State Champ Radio Memoir
Nearly 16 years after he shot to national fame following a runner-up finish on season 7 of American Idol, Billboard chart-topping pop singer-songwriter David Archuleta is finally telling his story on his own terms. On Thursday (Jan. 11), The Hollywood Reporter reported that the singer signed a book deal with Day Street Books, an imprint […]
Random House Books announced on Thursday (Jan. 11) that it will publish and as-yet-untitled posthumous memoir from Lisa Marie Presley. According to a release, the only daughter of king of rock Elvis Presley and ex-wife Priscilla began working on her memoir before her shocking death on Jan. 12, 2023 at age 54 from natural causes […]
Culture Club singer Boy George names names and does not hold back in his new memoir, Karma: My Autobiography. Especially when it comes to some fellow 1980s celebs he says were not so nice to him back in the day. The flamboyant, technicolor star who once sang “Don’t Talk About It” on his new wave group’s 1984 album Waking Up with the House on Fire definitely talks about it in the book out now.
According to an excerpt in People, George quips, “When it comes to me and Janet [Jackson], let’s wait a while.” George said the two pop idols met during their respective 1980s peaks on the show Solid Gold, where Janet superfan George approached the “Rhythm Nation” singer without his signature bold makeup on to express his love for her.
“She wasn’t friendly and didn’t try to be. But I just walked off and got myself into my best ‘Boy George’ and was walking around backstage to make sure I was seen by everyone,” he writes in the book, where he also notes that a member of Jackson’s crew later approached him with video camera in hand asking him to record a message for Janet.
“‘Next time you meet someone, be nice,’” George replied. Later, George said he was swept into Jackson’s dressing room, where she said she hadn’t recognized him earlier. “‘Are you saying you would have been nice to me if you knew who I was?’ We parted on awkward terms,” he said of their stilted exchange.
Things were not much friendlier the next time they meet at the long-running U.K. music series Top of the Pops several years later, where he reported that Jackson “looked straight through me.” George (born George O’Dowd), 62, told People he has nothing else to say about the incident now, noting that sometimes when you write a tell-all there’s a “chance you’re going to bump into someone that you’ve written about,” and that he’s secure in his truth about how people behaved.
“I’m always someone who’s prepared to bury the hatchet because there’s always another opportunity to be different,” he said, adding, however, that at this point, “there’s certain people I’m never gonna be friends with unless a miracle happens — and I guess I put her [Jackson] in that category.”
“I love Janet Jackson’s music and I love Madonna and I love all the people I’ve written about,” George told People. “I suppose when you write things about other artists, it’s also — note to self — you remember that perhaps there’s been times in your life when you weren’t friendly to everyone you met.”
George also had similar feelings about late rock icon Tina Turner — who he doesn’t mention in the book — though he told People that she also “wasn’t nice to me, which was a shame.” He says he’d been invited to an Elton John show and in a tiny, celeb-packed dressing room afterwards among such luminaires as Faye Dunaway and Ben Kingsley, John introduced him to Turner, who, he said, “turned her back.”
He never figured out why Turner reacted how she did, saying it may have had to do with his drug-taking at the time. “I’d just come off drugs — so maybe she was disapproving of that,” he said. Regardless, George said he’s still “the biggest Tina Turner fan on the planet. I mean, I forgave her and I loved her.”
“It’s 1,000% easier to be nice,” the singer told the magazine. “Not only Is it easier to be nice as it’s better for you.” In an earlier excerpt, People noted that the book covers everything from George’s violent childhood in South East London as as bullied teen to his four-month prison stint in 2009 after a conviction for falsely imprisoning and assaulting a male escort and his $2.3 million dollar legal battle with former bandmate/lover Culture Club drummer Jon Moss.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Mariah Carey has been getting fans in the holiday spirit with her Merry Christmas One and All! tour going on, and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” hitting No. 1 on the global charts. Now, the Queen of Christmas (who also recently found out what white elephant gifts are during an interview with People) is showing off Barbra Streisand’s memoir, which she recently received comedian Billy Eichner.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Carey has been touring around the country spreading Christmas cheer with her most festive songs, but during her travels, she’s been reading Streisand’s memoir My Name Is Barbra. Her love for the legendary singer came across in an Instagram gallery she posted on Wednesday (Dec. 5), in which she described the memoir as “incredible.”
