Miami doesn’t exactly do quiet—especially during Billboard Latin Music Week, when the city comes alive with music, industry conversations and nonstop events. But amid the excitement, Lincoln offered attendees something unexpected: a moment to slow down and recharge.

Throughout the week at Faena Forum, the luxury automotive brand brought its signature approach to comfort, design and rejuvenation to life through immersive experiences that offered a glimpse into the thoughtful details behind Lincoln’s latest innovations.

Between back-to-back panels, a little downtime went a long way. Lincoln’s Rejuvenation Pod invited attendees to step away from the bustle and settle into a moment of calm. Inspired by the Lincoln Rejuvenate feature available in the Nautilus and Navigator, the experience offered a taste of relaxation designed to be enjoyed behind the wheel.

Just a few steps away, the Lincoln Navigator turned heads in a specialty exterior color, Frosted Fig. Guests explored the SUV’s luxurious interior, complete with an expansive panoramic sunroof and a sweeping digital display across the dashboard. And because Miami’s sunshine rarely takes a day off, Lincoln offered ice pops to help guests beat the heat.

Inside Faena Forum, the experience continued with opportunities to indulge the senses. A lush floral installation became a picture-perfect backdrop for attendees capturing memories from the week, while a nearby scent discovery station invited guests to explore the fragrance options available through the Digital Scent feature. Together, the installations offered a reminder that luxury isn’t always about what catches the eye and sometimes, it’s about how a space makes you feel.

The Lincoln experience extended beyond Faena Forum on Monday evening, as Billboard’s Latin Power Players celebration brought together some of the industry’s most influential names. Select honorees enjoyed courtesy rides in Lincoln vehicles to the awards ceremony, arriving in style for a night celebrating those shaping Latin music’s global impact.

Across a week defined by music, movement and milestone moments, Lincoln made the spaces in between feel just as memorable. From discovering new scents to exploring luxurious interiors and finding a few minutes to recharge, each experience reflected the pleasure of being present.

And in a city that rarely slows its rhythm, Lincoln made a compelling case for enjoying the pause.

When Olivia Rodrigo dropped her third studio album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, it quickly became one of the year’s biggest breakouts, with legions of fans seeing themselves in its melancholy themes of sadness, loneliness and heartache. On the standout track “what’s wrong with me,” she opens the song with a wrenching and telling line: “I’m just staring at the ceiling, can’t describe this feeling.” Luckily, she was fibbing on that last part: Rodrigo has a knack for describing the depths of despair, and making us all feel a little less alone as a result – with Grammy nominations possibly waiting in the wings as a result.

Rodrigo’s album would make the perfect soundtrack for today’s World Mental Health Day. An annual tradition since 1992, it’s a moment to acknowledge that, like Rodrigo bravely points out, we’re not alone in our struggles. In Billboard’s latest episode of their Like Minded series in partnership with BetterHelp, Monaleo and Kehlani discussed motherhood and the permission to take care of oneself. “63% of U.S. women struggle to prioritize their health,” as reported in the launch of The Permission Project, a BetterHelp initiative focused on women’s mental health.

Between giving yourself permission and this year’s theme of World Mental Health Day, Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change, it all coincides with the music industry’s intimate relationship with mental health and giving oneself the OK to seek help. In the past year, the music world saw a genre-spanning slate of artists both wearing their hearts on their sleeves in their art, as well as publicly prioritizing their own mental health like never before.

Proving that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a fledgling singer-songwriter playing coffee shops and looking for a break, or the record-breaking artist Ella Langley, struggles don’t discriminate. Langley, who is breaking Billboard Hot 100 records as of late with her No. 1 smash “Choosin’ Texas,” has regularly sung about mental health and feeling less than. Take, for instance, “Be Her,” Langley’s vulnerable single from sophomore album Dandelion. On the song, Langley talks about wanting to emulate a fellow gal she’s idolizing. “I just want to be her so bad it hurts,” she croons with a signature twang, alluding to fretting about being less-than and an empty feeling of longing.

But beyond the lyrics, Langley has prioritized her mental health even as her immense success was unfolding before her. In fact, just before the dawn of her record-breaking run, Langley canceled a chunk of her 2025 tour, writing on Instagram: “I want to be fully present for the moments ahead, and I know I can’t do that without taking care of myself,” adding, “Sometimes we have to listen when our bodies and hearts tell us to slow down.” It was a vulnerable choice, and one that eventually paid off for the current superstar: She slowed down in preparation for something better.

