Governors Ball took over Flushing Meadow-Corona Park in Queens, New York, from June 7-9, featuring good weather, great vibes, and a cavalcade of stars: Post Malone, Rauw Alejandro, P1Harmony, Blondshell, 21 Savage, Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii, Sexyy Red, Chappell Roan, Faye Webster, Peso Pluma and many more. Our photographers were on the ground to catch some of the best moments onstage, backstage, and in the crowd. Take a look.
Shaking performs on her 'Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran' world tour
Decades into her career, Shakira remains an unstoppable force — and her current streaming success proves it.
This summer, the Colombian superstar asserted her global dominance with the release of her 2026 FIFA World Cup song “Dai Dai” featuring Burna Boy. It marks Shakira’s second official FIFA World Cup official song after the 2010 tournament, when she released the inescapable “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).” “Dai Dai” and her show-stopping performances of it at both the 2026 World Cup opening ceremony and halftime show during the final have the entire globe stating the obvious: Shakira is synonymous with the World Cup.
Since “Dai Dai” was released in May, the Afrobeats-inspired jam has scored major streaming wins. It went Number One on both Spotify’s Global Chart and Apple Music’s. That wasn’t a new release blip on Spotify, either. In July, “Dai Dai” broke the record for the longest-running Number One song of 2026 by a female artist on Spotify Global Chart by remaining atop it for 17 days. It also broke the record for the most daily Spotify chart entries by a song from a Latin artist (yes, even more than Bad Bunny’s “DtMF” following the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show). It’s also the biggest global hit of the year by a female artist on the platform. The dance-focused music video has also helped the song’s streaming power; it’s currently Number One on Spotify’s newly launched Global Music Videos Chart, becoming the first song to top the platform’s chart.
With the success of “Dai Dai,” Shakira has become the first artist to earn a Number One song on Spotify in both Spanish and English, and the fifth most-listened-to artist globally on Spotify, which is the highest position ever reached by a Latina artist.
It’s not just “Dai Dai” that bolstered Shakira’s streaming position, either. The superstar’s most memorable hit song “Hips Don’t Lie,” featuring Wyclef Jean, just entered the top 40, at Number 25, on Global Spotify for the first time. Of course, the track was released in 2006 before the world of streaming and has remained a Latin pop classic in that time with a whopping 2.5 billion streams. But Shakira’s recent high-visibility moments at the 2026 World Cup and wrapping up the latest U.S. leg of her record-breaking Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran tour helped the song earn its biggest-ever streaming day with 2.4 million streams on Friday, July 23.
To be clear, these latest wins are just one of Shakira’s biggest streaming moments after so many decades in the game. Her 2023 smash hit “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” also topped Spotify’s Global 200 chart, and has earned 1.3 billion streams to date. It’s not the only song the star has in the billions, either. “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” has reached the billion benchmark, as have her collaborations with some of Latin music’s biggest stars, “Chantaje” featuring Maluma and “TQG” with Karol G.
Back in 2024, Shakira’s longtime collaborator Will.i.am spoke with Rolling Stone for a cover story on the Colombian star and summed up the power of her continual success best. “It’s one thing to be like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been here for a minute,’ and you’re not being played on Top 40 or you’re just like a legacy act,” he said. “She’s competing. She’s not just flexing her legacy. It’s like, ‘I’m out here out-punching, out-swinging, out-basketmaking, outperforming my old self and new artists.’”
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' is inescapable, irresistible, and unstoppable. So why won't we admit it's the 2026 Song of the Summer?
It’s late July, the time of year when the days are long, the parents are restless, and everyone is consumed with a seasonal debate: What exactly is the Song of the Summer? Though this amorphous title isn’t usually anointed until around Labor Day, the chatter starts almost as soon as the season heats up. In today’s social media-centric, algorithm-driven market, however, it’s harder than ever to reach consensus. Still, one thing seems pretty clear to me — Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is hands down the song of Summer 2026.
