Two of Japanese singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada‘s seminal English-language records, 2004’s Exodus and 2006’s This Is the One, are receiving their first-ever remaster. Both LPs will be released in a new, limited-edition format via Island Def Jam this week; they’re available on both streaming and, in Japan, as a 2CD set with bonus tracks, and on vinyl. It’s also the first time either of the records have been pressed to wax.
Although Exodus was Utada’s fifth studio album, and came out the same year as their first greatest hits compilation, it represented their formal introduction to American audiences, an audience she would continue to endear for years to come. The genre-spanning LP wove together electronic, dance, R&B, and avant-garde sonics; Timbaland contributed production to two tracks and handled remix duties on a third, while Jon Theodore, at the time the drummer for The Mars Volta, lent his talents to “Kremlin Dusk.” A remix of the single “Devil Inside” became a club smash, rising from dance floors around the country to the top spot on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs, becoming Utada’s highest U.S. chart placement at the time.
Five years later, This Is the One arrived as a full-blown A-list pop album. It brought together producers Stargate, who has worked with the likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé, and Tricky Stewart, known for his successful collaborations with Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. The LP peaked at No. 69 on the Billboard 200, placing Utada among a small number of Japanese artists ever to reach the chart’s Top 100. Its lead single “Come Back to Me” reached No. 5 on the Dance Club Songs chart, while “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence – FYI,” nodded to Utada’s Japanese-American pop crossover lineage by building on the celebrated Ryuichi Sakamoto composition of the same name.
After decades in the spotlight, Utada continues to regularly release music. In March, she collaborated with British star Charlie Puth on the song “Home,” and their most recent album, Bad Mode, arrived in 2022. In 2024, they also embarked on the Science Fiction tour, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of their debut LP with multiple shows across Asia.
Today, Cole Goodwin is rolling out his Howdy EP, a project rooted in classic country influences and inspired by the traditional sounds of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Filled with authentic storytelling and timeless vocals, the EP reflects Goodwin’s commitment to keeping the heart of country music alive.
Born and raised in Pooler, Georgia, Goodwin has never wavered from the era that shaped his musical taste, often drawing inspiration from artists like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hank Jr. and Ronnie Milsap. Those influences run deep throughout the EP, which includes tracks “Howdy,” “Girl That’s How,” “Where She’s Coming From” and “Keep On Rainin’.”
“I mean, if you think about it, it worked so good and it still works 30, 40 years later and everybody still loves it. And I think that there’s something to be said about that,” Goodwin said of his effort to tap into the nostalgic country sound. “So anytime I can dive into that and try to tap into get as close as I can get to something that feels like that or makes somebody else feel like that, how it makes me feel when I hear those great old songs, that’s what I want to do.”
Cole Goodwin; Photo Provided
The title track, “Howdy” has already been making waves across live audiences and as of this week, it also made a strong impact at country radio, earning 56 first-week adds.
“Yeah, that’s pretty mind-blowing to me and I’m super excited about it,” he told Country Now, reflecting on the support behind the single.
Goodwin serves as a co-writer on two of the four tracks on the new project. Whether he had a hand in bringing them to life or was lucky enough to cut them as his own, he said the collection of songs came together naturally. He admits while each song brings something different to the table, both sonically and lyrically, they all relate to his life in some way.
“Obviously they’re all country, but I think most importantly, they’re all me and songs that I connect to and that I think is super great and special. And so yeah, they’re sonically maybe all a little bit different, but they’re all authentic and all genuine and me. I’m super proud of it and super excited for everybody to hear all of them and to play them on the road,” he shared honestly.
Cole Goodwin; Howdy EP
Fans have already become familiar with the charming and humorous story behind “Howdy,” as Goodwin describes a simple moment in a bar between two strangers that turns into a fun, feel-good lesson about what could come from taking a shot and seeing where the night goes. The track was penned by four of his good friends, Justin dukes, Davis Loose, Carson Peters and Ethan Phillips.
“They were gracious enough to let me cut it. One of them sent it to me or played it for me about a year and a half ago, I guess. And I was like, ‘wow man, send me that please and don’t send that to anybody else.’ And yeah, I just kept listening to it and I thought it was such a great song…I tell them, ‘it’s like, y’all wrote this for me’ because language wise, attitude wise, it’s just all stuff that I would say. And it’s very much, I think, my personality. And yeah, I just really, really connected with it and thought that it was an incredible song and I wanted to sing it.”
