The last week of September may have been Michael Bublé‘s most special of the year. Four days after making his debut as a coach on “The Voice” on Sept. 23, he released his first-ever greatest hits album, The Best Of Bublé.

It was a fitting combination of two major career moments for the five-time GRAMMY winner. While his Best Of compilation honors his catalog, his new role on “The Voice” allows him to personally thank fans for a remarkable career.

“To this day, I still can’t believe I’m doing this,” Bublé tells GRAMMY.com. “When I’m on ‘The Voice,’ every chance I get, I’m jumping into the audience, because I’m emotional and sentimental about [how] each one of those people changed my life.”

From hit originals like “Everything” to his reimagined Great American Songbook classics such as “Feeling Good” — and even his treasured rendition of “The Spider-Man Theme” — The Best Of Bublé celebrates his impact as a contemporary crooner. Though that legacy includes 75 million albums sold worldwide and multiple No. 1 albums, Bublé is the first to admit that it wasn’t easy to convince industry players that his traditional pop style would work in the 21st century. Not only has he proven that tenfold, but through it all, he’s been able to stay true to who he is — and that’s what matters most.

Below, in his own words, Bublé reflects on his hard-fought journey to becoming an international superstar, and some of the songs on The Best of Bublé that mean the most to him.

I had [released] music for 10 years before my first [major label] record, which was [2003’s] Michael Bublé. I had put out many independent records, I had gone and done a lot of indie festivals. I was singing this stuff forever — I mean, it seemed like forever, but I was 17 years old when my first independent record came out.

I was so stoic about who I was, and the music that I loved. And I loved jazz, and I loved the Great American Songbook. I was so entrenched in loving that, and so protective of it. But it’s funny, because it was literally so far from being cool or marketable that it took me so long to even get a meeting with a record company.

Every single label and agency said the same thing. And sometimes I’d wondered if they had talked to each other about it, and that there was, like, a manifesto that they had written, so that when Michael Bublé comes in to try to sell himself, here’s what you say: “You are a really talented young guy. You’re really fun to watch on stage in the nightclubs, but this music, there’s no commercial value in it, and we don’t see how investing in you would be financially responsible. But, you’re really talented, and it’s going to happen for you one day.”

Finally, when I was 25, I was introduced to David Foster, who at that time, was running 143/Reprise [Records] at Warner. He had just had success with Josh Groban, and I think it had given him a little bit of an opportunity. So I said to him, “Would you take me to see Tom Whalley at Warner?” And he said, “No way. You’re on my radar, but I just don’t see how this kind of music is going to take off” — the same thing!

I drove him nuts. Actually, as a matter of fact, it came down to him saying, “The only way I’d produce a record is if you came up with the money,” which was like, 100 grand a track. So my manager and I went bank to bank in Vancouver until we found someone who would lend us the money.

I put David in an awkward position where he finally took me to Warner, and I got my deal. And even then, it was just the beginning of a long story, because I had a one-record deal, and they said, “If you don’t [sell] this many albums, there’s no way there’s a second album.”

I had a great manager named Bruce Allen. He would say, “Listen, they’re not really biting in America. So what would you think about going to the Philippines? What do you think about going to Australia or South Africa?” And I did, and that’s kind of how it started.

I started to find success, and we started playing nightclubs. In New York, I’d play the Blue Note, or in LA, I’d play Michael Feinstein’s. They were really smart about how they sold me, because I could have sold more seats at some point, and they were like, “No, we’re going to go to LA, and we’re going to make sure that it’s a theater, and that people can’t get tickets.” And I was so impatient. It was like, “Yeah, but I can do this!” Thank God I had a great team of people.

A lot of people can’t say this about their relationship with a record company, but I’ve had a 20-year love affair. They’re my best friends. For a lot of great artists, that’s the trifecta — a supportive label and publicity department, and a manager who works you to death and loves you. I had this dream collaboration with them, and it worked out for me.

There’s a woman named Jo Faloona, who now has worked with me for the last 15 years in my management company. But she used to work for Warner in Canada, and her job was to guesstimate, for budgetary reasons, what I would sell in [my] lifetime as an artist. And she had some very moderate projections for me — 50 to 100,000 copies in my lifetime. I came to her, and I was like, “Jo, how could you have such moderate projections?” She goes, “Chicken, your first f—ing single was ‘[The] Spider-Man’ [Theme].’ I did not see a lot of longevity for you.”

And when I think about it like that, I understand. They didn’t know I was a songwriter at that point. It was like, “Who is this little Sinatra, Dean Martin singing guy?” Was I a good entertainer? Probably. But did I have a great sense of who I was artistically? I knew I did, I sort of had to prove that to them.

Really, truly, the best thing that ever happened to me was not making it for so long. I was 27 the first time I ever felt like I had real success, and I had become who I was going to be as a man. I was so appreciative.

To this day, I still can’t believe I’m doing this. When I’m on “The Voice,” every chance I get, I’m jumping into the audience, because I’m emotional and sentimental about [how] each one of those people changed my life.

I’ve gone through heavy stuff. Like when my son was diagnosed [with hepatoblastoma in 2016], it gave me a deeper sense in the connection that I had to my audience. Everything I had was because of them, and it was hard not to be emotional.

I wouldn’t call it a “greatest hits” [album], because I wanted it to be the best of my favorite stuff. Because, listen, “Spider-Man” wasn’t a greatest hit. But you know what? There is not a day that I don’t get into an Uber and somebody tells me that their kids listen to “Spider-Man.” It carries that sentimental value.