So, why aren’t we admitting it yet?
If the song stays Number One on the Hot 100 this week, “Choosin’ Texas” will surpass Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” as the only non-holiday song by a woman to hold the top spot for more than 15 weeks. According to the Billboard Summer Songs Chart, it’s already the clear winner, with Drake and Taylor Swift trailing behind. Langley’s defining hit is still viral on TikTok, and it’s on both country radio and the dance floor — even Drake, one of Langley’s competitors for this year’s title, played it himself during a DJ set, while others have been offering up their own remixed takes.
But even if you leave all of the pervasive data behind — after all, Song of the Summer runs as much on vibes as anything else — “Choosin’ Texas” still should lay claim to the spot. With its relaxed dancehall melody, catchy guitar lick, and Langley’s buttery twang, it just feels good. And that’s what a true summer song should be. A singable, danceable, and drink-to-able jam that makes you forget about your troubles, roll the windows down (global warming be damned!), and pour a cold one any time it comes on the radio or your playlist. At the end of the day, it’s about nostalgia. That a Song of the Summer can capture a sort of bygone, bittersweet feeling of ephemeral youth is just as important as being a nightclub staple.
Yet many online Song of the Summer lists don’t even include “Choosin’ Texas.” It’s not a contender here, nor is it one here. Or here. While “Choosin’ Texas” is in the running in plenty of other conversations, it seems like a song this omnipresent should have been crowned the warm-weather champ by now. In 2024, The Guardian was already anointing “Espresso” with the title in June. It’s hard not to wonder if the inherent countryness of “Choosin’ Texas” leaves some list-makers and critics hesitant to hop onboard.
After all, there’s arguably never been a Song of the Summer contender that sounds this country. While Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” and the Wallen/Post Malone collab “I Had Some Help” have all taken the title in recent years, they contain just as many pop signifiers as they do anything distinctly country. And no woman has ever had a country song dubbed “Song of the Summer” in the existence of Billboard’s tracking, which dates back until 1958. Not Taylor Swift, not Shania Twain.
“Choosin’ Texas” is all of these things: as country as can be, and sung by a woman. And, above all, it feels like a summer song. It’s breezy, catchy, feel-good with a throwback melody that satisfies that nostalgic itch. But the bias against country music — despite its rising popularity — still reigns. The cultural kiss-off of “I listen to everything but country” has yet to die, and remains a surefire way to demonstrate not just a musical taste but a position of class (“Anything but Country” is the title of a whole chapter of Nadine Hubbs’ book Rednecks, Queers & Country Music, which analyzes this in detail).
Langley has also not signified her own personal politics, which is one of the only reliable ways a country artist can surpass the stereotypical coastal assumptions about their music. But the chorus of “Choosin’ Texas”? That seems like something that everyone can agree on.
Online, offline, young and old, in the car and at the club, the song, written by Langley, Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor, has been unbeatable since its release last October. So, I’ve seen and heard enough: “Choosin’ Texas” is the Song of the Summer, a country song with steel guitar and mandolin that mentions not one but two Southern states, sung by a female artist from Alabama. In a divided world, maybe choosin’ to admit it can actually do us all a lot of good.
Katy Perry
Katy Perry slammed the Trump administration after the White House’s TikTok account used her hit “Firework” on a video of military strikes.
“I am deeply appalled and angry to see “Firework” used on the White House TikTok account as a backing track for video footage of military strikes,” the singer wrote on X. “I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it.”
The offending 9-second TikTok, posted two days ago by the White House account, shows “unclassified” video of U.S.-fired missiles hitting port targets in Iran as Perry sings “Boom, boom, boom / Even brighter than the moon.” “Iran has been warned,” the caption read.
“I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments,” Perry continued in her tweet Saturday. “To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for.”
Perry is the latest pop star to decry the White House social media team’s unauthorized use of their music, joining the likes of Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter.
