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While the YSL RICO trial has been filled with unexpected twists and turns, music releases from Young Thug have been steady and seamless.

Today (September 27), yet another special guest verse from Young Thug hit streaming platforms, this time courtesy of Nigo’s “Dope Boy.” The track proves that Lil Uzi Vert isn’t the only rapper with endless fashion.

On the record, Young Thug shows off his eye for designer duds and extravagant jewelry, a.k.a the quintessential dope boy fly uniform.

“Dope boy Nike, spikes, they can’t spy, kid / Lawnmower service, I ain’t have to sell white-tee’s / Orange and blue Richard Mille, feel like Spike Lee / Put my daughter in Fendi blankets when she night-nighty,” raps Young Thug.

Although the song only runs for a little over a minute and a half, that’s just enough of a treat to hold Young Thug fans over. Also, it is unclear if this song is the starting point for Young Thug’s next full-length project.

If not, that doesn’t matter much, as Young Thug fans are still running up the streaming numbers on beloved his 2023 release, Business Is Business, which featured appearances by Drake, Future, 21 Savage, Travis Scott, and more.

Listen to Nigo’s new song “Dope Boy” with Young Thug above.

“Birds Of A Feather” wasn’t the first single from Billie Eilish‘s Hit Me Hard And Soft, but it’s turned out to be the album’s biggest hit. The fan-favorite song blew up on TikTok before being officially released as a single in July, making it all the way to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Now, Eilish has released a “Birds Of A Feather” video, which is set in an anonymous office building where she defies gravity and seemingly gets pulled around by the ghost of a loved one (don’t get any ideas, Severance season 2).

Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, recently discussed the origin of “Birds Of A Feather” with Audacy.

“There’s a lot of songs about dying for somebody and loving them till they die, and I thought it was really fun to reverse it,” Finneas explained. Billie added, “With music, my whole thing is that it’s for the listener to decide what it means. It doesn’t matter what I wrote it about, what Finneas wrote it about… It really doesn’t matter, as long as you interpret it the way you need to.” They both admitted that “we overthought this sort of simple song so hard… We kept getting lost in the maze.” But once they re-wrote the chorus, they had a hit.

Watch the video above.

The music, drinks, and shared passion for creativity were flowing this weekend as UPROXX Studios and Hennessy hosted The Sound + Vision Awards, a first-of-its-kind awards show honoring the artists driving music culture forward.

Taking place at will.i.am’s FYI Campus, the event was packed with celebrity guests and music tastemakers — gathered together to celebrate the behind-the-scenes visionaries who drive music culture through music video direction, stage choreography, merch design, and so much more.

We’re talking Tino Schaedler, the creative director behind Travis Scott and SAULT’s futuristic on-stage designs; Adrian Martinez, the go-to campaign collaborator of Peso Pluma and Bad Bunny; Sean Kusanagi, the mind behind ODESZA’s stage show; Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw team; and Eric Haze, the artist imagining music culture’s most recognizable logos.

To kick off the event, UPROXX threw a pre-show party fueled by bespoke Hennessy cocktails, eclectic bites crafted by culinary design studio AnanasAnanas, caviar bumps, and stunning floral ice sculptures. Guests mingled while enjoying musical performances from Isaiah Collier and J. Rocc before comedian and host Reggie Watts opened the show, setting the stage for an electrifying celebration filled with surprise appearances and some inspiring storytelling that all shined a light on the often unsung creative heroes in the world of music. LL Cool J stopped by to hand out a Lifetime Achievement award to Haze while ODESZA’s live show lead, Sean Kusanagi, gushed about the privilege of getting to make art that moves people.

Dive deeper into the nominees and honorees by visiting UPROXX’s Sound + Vision platform, and stay tuned for more looks from the inaugural show.