He leans even further into the idea of falling in love on “Girl That’s How,” where a country guy wants to show the woman he cares about what life with him is really like by taking her around his small hometown, meeting his family and enjoying the simple things in life that matter most to him. It shows a softer, more romantic side of Goodwin and serves as a reminder that old-school chivalry might not be dead after all.
Second to last on the EP is the unreleased track “Keep On Rainin’,” which flips the idea of the familiar “Rain, Rain, Go Away” saying on its head. What sounds like it could be a sad song instead turns into an upbeat, high-energy “barn burner,” as Goodwin puts it, that finds him asking for the rain to stick around instead of wishing it would go away.
“Honestly, until after the fact, I didn’t even really realize that I’d done that in the room that day and maybe that’s why it felt familiar, but in the room, I wasn’t really thinking, let’s do the ‘Rain, Rain Go Away’ thing until after. And I was like, wait a minute, we actually did do that,” he said, thinking back to the writing session with Jessi Alexander and Jonathan Singleton.
Then the collection takes a sharp turn to showcase a more somber side of heartbreak as it comes to close with the emotional ballad, “Where She’s Coming From,” which digs into the painful realization that a relationship has run its course and the flame has burned all the way out.
‘Howdy’ Complete Track List:
1. Howdy
Written by: Justin Dukes, Davis Loose, Carson Peters, Ethan Phillips
2. Girl That’s How
Written by: Kevin Denney, Tom Botkin, Mike Rogers
3. Keep On Rainin’
Written by: Cole Goodwin, Jessi Alexander, Jonathan Singleton
4. Where She’s Coming From
Written by: Cole Goodwin, Wyatt McCubbin, Erik Dylan
Cole Goodwin’s Howdy EP dropped June 26 via Big Machine Records. The collection arrives amid a busy touring year for the rising star. He is fresh off a run supporting Vincent Mason and has plenty of festival appearances still ahead, along with nationwide support dates with Carly Pearce, Dierks Bentley, Jordan Davis, and Braxton Keith on select shows.
Photo Courtesy of Cole Goodwin
With all the major acts that Goodwin has had the chance to open for so far, he says getting to experience different tours and fan bases has been a major highlight of the journey.
“It’s just been really awesome and interesting to take notes from everybody and these people that young artists like myself look up to, to just rub elbows with them and pick their brain and take notes on how they treat it this many years into it or however many years into it they are…Never thought that I would get to play some of the stages that we’ve done and some of the venues and with some of the artists that we’ve played with. And I get to call some of them friends now, which is really crazy. So yeah, it’s one of those things you just kind of have fun and soak it in.”
Goodwin promises that his EP is just the start of all the new music he has in the works. He promised there is “a ton” coming that he is “super, super excited about.”
This has been a deeply cursed few weeks for Love Island USA.
A producer died. A woman was removed from the villa for racism.
Now, after new evidence surfaced, another slur-spewing contestant is gone.
Alannah Keyser was booted from Love Island USA. How did all of this slip past production?
Alannah Keyser attends the Warner Music Group Pre-Grammy awards party on January 29, 2026. (Photo Credit: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Warner Music Group)
She’s officially done
Peacock confirmed to TMZthat Keyser is gone from Love Island USA.
Thursday night’s episode was her final appearance.
This news comes in the wake of a resurfaced video of her saying the literal worst slur, the N-word.
The video was not the first sign of it.
An Instagram comment, seemingly by Keyser, appeared to use the slur.
Some often wonder how things like this seem to avoid detection during the casting process.
How many good, decent people were passed over to allow someone with a public history of racism to continue?
Well, production says that the video and social media posts were not publicly available.
According to them, they only resurfaced after Keyser was cast on the show.
That does make sense. Someone who isn’t a public figure suddenly being seen by millions is going to have people going “wait, didn’t she do that awful thing back then?” This can be either with good intentions or for clout.
Earlier in Season 8, production removed Vasana Montgomery from the Love Island USA villa.
This, too, was because of resurfaced videos that appeared to show he singing the N-word in one, yelling the N-word in another.
In both cases, production protested that the footage was not publicly accessible to them during the vetting process.
Again, widespread public scrutiny tends to be what allows shameful past actions to resurface.