Eichner also added a sweet dedication to her in the book, writing, “For the Queen of Christmas, a story about the Queen of Hanukkah,” which can be seen in the second photo from the “Touch My Body” singer.
“🎶 Living like Babs cause it’s Evergreen 🎶 Reading the incredible memoir by @barbrastreisand on the tour bus!📕❤️ Thank you for the gift and the fabulous dedication @billyeichner 💋,” Carey captioned her Instagram post.
Right now, the book is rated No. 3 on the Amazon charts and has a 4.6 star rating, proving its popularity among readers. It’s also on sale for up to 33% off, so whether you’re looking for musician memoirs to read or a gift for music lovers, keep reading to shop the book.
Amazon
“My Name Is Barbra” by Barbra Streisand
$31.50
$47.00
33% off
$31.50
$35.24
11% off
$42.30
$47
10% off
Dive into the life of “The Way We Were” singer and her more than six-decade career spanning from before she was famous to the praise she achieved from Funny Girl. You’ll read the memoir all from Streisand’s honest yet funny tone giving you insight into her journey straight from her own perspective.
For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best gifts for musicians, gender neutral gifts and Christmas gifts under $25.
Once a bandmate, always a brother. That appears to be the case for Lance Bass, who recently stuck up for his *NSYNC bandmate Justin Timberlake amid the “Mirrors” singer’s myriad swirling controversies following the bombshell revelations unleashed in Britney Spears’ new memoir The Woman in Me. In an impromptu airport interview with TMZ, Bass confirmed […]
Despite the hectic times surrounding the release of Spears’ fifth studio album, Blackout, she still considers it her favorite. She writes, “Blackout, the thing I most proud of my whole career, came out right around Halloween in 2007.”
The career-defining album featured hits “Gimme More,” “Break the Ice” and “Piece of Me.”
She performed “Gimme More” at the 2007 MTV VMAs, but ahead of the set, wasn’t feeling great after having two babies, suffering from postpartum depression and a series of other issues behind the scenes.
“Backstage at the VMAs that night, nothing was going right,” she writes. “There was a problem with my costume and with my hair extensions. I hadn’t slept the night before. I was dizzy. It was less than a year since I had my second baby in two years, but everyone was acting like my not having six-pack abs was offensive. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to go out on stage feeling the way I felt.”
To make matters worse, she also ran into her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake backstage, and everything resulted in her having a panic attack before going live.
“I went out there and I did the best I could at that moment in time, which — yes, granted — was far from my best at other times,” she writes. “I could see myself on video throughout the auditorium while I performed; it was like looking at myself in a fun house mirror.”
To add salt to the wound, following her unflattering performance, comedian Sarah Silverman made fun of her to the global audience. “She said that at the age of 25 I done everything worthwhile in my life I’d ever do,” Spears recalls. “She called my two babies ‘the most adorable mistake you’ll ever see.’ I didn’t hear that until later, though. At the time I was backstage sobbing hysterically.”
Britney Spears has been through a lot, from her 13-year conservatorship to her strained relationships with estranged family members. But one of the most difficult times in her life was her breakup with Justin Timberlake, as revealed in her new memoir The Woman In Me.
The pop star and *NSYNC band member dated from 1999 to 2002, until Timberlake allegedly broke things off with Spears via text message. The time immediately after was dark for the “Toxic” singer, who writes in her memoir she “barely left the house” following the couple’s split.
“When Justin began making his first solo album, Justified, he started being very standoffish with me,” Spears recalled in her autobiographical book, released Tuesday (Oct. 24). “I think that was because he decided to use me as ammunition for his record, and so it made it awkward for him to be around me, staring at him with all that affection and devotion.”
“Ultimately, he ended our relationship by text message while I was on the set for the video for the ‘Overprotected’ remix by Darkchild,” she continued. “After seeing the message as I sat in my trailer between takes, I had to go back out and dance.”
