It’s surreal … to go from playing Black Sabbath songs and Ozzy solo material at backyard parties at age sort of 16 and 17, over on the west side of Los Angeles before you went to the clubs … and then once I got on stage with Ozzy when I played in his band, playing songs like ‘Iron Man,’ ‘Sweet Leaf’ and ‘War Pigs’ was so incredible and surreal, like a dream come true. To do that and there he is, in front of me — it was great.

“So this experience we’re about to have in Birmingham is really special, but it’s also sad because you know this is the final show for them, and that’s definite. It feels like the closing of a chapter.”

Trujillo’s connection to Osbourne and Black Sabbath goes back to his childhood, in a manner he says is also shared by his Metallica mates James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett.

“The first music that was heavy that really did scare me came from Black Sabbath,” Trujillo explains. “All of us in Metallica have similar stories. It was listening to the song ‘Black Sabbath’ and looking at that photo of the woman on the [first album] cover, with the church in the background, and scaring ourselves: ‘What is this all about? Who is this woman? Where is this?’ It just resonated with us and scared us as kids.

“It’s so funny we had that similar experience. I thought that was pretty cool.”

Trujillo recalls that during his days in Osbourne’s band, the singer told him about Black Sabbath watching the 1973 film The Exorcist together while on the road in the U.S. “They were so scared by it they slept with the lights on — I don’t even know if they made it through the whole film,” he says. “It was so funny to hear Ozzy tell that story about how frightened they were. He was, ‘Can you imagine the Prince of Darkness, afraid of a movie?!’” he laughs.

“So what they experienced through The Exorcist, we all experienced through the [Black Sabbath] album and their music — especially on that first record.”

Because of that, the Metallica crew will be at Back to the Beginning as much fans as performers.

“We’re very excited to see Sabbath play,” Trujillo says. “It’s also a mystery to see what they’re gonna play and how much they’re gonna be able to do. It’s just cool that so many musicians — young and old and in-between — are gonna be part of this. Everybody’s around to celebrate the right way. It’s like three days compacted into one, and it’s an honor and privilege and really the ultimate sign of respect for that band.”

Trujillo says Metallica was one of the first bands approached to be part of the Back to the Beginning event, whose lineup also includes Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Tool, Patera, Halestorm, Alice in Chains, Sammy Hagar, Billy Corgan and many more, with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello serving as music director. “We got asked months and months and months ago — six months ago or before, when people didn’t know that it was happening,” Trujillo remembers. “Then I started hearing about it, so it was kind of interesting to see the excitement build with other musicians. It was sort of the talk of the town — at least in L.A., where I live — among the peers, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, I know about that …’”

Metallica has been busy crafting its half-hour set for the event, which will include its own songs as well as at least one Black Sabbath track. Trujillo’s not giving anything away, but predicts “I would imagine we’ll play what fans would probably want to hear from a Metallica set, the popular wheelhouse of what Metallica does. And then as far as the Sabbath song, we’ve played a few over the years. We’ve been working on stuff, but we haven’t officially gone in there and really jammed on it, so it’s a work in progress, but I think the fans will be pleasantly surprised and also excited, ’cause we always put our stamp on it.

“It’s also a great challenge for us. I heard James working on some of it yesterday, before the show, off in the distance in our jam room. Ozzy’s vocals are pretty high — especially back in his youth — he was going for those notes, and I think for anybody that’s a bit of a challenge you’ve got to kind of navigate. So, yeah, we’re gearing up for it, probably like everybody right now. Most of the bands are on tour right now, and probably in their sound checks they’re running through one or two of the Sabbath songs, ’cause you want to do it right, y’know?”

The Back to the Beginning concert will be livestreamed starting at 10 a.m. ET in the United States. Tickets are available via Back to the Beginning’s website.

Metallica, meanwhile, recently wrapped up the latest North American leg of its continuing M72 World Tour, which launched during April of 2023. The group heads to Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East starting in November, with another run through Europe slated for late spring and summer of 2026.

After Sean “Diddy” Combs was found not guilty of sex-trafficking, despite days of Cassie Ventura testifying to the contrary, the singer has received support from someone who knows what it’s like to have their sexual assault claims play out in court: Kesha.

Just hours after the Bad Boy Records founder was acquitted on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges Wednesday (July 2) — with a New York jury only convicting him on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution — Kesha shared a message of solidarity with Ventura on X. “Cassie, I believe you,” she wrote. “I love you.”

The pop star added, “Your strength is a beacon for every survivor.”

The jury’s decision came after two days of deliberations, putting an end to a seven-week trial that found federal prosecutors attempting to convict Diddy on allegations that he’d spent years running a criminal enterprise built around his own sexual gratification. Ventura took the stand for several days in May and detailed how the disgraced mogul allegedly abused and trafficked her for the sake of his “freak off” parties.

Diddy has denied all of the accusations levied against him in the trial from the beginning. He now awaits sentencing, facing a maximum of 20 years behind bars for the prostitution charge.

Kesha has previously found herself in the middle of legal proceedings involving allegations of sexual assault, with the singer accusing producer Dr. Luke in 2014 of drugging her and raping her at a 2005 party, something he vehemently denies. The claims sparked a yearslong legal battle that finally ended when the two parties reached a settlement in 2023 — but Kesha has been open about the toll her experience has taken on her personally and artistically.

