Music Today: Greta Van Fleet’s $20 Club Nights, Gunna’s New Era, and Bruno Mars on the Brink of a Chart Record

Thursday in music is the calm between two storms: last week’s announcements settling in, tomorrow’s Friday drop day loading up. But the middle of the week brought its own electricity — a $20 club residency in Nashville, a Billboard record about to fall, a new Gunna era, and a tour announcement from Mexico City to Minneapolis. Here’s what’s moving.

Greta Van Fleet went small on purpose. The Grammy-winning rockers are in the middle of a three-night residency at Nashville’s Basement East — a 575-capacity club — with shows on October 3, 10 and 17, and the whole thing is a love letter to the album they’re about to release. Tickets were $20 flat, all-ages, sold out instantly. The second show is this Saturday, two days before Palace for the People arrives on Friday, October 9, via Republic Records.

The Tennessean caught up with the band backstage before the first show, and the scene tells you everything about where their heads are at: the Kiszka brothers and drummer Daniel Wagner spent the hour before doors adorning the greenroom walls with chalk drawings. “We’re having arts and crafts!” bassist Sam Kiszka said, stepping back to admire “GRETA VAN FLEET” scrawled in giant block letters. That’s a band that spent 2023 launching tours at Bridgestone Arena choosing — deliberately, joyfully — to launch its next chapter in a room the size of a parking lot.

The album they’re previewing there was recorded in Tennessee in the spring and co-produced by the band with Mike Elizondo, whose credits run from Turnstile to Eminem to Fiona Apple. Three singles are already out — “Play Your Games,” “Saw You Stand” and “Tear It Down” — and the title nods to the band’s 2022 stop at London’s Alexandra Palace, the Victorian-era gathering place originally called “The Palace of the People.” Frontman Josh Kiszka has described the record as translating the human experience into music — adventure, passion, brutality, beauty — while guitarist Jake Kiszka calls it, at its heart, “a very modern record.” Saturday night in East Nashville is the last small room before the whole thing goes wide.

Bruno Mars is about to make Billboard history. “I Just Might” has now spent 31 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, tying the all-time record held by Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther,” which reigned for 31 nonconsecutive weeks across 2024 and 2025. The chart dates to 1958. Nobody else has ever spent this long on top — “Luther” itself had broken the record set by Lamar’s “Not Like Us” at 22 weeks.

Here’s the part to watch: if “I Just Might” holds No. 1 on next week’s chart — dated October 17, tracking streaming, airplay and sales from October 2 through today — Mars takes the record alone with a 32nd week. The single, released January 9 as the lead-off from his fourth studio album The Romantic, debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and made Mars one of the only solo male artists with 10 or more Hot 100 No. 1s, alongside Drake, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. It’s been even more dominant on Billboard’s narrower Hot R&B Songs chart, where it had logged 35 weeks at No. 1 as of mid-September — second only to The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” and its 48-week mark. For the hip-hop heads keeping score: the record Mars is about to take belongs to Kendrick and SZA — and “Luther” won the Grammy for Record of the Year. That’s the company.

Girl Ultra is taking RRRomeo on the road. The Mexico City singer-songwriter announced a 24-date North American headlining tour for early 2027 behind her new album RRRomeo, which arrives Friday via Ninja Tune. The record is a full collaboration with Chromeo, who co-produced it — a relationship years in the making that goes back to Girl Ultra touring with the Canadian duo — and it pushes past the R&B sound she made her name on into garage rock, house, pop and funk, with guests including Buscabulla, Empress Of and French producer Jean Tonique. On “Ironía,” Chromeo’s Dave 1 sings in Spanish for the first time.

The tour kicks off February 2 at Minneapolis’ 7th St Entry and runs through March 3 at Seattle’s Barboza, with stops in Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Brooklyn, Washington D.C., Austin and Los Angeles — plus a February 28 appearance at San Francisco’s Noise Pop festival. Presales for select venues started this morning at 10 a.m. local time, with the general on-sale Friday at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster.

Gunna’s next era starts Friday. The Atlanta rapper will release “Pop It” on October 9 — the first official single from his forthcoming album SPLURGE. He revealed the title and artwork on Monday with a short video preview (push-ups on the trunk of a convertible, because Gunna), and the single turns what had been a developing album into an actual rollout: he’s said SPLURGE could arrive in October if it’s ready, but there’s still no firm date, tracklist or features. The one concrete new detail: Tay Keith produced “Pop It,” and Gunna played the finished song first at his own birthday party.

SPLURGE follows 2025’s The Last Wun, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with roughly 80,000 equivalent album units — and which closed a chapter, as his final release through YSL Records and 300 Entertainment. Since then Gunna has spent as much energy building the world around the music as the music itself: creative director of the P-Star lifestyle platform with Under Armour, partnerships with Peloton and Cymbiotika, the WUNNA Run Club, Gunna’s Great Giveaway. Friday’s single is the first real signal of what the next musical chapter sounds like — and whether he stays in the melodic trap lane that made him or takes it somewhere new.

Rock notes, rapid-fire. The Dead Daisies released the single and video for “Lift Me Up” — the first track with new lead vocalist Kelly Hansen of Foreigner and Hurricane up front, and the first taste of their upcoming album. Guitarist Doug Aldrich describes it as a classic ’70s-style rock riff with a positive lift, and the band will spend the rest of the year in the studio before a 2027 tour: Europe and the U.K. in March (Bochum, Eindhoven, Hamburg, London’s O2 Forum, Nottingham’s Rock City — with The Quireboys and The Gems), then the USA and Scandinavia.

And Skindred released the video for “Big Em Up,” from their No. 1 album You Got This — a straight-up mental-health anthem about checking on your friends and pushing some positivity back into the world, per frontman Benji Webbe. The Welsh band’s biggest U.K. and Ireland tour dates start later this month at Nottingham’s Rock City on October 23, building to a Halloween blowout — “Night Of The Living Dred” — at London’s Alexandra Palace on October 31 with Alien Ant Farm and Spineshank. One pound from every ticket at Ally Pally goes to the music charity Metal For Good.

Also out and about: Pitbull’s Pitcoin dropped today — we previewed it yesterday, and now it’s yours. And the day’s biggest tour news — Def Leppard’s 45-date 2027 arena run with the Goo Goo Dolls and The Struts — got the full treatment here. On the charts: last week’s earthquake was Taylor Swift’s “Patient Zero” debuting at No. 1 and ending Ella Langley’s record 23-week run — this week, all eyes are on Bruno and the record he’s about to take.