Vote to Rename Nashville International Airport After Dolly Parton Passes Unanimously

The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority is still deciding on a final new title for the Nashville International Airport that will incorporate the country icon's name and legacy

Dolly Parton performs on Nov. 18, 2023 in Knoxville, TN.

All six board members from the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority have voted to rename Nashville International Airport after Dolly Parton. The unanimous decision is the first step in the rebranding process, which will continue to unfold in the coming months, the MNAA said.

“While a final name has not yet been determined, we are working closely with the appropriate parties to thoughtfully determine how Dolly Parton’s name and legacy will be incorporated,” the MNAA said in a statement. “This vote represents the first step in a multifaceted process. In the coming months, we anticipate having more definitive plans to share regarding the next steps and implementation.”

The state of Tennessee first announced plans to rename the location after Parton died in late August. “Dolly Parton’s extraordinary life is forever woven into the fabric of our state,” Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement at the time. “At a place where Tennessee welcomes the world, it is fitting that Nashville International Airport would bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter and greet travelers with the enduring legacy of Dolly’s music, generosity, faith, and kindness.”

Officials hope the act of renaming Nashville International Airport in Parton’s honor will be a lasting tribute to the country legend. The decision came sooner than expected. The proposal wasn’t scheduled to be heard until Sept. 17.

“Dolly’s remarkable legacy reminds us that what makes Nashville special is our ability to welcome people from every walk of life. She understood that dignity, kindness and opportunity should never be defined by where you come from or your socioeconomic status,” said Doug Kreulen, president and CEO, Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority.

More than a year before Parton’s death, two Tennessee natives launched a Change.org petition to rename Nashville International Airport after her. The petition has received an influx of signatures over the past two weeks.

“Dolly’s philanthropic efforts, her outstanding influence in the music industry, and the love she has instilled in our hearts through her actions and songs, truly make her a deserving candidate to have the Nashville International Airport named after her,” the original petition description read. “We request that the airport’s name be changed to Dolly Parton International Airport to honor an icon who has given so much to our state and to the world. Sign the petition to make this change a reality. We could all be Departin’ from Parton!!”

Stella Lefty performs onstage during Lollapalooza at Grant Park on August 02, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois.

By now, you’ve probably heard the name Stella Lefty — and if you haven’t, you must not spend time online. She’s the 24-year-old singer-songwriter behind hit single, “Boston,” which has been steadily climbing the Billboard Hot 100 this summer and currently sits at Number Two. She’s gone viral on TikTok for covering songs by Noah Kahan and Tyler Childers, slowly building an audience that helped her sell out her upcoming tour, and position her as a rising country pop star with weekly streams in the tens of millions.

Lefty, who was born Stella Lefkofsky, hasn’t been in the spotlight all that long, but she’s already become a hot topic on the wonderful, totally kind and nuanced place that is the internet. When “Boston” first shot up the Hot 100 this summer, social media turned a critical eye on the singer and her quick blast to fame. At first, online critics scrutinized Lefty for her background and lobbed “industry plant” and “nepo baby” accusations her way because of her billionaire father, the businessman and Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky. But now, the singer has come under fire for allegedly borrowing heavily from popular songs in her music without proper credit. Here’s a look at everything that’s happened.

When Lefty first began making noise in the music industry, online critics scrutinized her background and the authenticity of her meteoric rise. The singer’s father, Eric Lefkofsky, founded Groupon before pivoting to biotech, and currently holds a net worth of $5.8 billion. People suggested that Lefkofsky’s enormous wealth helped bankroll his daughter’s career, helping her become an “industry plant.”

It’s an accusation that Lefty’s manager, Adam Alpert, vehemently denies. “Industry plants don’t exist, no matter what anybody says or thinks from the outside of the music business,” Alpert told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “You have to make great songs that people like, and all these artists that people call ‘industry plants’ are having success because they’ve done just that.” Alpert has a reputation for deep investment in his artists from day one, and has kept his roster small intentionally.

For her part, Lefty hasn’t let the accusations bother her. “There’s always going to be people who don’t like me or my music, or something about me. At the end of the day, I just focus on the people that do. This is what I decided to do. Double-edged sword,” she told RS in June.

