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Suki Waterhouse‘s career came full circle Saturday (Aug. 17), when she opened for the Eras Tour in London after years of being a fan — and good friend — of Taylor Swift‘s.
And the next day, the Daisy Jones and the Six alum reflected on the surreal experience, sharing a backstage photo she snapped with the 14-time Grammy winner on Instagram. “The last time I was at Wembley I was dancing my a– off at the Reputation tour!” Waterhouse wrote. “Never did I think the next time I’d be here would be opening for my favourite artist with my friends and family in the crowd 🥹”
“Thank you @taylorswift for this once in a lifetime opportunity to perform in my beloved London and for the unwavering support in my own journey as an artist,” the English musician continued. “You are the world’s biggest and brightest star, I love you so much.”
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Waterhouse also shared photos of her performing on the massive Wembley stage, plus a video of Swift talking to the crowd after the opener’s set. “I’ve been such a fan of her music for so long — she absolutely crushed it,” the “Anti-Hero” singer says, asking the tens of thousands of fans in the audience to “give it up” for her friend.
At the end of her carousel of pictures, Waterhouse added a throwback photo of her wearing a T-shirt printed with Swift’s 1989 album cover. “My nervous system will never be the same after last night,” she concluded. “Someone go tell this girl on the last slide she just opened for ERAS BABY!!! ❤️”
The “Good Looking” singer was one of five new artists added to the list of Wembley Eras Tour openers earlier this month, along with Sofia Isella and Holly Humberstone — who also performed over the weekend — as well as Maisie Peters and Raye, who will go on Aug. 19 and 20, respectively. Paramore has also been a mainstay on the European leg of Swift’s trek, taking the stage in between Waterhouse and the “Karma” artist Saturday.
“Did you guys see Suki earlier?” frontwoman Hayley Williams asked during the band’s set, before introducing their Twilight soundtrack hit “Decode” with a nod to Waterhouse’s partner, Robert Pattinson, who starred in the vampy franchise years before welcoming a baby with the model in March.
“I would like to dedicate this next song to Mr. Waterhouse,” she told the crowd. “This is the skin of a killer, Bella … This is for you, Robert.”
Since releasing her hit album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess back in September, Chappell Roan has seen a lot of rise and almost no fall. Now, she’s ready to talk about everything that comes with that.
For Interview Magazine‘s new cover story, Roan sat down with Saturday Night Live star Bowen Yang to get real about her rapid ascent in the modern pop space — one that has seen seven of her songs chart on the Billboard Hot 100 while her album recently hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
While Roan maintains that she’s glad to see people finally recognizing the hard work she puts in, she can’t help but feel confounded by what’s happened. “This is really weird and really hard,” she explained to Yang. “In the past, honestly, eight weeks, my entire life has changed.”
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With the charts reflecting a lot of Roan’s success, the singer took a moment during the interview to explain her complicated feelings about how that chart success has translated into her career. “I’ve never given a f–k about the charts or being on the radio, but it’s so crazy how industry people are taking me more seriously than before. I’m like, ‘I’ve been doing this the whole time, b—h,’” she said. “My career doesn’t mean anything more now that I have a charting album and song. If anything, I’m just like, ‘F–k you guys for not seeing what actually matters.’ A chart is so fleeting. Everyone leaves the charts.”
Part of what’s made the transition so difficult, she explained, has been watching the conversation around her music become “automatically political because I’m gay.” Looking back at her Governors Ball performance — where Roan spoke out about trans rights and why she declined an invitation from the White House to perform during Pride — Roan said she was inherently nervous to speak so openly about queer issues.
“Gov Ball was really hard. It was hard to be like, ‘I’m going to say something that a lot of my family is going to be like, ‘Wow, you crossed the line,’” she explained. “It’s emotional because I believe what I said, and what’s sad is that me believing in who I am, and what I stand for, rubs against a lot of my home.”
But Roan also knows that reaching the level of success she has means she now has a significant amount of creative control over the work she does. “I’m just very lucky that I have the leverage to say no and yes,” she told Yang. “I mean, it’s awesome knowing that I have a job … I’ve never been guaranteed money before. That’s the difference. I’ve always been a writer, but I didn’t start making money to pay my rent until last year.”
That leverage means that Roan gets to have a significant hand in how she decides to release her music. With fans wondering when she’ll release new songs — such as her unreleased track “Subway” that she debuted live at Gov Ball — Roan says she knows what release strategy will work best for her career.
“My career has worked because I’ve done it my way, and I’ve not compromised morals and time,” she said. “I have not succumbed to the pressure. Like, ‘B—h! I’m not doing a brand deal if it doesn’t feel right. I don’t care how much you’re paying me.’ That’s why I can sleep at night.”