Sometimes, social media posts simply did not age well. Certainly, the prevalent humor of 2006 on forums and on nascent Facebook would not translate well in 2026.
But no one accused Keyser of Montgomery of posting, like, “ironic” racism or “joke” body-shaming, which would merit an apology but likely not result in firing.
People have used both forms of humor, using the term loosely, to highlight the grim realities of racism, sexism, and more in our society. It’s just that, with social media, people now usually do so more tastefully.
Both of these fallen reality TV personalities used the worst slur to exist in language. It’s unclear why someone would wish to do so.
This isn’t a Love Island USA problem. This is a societal problem. We live in a society where people might spew slurs and continue to have friends and then expect to go on reality television without consequence.
That should not be the case. Social sanction has a purpose.
Fliers posted at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Avis Alaska Sports Complex on June 25, 2026, advertise summer job openings and internships for students. Even though the positions are entry-level, temporary or internships, posted hourly pay rates on some fliers are above $20 an hour. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Starting next week, Alaska’s lowest-paid workers will be entitled to more money.
On July 1, the state’s minimum wage will rise to $14 an hour, a $1 bump from the current level. The increase is the result of a voter-approved ballot initiative that mandated paid sick leave, as well as stepped-up minimum wages.
The first increase took pay up to $13 an hour last year, and next year, the minimum wage is scheduled to rise to $15 an hour. In subsequent years, the state’s minimum wage is to rise with the inflation rate, under the voter-approved initiative.
Salaried workers are also covered by the minimum wage increase. Under state reuglations, minimum pay for salaried workers, with some exceptions, must be at least twice the hourly minimum wage, based on a 40-hour workweek.
Just how many workers will be affected by next week’s mandated pay increase is unclear.
Dan Robinson, research chief at the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, believes that there will be relatively few people affected by the change.
“This will not change very much because the situation for workers for a while now has been that employers have had to pay higher wages,” Robinson said.
Even a $14-an-hour wage for what are normally low-paid jobs was not high enough for many employers to attract workers, he said.
That is not because of any boom in available jobs in Alaska. The state’s picture is static, Robinson noted. Gains in private sector employment have been almost exactly offset by losses in government employment, mostly because of federal job losses, according to the state’s most recent analysis.
Rather, it is a product of demographic factors, including continued net-outmigration, meaning more people leaving Alaska than moving into the state. As of last year, Alaska had 13 consecutive years of net-outmigration, a post-World War II record.
Other factors shaping the labor force are Alaska’s aging population and immigration curbs.
Overall, there are “fewer people here seeking work than at other points in our history,” Robinson said. “So it’s kind of a feedback loop.”
The minimum wage increases are expected to affect more people in future years, when they are tied to inflation, he said.
A different perspective was offered in 2024 by the National Employment Labor Project, a nonprofit pro-labor advocacy group.
Prior to that year’s election, the organization estimated that 31,000 people in Alaska would earn more if the state’s minimum wage were raised. More women than men would see the benefits, since women are more likely to be in minimum wage-paying jobs, according to the analysis.
Robinson said the Department of Labor and Workforce Development does not have solid numbers on how many workers are earning minimum wage or anything closer to it.
The department does have information showing pay rates for different economic sectors and job categories, though that is also incomplete because it relies on surveys.
Alaska’s lowest-paid workers, based on those survey results, are in the food preparation and service sector, according to the Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s analysis. Within that sector, median hourly wages range from $12.65 for waiters and waitresses to $25.09 for chefs and head cooks, according to the survey data.
Alaska is among four states and more than two dozen municipalities with scheduled minimum wage increases going into effect in July. And by the end of the year, 88 jurisdictions across the country will have raised their minimum wages, according to the National Employment Labor Project.
As of Jan. 1, 20 states had minimum wages that were higher than Alaska’s $13-an-hour rate, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Next week’s increase in Alaska, along with phased-in increases elsewhere, may change those rankings a bit.
The nation’s highest state minimum wage is in the District of Columbia, at $17.95 an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. There are eight states with either no state-imposed minimum wage or a minimum wage that is lower than $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum, according to the department.
As Alan Jackson prepares for his final show, Joe Nichols reflects on the kindness and camaraderie shared during their time on tour together. Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
In 2000, Musiq Soulchild blended R&B and neo-soul to craft his debut studio album Aijuswanaseing. In honor of the album’s recent 25th anniversary, a special edition of Aijuswanaseing is being released as a 2LP “peacock opaque” vinyl set.