Lefty was raised in the suburbs of Chicago, which also caused some critics to question her style of country music. It’s yet another element that the musician herself is aware of. “I’m not Southern. I always worried, ‘Do I have to be?’” Lefty told RS, adding, “I love country music more than anything. It’s just what I love with my fucking heart and soul.”

Lefty teased a snippet of “Boston” with TikTok videos months prior to its March 2026 release. One clip went especially viral, earning millions of views. Immediately, fans connected to the track — but noted similarities to Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.”

When “Boston” was officially released, “Stick Season” was credited as an interpolation. Lefty gave more context in a Vanity Fair profile published in August. “When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan,” she said. “I was literally thinking about nothing at all.” The singer also shared that Kahan’s team reached out before the song was officially released, following fans’ remarks about the chorus sounding like that of “Stick Season.” “I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, so I’m like, if this sounds like that, whatever, all good,” Lefty said about the situation.

After the Vanity Fair article made its rounds on the internet, online sleuths also noted how many times Lefty has covered “Stick Season” on her TikTok account over the past few years. Those videos are no longer available to the general public; the earliest post on Lefty’s page is from August 2025.

Lefty’s debut album Long Way Home was released on Aug. 21, just as the controversy surrounding the singer-songwriter gained steam. A week after its release, fans noted melodic similarities between one of the project’s tracks, “Summer You Were Mine,” and the Chicks’ 1998 hit “There’s Your Trouble,” which wasn’t credited. In that same interview with RS, Lefty shared that her favorite the Chicks song was “without a doubt” “There’s Your Trouble.”

Lefty and her team at Atlantic Records retroactively credited “There’s Your Trouble” songwriters Tia Sillers and Mark Selby on the singer’s new track, after a streaming platform error left it off initially, as Rolling Stone reported. At the time, RS reviewed materials that showed Lefty’s team had received proper clearance for the track from Sony Publishing in June, and that Sillers and Selby were noted on the track’s credits in internal label documents in late July before the album’s release.

After Lefty acknowledged interpolating both Kahan’s “Stick Season” and the Chicks’ “There’s Your Trouble” with proper credit, the singer-songwriter has faced accusations of plagiarism, and detractors online have taken to calling the singer “Stella Thefty.”

Earlier this month, fans claimed that the lyrical construction and themes in the chorus of the 2025 track “Why Wouldn’t We” seem to mirror Blake Shelton’s 2017 song “I’ll Name the Dogs.” The writers of Shelton’s song are not credited on “Why Wouldn’t We.” A few days later, a fan online shared a clip of Lefty’s 2025 single “Seven Eleven” in an X post, which now has two million views, noting that it sounded similar to the beginning of Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag.” Some people went back on Lefty’s TikTok page and found that the singer covered “Teenage Dirtbag” in August 2025. Brendan Brown, lead singer of Wheatus and songwriter behind the 2000s hit, is also not credited on “Seven Eleven.” The most recent accusation is tied to an older song of Lefty’s: “Misery” from her Tragic, Really EP is now being compared to “A Million Dreams” from the 2017 musical movie The Greatest Showman. The writers for the soundtrack cut, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, are not credited on “Misery.”

Lefty has not addressed the new wave of song comparisons and plagiarism allegations.

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 06: Snoop Dogg performs live at the grand opening of the Long Beach Amphitheater at Long Beach Amphitheater on June 06, 2026 in Long Beach, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

Snoop Dogg will host the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, marking the show’s return to the West Coast for the first time since 2017.

“MTV and the VMAs have been part of my story since the beginning,” said Snoop Dogg in a statement. “Some of the biggest moments of my career happened on that stage and on MTV – they gave hip-hop a place to be loud, fearless and seen by the whole world. So to come back now and host the VMAs, all these years later, that’s a full-circle moment for me.”

Snoop added that hosting the show with veteran MTV producer Van Toffler “makes it even more special.” He added, “Van was there during those early MTV days when we were changing the culture in real time, and we’ve got a whole lot of history together. Now we get to make some new history. The VMAs have always been about those moments you don’t forget – and trust me, we’re gonna give y’all a few more. See you at the VMAs.”

The rap star is a 13-time VMAs nominee and has received three awards. Snoop made his debut to the VMAs stage in 1994 and later closed the show with Dr. Dre and Eminem in 1999. He returned for a tribute to the Notorious B.I.G. and again for a metaverse-inspired performance with Eminem of their collab track “From the D 2 the LBC” in 2022.