Before this wildly unpredictable presidential campaign season even kicked off, technology experts issued dire warnings that doctored artificial intelligence images and videos could be used to manipulate voters. That appears to be the case with some seemingly manufactured images shared by three-time White House candidate Donald Trump on Sunday (Aug. 18) on his Truth Social account.
The twice impeached former one-term Republican president re-posted a series of images whose authenticity could not be verified and which appeared to show Taylor Swift fans, as well as the singer herself, throwing in with his campaign. One featured six squares filled with smiling Swifties wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shits with the message “Swifties Turning to Trump After ISIS Foiled Taylor Swift Concert,” a seeming reference to the recently foiled plot to attack Swift’s since-cancelled trio of concerts in Vienna after the discovery of a 19-year-old ISIS-radicalized man’s plan to cause a mass casualty event outside the singer’s Austrian shows.
In another image meant to mirror the iconic “I Want You For U.S. Army” recruiting poster, a user doctored up an image of Swift in a patriotic red, white and blue suit and star-spangled top hat with the message, “Taylor Wants You to Vote For Donald Trump.” The other two pictures featured more images of what are allegedly Swift fans in Trump-boosting gear.
At press time spokespeople for Swift and Trump had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the post, which also featured Trump’s enthusiastic response to the alleged endorsement, “I accept!” According to The Daily Beast, the Swiftie images were first posted to X on Friday and Saturday by a couple of popular right-wing accounts, including one that reportedly mixed the doctored AI images with a real one of a blonde woman wearing a “Swifties For Trump” shirt at a rally. The Sunday Times noted that one of the 25 Truth Social posts featuring the faked images that read “The Swifties for Trump movement is real!” was labelled “satire,” calling into question whether Trump, 78, realized that he was re-posting computer-generated pictures.
Swift has yet to endorse anyone in the 2024 presidential race between convicted felon Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose nomination will be celebrated this week in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. Harris was swapped in for President Joe Biden last month and since her sudden elevation to the top spot on the ticket polls have shown the once dead-even race that Trump — now the oldest candidate to ever run for the White House — was winning in several key battleground states shifting slightly in Harris’ favor.
The singer eschewed political endorsements for most of her career, but following Trump’s election in 2016 she endorsed two Democratic candidates in midterm elections in her home state of Tennessee as well as endorsing Biden in 2020. She also took aim at the former Apprentice host during the George Floyd protests in 2020, lambasting Trump’s response to the unrest after earlier saying she was “completely blindsided” by his 2016 victory over former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.
“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’???” Swift wrote in reference to a comment from Trump that many took as a veiled threat to protesters who flooded the streets around the nation following the killing of unarmed 46-year-old Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on his neck for nearly 10 minutes. “We will vote you out in November.”
Trump, who the Washington Post reported in 2021 had made nearly 31,000 false or misleading statements during his presidency — a rate of 21 claims per day — recently claimed that photos of a massive Harris/Walz rally in Detroit were AI-generated, a falsehood that was quickly disproven by photos and videos taken by reporters and attendees on the ground.
Check out the AI Taylor Swift images below.
Lol, Trump posted a collage of AI generated Taylor Swift fans wearing ‘Swifities for Trump’ T-shits, and wrote “I accept!” as if this were real.I mean…..this is uniquely pathetic, even for Trump. pic.twitter.com/GUVXQLqzYo— Peter Henlein (@SwissWatchGuy) August 18, 2024
Cardi B has been teasing her highly anticipated sophomore album for more than a year. After marking the sixth anniversary of her 2018 full-length debut LP, Invasion of Privacy, in April by teasing that she was prepping something “so different from what everyone is expecting” for her second studio album, the “Bongos” MC has sent […]
For those working behind the scenes, Amazon’s sprawling, stunning and spendy fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is marked by a secrecy not unlike the clandestine creation of the titular gold bands in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world.
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“I would come [home] after working for 12 hours and my wife would go, ‘How’s it going?’ And I’d go, ‘The project is going okay,’” recalls composer Bear McCreary of the show’s first season. “My daughter was seven at the time — she would [have gone] to school and said it. The secrecy was crazy.”
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The second season, which premieres on Prime Video on Aug. 29, was a similarly stealthy production. When woodwind and brass players gathered at London’s AIR Studios Lyndhurst (a deconsecrated Victorian church that producer George Martin turned into a top-notch recording facility in 1992) in late April to record part of its score, the TV show’s name was markedly absent from the sheet music.
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“Even though there’s a code name, they know when they see my name and hear these tunes,” admits McCreary, an Elmer Bernstein-trained composer who writes every musical cue for the show (save Howard Shore’s opening theme). “It feels like coming back to school after a summer off and seeing all your friends.”