The “TikTok” hitmaker is now gearing up to release . (Period) — her very first independent album after finishing her contract with Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe Records — on July 4. “It’s been all of my vision, all of my words, a lot of hard work, a lot of joy,” Kesha said of the project on The Jennifer Hudson Show in May. “Really coming back home to myself and feeling what freedom really looks like, feels like, sounds like.”

As for Ventura, the model recently welcomed her third baby with husband Alex Fine. The birth came just a couple of weeks after she finished her time on the stand in Diddy’s trial.

In response to the hip-hop titan’s partial acquittal, Ventura’s attorney’s said in a statement, “By coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice … This case proved that change is long overdue, and we will continue to fight on behalf of survivors.”

See Kesha’s post below.

The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated July 12, we look at a loaded week of new and surging releases, headlined by returning alt-pop star Lorde and what’s quickly becoming the summer’s hottest movie soundtrack.

Lorde, Virgin (Republic): One of the most anticipated pop releases of the summer has certainly been Lorde’s fourth album Virgin, her first full-length since 2021’s polarizing Solar Power. The album came with an extensive rollout, led by first single “What Was That” — which was debuted at a stop-start live event in New York’s Washington Square Park (filmed for the song’s official video, released later that week) and which became her first Billboard Hot 100 top 40 hit of the 2020s, bowing at No. 36.

That song fell off the Hot 100 after just a few weeks, and none of the other tracks released in advance of Virgin followed it onto the chart — and the set has only 11 tracks and no feature appearances — so it’s unlikely to be a streaming blockbuster, though it should still perform respectably on DSPs. It’s also expected to sell well, helped by its availability for purchase in eight vinyl variants, including two signed editions — as well as being available on CD and for digital download. (The early critical response for Virgin has also been much stronger than the relatively mixed reception for Solar Power.)

It should be enough to continue Lorde’s streak of each of her studio albums making the Billboard 200’s top five, and may better the No. 5 debut of Solar Power. It’s unlikely to give her a second No. 1 album on the chart, however — following the No. 1 bow of Melodrama in 2017 — as Morgan Wallen’s I’m the Problem continues to be an absolute streaming juggernaut, set to score a seventh consecutive week of six-digit units on the chart.

KPop Demon Hunters Soundtrack (Republic): The greatest potential obstacle to Lorde’s path to a No. 2 debut on the Billboard 200 may come from another Republic release, and one far fewer would have tabbed as such a charts contender. KPop Demon Hunters, the animated Netflix musical set in the Korean pop world, has become such a sensation since its release two Fridays ago (June 20) that its soundtrack — featuring the songs of its two primary fictional groups, HUNTR/X and Saja Boys, as well as a couple contributions from real-life K-pop stars TWICE — appears on its way to being one of the summer’s biggest hits.

The rising soundtrack already debuted on the Billboard 200 dated July 5 at No. 8, making it the first soundtrack to reach the chart’s top 10 since Ariana Grande & Cynthia Erivo’s Wicked accompanying set in January. And the set is still growing, up 220% in streams over the first four days of this tracking week (June 27-30), as its songs continue to scale the DSPs’ daily charts — with the soundtrack now occupying five of the top 15 spots on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA listing, and seven of the top 25.

If the set continues to grow on streaming, it could not only crash the Billboard 200’s top five next week, it could challenge Virgin for the chart’s runner-up spot. And the album doesn’t even have a physical release yet — it’s only available for streaming and digital purchase at the moment — so if Republic could get a physical soundtrack together to tap into K-pop fans’ investment in tangible products, the sky is the limit for KPop Demon Hunters‘ commercial potential.

KATSEYE, Beautiful Chaos (Hybe UMG/Geffen): Speaking of K-pop — one of the biggest stories in the genre this year is of the global outfit KATSEYE, which encompasses members from not just Korea but the Philippines, Switzerland and the U.S., and sings in multiple languages, despite largely working within a K-pop framework. The group’s approach has generated much discussion within various pop communities, and also a couple crossover hits: The group’s singles “Gabriela” (No. 94) and “Gnarly” (No. 98) can both be found on this week’s Hot 100.

Both those singles can also be found on the sextet’s second EP, Beautiful Chaos. The five-track set contains contributions from behind-the-scenes stateside pop fixtures like Andrew Watt and Justin Tranter, and comes with a surfeit of physical options for purchase — including four vinyl variants and nine CD variants. It might not be enough to compete with the streaming power of KPop Demon Hunters on next week’s Billboard 200, but it should be enough to further cement KATSEYE as a burgeoning force on the charts.

IN THE MIX

Russ, W!LD (Diemon): Billboard‘s 2025 Indie Trailblazer returned on Friday (June 27) with new set W!LD, follow-up to 2023’s No. 12-debuting Santiago. The album should also be ticketed for a top 20 debut, as the 19-track collection has yet to produce any obvious breakout hits, but Russ’ selling power remains considerable for an independent rapper — and W!LD is available for purchase in multiple vinyl, CD and cassette variants, some of which are signed.

Barbra Streisand, The Secret of Life: Partners, Vol. 2 (Columbia): Barbra Streisand is one of the legends of the Billboard 200, having topped the chart a staggering 11 times in her career, ranging from 1964’s People to 2016’s Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway. Streisand’s latest Partners duets set is unlikely to make it an even dozen, but should attract interest with its star-studded guest list — including modern-day chart-toppers Ariana Grande, Sam Smith and Hozier, as well as all-time legends like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mariah Carey — and is available for sale in a pair of vinyl variants, as well as on CD.