This year, Madonna leads all nominees with 11, thanks largely to the short film she made for her acclaimed new album, Confessions II. Swift follows with nine nominations. For Video of the Year, the Confessions II short film and “The Fate of Ophelia” will face off with Ariana Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” Bruno Mars’ “I Just Might,” Gener8ion and Yung Lean’s “Storm,” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Tears.”

The VMAs are scheduled to broadcast live from Los Angeles on Sept. 27, airing simultaneously on CBS, MTV, and Paramount+.

Styles onstage in May in Amsterdam

After three years away from the stage, Harry Styles can’t get enough of being together, together again. The Grammy award-winning musician launched the Together, Together residency tour in May in support of his fourth studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. The run kicked off with a stretch of stadiums in limited cities and recently made it to New York, where Styles is performing 30 nights at Madison Square Garden. Now, he’s extending the fun to six stadiums for his biggest North American shows yet, before heading to Europe for performances in Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Dublin, and London, where he closes out the tour with three shows at Wembley Stadium.

The tour kicks off April 2 at Phoenix’s State Farm Stadium, and continues in North America through May 29 at Chicago. Each city on the 2027 tour will feature a different special guest, with Tinashe, CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso, Kylie Minogue, Lainey Wilson, Q Marsden, The Womack Sisters, Getdown Services, Caroline Polachek, Feist, LCD Soundsystem, Baby Rose, and Tears For Fears joining Styles on select dates. In North America, general on sale begins Sept. 16 at 9 a.m. Full details are available at Styles’ website. Ticket prices will be listed on the site and range from $60-$300.

Styles’ Together, Together tour will continue to support the humanitarian organization Choose Love. In London, £1 from every ticket sold on the tour will go to LIVE Trust, which is devoted to protecting, expanding and supporting grassroots music in the UK. In the U.S., Styles will continue his partnership with HeadCount; eligible fans attending any show date can register to vote onsite at HeadCount’s pop-up activation. Styles has also partnered with Green Nation, Live Nation’s global sustainability initiative.

Styles’ slate for the rest of 2026 includes his remaining nights at MSG, plus a much shorter run in Australia, with four stops in Melbourne and two in Sydney. “When we decided to do the 2026 tour I knew it would be special but what you turned it into was far beyond what I could have imagined,” Styles wrote in a letter to fans Wednesday night. “I love playing music, I love being with all of you and being a part of the love and joy you all create together every night.”

“In the time that I took away from touring, I watered a side of my life I hadn’t paid much attention to previously. Because I started so young, touring became so much of who I was. I would feel quite uncomfortable with stretches at home. I didn’t know what to do with myself sometimes,” Styles told W Magazine recently. “Now I feel really fortunate to have this incredible job and creative environment, but also this life away from it that I’m excited to spend time in. I don’t know that I had that before. The idea of not touring is less frightening to me. It feels quite special to be in it, bathe in it, and be aware it’s not forever.”

Styles’ shows this year mix Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally with hits from his three other studio albums. “On most of Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, Harry Styles is a seeker, looking to find or provide enlightenment, ecstasy, love, or light,” Rolling Stone wrote in a review of the record. “The album opens with Styles singing about letting in the light in ‘Aperture’ and ends with ‘Carla’s Song,’ where he finds the light not in someone else’s eyes, but in the gold those eyes see, as if his own capacity for empathy and understanding — not sex and love — is what he’s been after the whole time.”