Spears added that the breakup left her “devastated.” “When I say, devastated, I mean, I could barely speak for months,” she wrote. “Whenever anyone asked me about him, all I can do is cry. I don’t know if I was clinically in shock, but it felt that way.”
In her long-awaited memoir, the “Sometimes” artist dropped quite a few bombshells about her high-profile romance with her former Mickey Mouse Club castmate, beyond the depression she faced following their split. While they were together, for instance, she said she got an abortion because Timberlake wasn’t ready for fatherhood; she also admitted to having cheated on her then-boyfriend once with choreographer Wade Robson after finding out about the “Cry Me a River” singer’s alleged affairs with other women.
Those struggles didn’t stop Spears from loving Timberlake, though — even after they called it quits. While she was still grieving the relationship, Timberlake brought her a framed handwritten letter that she still keeps under her bed, the Princess of Pop shares in her book. “And at the end it said — it makes me want to cry to think about it — ‘I can’t breathe without you.’ Those are the last words in it,” she writes.
“It almost felt like I was suffocating,” she adds, “like I couldn’t breathe after all that happened. The thing is, though, even after I saw him and read the letter, I didn’t come out of the trance. He did all that, he came there to see me and I still couldn’t talk — to him or to anybody.”
As the release of Britney Spears‘ upcoming tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me, gets closer, more details from the long-awaited book are getting revealed.
Earlier this week, People revealed a shocking excerpt of the book in which the pop superstar had an abortion after an unexpected pregnancy with then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake. In an extended excerpt published by The Associated Press, Spears went into further detail. “I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby. Abortion was something I never could have imagined choosing for myself, but given the circumstances, that is what we did,” she writes. “It was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion, which meant doing everything at home.”
She adds of the pain from the medication abortion was “excruciating.” “I kept crying and sobbing until it was all over,” she writes. “It took hours, and I don’t remember how it ended, but I do, twenty years later, remember the pain of it, and the fear.”
In a copy of the memoir obtained by Billboard, after describing her abortion experience, Spears added that she still has love for her ex-boyfriend, who she began dating in 1999 until their split in 2002. “After that, I was messed up for a while, especially because I still love Justin so much,” she writes. “It was insane how much I loved him, and for me, it was unfortunate.”
In the earlier excerpt published by People, Spears said that the pregnancy was a “surprise,” even thought she always “expected” to start a family with Timberlake. “But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she wrote, adding, “To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
The Woman in Me arrives Oct. 24.
Britney Spears is gearing up to release her highly anticipated memoir The Woman in Me on Oct. 24, and the star took to X on Sunday (Oct. 15) to share some excerpts from the upcoming book. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “I actually envy the people who know […]
Madison Beer shared the news on Wednesday (Feb. 15) that she’s coming out with her first-ever memoir, The Half of It.
“It feels truly surreal to be announcing this book and i am so excited to share my story with you in a way i never have before,” she posted on Instagram of the memoir, which hits bookshelves April 25 via HarperCollins. “From the reality of being signed at twelve, to everything that followed, where i am now, and my journey of reconciling with everything that came before. it has taken me a lot of extremely dark times to get here but i feel incredibly ready to tell you these chapters of my story. i hope you love it. i can’t wait to reintroduce myself to you.”
Showing a glimpse of The Half of It‘s title page, Beer shared the book’s dedications, which read: “For my mother, my brother, and my father—thank you. I know it hasn’t been easy. For the younger Madison I’m writing this about—thank you for getting me here. I hope I’ve made you proud.”
The pop singer’s mom, Tracie Beer, gave a sweetly emotional show of support for her daughter’s venture into autobiography in the comments section of the post, writing, “Me bawling like a baby… So incredibly proud of you & to be part of this journey alongside of you through it all!!!” and adding the hashtag, “#proudmom.”
Beer dropped her debut studio album, Life Support, back in Feb. 2021. When discussing the book reveal in an interview with People, she opened up about working on her soon-to-be-released sophomore follow-up.
“I am so excited for this next album which will be coming soon,” she teased. “Music has always been my first love; it’s what lead me to this memoir and what drives me daily. I am really excited for what is next with my music this year.”
Check out Beer’s memoir announcement — and get a first look at its vulnerable cover — below.
-
Pages