The word “legend” gets thrown around too loosely these days — as do the epithets “G.O.A.T.” (“greatest of all time”), “icon,” and “generational talent.” All too often, they get applied to artists or athletes in the midst of a great, maybe even mind-blowing run. But they are also applied too quickly, before the true test of iconic status can really be weathered or overcome: Time. Runs end; even some of the most paradigm-shifting talents can come and go in the matter of months or just years. Perhaps they set the foundation for true greatness to stand on after them, and that should be noted, but they probably shouldn’t be remembered as pillars or exemplars of their craft.

Wednesday night at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, Usher Raymond earned — or rather, proved that he long ago already earned — all-time status with the Los Angeles stop of his aptly-titled Past Present Future Tour.

Here’s a thought exercise: Think of Usher’s contemporaries in R&B or pop music — the Justin Timberlakes, the Tevin Campbells, the myriad of quartets, trios, and boy bands to have come and gone since Usher’s debut in 1994 with his self-titled album. Stars have fallen; controversies, both fabricated and substantiated, have stalled ascensions; many have reached dizzying heights but become untethered from the craftsmanship that made them. Even beyond just smooth vocalists, Usher stands more or less alone.

Sure, Snoop Dogg has become a titan of pop culture, but his last RIAA-certified album was 2008’s Ego Trippin’. He’s better known for sports commentary than music at this point. Jay-Z? Hasn’t made a new album since 2017’s 4:44 (critically hailed though it was). And a handful of Usher’s contemporaries are so much worse off at this point — especially this year — that it’s better not to mention them at all.

But Usher, who garnered his first Hot 100 No. 1 in 1997 with “Nice & Slow,” and whose string of Hot 100 hits continues to this day with his independent album Coming Home and its lead single “Good Good,” has nearly outlasted them all. He’s retained his radio relevance while becoming the sort of towering titan of pop culture capable of headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show, which he did this year to tremendous acclaim, reminding doubters that he’s got almost 30 years worth of hits to draw from. He did just that at BET Awards in June as he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

And he does it again on the Remy Martin-backed Past Present Future Tour, with a setlist reaching all the way back to his fresh-faced debut and running through R&B touchstones like “Burn,” “Lovers And Friends,” “My Way,” “Superstar,” “U Remind Me,” and “You Make Me Wanna…”; club classics like ““DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love” and “Yeah!”; and the sports stadium staple “OMG.”

Wednesday night, Usher also showcased the depth of his Rolodex, employing comedic chops alongside a bare-chested Kevin Hart, who teased the audience with his own rendition of “Nice & Slow” before being given the tongue-in-cheek boot by his host. Breakout star Tommy Richman put in an appearance to chirp his way through his smash “Million Dollar Baby” before Usher’s spiritual ancestor Stevie Wonder took to his piano at center stage, with the star of the evening doing duets to “Ribbon In The Sky” and more. Who else has that kind of pull, plus the generosity to cede the spotlight to his inspirations?

What impressed me the most is that I saw Usher do nearly the same setlist — albeit with a shuffled song order — at his Las Vegas residency not a full year ago. His stage at Intuit Dome struck me as being far less elaborate than the stage at Dolby Live at Park MGM — it certainly never transformed into a scale replica of his hometown’s Magic City, opting for a more (ahem) stripped-down approach — yet his performance was no less engaging. I didn’t think he’d have the room to pull off his roller skating tricks, and yet, he did. The crowd was inarguably larger than the capacity at his theater show, yet even the rafters were rollicking to “There Goes My Baby” and “Climax.”

The new venue undoubtedly helped; at some point during the show, I texted my editor to request that I only cover concerts at Intuit Dome for the rest of my tenure at Uproxx. Yes, there’s a little homerism from a lifelong Clippers fan, but the building’s design, intended to highlight the partisanship of a basketball home game, also lends itself toward amazing acoustics that complement its state-of-the-art, brand-new sound system, and terrific sight lines, as even sitting at a right angle to the stage, budged up against The Wall (inspired by college arenas), allowed a fantastic view of the stage and its recesses.

