Sabrina Carpenter has addressed online chatter regarding her reaction to a loud, high-pitched cheer from the crowd during her Coachella performance Friday night (April 10).
Related
Sabrina Carpenter Turns Coachella Into ‘SABRINAWOOD’ With Superstar-Caliber Headline Performance: Recap and Best Moments
The pop star seemingly wasn’t aware that it was the trilling vocal sound known as a Zaghrouta, a chant common to various cultures that’s meant to honor and celebrate. (Music fans might recall Shakira expressed herself this way amid her 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, while wagging her tongue at the camera ahead of singing “Hips Don’t Lie.” Shakira, who is half Colombian and half Lebanese, was paying homage to her Middle Eastern roots.)
During the Coachella livestream and in video recordings circulating the internet of Carpenter on stage Friday in Indio, Calif., the Man’s Best Friend singer was seen sitting at the piano with a confused expression on her face upon hearing the sound, and heard saying, “I don’t like it.”
When someone in the crowd loudly called out, “It’s my culture!” Carpenter retorted, “That’s your culture, yodeling?” before adding, “Is this Burning Man? What’s going on? This is weird.”
On Saturday, Carpenter followed up on the comments she’d made on stage.
“my apologies i didn’t see this person with my eyes and couldn’t hear clearly,” Carpenter wrote in reply to a post on X that accused the artist of reacting in a way that was “insensitive and Islamophobic.”
The pop star continued: “my reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended.”
“could have handled it better!” she said. “now i know what a Zaghrouta is! I welcome all cheers and yodels from here on out.”
A Zaghrouta is often used by women in the Middle East and North Africa as a way to express joy, and — as explained by the educational resource Arab America — is “best described in English as ‘ululation.’ It is a form of a long, wavering, high-pitched vocal sound representing trills of joy. It is produced by emitting a high-pitched loud voice accompanied by a rapid back and forth movement of the tongue.”
Carpenter headlined night one of the first weekend of Coachella 2026 on Friday. The lead slot comes just two years after the her debut performance at the annual festival — the time when she accurately predicted, “Coachella, see you back here when I headline” in an ad-libbed lyrical outro to her song “Nonsense.” Since then, she’s released two Billboard 200 No. 1 albums, 2024’s Short n’ Sweet and 2025’s Man’s Best Friend.
As Bruno Mars took the stage at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on April 10 to peel back the red velvet curtain on his 77-city, nine-country The Romantic Tour, he celebrated a day packed with more milestones than most artists achieve in an entire career. The spectacle of accolades included a parade courtesy of MGM Resorts, home to his record-breaking residency; a day and street named in his honor; the key to the city; a state flag from the governor; a pop-up merch shop with icon Hello Kitty; the launch of his first American football stadium tour, and a new title, “The King of Las Vegas,” among other honors.
At the first of two Las Vegas nights, the lights dimmed just before 9 p.m. The sold-out crowd was beckoned into the church of Mars via a video intro, where the evening’s spiritual leader (Mars) — a lone Romantic kneeling in prayer — casts a blessing over the audience, vowing to protect all who have entered this sacred space and promising to give the city a show “it would never forget.”
As the stage blazed into view, Mars emerged from a fragmented glow of prismatic stained glass — embedded with a single allegorical red rose — a man on a mission, ready to “Risk It All” for romance.
Choosing to open with “Risk It All,” the second single from Mars’ 2026 album The Romantic, is a surprising move — a ballad in a slot typically reserved for a big bang. But it immediately established the night’s emotional thesis: all-or-nothing love, played out in sweeping highs and funky (not-so) lows. That sense of frenzy and fever became the throughline of a cinematic concert experience that unfolded across the full 26-song set list.
Mars is a flawless performer, from his vocal range to his musical artistry and showmanship. In the live setting, he locked into his character, audience and band in a way that transcended his four albums, taking fans on an interstellar ride through his musical canon.
Here are the best moments from opening night.
Zac Brown Band now has something in common with Carrie Underwood and Lenny Kravitz.
The three-time Grammy Award-winning southern rock band will star in the opening for NBC’s Sunday night coverage of Major League Baseball.