Those early songs I’d written, songs like “Everything” and “Home,” had a special place for me. Especially because I had to fight — at that time, the company was saying, “No, no, no, you’re an interpreter of music.”

[With “Home”], I had a letter from an executive at the company, and it said, “You have said the word ‘home’ 41 times in this song. It’s not a great song, and we don’t want it.” And then when I did “Everything,” I was doing the music video for it, and I remember standing behind the trailer getting ready to go and shoot. And an executive said to me, “If I had known that you wanted originals, we would have hired a songwriter for you. I think the song is weak.” On the first record that I did with David Foster, I had songs, and he used to say, “Well, you can do that on your solo record.” There was this running joke, “Oh, you’re a songwriter?” So those songs meant a lot to me.

And then there’s songs like, “Feeling Good,” “Cry Me A River.” I think the thing I’m best at is arranging and reinterpreting standards. But that comes with coming up with conceptual ideas that take a song and change it from the first time that you’ve heard it. For me, they were always very cinematic — even “Feeling Good.” I mean, obviously, Nina Simone is a goddess. I was deeply infatuated by her and all her records. I had this very James Bond-esque thing that I had in my head. And I was so lucky that I could articulate that, and that a producer like David Foster could put that down on pen and paper.

It was always cinematic. “Quando, Quando, Quando,” I remember singing it to [David] and pretending that I could speak Portuguese. There’s these demos where I’m singing the Nelly Furtado part. As ridiculous as it sounded, David got it.

God, I love the Dap Kings. I miss Sharon Jones every day. “Baby, You Got What It Takes” was one of my favorite songs ever. I got wasted with her when we did that recording. There was so much smoke in the booth, we couldn’t see past each other. We performed on “SNL” together, and we were like kids in a candy store. We couldn’t believe we were doing it together. She was such a great lady, and the Dap Kings were such a badass group of musicians. There’s so many memories, craziness.

It’s 21 years [of] making music with my favorite humans — my musicians, my co-writers, the arrangers, the producers. People I idolized. I was listening to [The Best Of Bublé], and I was thinking about [the fact that] every note that came out of my mouth, I never let one go without it meaning everything. And whether I failed or succeeded, I can look back with this great sense of pride.

Lorde struck a glamorous figure at the 2025 Met Gala on the first Monday in May, arriving at the famous steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City wearing a custom creation by Thom Browne. Constructed of wide strips of metallic, silver-gray fabric, the high-fashion look was clearly an inventive play on a men’s cummerbund — but upon first glance, did the daring, backless ensemble also resemble…duct tape?

“It’s something of an Easter egg, more will be revealed,” the two-time GRAMMY winner teased to Emma Chamberlain on the carpet. “To me, it really represents where I’m at gender-wise. I feel like a man and a woman, you know?”

One week later, Lorde brought up the topic of duct tape herself while showing off a few talismanic objects that helped inspire her fourth album, Virgin (out now via Republic Records and Universal Music New Zealand), to Rolling Stone. The superstar explained that she began viewing the adhesive in a new, more profound light after using it to tape up her boots, calling it “a portal into her masculinity.”

Lorde’s newfound gender fluidity is a core element of Virgin‘s DNA, from its 11 taut, polymorphic tracks to its clinical cover art, which depicts an X-ray of the singer’s pelvis, complete with her intrauterine device at the center of the medical scan.

“I just felt like it was the right portrait of me to be with this album,” the New Zealand native dished to BBC Radio 1 ahead of the LP’s release. “It’s a little bit mystical, it’s super vulnerable, it’s a bit tech-y. And I like that it’s just the essentials: my jeans, my belt and my IUD. It was just something about it that hit for me.”

Like each album that came before it, Virgin marked a conscious, intentional shift for Lorde. Working with new producers like Jim-E Stack, Dan Nigro and Buddy Ross for the first time, the singer builds a series of intricately layered soundscapes sparingly littered with touches of electronica. (That is, until a pulsing, hypnotic blast nearly threatens to overtake the album’s final track, “David.”) Meanwhile, her poeticism remains searing as ever and even more personal, combining the musical poetry of her earliest work with some of the philosophical musings she developed on later projects.

The result shows continued growth, self-awareness and maturity from the now 28-year-old superstar, who first captured the world’s attention by turning her imaginative teenage point of view into grandiose alt-pop opuses on 2013’s Pure Heroine. She then depicted the heartbreak and peak millennial confusion of growing up with 2017’s Melodrama, before setting her sights on escaping via the path less traveled with 2021’s Solar Power. And now, she’s ruminating on sexual politics, healing from past traumas and exploring her identity like never before with Virgin.

To celebrate the new album, dive into 10 essential songs in Lorde’s catalog, from groundbreaking early hits like “Royals” and “Team” to her latest potent singles “Man of the Year” and “Hammer.”

As the opening track off her debut EP, The Love Club, “Bravado” serves as one of the earliest examples of Lorde’s stunning skills as a teenage pop prodigy. The vulnerable, pre-Pure Heroine track gives insight into the dichotomy between Ella Yelich-O’Connor, the introverted, intensely observant girl from the suburbs of Auckland, and the bold pop persona she’d invented as Lorde.

“All my life, I’ve been fighting a war/ I can’t talk to you or your friends/ It’s not only you/ My heart jumps around when I’m alluded to, this will not do,” she confesses of her insecurities on the opening verse before admitting, conversely, on the chorus, “I want the applause, the approval, the things that make me go, ‘Oh!'”

“I am quite reserved in general and I’m not a very confident person,” the then-16-year-old told Huffington Post about the inspiration behind “Bravado” while on her very first press tour of America in 2013. “But I knew I was about to be entering an industry where you have to be. And so [‘Bravado’] was kind of my personal pep talk. Like kind of coming to a point where I could put on confidence.”