But, honestly, Usher doesn’t really need the help. Even without the massive, cutting-edge production on display, without the fleet of rigorously conditioned dancers, without the laser lights, and without the double-digit costume changes he effected throughout the night, Usher would be the consummate performer. He’s not just a once-in-a-generation talent, he’s a multigenerational one. He’s got a massive past catalog to draw from, but he’s also a modern hitmaker and superstar — and like his hero Stevie, he’s likely to remain one for generations to come.

Anders Rahm fell in love with stage design and the aesthetics of live performance as a young kid. While others were saving up for PlayStations or basketball jerseys, Rahm, who co-founded creative design company Raw Cereal, was counting pennies in hopes of catching his favorite groups on tour.

“I used to say that my savings account was in a stack of concert tickets,” he explains to Uproxx with a chuckle.

Though his heart has always been in live music, Rahm took a circuitous path to where he is today: creating festival rigs and tour designs for artists like Fred Again.., Calvin Harris, Duke Dumont, and more. He went to college with hopes of being a chef, but by his mid-20s, he had abandoned that dream and got hired at a creative agency.

After years of hustling, he sent a “future resume” to Baz Halpin, who led design for Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour, among others, with his company Silent House. (Silent House’s work on Tyler The Creator’s 2023 Camp Flog Gnaw set just won the Sound + Vision award for Best Stage Show Design.) Halpin introduced Rahm to some of his collaborators, and he quickly found himself on set of his first gig as a freelance stage designer: Assisting the 2018 Super Bowl Halftime Show with Justin Timberlake.

When Rahm started Raw Cereal, he began following a simple tenet: He wanted his company’s work to represent “unprocessed creativity.” Now, as a go-to collaborator for EDM superstars across the globe, Rahm and Raw Cereal are expanding their scope as they continue to perfect the craft of making every concert an unforgettable, charged experience.

What were your introductions to the art and music worlds as a kid?

I just really loved music. My dad gave me a stack of records when I was 10 or 11, and it was right around the time that my parents had a guest room and we got our own rooms. My dad gave me the new room and he gave me a turntable receiver, two speakers, and some crates of records. I just really got into rock and roll, soul, and funk music. When I was a bit older, I started going to shows and festivals. I was just hooked on live music.

What did you go to school for?

I actually went to school to cook. I learned a lot from that, really. I still look at what we do today as a similar process. Running a kitchen is no different from running a creative services company. We’ve got specialized teams that focus on specialized things, and in order to run a good restaurant, it’s the same as running a solid operation.

I took an apprenticeship, which was really key for me. I realized that I learned from people as opposed to from classrooms. From there, I realized I could just find teachers and reach out to people I wanted to learn from. I found that more often than not, they were totally willing to support me in that. I started in my early 20s, and I left cooking and in my mid-20s.

I ended up at a creative agency, and through that creative agency, I met Baz Halpin. I was in Milwaukee at the time. He was in LA running Silent House. He had done Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour and led Katy Perry’s tour — all the biggest in the world. I had met him because he hired us to do some of his video edits.

Years later, I was living in Austin, and Baz was still reaching out to me pretty consistently for help with presentation. I thought to myself, “I love what he does and I really want to do what he does.” I reached out to him and gave him a future resume, where I wrote what I would like to have done and what I would like my job to be. He said, “I can help you with that.” He hooked me up with some of his partners and I moved to LA with the hopes of working with them.

They gave me a chance and as an intern, my first show with that group was the Super Bowl Halftime Show with Justin Timberlake [in 2018]. It kicked off pretty quickly that year. They allowed me to help project manage the graphics for Taylor Swift’s Reputation tour. I was a producer on Beyoncé’s On The Run tour and her Coachella show. From there, my freelance career was off, and then I continued on into starting Raw Cereal a few years ago.

What makes Raw Cereal different from any other company in your sphere?