The White House TikTok appears to be seeking out music by artists who strongly dislike Trump in their endless pursuit of shitposting; earlier this month, the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” — written by avowed Trump critic Jack White — soundtracked a different White House TikTok about military action.
“My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare,” Perry wrote Saturday.
Jimmy Eat World set out to be “dementedly conservative” in their musical choices on ‘Bleed American’ — and it became their biggest hits
When Jimmy Eat World‘s Jim Adkins wrote one of the greatest-ever musical pep talks, “The Middle,” he might as well have been talking to himself. His Tempe, Arizona band had just been dropped from Capitol Records, and they recorded their fourth album with no new deal in sight. But the 11 lean, hook-packed songs that became 2001’s Bleed American were so strong that they sparked a major-label bidding war, and the band signed to the now-defunct Dreamworks Records.
The album, and the still-ubiquitous “The Middle” in particular, ended up defining Jimmy Eat World’s career. They’re out on tour now marking its 25th anniversary by playing it in full, including at all five dates of the revived Warped Tour. Frontman Jim Adkins jumped on a Zoom with Rolling Stone to talk about making the album, the underwear-party video for “The Middle,” the influence of Bruce Springsteen, and much more.
It’s so crazy to listen to the demo of “Sweetness” that you guys did in the Clarity sessions. You already had that song down. Why did you not put it on that album?
Business affairs at Capitol just added it up and decided, “We can’t spend any more money on these guys.” We were the type of act not doing anywhere close to the kind of business that Capitol was in. The bigger labels in the mid to late Nineties, they knew exactly what to do with an act that was selling, like, 30,000 copies a week. They had no idea what to do with us, who maybe had 3,000 copies sold between all of our releases.
“Lucky Denver Mint” on that album was already pulling towards a tighter pop thing. And if your budget wasn’t cut off before you could record “Sweetness,” that could’ve been a hit for you guys, and maybe the whole course of things might’ve been different. Capitol might not have dropped you.
Who knows, dude? Who knows?
Rock was in such a weird place. We were seeing the death of ’90s alt-rock and the birth of nu-metal, and the rise of whatever people were calling emo on a more underground level. Then in 2001, the cool stuff was the Strokes, which wasn’t you. How did all that affect your thinking?
I was really glad when the Strokes got big, because all of a sudden people stopped asking us about emo [laughs]. Thank you, Strokes. I love the Strokes, but it is funny, after the wave of grunge, media and labels to some degree, everybody wants to take credit for breaking the next big thing. And so there’s a lot of people just trying to frame everything.
That all just happens in the background and it’s something we laugh at, but it doesn’t really affect anything that we do. We’re right alongside you and everybody else who’s consuming it, just watching the show. If you chase that, you’re just gonna turn people off. It’s like, “Oh, wait, this is cool now? Oh, we gotta do that.” There’s nothing more of a turnoff than trying to chase approval. Should we have a DJ in the band? Should we wear masks? Should we collab with Pharrell? What you choose to incorporate and your approach to that has gotta be based on just what is personally rewarding.
“The Middle” is obviously the consensus mainstream winner, but what would be your pick as the actual greatest song on Bleed American?
It’s tough to say ’cause every single song had a thing it was trying to do, and that thing is a very specific target. AC/DC does something really great that Drive Like Jehu doesn’t do. And Drive Like Jehu does something phenomenal that AC/DC could never do. They’re trying to achieve a thing that you don’t understand when you’re really in the flow of creation, but you know when you get there.
“Middle” is definitely something that I’m surprised with in a lot of ways as time has gone on. And I feel “Bleed American,” the song, is in a weird way a really dark version of what “Middle” is saying. This idea of what you’re placing your sense of fulfillment or purpose or self-worth in might be the wrong target, and that’s why it’s not doing the thing you were hoping it would do. In “Middle” you’re talking about comparing yourself to some other, purely wanting to chase approval and how empty that is. In “Bleed American,” you have a similar kind of thing. I’m doing what I think I should do, and none of it is filling that space inside of me that I was told it would. It’s like an angry version versus a “forget about it” version.