“Royals” (‘The Love Club’/’Pure Heroine,’ 2013)

“Royals” sounded like nothing else on the radio when Lorde emerged as a bright new star in the pop firmament in 2013. Like adolescent authors S.E. Hinton and Miles Franklin before her, here was an unknown teenager from the suburbs — in this case, in New Zealand — somehow perfectly and poetically capturing exactly what it felt like to be a teenager, well, everywhere in the age of Instagram, “Blurred Lines” and Miley Cyrus‘ Bangerz.

In the song, a clear-eyed Lorde rejected the artifice rampant materialism blaring from her screens every day with her evocative lyricism, and even enlisted her real-life friends to appear in the accompanying music video. “But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece/ Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash/ We don’t care/ We aren’t caught up in your love affair,” the newly born pop star sang on the undulating hook.

“My friends and I, we’ve cracked the code,” Lorde later intones on her debut single, not so much bragging as letting the listener in on a well-kept secret. And in reality, the teen phenom cracked the code to chart success, with the song spending nine consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and winning her both Song Of The Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2014 GRAMMYs among four nominations.

Read More: 5 Ways Lorde’s ‘Pure Heroine’ Helped Pave The Way For The Unconventional Modern Superstar

“Team” (‘Pure Heroine,’ 2013)

How does a teenage wunderkind build on a generation-defining No. 1 hit that both rewrote the rules of pop music success and turned her into music’s next big thing? By inviting fans to venture even further into her suburban fantasy fueled by equal doses of boredom, self-mythologizing and adolescent angst.

Pure Heroine‘s third single, “Team,” added fascinating new layers to the world she’d started building on “Royals.” Conjuring up astral empires constructed brick by brick out of overlooked and forgotten “cities you’ll never see on screen,” Lorde perfectly encapsulated how an entire generation of millennials felt being constantly pandered to in a new millennium constantly rocked by global conflict, financial meltdown and endless appetite for consumption (“I’m kinda over gettin’ told to put my hands up in the air…So there”).

When Pure Heroine celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2023, Lorde looked back on creating the LP that would change her life with a sense of loving nostalgia. As she wrote in her popular newsletter to fans, “I’d go on long walks around the neighborhood, and began to mythologise the stuff around me (big empty floodlit rugby fields/bus rides/dark streets/boredom/isolation) into the motifs that would become Pure Heroine. I wore a lot of, like, navy lipsticks from the 2 dollar shop. God, this aesthetic, It’s just TOO MUCH.”

“Green Light” (‘Melodrama,’ 2017)

When it came time to write her acclaimed sophomore album in 2017, Lorde turned her platinum pen inward. She explored her dual transitions from adolescence to young adulthood and unknown musical prodigy to global superstar in equal, fascinating measure.

Kicking off the GRAMMY-nominated Melodrama with lead single “Green Light,” the singer let her heart bleed onto the page as she documented a major romantic breakup with indelible lines like, “All those rumors, they have big teeth/ Hope they bite you/ Thought you said that you would always be in love/ But you’re not in love no more.”

Compared to the spare alt-pop that had populated Pure Heroine, the pulsating, jittery energy of “Green Light” felt downright frenetic, and gave Lorde the permission she needed to hit the gas and zoom into the messy, confusing, heart-shattering trials of adulthood in all its glory.

Read More: The Magic Of ‘Melodrama’: How Lorde’s Second Album Solidified Her & Producer Jack Antonoff As Global Stars

“Liability” (‘Melodrama,’ 2017)

There’s perhaps no single track more vulnerable in Lorde’s entire oeuvre than “Liability.” The fan-loved Melodrama album cut turns the singer’s fear of rejection and hard-earned realization of the fickle, transactional nature of fame into a devastating ballad — one that can be deeply felt by anyone who’s ever worried about being too intense, too loud, too emotional.

“They say, ‘You’re a little too much for me/ You’re a liability/ You’re a little too much for me’/ So they pull back, make other plans/ I understand, I’m a liability,” Lorde laments, eventually concluding, “I’m a little much for…everyone.”

However, what others so unkindly deem to be unworthy or unwanted can ultimately be your own saving grace, as Lorde learns by song’s end; she ascends high above the fake and fair weather friends not worth her time to disappear into the blazing sun.

Lorde’s artistry had always been incisive and filled with lush, hyper-specific details, but the superstar had never experimented with satire before in the way she did on Solar Power‘s third single, “Mood Ring.”

For her sometimes polarizing 2021 album, the singer/songwriter had taken sonic inspiration from across the decades, ranging from Fleetwood Mac to TLC‘s strains of ’90s R&B and the turn-of-the-century bubblegum pop of S Club 7. That “buzzy mix,” as she described it to an Australian radio show at the time, is proudly on display on the single’s floaty, harmony-laden groove.

A platinum blonde Lorde finds escapism in winking references to sun salutations, transcendental meditation, and the dual cults of wellness culture and celebrity worship. Both fans and critics were divided at the time, with some not quite understanding the color of the singer’s “Mood Ring.” But four years on, the satirical song — and the rest of Solar Power, for that matter — deserves its flowers for being the kind of big creative swing that requires deeper listening beyond the hot takes and instant opinions to appreciate its tongue-in-cheek message.

Multiple versions of Lorde converge in “Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen it All),” a sweetly sentimental letter of advice the grown-up superstar penned to her younger, pre-“Royals”-era self.