Oftentimes, we say our internal note is, “We’re here to help.” We’re really a service-focused company, and I think our outward tagline is “unprocessed creativity.” There are a lot of folks really focused on telling stories. While we do tell some great stories, sometimes things get convoluted, and they get lost in the attempt to tell a story in an abstract space. A lot of times, we are able to help build a loose narrative that allows for more of a focused good time, as opposed to trying to follow along in a convoluted way. We’re trying to just convey emotion as opposed to direct attention.

How do you make sure things go off without a hitch when you’re working with someone like Calvin Harris on his Ibiza shows?

I go: That’s how we do it. We can’t always go if there’s overlap, but we have enough great people to where sometimes, we just say, ‘Hey, you’re going over here. I’m going over here.’ We try to be together as much as possible, but it doesn’t always work. With Calvin Harris specifically, I spent close to a month out there in Ibiza and onwards into some of his European festivals. We go to rehearsals, we have creative meetings prior, and then we try to be there as much as possible. I’m on a lot of planes. When we’ve got back-to-back shows, it is back-to-back travel. We like to be there. Hope doesn’t work in this industry. We’ve got to go there and make sure it goes well.

How did you begin shifting into the world of EDM?

We’ve been talking about working in EDM since forming Raw Cereal. Good work begets more work. When we do a good job, people end up calling us. Our work in EDM really started with HiJinx Music Festival. We’re the designers and production leads for HiJinx Music Festival, and we get a lot of connections through that. That was what kind of started it. We had so much fun doing that. We wanted to do more.

Eventually, Fred Again..’s team called and they’re like, “Hey, who can really make this happen and pull it together?” They had a huge ask with a very custom request. We become the fixers in certain scenarios, where people are struggling and they’re saying, “Well, we’ve got something really big on our hands. Who are the people that can come in and really do this, and who’s going to put in the time and effort to really figure it out?” As far as Calvin Harris is concerned, he saw our work and we sent him a deck and he said, “These guys have it. This is what I want.”

What’s the five-year plan for Raw Cereal?

We’re aiming for longer-term projects, specifically in the EDM space. We love dance music and we want to be involved further. That means venues, it means clubs, it means installations, it means international. I had built a club in Asia with XiteLabs at one point in my career, and I’d spent a fair amount of time looking at the Asian club scene. We’re working on some hospitality club design with some partners out of Europe, and then projects in the Middle East. We’re trying to branch out from the United States and branch out from touring shows, taking what we know and building new teams that can really put some longevity into the scene, and hopefully inspire generations of more shows. That’s a big focus for us. Concert touring and festival design installations in EDM, rock, pop, and hip-hop will always be a staple of ours: It’s what we’re built on. We’re just excited to take that into hospitality, venue, and brand design. We’re just looking outwards and upwards.

Does having a venue or a fixed location offer you more versatility?

It does and it doesn’t. What’s fun about the touring show is that you’ve got all kinds of one-off toys that you can play with. You’ve got trucks moving them around and bringing them in. With venue design, you’ve got to think a little bit longer-term. The builds are a little bit more difficult, and you also have to allow room for people to bring in production. While we potentially could go all out and just totally blow a space out of the water, we also have to think, “Well, when Fred comes, he’s going to need room for this, this, and this.” When we’re looking at venue space, we’re really thinking how we can align with consistent updates to design things more modular and accessible for artists that are coming in.

You never want to have an artist say they can’t play at your venue because there’s not space for their design.

That’s exactly it. It’s like moving into a furnished house when you’ve got all your stuff in the truck. What’s the point of buying all this if you can’t use it?

I remember the first time I heard a Sophie song.

Or more accurately, the first 10 times. As soon as I finished listening to the impossibly tender “It’s Okay To Cry,” the first track from her momentous 2018 album Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, I pressed the back button and listened to it again. And again and again and again. Where had this song been my whole life? A lot of people felt and still feel this way about Sophie, which made her death in 2021 all the more tragic. But her influence can still be felt today.