What song did for you as a young person what “The Middle” seems to have done for so many people?
I don’t have anything that I can feel like directly spoke to me in that way. But I do feel like coming from being a metal guy and someone that was following a lot of guitar virtuoso players when I was learning how to play, and discovering something like Fugazi, and hearing how the guitar work happened there, and just the epiphany of how you can harness the feelings of angst or disillusionment in such a different way.
It’s just letting go of chasing the kind of player that I would never be. I can start right now and make something that is seven minutes of noise and feel like a complete whole person when I’m done making it. I don’t have to be good enough to do sweep arpeggios at fucking 200 BPM to do that. Just that experience of what punk rock in general showed me — what you’re feeling, and how you express it, no matter what that is, is completely OK as long as you are achieving a sense of reward from it.
The demo of “The Middle” was released a while back and it has a totally different vibe. It could be a Guided By Voices song. I know you were in a bedroom in Arizona. What did you actually record that on?
I think for 50 bucks or something I bought an old drum set off of [Jimmy Eat World drummer] Zach [Lind], and it was just fun. Playing drums is fun. So I had a eight-track digital thing in my bedroom in Tempe, by the college there. And it was just purely chasing any idea I was excited about, regardless of where I thought it was gonna fit in our band or not. I’ve made a lot of music that was just so not supposed to be for our band, but later on elements of it would get cannibalized and put into other songs that the band was working on.
So you had gotten that email from a fan about being put down at school. How long had elapsed between getting that email and sitting down and writing this song with that in mind?
I don’t really remember. We posted the band email at the Static Prevails time. And I don’t remember when that came in or how much time had elapsed for me to use that as a place to address, I don’t know. It just seemed like the music for “Middle” was just calling for something that felt simple, the truth. And trying to leave you with a sense of hope, in the way that really great, simple rock songs can. It was chasing that.
So you had the music first, and then you had to figure out a song around it?
I might jot down ideas that might be cool to develop later on into lyrics, but I don’t write just lyrics. It’s always a musical idea. But usually most of the song has to be complete before I start going down the road of putting in actual words to that kinda scat, and the simpler a song is, the more important that is. ‘Cause I’m not gonna just sit there and play a G chord for 16 bars if there’s not another element that I’m excited about.
How is it that you had a promo standup for the Bruce Springsteen Tunnel of Love album in your bedroom?
I think my seventh grade girlfriend gave it to me.
And you kept it all that time?
It was cool!
And for the “little girl” lyric, you looked at that Bruce standup and said…
Yeah, what would the Boss do? He’d probably say something like this. All right, I guess that’s the lyric now.
You had said that it was really around the time of Bleed American that you were thinking about Petty and Springsteen. How did those influences work?
I work a lot better with restrictions. Like some kind of artistic restriction. Here’s the idea, it’s gotta exist within these arbitrary boundaries, how can I push that? In the past, when we were younger, maybe those boundaries were a lot wider and it was about a whole lot of parts and a whole lot of guitar playing. And then when the material for Bleed American came together, the challenging, rewarding thing for me was what if those restrictions were a whole lot more narrow? What if we were trying to be, like, dementedly conservative in the choices? How far can we go in that? How far can we pervert that?
Like Mike Patton talking about his “Easy” cover — it’s super easy just to go fuck something up, but to go all-in, that’s another level entirely. Within chasing those restrictions, it really is true that the hardest note to play is a rest. And that’s a challenge. Is there a way to make it even more simple? It’s an exciting thing to chase.
Learning about that years later, I realized that the chorus of your song is almost like “Dancing in the Dark.” It has that same kind surge.
“Dancing in the Dark” was a huge one for me. Really listening to “Dancing in the Dark” and seeing and feeling what that can do is like, “Oh, yeah, of course.” It’s like the perfect song.