Harry Styles Together, Together 2027 Stadium Tour Dates

April 2 — Phoenix, AZ @ State Farm StadiumApril 3 — Phoenix, AZ @ State Farm StadiumApril 9 — Dallas, TX @ AT&T StadiumApril 10 — Dallas, TX @ AT&T StadiumApril 23 — Los Angeles, CA @ Rose Bowl StadiumApril 24 — Los Angeles, CA @ Rose Bowl StadiumMay 7 — Toronto, ON @ Rogers StadiumMay 8 — Toronto, ON @ Rogers StadiumMay 21 — Atlanta, GA @ Mercedes-Benz StadiumMay 22 — Atlanta, GA @ Mercedes-Benz StadiumMay 28 — Chicago, IL @ Soldier FieldMay 29 — Chicago, IL @ Soldier FieldJuly 2 — Berlin, DE @ Flughafen TempelhofJuly 3 — Berlin, DE @ Flughafen TempelhofJuly 16 — Paris, FR @ Plenitude ArenaJuly 17 — Paris, FR @ Plenitude ArenaJuly 30 — Madrid, ES @ Riyadh Air MetropolitanoJuly 31 — Madrid, ES @ Riyadh Air MetropolitanoAug. 7 — Rome, IT @ Circo MassimoAug. 8 — Rome, IT @ Circo MassimoAug. 18 — Dublin, IE @ Croke ParkAug. 20 — Dublin, IE @ Croke ParkAug. 25 — London, UK @ Wembley Stadium Connected by EEAug. 27 — London, UK @ Wembley Stadium Connected by EEAug. 28 — London, UK @ Wembley Stadium Connected by EE

For a second year in a row, Polaris Festival is bringing Canadian artists, audiences and music obsessives together across Ontario for a full month of concerts, listening sessions, artist talks, exhibitions, workshops and unconventional collaborations.

Seminal albums from the performing artists will be put in the spotlight. Among others, producer Caribou will be the subject of an immersive listening experience devoted to Andorra on September 29, followed a day later by Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It in People. Both events take place at Standard Time in Toronto, one of the city’s best listening bars.

Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Elizabeth Copeland will take part in an intimate discussion at It’s OK* Studios, while Haviah Mighty will headline a Producers’ Circle at Hart House. A special Collective Study session will also dig into k-os’ Joyful Rebellion.

While many events take place in Toronto, other cities will play host to the celebration. William Prince and Population II will perform a free Supercrawl presentation in Hamilton, while Thanya Iyer and Cadence Weapon head to Belleville for another free event.

The Polaris Prize award show will take place September 22 at Toronto’s Massey Hall, where one of 10 shortlisted albums will take home the 2026 Polaris Music Prize. This year’s nominees include Angine de Poitrine’s Vol. II, Bibi Club’s Amaro, Peaches’ No Lube So Rude, Tanya Tagaq’s Saputjiji, Rochelle Jordan’s Through the Wall and Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s Laughter in Summer, alongside records from Aquakultre, Begonia, Charlotte Cornfield and Les Louanges.

Zedd and Shania Twain.

The opening lyrics to Shania Twain‘s “You’re Still the One” take on surrealistic new levels of meaning in the video for her dance-floor ready redo of the song with Zedd: “Looks like we made it/Look how far we’ve come, my baby,” she sings … riding a star-adorned unicorn. The video, which is essentially an ad for Candy Crush since the game sponsored the collab, bursts with glimmery psychedelia, literally Shania in the Sky With Diamonds. Filmmaker Jonas Åkerlund directed the clip.

There’s a pink vulture, flying Swedish fish, singing cacti, a blot-out-the-sun-like-E.T.-silhouette moment, a “glamwash” — and that all takes place two-and-a-half full minutes before Twain even sees Zedd. By then, her unicorn’s legs are motorcycle wheels, and all that’s left is a electro-house line dance. “We mighta took the long way,” Twain sings early in the song, but she likely never thought she’d get here someday.

“Bringing ‘You’re Still the One’ back with Zedd, and building this special world with Candy Crush for fans to play in, felt like the perfect way to give the song new life,” Twain said in a statement. “It feels exactly right.”

“I was super happy Candy Crush brought me and Shania Twain together,” sed Zedd. “She’s a legendary artist, and I grew up listening to her music, so being able to collaborate with her on a new version of such an iconic song has been really special.”

Twain originally recorded “You’re Still the One” for her 1997 album Come On Over. Cowritten with producer and Twain’s then-husband, Robert John “Mutt” Lange, the song was intended as a middle finger to naysayers who thought their marriage wouldn’t last.

“Mutt and I are an unlikely pair,” Twain told The Spokesman-Review in 1997. “There’s been talk in the tabloids that we’re divorcing, but we are very happy. We love each other in every way. We have a great creative relationship and a great personal relationship. We feel as strong as ever, and ‘Still the One’ is sort of my own personal victory song about the marriage.” After the couple divorced in 2010, Twain called “You’re Still the One” “the people’s song” and said, “it no longer applies to Mutt and I.”