The band’s opening segment will debut on Sunday (April 12) when the Atlanta Braves host the Cleveland Guardians in the first “Sunday Night Baseball” game on NBC.
“It’s humbling, honestly, to have our band’s name mentioned in the same breath as theirs in this context means a lot. We’ve spent many years just trying to make music that connects with people, and something like this tells you that it’s reaching further than you ever imagined,” Brown said in an email to The Associated Press.
Zac Brown Band sings a reimagined version of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression Part 2.”
NBC Sports creative director Tripp Dixon said the song resonated because it features an organ and the first line is “Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.”
The majors has often been referred to as “The Show.”
“Those were the two elements we felt like, holy cow, that sounds like something to build this idea around,” he said.
All three also carry the theme of “waiting all day for Sunday night.”
Underwood has done the “Sunday Night Football” opening since 2013, a reimagined take on Joan Jett’s 1988 song “I Hate Myself for Loving You”. Kravitz’s opening to “Sunday Night Basketball” uses Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation,” which came out in 1968.
The “Sunday Night Baseball” opening was shot in Milwaukee last month. A couple of seconds were featured on NBC’s opening night broadcast between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers.
“It was one of those experiences where you step back and think, how did we get here? We put everything we had into the performance and then watching it come together with the visuals, the production, it took on a whole new life,” Brown said. “The folks at NBC Sports really understood the energy we were going for. It felt like a genuine collaboration, and when I finally saw the finished product, I was really proud.”
While Dixon had more than a year to think about a “Sunday Night Basketball” open, brainstorming about baseball didn’t begin in earnest until last November, when Major League Baseball and NBC agreed to a three-year deal for Sunday night games and the wild-card round of the playoffs.
“Selfishly, it’s been just a really a fun challenge. But in terms of working with somebody, I think just not only just a familiar song, but we’d worked with Zac in a limited capacity about six years ago when he did a Thursday night tease for us on Thanksgiving,” Dixon said.
“I think just in terms of his music and trying to bring people together, it just felt like really the right fit in terms of letting them put their own spin on a classic.”
“It was a very ambitious, tight schedule. We didn’t have a lot of time to put it together, but you wouldn’t know it from what Zac came back with in terms of a song and a performance.”
After Sunday’s game, the next six weeks will be on Peacock and NBCSN before NBC takes over from May 31 through Sept. 6.
This week’s game also carries special significance for Brown, who grew up in Georgia and followed the Braves.
“Man, that is not lost on me at all. I’m a Georgia boy through and through, so having this debut on a night when the Braves are playing, that’s the kind of thing you just can’t script. Our fans know how much Atlanta means to us. To have this moment tied to our team, in our home state, it really does make it feel full circle,” he said.
Three years after lighting up the stage at Barclays Center for his first tour, Jackson Wang partied it up once more at the iconic Brooklyn, New York, venue on Friday (April 10). Not only was it a night full of explosive fun, but it also brought Wang’s own interesting psyche into focus.
The concert comes nearly a year after the release of his third solo album, MAGIC MAN 2. Wang previously talked to Billboard about how he took a year off to gather his thoughts on where he stood as an artist, but more importantly, as a human. Using his alter ego of MAGIC MAN, he explored who he really was inside — from the dark and gritty experiences of the music industry that he went through as a member of GOT7 and a solo artist, to perpetual vulnerability and ultimately, recognizing and accepting of all those complicated feelings.
“I wish I could find peace,” Wang’s raw vocals reverberated throughout the arena as he sang “Everything.” “In my mind where the doubt and the pain intertwine/ I don’t know if the life that I’m living is mine.”
The 32-year-old singer constantly proves to be an outstanding performer and creative visionary throughout all of his solo projects. While his previous two albums are deeply personal, what he cares about the most is making his fans happy.
On Friday night, Wang declared that the tour would be a form of escapism for all the attendees. He imparted some words of wisdom in a chaotic time, “The world is crazy right now. Everyone is stressed. I want you guys to treat yourselves better. [Being] selfish is not a bad thing,” before getting real with the crowd, “Sorry that this concert isn’t as commercial as you thought.”