On “The Authority Song” you’re referring to both the Jesus and Mary Chain and John Mellencamp, which says a lot about the multitudes you guys contained.
It seems crazy, but it’s literal. I would go to my friend’s DJ night, and it’d be playing Velvet Underground and Jesus and Mary Chain. I’d be playing pool and there’d be John Mellencamp on. All the weirdo arcane seemingly head-scratching things are just this the honest documentary of us as kids in the late ’90s in Tempe, Arizona, and the surrounding area.
Jim Adkins performs with Jimmy Eat World at Warped Tour in D.C.Mike Kimchi for Rolling StoneI remember you saying that you were getting into Buddy Holly back then.
“Everyday” is one of the greatest songs of all time. If you start really thinking about it, it is mind-blowing. But also, you can ignore it and it’s mind-blowing. How do you do that? I don’t know.
I thought about this a little bit when we were going back and listening to the multi-track of the album. Like a song like “Everyday,” like what’s the verse? What’s the bridge? It doesn’t abide by any of those things. I didn’t learn songwriting. Nothing feels like a chorus to me, but everything is a hook. I don’t know what people call these elements of this song. Each of those parts feels as complete as the most perfectly put-together modern-day verse or chorus or bridge section that you can clearly identify.
As far as the guitar solo, you cite GBV’s “I Am a Tree,” the Doug Gillard solo, as an influence. I don’t know if you heard, but Rolling Stone recently named “The Middle” solo as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.
I was forwarded that by many family members. Thank you very much. I’m now completely valid in the eyes of a whole lot of my family members.
You can feel your chops on that song. It’s not full shred, but it’s not easy to play either.
It sounds harder than it is. What I’m most proud of is just the arc of it, the structure of it. It has to go somewhere, it can’t just shred. And how you do that is theme, variation, ascension, next theme, variation, some kind of conclusion. It has to have its own little story to it. That’s what I was going for there, and I feel like I got it, so there’s that.
You didn’t have a label, you’d been dropped. Was there any sense of going for broke, that we’re gonna write the tightest, most accessible stuff we can? Or was it mostly the opposite, that freedom?
Oh, no. It really is just the happy accident of what was rewarding for us, what was a challenge, what was exciting to do. What if the bumpers on the lane were a little bit tighter together? A song like “Your House,” it just goes. The fact that chasing that produced really tight, concise songs is really just secondary. It wasn’t a consideration of “This is gonna really work, guys,” it was like, “This is what we want. This is just what we wanna do, and I don’t know who’s gonna like it.”
Was there any cynicism in the video — “look, it’s gonna work really well to have this underwear thing on MTV”?
It’s not the way I was thinking. I thought all videos are just ridiculous, and we’re just gonna put this 100 percent in [music video director] Paul Fedor’s idea — whatever you wanna do, dude. You have an idea, we understand what it’s like to chase an idea. We’re gonna let you chase it, and we’re gonna help you.
Did anyone dare suggest that you guys should be in your underwear too?
No, ’cause we’re like the omniscient narrators in the “Middle “cinematic universe. We’re not participants, so we’re gonna have our clothes on.
With the next album, Futures, it felt like you avoided the trap of following up Bleed American by not trying to do it at all. It’s a much more somber and much less hook-filled album.
When you make an album, it should feel like that’s your best work. And once you do that, and once you go on tour for a year playing it, you really feel like you’ve explored that. So of course, the next thing that you do is gonna be wanting to explore somewhere else. All of our records are like that. It’s like where do we go next? Probably not just where we were.
Was there any label or management grumbling that you didn’t give them one song that was more of a direct follow-up?
No. Futures was really the first album we made where we had anyone really kinda paying attention. So it was a little bit new for us navigating that. We definitely knew that there were some songs that the label was excited about, but at no point were we making decisions to chase that.