FKA Twigs called Sophie “a star of our generation.” To Rina Sawayama, she was “an icon,” while Vince Staples praised her for not being “afraid to be who she was, to wear what she wanted, to say what she wanted, to play what she wanted.” Sophie was a pop visionary, an electronic music icon, a trans trailblazer, someone who made an impact on the underground and the mainstream with her kitchen-sink production and vulnerable songwriting. The amount of everything happening all at once in her songs — clangs, bloops (bipps?), screeches — should have led to a pile-up of noise, but Sophie was a skilled enough producer to turn the clatter into something profound.

“I think all pop music should be about who can make the loudest, brightest thing,” Sophie once said. “The challenge I’m interested in being part of is who can use current technology, current images and people, to make the brightest, most intense, engaging thing.”

Sophie’s bright, intense, engaging deconstructed pop found fans in Madonna (she co-wrote “Bitch I’m Madonna”), Kim Petras, Mykki Blanco, Arca, St. Vincent, and Caroline Polachek, who considered Sophie a “complete embodiment of the contemporary diva.” She dedicated “I Believe,” a standout track from 2023’s acclaimed Desire, I Want to Turn Into You album, to her.

Sophie’s beautifully brash imprint can still be heard across the indie and pop genre-smashing landscape, including the songs of 100 gecs (“it’s impossible to overstate the influence Sophie had on me and countless others, musically and otherwise,” one-half of the duo, Laura Les, wrote as a tribute) and on one of 2024’s most defining albums.

Charli XCX’s career can be separated into two eras. Before Sophie, she was the “I Love It” and “Bloom Clap” girl. Once Sophie entered into her orbit, she began to shape pop in strange, new directions, beginning with the thrillingly brash Vroom Vroom EP, and later, Number 1 Angel and Pop 2. “She believed in me in ways that I didn’t believe [in] myself,” Charli told The Face earlier this year. There might be no Brat, or “Brat summer,” without Sophie.

There’s a new Sophie album out this week. It’s called Sophie, and it includes collaborations with many of her close friends. There’s Kim Petras on the pulsating “Reason Why,” Hannah Diamond on the lovely “Always and Forever,” and Bibi Bourelly on the Rihanna-like “Exhilarate.” The posthumous release came with the blessing of Sophie’s family. “Sophie didn’t often speak publicly of her private life, preferring to put everything she wanted to articulate in her music. It feels only right to share with the world the music she hoped to release, in the belief that we can all connect with her in this, the form she loved most,” they wrote when the album was announced. “Sophie gave all of herself to her music. It’s here that she can always be found.”

Sophie is part of the collective healing process, but for all its strengths, the album can’t help but feel incomplete because Sophie’s life was incomplete. She wouldn’t want us mourning what happened, however — to truly honor Sophie, listen to the music she left behind, and the music from her spiritual disciples to come. “I think if this album does anything, it’s about her legacy not being associated with something purely in the past,” her sister Emily told The New York Times. “That’s my real hope. I think that there’s a part of her in the future.”

It’s okay to cry about Sophie’s passing, but it’s also okay to feel joy that she was in our lives at all.

Sophie is out now. You can find more information here.

iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Tour season is nearly upon us. Today (September 27), the annual multi-city run was announced, including its beloved New York City stop.

On December 13, the 2024 Jingle Ball Tour (presented by Capital One) will make a stop at Madison Square Garden (for the impressive 28th time). To celebrate this momentous occasion, Katy Perry will have the honor of headlining the show. Performers set to join the “I’m His, He’s Mine” singer on the lineup include Uproxx cover star Tate McRae, The Kid Laroi, Shaboozey, NCT Dream, Twenty One Pilots, Teddy Swims, Meghan Trainor, Madison Beer, Benson Boone, and Gracie Abrams.

As its official sponsor, Capital One cardholders will get granted first access to tickets and exclusive experiences during the Capital One pre-sale beginning on Tuesday, October 1 at 10 a.m. local time. The general on-sale will launch on Friday, October 4 at noon local time. Find more information here.