Prioritizing oneself is something Ariana Grande has been brave about as well, with Grande perhaps the poster child for the biggest mental health story of the year. While belting out raw anthems on her 2026 album Petal (including the emotive anti-romance ballad “Hate That I Made You Love Me”) in the wake of her stunning success with Wicked, Grande announced a hiatus from public life and canceled all engagements after her current tour, including a turn in a much-ballyhooed upcoming production of Sunday in the Park With George. Grande cited “ongoing public scrutiny,” as fans around the world then rallied to her defense about knowing when to step back from the inferno of fame. In June, Grande also launched B-Line through her Brighter Days Ahead Foundation, in support of the below-the-line workers that make the industry sing.

Langley and Grande aren’t the only ones who knew when to rest in face of a grueling schedule, which serves as popularity’s double-edged sword. Look no further than the typical vulnerability singer Lola Young exhibits, with the talented UK singer-songwriter also taking a step back from her burgeoning spotlight, which included a best new artist Grammy nomination (and best pop solo performance win for “Messy”) to work on herself amid rising fame. “It’s an ongoing process,” she said earlier this year. “I’m not the finished article, but I’m doing a hell of a lot better.”

Another one of music’s biggest acts, the beloved country star Jelly Roll, has also been frank about taking care of his mental health, amid personal struggles including his recent divorce as well as being a recovering addict. “I just gotta go do a little bit of work on myself to make sure that I’m all the way ready,” he said when it comes to handling the next steps of his skyrocketing career. “I’m completely sober, though. I’m clear-headed, and I’m deep in therapy, I’m deep in my Bible, but I think that I gotta separate from the chaos of the business for me to really hear what God wants for me to do next.”

From breakouts to veteran acts, the pop songstress Meghan Trainor was so overwhelmed on the eve of her 2026 tour she pulled the plug on it entirely. Speaking to Billboard earlier this year in a candid interview, she spoke about being a brand-new mother and explained she needed help to see the bigger picture in her life amid the pressure of an impending tour. “I was drowning. I couldn’t do it all and I thought I was doing it all,” Trainor noted.

As the music industry has proven, mental health checkups are an essential part of life, including for artists who are seemingly on top of the world. It’s a worthy reminder on World Mental Health Day, and the rest of the year as well.

One of America’s most beloved and long-running competition shows, Dancing With the Stars, begins its 35th season on Sept. 15 and 16 on ABC and Disney +. Though every season brings a new slate of stars — including Ciara Miller, Julia Stiles, Amber Glenn and Jenna Dewan for this fall’s cast — Dancing With the Stars has had one constant over the last 17 seasons: music director Ray Chew.

Chew, leading a 14 piece band, has played an instrumental role in modernizing the music of the show, taking it from a classic ballroom feel to one that reacts in real time to pop culture trends. He’s led his crew of musicians through a recreation of hit Broadway musical Wicked, a night of TikTok viral hits and just about every genre, tempo and style.

To pull it off is no easy feat. DWTS is shot in real time, and the music director tells Billboard his average show day begins at 3:30 AM, and doesn’t end until the show wraps that evening. Throughout the week, his team is also racing against the clock to create arrangements for songs the choreographers are picking in real time, a process he lovingly refers to as “unbaking the cake,” or trying to sleuth out each element of the song so that his musicians can rework it in a matter of days.

Meanwhile, the show’s music supervisor, Nancy Severinsen, is working to clear the rights for the songs, which, as Chew explains, doesn’t always work. “To clear one song, it could have two writers, [or] it could even have seven publishers,” Chew explains. “You got to contact everybody, and everybody’s not waiting around on their phone to be contacted. Some of the music clearance happen right up until the last minute.” He notes that even on the Wicked night they have to rework their original plans to satisfy the vision of the original rights holders of the music.

Still, Chew takes it all stride — he knows how to work under the pressure of live TV. He got his start in the band for Saturday Night Live back in the 1980s, and then has gone on to music direct everything from the Grammy Awards, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miss Universe, the Emmys, the BET Awards, American Idol, Showtime at the Apollo and more. Dancing With the Stars, however, he says is like a “unicorn” for live TV.

As using live musicians becomes increasingly less common, the dance competition is a bright spot, which one of the largest, if not the largest, live bands on screen today. “It’s a blessing,” Chew says. “It’s a blessing.”

To discuss how the show comes together every week, and the important, but little understood, role that music directors hold, Chew joined Billboard’s music industry podcast On the Record.

Watch the episode on YouTube, or read an condensed and edited version of the conversation below.

Billboard: Can you walk me through the timeline of a week on Dancing With the Stars?