The tenderly psychedelic track acts as a sort of emotional centerpiece to Solar Power, with Lorde carving out a much-deserved moment of introspection and inner calm as she imparts lessons to that wide-eyed dreamer writing songs in her bedroom back in Takapuna.

“Couldn’t wait to turn fifteen/ Then you blink and it’s been ten years/ Growing up a little at a time, then all at once/ Everyone wants the best for you/ But you gotta want it for yourself, my love,” Lorde sings on the chorus before none other than Robyn makes a surprise, uncredited appearance on the song’s amusingly philosophical spoken word bridge.

“Girl, so confusing” (Charli xcx’s ‘Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat,’ 2024)

After years of miscommunicating their way into something like frenemy territory, Lorde and Charli xcx worked it out on this impeccable remix, which the latter dropped by surprise just two weeks after releasing Brat in the summer of 2024.

Charli lays out the foundational twists and turns of the pair’s once-fractious relationship, from half-hearted attempts at collaborating in the past to being compared by fans and critics alike as two sides of the same coin. On her verse, Lorde takes accountability for her part in the love-hate relationship, even if some of her actions were completely unintentional (“Your life seemed so awesome/ I never thought for a second/ My voice was in your head,” she admits).

The Kiwi superstar also gets fearlessly candid on her verse about a lifetime of personal struggles: developing disordered eating habits, being “at war in my body” in the wake of releasing Solar Power, or still feeling haunted by schoolyard taunts (“Girl, you walk like a b—, when I was 10 someone said that/ And it’s just self-defense until you’re building a weapon”). Ultimately, the remix serves as an empowering statement of femininity and girlhood — themes Lorde would soon revisit in new, fluid ways on Virgin.

“Man of the Year” (‘Virgin,’ 2025)

Lorde’s daring Easter egg at the 2025 Met Gala made thrilling sense when she unveiled the music video for Virgin‘s second single. One minute into the visual, the singer removes her white t-shirt to plaster three strips of silver duct tape across her chest — instantly calling back to the Thom Browne look while revealing that she, herself, is the titular “Man of the Year.”

As the track’s sparse instrumentation crescendos into a crashing, cacophonous wall of sound, Lorde considers her changing relationship with gender expression and fluidity in the wake of a recent and necessary “ego death.” “How I hope that I’m remembered/ My gold chain, my shoulders, my face in the light/ I didn’t think he’d appear/ Let’s hear it for the man of the year,” she sings in a moment of awestruck self-discovery — which feels all the more potent after hearing the artist admit, “I cover up all the mirrors, I can’t see myself yet” on Virgin‘s previously released lead single “What Was That.”

“I pictured the person who wanted to be singing that song on a stage in front of people: it was me in my jeans, and I wanted to be shirtless. Just in a chain and my jeans,” she toldRolling Stone of choosing to use the tape as a sort of binding in the visual. “I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, ‘That’s…that’s me. That’s who I am.’ I really just saw my body as an extension of the work of art.”

“Hammer” (‘Virgin,’ 2025)

Like many of Lorde’s most nuanced and thoughtful singles, “Hammer” builds expertly on what came before it by deepening the themes and urban motifs she distilled on both “Man of the Year” and “What Was That.”

“I burn and I sing and I scheme and I dance/ Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man/ I might have been born again/ I’m ready to feel like I don’t have the answers,” Lorde sings on the urgent, euphoric track, which she revealed will open the album and cheekily described as “an ode to city life and horniness.”

And while she closes out “Hammer” by offering it up to the listener as a “postcard from the edge,” the song is just the start of the soul-baring journey Lorde takes on Virgin.

“It definitely just felt like a statement that I had to make, really, to go forward,” the superstar revealed about the album in an interview with Apple Music 1 just days before its release. “Really, like, everything on Virgin felt like if I don’t make this group of statements, my throat’s gonna stay locked up, you know? Each of them had to come out, come what may.”

Benson Boone closed out 2024 on an undeniable high. “A lot of insane things have happened this year,” he shared in a reflective, year-end Instagram post. “More than I ever imagined were even a possibility for my career.”

In less than a calendar year, the 20-something from rural Washington had gone seemingly overnight from a budding talent worth keeping an eye on to a certified global superstar and the voice behind the biggest song in the world.

In 2024 alone, the mustachioed singer released his debut album, Fireworks & Rollerblades, on the heels of his breakout single “Beautiful Things,” and criss-crossed the globe on his first-ever world tour. His shaggy mullet, impish grin and penchant for onstage acrobatics helped turn him into an internet heartthrob, a viral sensation and one of Gen Z’s first defining male pop stars. By year’s end, he’d also become a GRAMMY nominee setting attendance records at live shows and drawing thousands of fans to festivals he wasn’t even headlining.

Now, Boone is on the precipice of releasing his wildly anticipated sophomore album, American Heart, out now via Night Street Records and Warner Records. The full-length features a portrait of the hunky pop star shirtless and dirt-smudged on its patriotic cover, arms outstretched like a modern-day Jesus as he brandishes a well-worn version of the Stars and Stripes. The bold imagery harkens back to classics from an earlier age, like Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. or Johnny Cash’s Ragged Old Flag.

If American Heart’s trio of singles is any indication, Boone is also aiming for a more timeless, retro-leaning sound on the new LP — from the pulsing synths and spacey production of “Sorry I’m Here For Someone Else” to the fanciful romance of “Mystical Magical” and its nonsensical devotion to a “moonbeam ice cream”-flavored love. (The latter also contains a clever interpolation of Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 hit “Physical.”)