If you aren’t able to secure a ticket to one of the tour stops, iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Tour will air as part of a special on ABC on December 18. The following day, the special will be available to stream on Hulu. Continue below to view the entire 2024 Jingle Ball Tour schedule.

iHeartRadio Jingle Ball Tour 2024 Dates

12/03 — Fort Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena
12/06 — Los Angeles, CA @ Intuit Dome
12/09 — Chicago, IL @ Allstate Arena
12/10 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
12/13 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
12/15 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
12/16 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
12/17 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
12/19 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
12/21 — Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center

Drake has long been connected with the sports world, most notably via his love (and since 2013, official role as an ambassador) for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors. Now, he’s honoring some of his home city’s most beloved athletes as his brand October’s Very Own (OVO) announces the “Hometown Heroes Collection.”

The new merch drop honors “the legendary athletes who have shaped the city’s sports and culture,” per a press release. The ten-piece collection includes hoodies, t-shirts, and basketball and hockey jerseys featuring OVO branding, in partnership with the Raptors and the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs.

OVO is launching the collection with a campaign highlighting three Toronto favorites: former Toronto Maples Leafs captain Mats Sundin and former Raptors Muggsy Bogues and Morris Peterson.

The Hometown Heroes collection will be able to shop on the OVO website and at OVO flagship stores in the US, Canada, and UK, starting today, September 27, at 10 a.m. ET. Prices range from $68 to $198 USD.

Meanwhile, it was recently reported that on multiple occasions, Drake has turned down an invitation to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Jamil “Mal” Clay of the New Rory & Mal podcast claimed, “Drake has been offered the Super Bowl show for some years now and has turned it down. Probably four years, he’s been offered to perform at the Super Bowl, said no for whatever reason.”

Billy Strings is a man of many talents: A preternaturally skilled guitarist, a soulful singer, a thoughtful interpreter, a crafty songwriter, a charismatic stage presence. But his greatest feat to date might be persuading Marc Maron to not talk over him.

The 31-year-old bluegrass phenom appeared on WTF With Marc Maron back in May, and it is truly one of the more enjoyable podcast episodes I’ve heard all year. For about 90 minutes, Strings shares his life story, which has already become an integral part of the Grammy winner’s mythos. He talks about growing up in rural Michigan as William Lee Apostol, a kid who started playing guitar practically out of the womb amid squalid trailer park surroundings as his parents succumbed to substance abuse. He outlines the musical education he received from stepfather (and future collaborator) Terry Barber, who raised him to appreciate both country pickers (Doc Watson and David Grisman) and classic rock stalwarts (Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath). All the while, Billy is charmingly lowkey, expressing a wealth of beyond-his-years music knowledge with self-effacing humor. He’s so engaging that Maron temporarily forgets to redirect the conversation back to himself, as is his custom, and instead listens intently.

In the episode’s final third, Strings reveals a critical turning point in his career: Meeting the veteran mandolinist Don Julin, who played with the much-younger Strings on his early records. A respected player and author with a long resumé going back to the eighties, Julin is credited by Strings with teaching him how to be a professional musician. “When I was in middle school, I thought I was going to be some ‘Jimi Hendrix’ guy. I quickly realized that isn’t reality,” Billy says. “What he showed me was, you might not be a guitar god, but you could make a living.”

The irony is that Billy Strings — in terms of the reverence he’s earned from a large and growing audience of fanatical admirers — essentially is a guitar god at the moment. He is the guitar god, in fact. Given how the culture these days generally is agnostic when it comes to six-string deities, the profundity of this achievement cannot be overstated. This simply is not an era in which guitarists become famous for playing with extreme speed, force, clarity, and agility. And yet that is precisely what Billy Strings has done. He’s so good at playing guitar that he can call himself “Billy Strings” and not look foolish. He’s so good at playing guitar that “Billy Strings” might as well be a moniker engraved in stone and passed down directly from the Guitar Center store in the sky.