Check out the seven best moments from Jackson Wang’s Brooklyn concert below.
Bruno Mars kicked off The Romantic Tour on Friday night (April 10) with a sold-out show in front of more than 60,000 fans packing Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Related
The pop supernova lived up to his billing as the King of Las Vegas entertainment as he ran through his plethora of smash hits within a 25-track setlist, which included five songs with his Silk Sonic running mate, Anderson .Paak, who joined him midway through the show.
If there’s one thing Sin City knows how to do, it’s throw a party. Friday was an all-day celebration for Bruno Mars ahead of his Romantic Tour launch.
“Bruno Mars isn’t just a global superstar; he’s one of the most electrifying performers of our time, and over the past decade, he’s become an integral part of Las Vegas,” said Bill Hornbuckle, CEO and president of MGM Resorts International, in a statement. “From his early performances at Bellagio and MGM Grand to his record‑setting residency at Dolby Live, Bruno has drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors and has created the kind of unforgettable, ‘only in Vegas’ moments that define this city. It’s only fitting that we help launch his world tour here today as we honor his extraordinary impact on Las Vegas and the energy he brings to our community.”
Bruno started the day in style with a ride down the Strip in a vintage convertible for a parade honoring his contributions to the Las Vegas entertainment scene, as April 10 was renamed to Bruno Mars Day in Sin City.
The Grammy-winning artist was given the key to the Las Vegas Strip, while Park Avenue outside Park MGM was renamed to Bruno Mars Drive. He joins a decorated group to receive the honor, which includes Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin.
As Las Vegas has been a lucrative endeavor for Bruno, he made sure to give back to the community. The singer-songwriter pledged a $1 million donation to the future Intermountain Health Nevada Children’s Hospital.
The Romantic Tour continues on Saturday night (April 11) when Bruno Mars returns to the Allegiant Stadium stage for another cinematic performance. It’s the 40-year-old’s first trek in nearly a decade and his first time taking over North American stadiums.
Bruno’s The Romantic album arrived in February and debuted atop the Billboard 200 — his second No. 1 — with 186,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending March 5, according to Luminate.
Dance artist Anyma’s performance at Coachella 2026 was cancelled about 15 minutes after its scheduled midnight slot on Friday (April 10) on Weekend One of the two-weekend festival. At press time, Anyma remains scheduled to play next weekend.
The show was set to close out the festival’s main Coachella Stage, but minutes after 12:00 a.m., a message was posted on the stage’s screens stating that “due to strong winds affecting Anyma’s stage build, he is unable to perform tonight. Coachella and Anyma have made this decision together with your safety as the priority.”
“I’m sorry everyone,” the artist later wrote in a comment on an Instagram post with the news shared by Coachella. “We’ve done everything in our control to build the show I’ve worked an entire year on. Safety always comes first and we’re working on a solution now.”
The main stage appeared set with at least some musical equipment and various props for the show that ultimately did not happen. While not clear which aspect of Anyma’s set would have been impacted by the winds, the conditions appeared to only impact Anyma’s Coachella Stage set so adversely, as concurrent scheduled performances onsite continued during this timeframe. Crowds gathered for Anyma could be seen diverting to Gordo at the festival’s dance-focused Yuma Tent, Sexyy Red in the Sahara Tent, and Blood Orange at the Mojave, while others made their way to the festival exit.
The performance was meant to be the global debut of ÆDEN, the new Anyma production. This show would have followed his late 2024/early 2025 residency at Sphere Las Vegas, where the Italian American artist debuted his acclaimed audiovisual show, The End of Genesys.
If Anyma’s recent singles and music videos are any indication, the aesthetic of his new era is ancient ruins and cyborg angels, with both of these motifs seen in the recent videos for the Joji collab “Beautiful” and the LISA collab “Bad Angel.”
“I can’t believe I’m headlining Coachella!” Sabrina Carpenter proclaimed partway through her performance doing exactly that on Friday night (Apr. 10) of the festival’s first weekend. “I mean… I can a little bit. But it sounds nicer to say that.”