The rest of the album’s 10 tracks broaden the singer’s sonic palette even further. “Mr Electric Blue,” which seems to be locked and loaded as the album’s next single, is pure 1980s power pop; the soaring, belt-it-out refrain of “I Wanna Be The One You Call” sounds like a spiritual successor to the emotional bombast the singer struck gold with on “Beautiful Things.”

Read More: Benson Boone Declares “Beautiful Things” Is No Fluke: “I’ve Tapped Into How I’ll Write For The Rest Of My Life”

With momentum and talent on his side, Boone seems primed for the next level of his career as he shows his American Heart to the world. But as his celebrity climbs ever higher, the newly minted pop idol is determined to keep his feet on the ground.

“If this is a bigger year than last year, I want to be ready to keep the fabric of who I am,” he told Rolling Stone in a March cover story declaring him “The Future of Music.” “Just hold on to everything that I have. If this is a bigger year, it will be so easy to get carried away. Again.”

Ahead of American Heart‘s release, GRAMMY.com took a journey back through seven major moments in the year Boone became a global superstar — from the worldwide takeover of “Beautiful Things” and earning Taylor Swift‘s stamp of approval to his triumphant moment on stage at the 2025 GRAMMYs and more.

These “Beautiful Things” That He’s Got

When Boone released “Beautiful Things” at the start of 2024, there’s no way he could have predicted just how much the song would change his life.

While the lead single off his debut album, Fireworks & Rollerblades, initially debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February of that year, the anthemic track then spent eight solid weeks gaining momentum and climbing the chart — ultimately peaking at No. 2 by the end of March, just in time for his LP’s April 5 arrival.

A No. 2 single would be a major victory for any rising artist, but the success of “Beautiful Things” was far from complete. Thanks to a perfect storm of TikTok virality, strategic promotion and a rapidly growing fan base, the singer’s breakout hit went on to become the biggest song in the world in 2024.

After topping the charts in 19 other countries across the globe, “Beautiful Things” ended 2024 as the most-streamed song of the year (with over three billion streams worldwide) and was named the Top Global 200 song on Billboard’s year-end chart. The song’s record-breaking success even continued into 2025, when it hit the top of yet another chart, Billboard’s Adult Contemporary tally, in March following an unprecedented 55-week ascent.

In his Rolling Stone cover story, the newcomer didn’t hesitate to chalk up all of his success to the song. “I mean, it’s the reason I’m here,” he said. “Like, it is the reason this year has been a big year.”

Just two months after dropping Fireworks & Rollerblades, Boone got the opportunity of a lifetime to open for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour‘s final night in London. The singer even tweaked the lyrics of “Beautiful Things” to mark his first time performing at Wembley Stadium, cutely sticking Swift’s name into the chorus. (“Please stay/ I want you, I need you, oh god/ I need Taylor Swift,” he sang, before adding, “These beautiful things that I’ve got.”)

Once Swift hit the stage for the June 2024 show, she returned the favor by giving the opener a shout-out of his own. “He’s such a showman, he’s out here doing flips for you!” the superstar told the ecstatic crowd before performing “Lover” — much to the stunned delight of Boone, who was watching the live spectacle from the audience.

After the fact, Boone admitted to Rolling Stone that he “didn’t even know much about” Swift or her music prior to opening for the Eras Tour, but said the experience had a massive impact on him. “She shouted me out on stage, which you do not need to do,” he said. “It really changed my perspective on so many things that I want to carry into my own career. Just the way I treat people and my crew, watching the way she treats people.”

Boone’s big breakout year has come with plenty of recognition, most notably when the newcomer scored a nomination for Best New Artist at the 2025 GRAMMY Awards. (“[It feels] like a fever dream; it is so psycho,” he gushed about the honor from the GRAMMYs red carpet.) Along his road to superstardom, the singer also racked up an MTV Video Music Award, two Billboard Music Awards, the MTV Europe Music Award for Best New Act, Song of the Year at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, and the BMI Champion Award and two other trophies at the 2025 BMI Pop Awards.

The 22-year-old’s accolades haven’t just been confined to North America, either. With “Beautiful Things” becoming a bonafide global smash, he’s received a trove of awards and other nominations everywhere from France, Great Britain and Spain to South Korea, Japan, and Switzerland in the last year.

The Infamous GRAMMYs Jumpsuit

Speaking of the GRAMMY Awards, Boone delivered one of the most talked-about moments of the night thanks to his gravity-defying performance during the Best New Artist showcase inside L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena.

Kicking off a medley that also included performances by fellow BNA nominees Doechii, Teddy Swims, Shaboozey, and RAYE, the crooner launched “Beautiful Things” with help from Heidi Klum and Nikki Glaser — who ripped off his dapper tuxedo to reveal a glittering, baby blue jumpsuit underneath.

Naturally, the very first thing he did in the ab-baring ensemble was one of his signature flips (this time a rare front flip!) headfirst off the piano. However, it was the end of the jaw-dropping number that really got tongues wagging, as Boone adjusted his skin-tight jumpsuit before taking his final bow.

The viral moment quickly proliferated across the internet, resulting in memes, gifs and commentary galore — and was even lampooned in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch by Marcello Hernandez and copped by Mark Zuckerberg for a surprise performance of his own during his wife’s star-studded 40th birthday party in February. (“Shoutout to @bensonboone for the jumpsuit and the new single,” the Meta founder said on Instagram about borrowing the now-iconic stage costume.)

Much has been made of Boone possibly being the heir apparent to the late Freddie Mercury ever since he exploded onto the scene. After all, from his bombastic vocal style to theatrical stage presence, the singer certainly seems to have picked up a thing or two from channeling the late Queen frontman’s indelible swagger, charisma and star power.