For Futures there was an idea for a song called “Jen” that was probably the most “Middle”-sounding idea that we had, and we went through a couple different versions of it, and when it got to the end and played it for the head of promotions and other people at the label, it wasn’t close to the song they were all leaning toward as what they wanted to put out. So we just kinda didn’t put it on the album.
That song has leaked, and it’s great. Didn’t you once say that there was some kind of copyright issue there?
Yeah. There was some musicologist report that came back with this sort of, it nods to in a way a couple other songs that you could have songwriting issues with. And I hadn’t even thought about it. There’s that song “Pop Goes the World,” by Men Without Hats. They go, “You’re gonna have to pay Men Without Hats if you wanna put this on your record.” And no one at the label was coming back saying they wanted it, so let’s just not even mess with it.
There’s bootlegs of it. Maybe it’s time you guys officially release that song.
Yeah, we could. It’s like the fun, nothing-wrong-with-it song that I always thought “Middle” was, except it turned out “Middle” was actually saying a whole lot more than what I thought.
There was a little acoustic cover of “The Middle” in Supergirl, and people were super mean about it. What was your take on all that?
I don’t get it. I don’t get why people are bummed out on it. There’s a lot of covers of “The Middle” out there, and I feel like someone taking the time to learn one of your songs, they connect with what you’re doing in such a way they wanna take the time to learn one of your songs — that’s a huge deal, man. It’s a huge compliment, that especially another musician is looking at something that you did and they think “Oh wow, I wanna do a cover of this song.” So it’s flattering. Maybe people are just attached to our version of it in the way that makes them feel nothing is gonna be as good as that. I think it’s cool to hear someone else’s take on it.
And then finally, what’s going on with your next album?
We’re working on it. Always working on something.
Do you think next year?
I hope so. We’re not gonna put out anything that isn’t exactly right. And I feel like it’s slowly coming together, not there yet. But we’re definitely not gonna stop making music. It might seem that way, but we’re definitely not.
Charli XCX dropped an extended version of her new album, Music, Fashion, Film (B-Sides Edition), on iTunes on Sunday. The digital release features three additional tracks: “I Keep On Thinking Bout You Every Single Day and Night,” “Playboy Bunny,” and “If You Take the Music Then What Has She Got?”
The three songs were previously shared with fans on Charli’s @b.sides alt-account on Instagram. They were included as actual b-sides on limited-edition, physical 7-inch single releases for her tracks “Rock Music,” “SS26,” and “Camera,” and as part of the Music, Fashion, Film physical box set. The singer acknowledged that she hadn’t planned to unveil the songs digitally.
“i made b sides for each of the songs released ahead of Music, Fashion, Film because it felt natural to pair each songs with a fitting counterpart – something that’s adjacent to the album but not entirely part of it,” she wrote on Instagram. “traditionally, b sides often become fan favorites… and i guess in the case of some of the b sides for this album, that has proven to be true.”
She added, “i felt adamant i wouldn’t put them on streaming because it sort of felt counter intuitive to the whole ethos of those songs, but i know you all really wanted them so i’ve begrudgingly put them on itunes lol. you can call me a hypocrite, i don’t mind 😉 love you all and i hope you enjoy these special songs in ur ears.”
The new edition is available for for $4.99 on iTunes. It includes Music, Fashion, Film‘s original 11 tracks, plus the three b-sides and their accompanying music videos.
Charli XCX released Music, Fashion, Film, her seventh studio album, on Friday. In her recent Rolling Stone cover story, Charli spoke about the new album, following up the massive success of Brat, and her burgeoning acting career.
“All of my albums work in opposites,” she said. “They repel against each other, and that’s the connective tissue. I knew when I was making it that I was never going to make that record again. It’s not creatively rewarding for me to make the same thing twice.”
Charli will tour behind Music, Fashion, Film, hitting the festival circuit (Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, Reading, Leeds, and others) before making stops at arenas like Barclays in Brooklyn, New York, and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles.
