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The history of rival sibling pop solo acts is a limited but potent one. Most famous, of course, are Michael and Janet Jackson. Kylie and Dannii Minogue, Billie Eilish and Finneas, Beyoncé and Solange, Natasha and Daniel Bedingfield, Neneh and Eagle-Eye Cherry, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, and Brandy and Ray J all share the intimate and rare understanding of what it was like to share Lego sets and chart space.
That strange dynamic recently gained a new pairing. The US artists Audrey Hobert, 27, and her younger brother, who performs as Malcolm Todd, 22, have both scored global hits synonymous with the sound of summer 2026.
Two years after Todd released the song Earrings, a lovelorn track sung over the music to Steve Lacy’s 2022 megahit Bad Habit, it started blowing up in April, rising to a peak of No 16 in the UK and No 20 in the US. Just as his song started to slip down the charts, Hobert’s ultra-wordy, ultra-catchy track Sue Me started breaking through, vaulting up the UK Top 40 weekly since early June. It reached a new peak of No 29 this week, and cracked the Billboard Hot 100 two weeks ago.
In 2026, music fans are used to family dynasties ruling over music thanks to the rise of the pop star nepo baby: Gracie Abrams (daughter of director JJ Abrams), Willow Smith (Will and Jada Pinkett Smith), Mabel (Neneh Cherry), Maya Hawke (Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman), Romy Mars (Sofia Coppola and Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars) to name but a few.
The Hoberts are not exactly nepo babies, though they have showbiz links: their father is a TV showrunner who worked on Scrubs and the Nickelodeon kids’ show on which Hobert, a screenwriting graduate, got her start. She then started writing songs with Gracie Abrams, a childhood best friend, resulting in six co-writing credits on Abrams’ second album, 2024’s The Secret of Us.
Hobert’s work with Abrams earned her a publishing deal and later a solo record contract with RCA. She has cited Taylor Swift, Lena Dunham and the comedian Nathan Fielder as inspirations; her loquacious, rhythmic songwriting, full of offbeat narratives about awkward but hopeful loners, mines the sounds of pure pop and pop-punk synonymous with Y2K MTV. She released her debut solo album, Who’s the Clown?, last August. Fellow breakout pop superstar Role Model recently described her slapstick-heavy live show as “one of the best things I’ve ever seen” on the cult How Long Gone podcast. “She’s doing something very new, which is hard to do onstage.”
Todd’s USP, meanwhile, is a sort of blue-eyed, heart-on-sleeve take on indie-R&B inspired by the likes of Steve Lacy and Omar Apollo. He started making music seriously during the pandemic, and postponed going to university in order to pursue pop stardom. It worked: he signed with Columbia and released his debut mixtape for the label, Sweet Boy, in 2024. This week, he appeared in a Gap ad covering Robyn’s Dancing on My Own.
There appears to be no rivalry between the pair, who frequently boost each other’s careers. She directed the video for his 2025 single Concrete; after he covered her song Phoebe on Australian radio station Triple J’s noted covers session Like a Version in April, she returned the favour in May, covering Earrings for the same slot. Last weekend, the pair duetted on Phoebe during Hobert’s performance at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival, where she drew one of the festival’s bigger crowds.
Todd told the Face that it was no surprise his sister had found musical success, even if the aspiring screenwriter always said that her goals were working in film and TV. “You just have to watch 30 seconds of a video of her when she was eight years old and you’d be like, ‘Yeah, there’s no way in the world this girl doesn’t become a pop star.’”
Hobert told Triple J that Todd “deserves every good thing that’s happening and it’s just gonna keep on happening … the head on his shoulders is so straight and he’s just never strayed from the guy he is. He’s always been this guy. He is funny. He is smart. He knows he’s talented and his ego does not fill up a room.”
Hobert and Todd’s respective steady rises are symbolic of how breakout pop careers are made today. Rare is the bolt-from-the-blue debut single such as Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021 smash Drivers License (though that built on her years-long Disney Channel career). It took Chappell Roan seven months to blow up after the release of her debut album, which itself came after years of grinding in the pop underground and being dropped by her former label. This year also saw Zara Larsson tower over pop thanks to two slow-burning older hits, last year’s Midnight Sun – and 2015’s Lush Life. TikTok discovery is often the fuel behind these rises.
UK audiences will have to wait to see Todd, who embarks on a long tour of North America in September. But Hobert will appear in the UK later this month, playing solo dates and festival appearances supporting Lorde in London and Bristol.