Boone made those comparisons all the more real by bringing out none other than Brian May as a surprise guest at his first-ever Coachella set in April. With help from the legendary Queen guitarist, the singer delivered a majestic cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” — even starting out the number in a grandiose cape that immediately brought to mind the image of Mercury donning his iconic crown and cloak on the band’s final live tour in 1986.

While he sang May’s praises as a “brilliant, wonderful, legendary human being” following the show, the Washington native was also quick to reiterate that Mercury’s legacy remains untouchable in his eyes. “Honestly, I take that as a huge compliment,” he toldTMZ of being compared to the late icon. “I’m not trying to be anybody else but myself, but, like, to hear that is incredible.”

On top of being one of Gen Z’s most promising rising pop sensations, Boone also happens to be very funny. In May, the pop star made his debut on “Saturday Night Live” as the musical guest opposite host Quinta Brunson.

In addition to lighting up Studio 8H with American Heart singles “Sorry I’m Here For Someone Else” and “Mystical Magical,” Boone also made a hilarious cameo during Weekend Update, playing a hunky server responsible for delivering a pair of sizzlin’ sriracha fajitas (with a side of Asian glaze) to Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang’s raunchy Applebee’s barflies Darlene and Duke.

A 9-Second American Heart-Beat

Following the release of American Heart, Boone is set to embark on the American Heart World Tour, which kicks off Aug. 22 at Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minn.

Fans who snagged tickets to one of the 30-plus dates across North America should consider themselves awfully lucky, considering Boone’s entire tour of arena shows sold out in less than 10 seconds when tickets went live earlier this spring.

“SOLD OUT. IN 9 SECONDS??? bruh. (Pees himself) THANK YOU THANK YOU,” the singer posted in disbelief upon learning the news. (Since then, additional shows have been added to the trek, including two extra dates to close out the North American run at Salt Lake City’s Delta Center and an entire European leg running through mid-November.)

Boone seemed just as surprised as anyone about the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them sales feat. “It, honestly, is actually very shocking,” he dished to Billboard at the 2025 American Music Awards. “I was really obviously hoping the tour would sell out … I thought it would take a couple weeks though. It went so fast.

“But I’m very honored. It feels so good because I love being on tour, I love being on stage. I’m very excited,” the singer continued. “But I promise you, everyone who did get tickets, it will be worth it.”

There’s a cinematic inevitability to Role Model’s rise into the pop pantheon. The singer/songwriter born Tucker Pillsbury launched his musical journey nearly a decade ago — and while he was initially interested in rap, he’s since gone on to become a TikTok-adored bedroom pop star.

As would befit someone so superbly cool, Role Model stumbled into a hit-making career almost literally by accident. After breaking his wrist not once but twice in quick succession during college (first in a skiing accident, then skateboarding), he found a deep boredom while recovering for months. During that time, some friends decided to use his college dorm to record some music. When they were done, the gear was left behind for safe-keeping — leading to a life-changing discovery. “I spent two weeks completely obsessed, skipping classes and learning how to use Logic,” he told Nylon in 2020.

Pillsbury started using those burgeoning music skills as a rapper, first under the mononym Tucker and then under the name Dillis. But switching to a more pop-friendly sound in early 2017, adopting the Role Model moniker, and singing softly in his closet unlocked a new formula that would help rocket his music to international attention. The debut Role Model EP, 2017’s Arizona in the Summer, gained a quick following, leading to a deal with Interscope. In the following years, he’s released two beloved albums: 2022’s Rx and last year’s Kansas Anymore, the latter of which embraces folk influences and light western warmth to further round out his highly personal lyrics.

Each record seemed to expand on the Role Model mythos, his boyish charm and quirky creative approach bringing life to lyrics that refuse to follow expectations. Only Pillsbury can deliver a love song called “die for my b—,” or fight against his introversion as the homies try to get him to the strip club on “Going Out.” And he does it all with the perfectly messy hair, spray of tattoos, and heartthrob smile.

“I love having very just raw, depressing lyrics and then throwing in things about sex and s— like that, and having the juxtaposition or talking about sex over what should be a piano ballad about how you’re dying on the inside,” he explained to Ladygunn magazine in 2022.

That approach is on full display on his most recent viral hit “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out.” Over choppy acoustics and barroom piano, Pillsbury’s deceptively cheery-sounding tale of a lover who wavers when they get a bit tipsy has become the soundtrack to summery TikToks the world over.

As he spends this summer opening for the last stretch of Gracie Abrams’ world tour, more and more fans will get to experience that swanky idiosyncrasy themselves. With Role Model continuing to bring new color into his palette, GRAMMY.com rounded up everything you need to know about the pop provocateur, from his film school origin story to the iconic rapper who inspired his rise.

He’s Role Model, But Not Yours

Releasing music under the name Role Model should either come across as someone with a massive ego or someone obnoxiously ironic. While Pillsbury is certainly in on the satire of having his slick songs about love, depression and sex under that moniker, the knowing smile is far more charming than it has any right to be. And it might have something to do with how much that choice seemed to have come on a whim.

After multiple name changes in his rap life, he decided to try a new name out as he uploaded a track with woozy singing instead of his usual bars. “I changed it to Role Model because at the time, I just thought it was ironic to me and funny, and I was kind of a trash human being,” he told Ladygunn. When that song, the hazy and lush “Cocaine Babe,” outpaced anything he’d done previously, he knew the name had stuck.

He Could’ve Been A Director

Without falling into a music career, Pillsbury may have been well on his way to superstardom in film instead. The Maine native started studying film at Point Park University in Pittsburgh in 2016, imagining that his future might lead to Hollywood.