I am a recent convert to the church of Billy. Until recently, I was aware of his music, respectful of his obvious ability, but mostly noncommittal. This stemmed from my general indifference to bluegrass music, as well as the jam-grass wing of the jam-band world. I don’t dislike bluegrass; as a person with a heart that beats and toes that tap, I can enjoy Flatt & Scruggs or Bill Monroe as much as the next cowboy-booted individual. But usually, I have my fill after about 20 minutes. My ears just get exhausted by all of those frenetic banjo runs and fiddle … fiddlin’. (Also — I apologize in advance to all traditionalists out there — I love drums in my music and miss them when they’re not there.) I once wrote about the concept of “jam ears” to describe how one can become acclimated to hearing 20-minute improvisations and actually enjoy them. You could say I was not equipped with strong “bluegrass ears.”

That started to change in July upon the release of Live Vol. 1, Strings’ first “official” concert album. (Scores of Billy Strings’ live recordings are also available on Nugs.net, not to mention the audience tapes posted for free on Live Archive.) Sometimes, if the right record clicks in your mind, it can unlock the rest of an artist’s work. That’s what Live Vol. 1 did for me with Billy Strings. On his studio albums, Strings dabbles in psychedelia but mostly sticks to succinct songs and orderly arrangements. But on Live Vol. 1, he goes full Deadhead, taking already expansive numbers like “Away From The Mire” and “Heartbeat Of America” to the tripped-out “Dark Star” zone. Along the way, he uses effects pedals to wring acid-soaked electric solos out of his otherwise crisp acoustic guitar. These lines are exploratory, mesmerizing, and frequently surprising. But above all, it’s the combination of physicality, energy, precision, and curiosity that dazzles. Strings leaves himself open to in-the-moment discovery in ways that don’t feel self-indulgent or tedious. He might not know exactly where he’s going, but his success rate at uncovering musical gold along the way is very high.

On WTF, Strings says that his early attempts at bluegrass amounted to him attempting Hendrix-style leads against an old-timey musical landscape. He had to get over that, he says, though some of that vibe (thankfully) remains on Live Vol. 1. (His excellent backing band, particularly mandolinist Jarrod Walker and fiddle player Alex Hargreaves, must also be praised for keeping up with Billy as well as grounding him.)

For me, Live Vol. 1 is Exhibit A in the case for Billy Strings being a generational talent. After hearing this record, I became hopelessly Billy-pilled.

But like the guitar gods before him, Billy Strings wants to be known for more than unspooling exploratory, mesmerizing, and frequently surprising solos. He also cares about albums that work as albums, and not just as adjuncts to the live show. On record, he tends to downplay his blazing leads and instead focus on his “singer-songwriter” side. This is especially true of Highway Prayers, his 20-song major label debut out today.

In light of the jam-heavy Live Vol. 1, Highway Prayers feels like code-switching, with Strings deftly transitioning from his most far-out music on record to his most carefully considered. A key to Billy Strings’ popularity is that he’s a musical Rorschach test — he appeals to Americana lovers, bluegrass purists, and jam-band scenesters equally, but often in ways that don’t necessarily overlap. His music is big enough that people can take what they want from it and disregard the rest.

Highway Prayers is a record made primarily for the jam-averse portion of the Billy congregation. Even in comparison to previous efforts like 2019’s Home and 2021’s Renewal, which allowed for the occasional lysergic instrumental passage, Highway Prayers sticks mostly to a back-porch, folk-country lane. (The exceptions are two prog-grass instrumentals, “Malfunction Junction” and “Seney Stretch,” as well as the two-part mind-melter “Stratosphere Blues/I Believe In You.”) As the album title suggests, Strings’ extensive tour schedule has inspired him to write about life on the road. Sometimes he reflects on his existence as an in-demand budding superstar musician (the pensive “Gone A Long Time”), but he’s just as likely to spin a good-time number about fast cars and the small-town ne’er-do-wells that pilot them (“Leadfoot,” in which Billy plays guitar, banjo, bass, Ebow electric guitar, and a “1972 Chevrolet Chevelle”).