If Rings of Power were a high school, you’d probably peg McCreary – with his black t-shirt, trim beard and long, dark mane of hair – as a metal kid. And sure enough, just days after that recording session, the 45-year-old unleashed The Singularity, an expansive, hard-rocking concept LP, into the world. But before he fell in love with Queen and Guns N’ Roses, McCreary was a little boy obsessed with film soundtracks, especially those for epic fantasies.
Now, after scoring Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead and a number of video games, he’s creating one of his own with The Rings of Power. Only for season two, the stakes are higher — arguably, this is the pivotal season that will cement the fan response to this latest adaptation of Tolkien’s beloved world.
McCreary is easygoing while giving notes to the trumpet section or chatting with visiting cast member Markella Kavenagh (who plays Nori) at the recording space, but when the French horns and oboes kick in, he is battle ready. Considering that season two ups the action quotient, his body language is fitting. Not only does heroine Galadriel battle with archnemesis Sauron (“We’ve been waiting for this fight,” McCreary says), but a mysterious region of Tolkien’s Middle-earth will be shown for the first time.
“I felt an initial shock when I read the script and realized we were going to Rhûn,” he says. “Here is a part of the map that we’ve never seen in an adaptation before.” After “using every trick in the book” to score season one, McCreary sold showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay on an unusual idea: bring in a Bulgarian’s women’s choir to complement the arid desert setting. “They let me run with it, and I have to say, it sounds beautiful — haunting and strange.”
Adds Bob Bowen, worldwide head of music at Amazon MGM Studios: “[Bear’s] use of innovative musical approaches, combined with his deep understanding of Tolkien, provides a unique world-building for this series.”
Though McCreary’s dramatic, nuanced score fills the hexagonal, high-ceilinged AIR Studios with a tense grandeur, he’s aware that most viewers will experience it in an entirely different setting. With that in mind, he sometimes spins the Rings of Power mixes on his cellphone to ensure the most salient melodic elements come through clearly. “I want to make sure the show and score sounds good, even in a terrible listening environment.”
Morfydd Clark in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”
Ben Rothstein/Prime Video
He’s also cognizant of social media responses to his score and was pleased when a few savvy fans figured out that his theme for Halbrand is the theme for the perfidious Sauron played backwards (Spoiler: the two were revealed to be one and the same in the season 1 finale). “I like to encode messages into the score,” says McCreary, who reveals that he’s burying the musical Easter eggs even deeper on season 2. “Now that I know people are digging, I can be even more subtle.”
The most rewarding fan response, however, has been at home. “My daughter has watched the show multiple times. She loved it,” he says, his tone growing as misty as the mountains of Moria. “I felt so proud that I could be part of the stories that bring my daughter into Middle-earth.”
Rory Kinnear and Daniel Weyman in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”
Ross Ferguson/Prime Video
A version of this story will appear in the Aug. 24 issue of Billboard.
Just one week before the planned kick-off of a headlining U.S. tour with Fear Factory, Twizted and Black Satellite, hard rockers Coal Chamber were forced to postpone the outing following singer Dez Fafara’s emergency hospitalization over the weekend.
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The 58-year-old vocalist apologized to fans in a lengthy statement about having to press pause on the Fiend of the Fans tour — scheduled to launch on Friday (August 23) in Las Vegas and run through a Sept. 29 show in Denver — but said a recent unspecified health crisis forced his hand.
“With a heavy heart, let me tell you a story about life taking a turn, I’m writing to you from my bed. I’ve been running 6 miles daily, I’ve been rehearsing two hours daily in my home studio and excited to hit the road, I’m excited to get on a bus with my brothers and sister and my crew. I’ d never felt better and as you all know, I fought back hard after long haul COVID tried to kill me,” Fafara wrote in the post.
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“Saturday morning I woke up and I was coming up my stairs. I saw flashes in my eyes. I passed out and my wife revived me. My vitals were through the roof, and I was sheet white and vomiting, and the whole world was spinning,” he continued. “[My wife] Anahstasia called 911. I ended up in the back of an ambulance and did nine hours in the ER testing all my vitals including taking X-rays of my heart and lungs. My doctor has advised me to get a cat scan, and until further testing, I am on bedrest and must postpone the Tour. Our agent sprung into action to rebook this tour for March 2025, and until we can figure out what the f–k medically is happening.”
Fafara said the tour is now scheduled to hit the road in March 2025 under the same name. “This tour postponement is surreal, I was looking forward to playing with my band and connecting with fans, friends and family on the road,” Fafara wrote. “I want to take a moment to thank everybody for their outpouring of love and outpouring of calls and texts checking on me. It seems like the word spread and the whole industry has been ringing my phone since Sunday; musicians, agents and managers and I really really appreciate it.”