Ray Chew: Our show day is Tuesday. Wednesday is when we get our assignments. Now, it would be great if we could get in front of this a lot more, but we can’t because it’s a contest. We don’t know who may or may not be on the show. So, yes, they may know what they want to do, but we may not know that they’re going to do it. So Wednesday, I get the assignment. I take a song, a very popular song, and I have to deconstruct it. The process I actually call “unbake the cake.” I have to figure out what’s in that sauce, what’s in that gravy, what makes that really move and tick. Why do people love it? What’s that signature sound that you can’t be without? Nobody’s handing us these ingredients. We have to go in and figure out what’s in that song. Is there a special sound in there? A special synthesizer? What’s happening? And in particular, the vocal. So for the vocalist, we have to do what we call vocal shaping. All right, so if we have a song that is very popular, you don’t want to be out of character. You’ve got to meet the character. Sometimes it’s in all the nuance.

So my prep week starts on Wednesday. We get the song list on Wednesday. At the same time, we have to deconstruct the song. So, 16 songs, right? You have to go through them one by one. That takes hours and hours of work, just trying to take one song and figure out what’s going on in there. Now we have to start doing arrangements for those songs, and that takes days. So we have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to prepare everything we need to do, and then Saturday we have a full-band rehearsal.

On Saturday we have our band—the singers, musicians, everybody—assembled in the ballroom. We have to go through all the songs and make sure that everything is correct. We also have to make sure our audio team hears all the things, because a Frank Sinatra song is not going to sound the same as a Katy Perry song.

How have you seen the show evolve since you got started with it?

Well, the audience has certainly gotten a lot younger and a lot more engaged. I think when I started with the show, it had already been running for 10 years, so it had a very established audience, and it was really a ballroom-type sound with a very traditional presentation. When I came in, I think it was at a turning point where they really wanted to contemporize this stuff. We had to say, “Hey, man, we’ve got to talk to a younger audience. We’ve got to do some songs that are younger and bouncier and have a different thing.” And we’ve evolved into that completely now.

You guys are now also airing Dancing With the Stars on streaming services. Does that impact how the run of show goes on the day of?

Not for us. But two seasons ago — or three seasons ago, during the pandemic — we had to reconfigure everything just to get the show presented at all, because everybody had to be in different quadrants. We couldn’t be in the same space. It was a lot, even just trying to get the show going. That’s when they started doing the streaming. Now that we have a dual package to present, the streaming doesn’t necessarily impact what we do. We do what we do, and then they stream it.

On the day of the performance, what is that timeline like for you?

Well, it starts with the night before. I have to go to bed at 9 o’clock, which is totally against my whole body. But it’s because I have to get up at 3:30. Then we have to be on set at 5 or 5:30 sometimes, I have to allow time because you never know. You’re expecting no traffic at 4 in the morning, but you never know. We have our entire music team, which is 14 musicians and singers, and we’re expected to be on. When I say “on,” I mean it has to sound as live and as great as it can. You can’t say, “well, we’re waking up and we know we’re going to get it going.” No, you get it going. You’re going at 5:30.

We start at 5:30. We do a rehearsal of some of the revisions they may have wanted. They’ll tell us, “Hey, I need a little of this over the weekend,” so we have notes, and we’ll start with that. Then the dance teams come in at 7. We’ll do a camera block with them until about 12, and then at 12 we take a lunch break. We do a dress rehearsal from 1 to 4:30, and then we go on air live at 5:30.

It seems like a luxury in TV today to get to work with 14 musicians — live musicians — week after week. I could imagine some productions just wanting to cut costs and be like, “well, a master recording is good enough. We’ll just license that.” Have you seen TV shows change over time in their willingness to hire live musicians?

This is the dinosaur. Well, I don’t want to say dinosaur — It’s a unicorn. We’re a unicorn because I don’t see any other show that do this. Some of the other shows continue to have live music, but it’s not 14 musicians. All credit goes to the fact that there’s an appetite for this sound. The audience is loving it. When I went to the Dancing With the Stars convention, the fans were coming up to me. I was like, “wow, this is beautiful.”

The comment I got most was, “We love what you do,” because anybody can play a master recording. We hear that all the time. We’re bringing a different life to the song.

Have you ever had a musician who you’ve covered on the show reach out to you and say thanks, or that they loved the cover you performed on the show?

Yeah, I’ve had that a lot. We did Janet Jackson week, and Janet Jackson also made a video appearance, but the producers of that project are Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They’re very special. I know these guys, and I was like, I am not going to not make — by the way, I give the same attention to everything, but I was like, “you know what? I know these guys are watching, so let me make sure every little thing that I can think of is as good as possible.” The good news is that they contacted me afterward. Jimmy Jam said, “Hey man, you did us right on that stuff.”