Highway Prayers was co-produced by Jon Brion, an L.A. music scene legend most famous for his sonically adventurous work on albums by Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, and Rufus Wainwright. So, it’s surprising that Highway Prayers mostly sounds straightforward and unadorned. (The most eccentric production occurs on the pro-weed drawler “MORBUD4M3,” in which the rhythm section is composed of lighter flicks and bong gurgles.) The idea, apparently, was to put Billy in a room with his band and some A-list session players — including drummer Matt Chamberlain, pianist Cory Henry, and dobro master Jerry Douglas — and let the songs shine.

And that, mostly, is a smart strategy. As a songwriter, Strings resembles the rock-solid craftsmen who scored numerous AM radio hits in the seventies, artists like Gordon Lightfoot and John Denver that could meld traditional sounds with catchy song structures and unforgettable acoustic-guitar hooks. In that mode, Strings moves from dusty strummers like the murder ballad “My Alice” to the sly pop-country of “Don’t Be Calling Me (At 4 AM)” with ease. On these songs, Strings leans on his most underrated attribute: his voice. It has that natural, inherent grit that all singers from Michigan seem to have. (I hear traces of Bob Seger, with 75 percent less raspiness.) While you can feel the velocity of his fingers every time he touches his ax, Billy’s vocals always sound relaxed and conversational. It’s a disarming instrument, as soothing as his guitar is incendiary.

Speaking of incendiary guitar playing: I wish Highway Prayers had more of it. I can appreciate that my gods don’t always want to summon their showiest displays of fire and brimstone. But Highway Prayers, for all its strengths, doesn’t have the same “knock you on your ass” power of Live Vol. 1. The music is laidback, and that suits the mostly contented vibe of the lyrics, which don’t reflect as much on Strings’ checkered past as his previous records do. Billy’s present, after all, seems to be pretty damn good. On the first track, he wonders, “How much longer now before I’m in the clear?” And then the rest of the record affirms that he is.

Which, of course, is great. Billy Strings is an easy person to root for. And Highway Prayers should only strengthen his standing in the current generation of young, ascendant Americana artists. As for me, I’m going to keep preaching about Live Vol. 1. It’s just that kind of record — it has the capacity to turn casual listeners into evangelists.

Lady Gaga‘s Joker: Folie À Deux companion album, Harlequin, is out today, and many of the 13 jazzy tracks are taken right out of the Great American Songbook. There are two originals, however, and you might expect “The Joker” to be one of them. But nope, the song hails from the 1964 musical The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd and was later performed by Shirley Bassey. Gaga, who plays Harley “Lee” Quinn in the Joker sequel, called her cover the “most daring” song on the album.

“The most daring is on ‘The Joker.’ Michael [Polansky, Gaga’s fiancé] and I wanted to show the defiance of Lee proclaiming that she is the real criminal in all of this,” Gaga told Entertainment Weekly, “and that she has the ability to mastermind a kind of coup d’etat in their relationship, that she is the persona of Joker incarnate, in a woman.”

Speaking about the album as a whole, Gaga said, “I think they’re all risky. Some of these songs, like ‘Get Happy,’ are from the 1930s. We’re in 2024, the song is nearly 100 years old. We focused on deploying slapstick and lyrical changes in reference to Arthur [Fleck]. He made his way into the album as well. The lyric, ‘If a nice guy can lose, what’s it matter if you win?’ — that’s pretty daring, considering who Arthur is, what he’s done, and it’s something the film grapples with. We’re rooting for Arthur, and yet he killed five people.”

Harlequin is out now. Joker: Folie À Deux releases in theaters on October 4.