Probably more than a little bit: Carpenter actually predicted this almost exactly two years earlier, when she closed out her debut performance at the festival with the “Nonsense” outro proclamation: “Coachella, see you back here when I headline.” At the time, with Carpenter a rising hitmaker but still hardly a superstar, the prediction might’ve felt outlandish — or at the very least slightly ahead of schedule — but thanks in large part to a song she released the same weekend, she was about to be fast-tracked to pop’s A-list, where she has only become more established in the days since.
In fact, if there was one major takeaway from Carpenter’s headlining set this Friday, it’s just what a robust catalog of hits she’s built in such a short period of time. The only songs older than “Espresso” that she performed were a couple Emails I Can’t Send-era favorites: the likely “Drivers License” rejoinder “Because I Liked a Boy” and the radio-blessed deluxe cut “Feather.” Still, it didn’t feel like a thin setlist for a headliner — her two most recent albums have just that many hits between them, and even most of the Man’s Best Friend deep cuts she played sounded single-ier than ever on Saturday, with beefed-up, extra-discofied arrangements, not to mention plenty of time to grow on fans since their mid-2025 release.
Carpenter has simply put in the work over those two years to not only produce the songs worthy of fleshing out a pop star resumé, but to continue to expand the world around them, with music videos and live performances and even in-song callbacks that deepen their impacts. And Friday night’s headlining show was one of her best examples of that yet, finding new ways to play with her established hits both sonically and visually, and adding to her own iconography in the process. Most notably, Friday marked the introduction of the no-doubt eternal “SABRINAWOOD,” her take on the famous Hollywood sign that appeared displayed on stage for most of the performance.
Classic Hollywood and its eternal glamour seemed to be a fixation of Carpenter’s for the majority of her performance, with the grooves and general sweep of disco serving as its other twin pillar. But Carpetner’s adoption of these long-past cultural touchstones never felt overly retro; even “SABRINAWOOD” not just suggested her general takeover of Southern California this week but snuck in an another boner joke to a memorable performance of her already dangerously frisky “When Did You Get Hot?” And moreover, by this point she projects as such a larger-than-life pop figure that 2020s top 40 stardom sometimes doesn’t really feel big enough for her anyway. Tellingly, no musical guest stars interfered with Carpenter’s one-woman show, though a handful of big-name actors — most notably Susan Sarandon and Will Ferrell — did offer quick (or sometimes not so quick) diversions for her many set and costume changes.
Also telling: No “Nonsense” at all in this set, with the breakout hit marking the only major song of her past three years to not make an appearance. Perhaps when you call a shot like Sabrina did with her prior Coachella “Nonsense,” the proper thing to do is to not push your luck a second time. (It sounds nicer to say that, anyway.)
Here were the seven most memorable (non-“SABRINAWOOD”) moments from Carpenter’s winning headline performance:
Back when they were just starting out, 98 Degrees singer Nick Lachey says that someone from the group’s label handed the band a book that laid out the age of consent in every single state. The shocking revelation comes in the new Investigation Discovery docuseries, Boy Band Confidential, which features stories from members of some of the era’s biggest names dishing on life inside the boy band bubble.
“This is going to sound super shady but when we first went out — I remember in our first tour — someone at the label gave us a book,” Love Is Blind co-host Lachey says in the series that debuts on Investigation Discovery on Monday (April 13) and Tuesday (April 14) at 9 p.m. ET before later streaming on HBO Max. “It was the age of consent in every state in the country,” he added, according to Us magazine.
“We kept that book on the tour bus. Unfortunately, there were people out there looking to tear you down,” he adds in the show of the manual that was seemingly meant to make sure the singers, then in their early-to-mid-20s, did not break the law on the road when interacting with fans. Lachey fronted the band that also featured his younger brother, Drew Lachey, as well as Jeff Timmons and Justin Jeffre, and he says that the safeguards in place today were not there when he and his bandmates were touring.
“You see [Justin] Bieber cancel a tour. You’ll see Shawn Mendes cancel a tour because [their] mental health needs to come first,” he said, noting that no matter what was going on off stage for the group known for such hits as their Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 collaboration on Mariah Carey’s 1999 smash “Thank God I Found You” (also featuring Joe) and 2000s No. 2 hit “Give Me Just One Night (Una Noche),” they were encouraged to carry on.