“I always loved film and my parents wanted me to go to school, so I was like, this is the only thing I like,” Pillsbury told Ladygunn. But in true precocious genius fashion, waiting around and learning the basics wasn’t appealing: “I didn’t want to start from the beginning and learn every button on the camera.” Thankfully, his discovery of music production hit at the precise right moment.

But that’s not to say that film has completely faded from the Role Model world. Instead, he infused his vision into music videos, where songs like “neverletyougo” gain an even more intimate excitement via immaculately shot and choreographed clips. What’s more, Pillsubry is set to make his own film debut when he appears in the upcoming Good Sex, a romantic-comedy from Girls’ Lena Dunham also starring Natalie Portman, Rashida Jones, and Mark Ruffalo.

Mac Miller Thought He Was Pretty GO:OD

As Role Model was first starting out, he benefited majorly from a Pittsburgh legend who was on the lookout to support his community. Just one year into making music and still in Pittsburgh himself, Pillsbury released his debut EP as Role Model, Arizona in the Summer. It got some listens from internet buzz, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep trying to make a music career happen. Then social media did its magic.

“I was like, give it two months, a month and a half, and if nothing happens, if nothing great happens, then I need to move on,” he told the Zach Sang Show in 2023. And in the middle of that stretch, he happened across his own music on an Instagram story from Quentin “Q” Cuff, longtime friend and manager of Mac Miller. As it turned out, Mac dug Arizona highlight “stolen car,” and invited Pillsbury out to Los Angeles to meet and work on music. Not long later, Role Model landed a major label deal, and has since remained inspired by his Pittsburgh mentor: “Not to be corny, [he] saved my life.”

He’s Experienced The Highs And Lows Of Love In The Limelight

By the time Role Model released his debut album, Rx, in 2022, the rumor mill had been running at high voltage for a while. And as fans dug into the dizzying songs of love and lust on the record, they eagerly dissected on the hunt for details of his then-still-theorized relationship with influencer/model/host Emma Chamberlain. Eventually they shared a GQ photoshoot, and she would appear center-frame (though back turned) in the video for Rx highlight “neverletyougo.”

But as with most celebrity relationships, the rocky end winds up being as much creative fodder as the giddy start. While the lyrics for Kansas Anymore remain intimate and compelling, they hint at the outline of heartbreak — one that was otherwise reported, though not in the same emotional depth as songs like “Oh, Gemini”: “And, oh, we’re hanging on by threads/ And I can’t hold it any harder on my end, no/ Oh, I’m something to regret.”

And as always, Pillsbury somehow pulls off self-awareness and the direct emotional hit. “Artists are just annoying … We capitalize off of trauma and tragedy, and we’re like, ‘Yes! A breakup, finally! That’s what I needed!’,” he quipped to InStyle Australia last year.

He Has An Alter Ego On TikTok

Being an artist in 2025 means being chronically online — and at this point, Pillsbury is doubling down on that assertion. In addition to mostly posting short clips of himself and celebrity friends dancing along to Role Model tracks on his artist TikTok, Pillsbury’s alter ego Saint Laurent Cowboy lives a life of his own on the platform.

That character takes constant potshots at Role Model as if he were another person, but also crediting Role Model songs and actions as if they were his own — and oh yeah, they’re often riddled with a sleepy approximation of youth slang. “There is an account on here called Saint Laurent Cowboy, and he’s impersonating me, or trying to be me, and I don’t love it. And I also don’t get it,” he deadpans on his Role Model account.

Cut to the Cowboy account, and he’s saying “Role Model is having a little moment again” and that his fame is running out so he “better start putting them fries in ze bag.” Whatever the game is, Pillsbury seems to be having a blast playing it — and it makes for two wonderful TikTok follows.

He Expanded His Collaborative Circle To Reach New Heights

Despite Kansas Anymore‘s place as a breakup album — the story of some of his darkest feelings — Role Model delivers an album of intimate passion rather than mere pain. Instead of presenting a simple story of good and evil, he plays more true to humanity, inspired in part perhaps by his choice of collaborators.

Throughout this third record, Pillsbury runs his ideas through a diverse collaborative team, including more women than he’s previously worked with. “Growing up, I would always go to my mom and my sister for anything, whether it was talking about a girl or crying to them,” he told Nylon. “I try to surround myself with people that feel like that, and I’m just comfortable with them.” Songwriter Annika Bennett lends some folksy depth to tracks like “Look at the Woman,” while singer/songwriter Lizzy McAlpine provides the perfect vocal counterpoint on “So Far Gone.”

Pillsbury’s characters and stories have always felt fully fleshed out. But processing his real relationships alongside this team have helped Role Model boldly engage his pain and unleash his most passionate delivery yet — and it’s all helping him become a pop music mainstay.

Marina Diamandis has always wielded time. The South Wales-born pop auteur creates and recreates dazzling new personas and styles with each album, ideas that draw from the past and envision the future, all while being firmly in the now. This journey began in an electro bubblegum wonderland under the name Marina and the Diamonds on 2010 debut The Family Jewels, and now cements her pure pop royalty on the new PRINCESS OF POWER.

Diamandis is the kind of natural that knew she was destined for the stratosphere long before she released her first song. As she explained to the Guardian in 2009, she spent her younger years hunting for auditions to get her foot in the door, with most resulting in rejection. So in 2005, she decided instead to focus on crafting her own musical experience, becoming one of the bounciest, quirkiest, most fascinating voices in pop.