Musiq Soulchild signed to Def Soul, the R&B division of Def Jam Records, in 1998. Two years later, Aijuswanaseing peaked at number 24 on the Billboard 200 and number four on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart. In 2001, the record was certified platinum by RIAA.
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Last year, Soulchild performed the album in full at the Roots Picnic in his hometown of Philadelphia. Speaking to The Philadelphia Inquirer, he shared: “The fact that I was able to perform only songs from the first album, something I’ve never done, not even when I first released the album… was actually a milestone for me.”
The album spawned three singles: “Just Friends,” “Love,” and “Girl Next Door.” “Love” particularly resonated with fans, and spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. While there have been numerous interpretations of the songs’ lyrics, Soulchild has his own perspective. He explained, “I had a very traumatic upbringing, childhood trauma. So what people don’t understand is they think it’s a romantic song, or they think that it’s a gospel song. It’s actually intentionally neither. If anything, it’s closer to therapy, really.”
He also reflected on the organic process behind the first album’s creation. “I didn’t really plan on making an album,” he said. “I didn’t expect to be signed to Def Jam. I wasn’t looking to be, you know, a super international star or anything. I was just trying to get some ideas out. I was working with my writing partner, Carvin Haggins, at the time. We recorded some songs. I didn’t think much of it.”
The success of Aijuswanaseing propelled Soulchild’s follow-up record, Juslisen, to number one on the Billboard 200 upon release in 2002.
A former personal chef alleges that her demanding and dangerous workload caused a miscarriage.
She says that she was underpaid, wrongfully terminated, and falsely accused of wrongdoing for her troubles.
Kylie Jenner attends the 2026 Met Gala celebrating “Costume Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 04, 2026. (Photo Credit: Theo Wargo/FilmMagic)
A third lawsuit has hit the makeup mogul
On Monday, June 22, a former personal chef — whose name remains undisclosed — filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior County.
In the documents, she alleges that she worked 11-to-12-hour shifts five days a week, including physically demanding tasks that may sound to many to be well outside the expectations of a personal chef.
According the Los Angeles Times, the woman says that she began working for Kylie in November of 2024.
One month later, she informed her supervisors — who are named as co-defendants in the lawsuit — that she was pregnant.
She told them that she “required reasonable accommodations to protect her health and pregnancy.”
On New Year’s Eve 2024, when she was about 4 months pregnant, supervisors allegedly demanded that she “lift and transport heavy food items across the street and uphill without assistance.”
The lawsuit says that she “became dizzy, began choking and gasping for air, and required assistance from security personnel, who intervened by providing water and aid.”
The following February, for Stormi’s birthday, she says that she was forced to work the Palm Springs event, but did not receive “adequate support.” She describes being ignored by managers.
“Due to exhaustion and overwhelming physical strain, [she] broke down emotionally in the bathroom during the event,” the lawsuit reads.
“That evening, [she] experienced extreme physical exhaustion and heaviness throughout her body as a result of the prolonged and intense workload,” the documents continue. This would have dire consequences.
The next morning, she had experienced such severe blood loss that she sought emergency medical care.
At a nearby hospital, the lawsuit reads, she was “informed that there was no detectable heartbeat and that she had lost her unborn child.”
According to the filing, the woman informed her bosses of the miscarriage.
Days later, she was allegedly “falsely accused of leaving the kitchen and refrigerator in disarray following the Palm Springs event.”
In addition to further hemorrhaging, she developed severe depression and emotional distress. But the documents say that her supervisors were less than sympathetic.
“Stop it, just stop it,” managers allegedly told the woman. “You are upsetting Kylie. You are making her depressed.”
(It is unclear if the manager was conveying Kylie’s wishes. As with other lawsuits, it seems conceivable that Kylie’s attorneys may argue that managers acted without her knowledge.)
The former personal chef is seeking damages in an unspecified quantity.
In addition to the pregnancy discrimination, accommodation failures, and harassment, she argues that she was misclassified as an independent contractor, not paid on time or in proportion to hours worked. And she says that she was wrongfully terminated.
That all sounds awful. It will be enlightening to see how — and if — Kylie responds. It’s also possible that she’ll settle quietly, paying the money with whatever she’s gotten for endorsing Meta’s dork-ass AI slop pervert glasses for losers.