“That was not an option when we were out there. You went out there and you did the show. Then you came back after the show and you broke down and you cried and you kicked a hole in the wall. Or you did whatever you had to do. But you didn’t bow out. You work so hard to get there, you can’t let your foot off the gas,” he said of expectations for the band, who were all between 25-27 years old during their peak 1998-2000 years (Drew was between 22-24).
98 Degrees released their first non-Christmas album in more than a decade, Full Circle, last May. The collection featured six updated versions of their biggest hits. Boy Band Confidential, executive produced by *NSYNC’s Joey Fatone, features Fatone, Lachey, O-Town’s Ashley Parker Angel, *NSYNC’s Lance Bass, Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean, Boyz II Men’s Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman and LFO’s Brad Fischetti.
Hilary Duff just revisited one of her most beloved tracks ahead of the Laguna Beach reunion special, re-recording “Come Clean” and surprise releasing it Friday (April 10).
Related
Hilary Duff Talks Bra Shopping at the Same Time as Lizzie McGuire & Still Feeling Like a ‘Child Actor Inside’ on ‘Hot Ones’
Hilary Duff Opens Up About ‘Horrible’ Divorce, Losing Her ‘Innocence’ on Disney & Family Friction: ‘My Sister & I Don’t Speak’
Approaching the track with a mature sound that still evokes the charm of her teenage self, the Lizzie McGuire star sings, “Let the rain fall down/ And wake my dreams/ Let it wash away my sanity/ ‘Cause I want to feel the thunder/ I wanna scream/ Let the rain fall down/ I’m coming clean.”
The track will appear on Hilary Duff – (Mine), the star’s upcoming collection of re-recorded versions of her greatest hits. The project will arrive Friday (April 18) on a silver vinyl exclusively for this year’s Record Store Day. Only 10,000 copies will be available to purchase, meaning only a small number of fans will get their hands on Duff’s updated renditions of “What Dreams Are Made Of” and other nostalgic favorites.
“Come Clean (Mine)” will also be featured on The Reunion: Laguna Beach, which premieres Friday on The Roku Channel. The original track by Duff — which reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2004 — served as the theme song for the reality show back in the day. That’s not to say Duff herself was a fan of the show; she hilariously confessed on Watch What Happens Live in 2023 that she’d never seen it.
The How I Met Your Father alum is currently in the midst of a major musical comeback, dropping her first album in 10 years in February and reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with Luck … or Something. Her seven-month Lucky Me Tour kicks off in June.
Listen to Duff’s new-old song “Come Clean” below.
After months of buildup, BTS finally kicked off its global tour in support of new album ARIRANG, performing in front of thousands of ARMY at Goyang Stadium in South Korea on Thursday (April 9).
RM, j-hope, Jin, SUGA, V, Jung Kook and Jimin were a force onstage as they presented a united front in a live setting for the first time in years (aside from their official comeback performance in Seoul in March). They sang and danced to a number of tracks from ARIRANG, as well as older Billboard Hot 100-topping smashes such as “Dynamite” and “Butter,” as fans waved their signature lightsticks in the crowd.
And as good of a time as the audience had at the first show on the yearlong trek, the band might have enjoyed it even more. “I had so much fun at Arirang Tour’s first concert,” Jin wrote on Weverse shortly after the concert wrapped. “I feel comfortable performing as a team and being in the same space with ARMY, so I feel like I’m back home.”
Related
BTS will perform a total of three shows in Goyang before heading over to Tokyo, at which point the sprawling stadium tour will be really underway. The global run — which begins after ARIRANG spent its first two weeks atop the Billboard 200 and spawned a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 with lead single “SWIM” — will take the Bangtan Boys through cities in North America, Latin America, Europe, Australia and more parts of Asia through March of next year.
So whether you’re planning to catch a show or just want to know what songs the guys are playing on a nightly basis these days, Billboard has the full setlist from night 1. Check out every track BTS played at the kickoff show of tour below.