Fans in the U.K. quickly embraced that energy, rocketing The Family Jewels to No. 5 on the Official Albums Chart, with 2012’s followup Electra Heart reaching No. 1. International audiences caught on by 2015, as her third album, Froot, reached the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 in the U.S., and her thrilling live shows boosted her fan base around the world. Since then, she has continued to refine and reinvent her ecstatic approach to songwriting, bringing rapturous fans to the dance floor.

By 2019, she had grown so fully into herself that she decided to drop the “and the Diamonds,” releasing Love + Fear as MARINA. The record’s bass-heavy synths and thrumming beats accentuate the two massive emotions of the record’s title in split halves, MARINA showcasing her empathetic strength. Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land followed in 2021, with MARINA presenting an even stronger vision of danceable electropop peppered with more political messages of environmentalism and equality, in addition to her intimate storytelling. Throughout it all, MARINA has exercised her impressive creative vision live as well, presenting expressive performances in captivating costumes, including the glam punk pink plaid, ruffled white skirt, and Marilyn Monroe blonde curls she sported at this year’s Coachella.

From strength to strength, it’s impossible to sum up the sprawling universe of MARINA, but these five tracks offer a handy road map.

This is the track that encapsulates everything we love about MARINA: her striking presentation, her dynamic enthusiasm, her fully developed characters and concepts, and her knack for inescapable hit-making. There’s an obvious smirk to her delivery on “I Am Not A Robot,” ingenuously channeling that universal sense of feeling detached from reality.

While the song — which first appeared on her 2009 EP The Crown Jewels — flirts with high-gloss bubblegum pop, it’s the furthest thing from pastiche. “But inside, you’re just a little baby, oh/ It’s okay to say you’ve got a weak spot,” she sings, the words bustling with both hedonism and self-realization — as if MARINA herself is about to leap out of the track.

“I Am Not a Robot” bubbles with an incredible depth rarely seen in mass-market pop at the time. While many others were still trying to present a polished perfection, MARINA reckons here with the need to act tough on the outside, masking your pain but still feeling it even when pushed down into the deep. Even this early in her career, MARINA immediately embraces imperfection and encourages us to embrace the same.

The rest of the record pulses with that same raw energy as well. The massive “Numb” is another fan favorite thanks to its Kate Bush push-pull piano, airy falsetto, and tender understanding of anxiety and depression, not to mention other album highlights like “Mowgli’s Road,” “Obsessions,” “Hollywood,” and “Oh No!”

The lead single to sophomore album Electra Heart, “Primadonna” builds from the strengths of other fan favorite hits like “Bubblegum B—” and “Lies” and draws listeners ever deeper into the MARINA orbit. There’s her voice from the moment the song starts, cutting through the air and pulling the listener close. “All I ever wanted was the world/ I can’t help that I need it all,” she sings, openly proclaiming a longing she no longer needs to hide.

That openness is particularly affecting, a dominant defiance that calls into question both relationship dynamics and, well, the entire history of idol worship in pop music. “Would you get down on your knees for me?” she asks, playing on adoration, traditional proposals, sexuality. There’s agony and ecstasy intertwined, the interlaced DNA that MARINA straddles so well.

MARINA has never been one to shy away from some cheeky wordplay or sex jokes, and the deliriously fun “Froot” features some of the best of both — with, of course, some danger lurking around the corner.

Over the thumping beat, MARINA dances through lines as if they were potential partners, each one bouncing between metaphors for being ready for the bedroom and the ripeness of fruit. But then, in the core of the song, there is a reminder that she’s not just something to be plucked: “I’m your deadly nightshade, I’m your cherry tree/ You’re my one true love, I’m your destiny.”

For those that don’t know, nightshade (scientific name belladonna, Italian for beautiful woman, in another layer of brilliance) and cherry trees are toxic, so beware. This track shows MARINA amping up the glitz, glam and lust, while cleverly undercutting the sweetness with just enough venom.

Just when the MARINA formula started to seem comfortable in its bubbly technicolor, the title track to Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land reinvents everything, without losing an ounce of the inescapable bouncy fun. The synth-heavy track breathlessly ratchets, riding a rhythmic pulse that’s closer to the dizziness of Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion than to anything her pop contemporaries were doing.

And that’s not to mention the lyrics, where MARINA dissects the very concept of existence: “I am not my body, not my mind or my brain/ Not my thoughts or feelings, I am not my DNA/ I am the observer, I’m a witness of life/ I live in the space between the stars and the sky.” The heady existentialism lands perfectly sweetly — and that’s just the chorus.

The track posits a need to embrace one’s weirdest truth, to be the “eye of the storm” in this tornado we call modernity, and this is the ideal heart-racing soundtrack to that journey. That confidence builds perfectly to PRINCESS OF POWER, a record that wields refined muscly electronics and more provocative lyrics.

While today’s pop stars now lean into the fascinatingly raw delivery MARINA has long channelled, she reinvents the vibe with PRINCESS OF POWER, daubing things in a heightened elegance. That surprising fusion vaults listeners directly into the pop star’s sun on “CUNTISSIMO.” “I’m a star, I’m a star, I’m a star/ I’ll be shining wherever you are,” she skewers through a thick haze of techno beat, reminding us of who she is.

MARINA is downright intoxicating as she sings about the power she has walking down the street, wielding “cuntissmo” that no-one can “dull.” Arriving just ahead of PRINCESS OF POWER‘s release, the song immediately set the tone for an album brimming with beguiling, shuddering rhythms and lithe lyricism.

“CUNTISSIMO” quickly races into a rousing pop anthem, the kind of playfulness that makes MARINA’s music suited for a dance-floor takeover. It’s a call to command the sexuality women possess, an extra kick asserting her own personal strength — affirming both who she is and the heights she knows she can reach.