As of now, the re-routed outing will begin with a March 5 show at the Summit in Denver and run through an April 18 gig at the Myth Live in Maplewood, MN.
Fafara ended his note with an uplifting message about resilience and an promise to keep fans in the loop on developments. “Kiss your loved ones, no one is promised tomorrow. I’ll fight my way back to be with you all onstage you can be sure of that as well I’ll keep you all updated on my socials as to what’s going on,” the singer said. “Apologies if this news causes you to rearrange your schedules to attend the concert with us and I want to say thank you in advance. We are all truly in the dark and I’m looking forward to finding out what’s going on. HAIL.”
See Fafara’s post and the rescheduled tour dates below.
Are you ready for “One More Time”… one more time? Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker sent fans’ heart racing over the weekend when he teased new music from the punk-pop trio in a post on X in which he promised that fresh tracks are almost ready to go. After tweeting “Who’s ready for One More Time […]
Attending your first Taylor Swift show is always a big deal. But for Nobel Peace Prize winner and girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai, seeing an Eras Tour show in London over the weekend was a milestone for much deeper reasons.
The 27-year-old Pakistani activist who has been a vocal advocate for human rights and the education of women and girls for more than a decade posted a moving story on Instagram on Saturday (August 17) describing the emotions she was feeling while attending the show with her husband and some of her oldest friends.
“One of my favorite memories from Swat Valley is a field trip I took in middle school with my best friend, Moniba (second photo, on the left). Giggling, we went to a waterfall hidden away in a lush green mountain. We were so excited because we were finally allowed to go to school again and could be outdoors with our friends, laughing and singing together,” wrote Yousafzai, who grew up in Pakistan under repressive Taliban rule that included bans on music and television, as well as a bar on girls going to school.
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“Having lived through a time where music and art were banned, music felt like a gift,” she continued. “Moniba and I found the highest rock we could, climbed on top of it and announced to all of our classmates and teachers we were going to perform our new favourite song called ‘LOVE STORY.’ We sang with all of our heart, taking in the joy we felt every second. That’s where my Swiftie journey began. It feels magical that my first-ever proper concert would be to see @TaylorSwift, singing along to every song surrounded by friends.”
Yousafzai, 27, whose story became international news when she and two other girls were shot by a Taliban gunman in Oct. 2012 in an assassination attempt, used her post to once again spotlight the repressive nature of Taliban rule and the disturbing backsliding on human rights that she said has occurred over the past few years.
“Three years ago, the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan. Once again, music no longer plays on the streets, and girls and women are barred from school, work and public life,” Yousafzai said. “In Swat, music made my friends and me feel confident and free. And one day I hope we will live in a world where every girl will be able to enjoy music and live out her wildest dreams. 💖”
In addition to a photo with her husband, Asser Malik, with the packed Wembley Stadium in the background, Yousafzai’s photo roll included the snap with her childhood best friend, another of her making a hand heart and pics of her crew’s friendship bracelets.
Swift is in the midst of a five-night run at London’s Wembley Stadium, with two more shows slated for Monday (August 19) and Tuesday night (August 20). The shows took place after Swift was forced to cancel a planned string of three shows in Vienna due to a terror plot aimed at attacking fans gathered outside the stadium. Two Austrian teenagers have been arrested in the case and a third was detained for questioning.
Check out Malala’s post below.
The Weeknd is set to return to Australia in October 2024, bringing his After Hours Til Dawn stadium tour Down Under after initially postponing and then cancelling his 2023 dates.
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The Australian and New Zealand leg was originally planned as one of the final stretches of his world tour before those dates were shelved.
The Canadian R&B superstar, born Abel Tesfaye, will kick off the 2024 leg on Oct. 5 at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, with a second show on Oct. 6, before heading to Sydney for back-to-back performances at Accor Stadium on Oct. 22 and 23.
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These will be The Weeknd’s first stadium shows in Australia and his first visit since 2017. Special guests Mike Dean and Chxrry22, along with Australian DJ and vocalist, Anna Lunoe, will join him on all 2024 Australian dates.
However, fans in Brisbane and New Zealand, who were included in the cancelled 2023 tour, will be disappointed to learn that these locations are not part of the 2024 itinerary.
According to a statement from the tour’s press release: “Due to schedule and logistical constraints, the ‘After Hours ‘Til Dawn’ tour will not be making its way to New Zealand or Brisbane in 2024 and there will be no further cities added.”
This decision has sparked backlash on social media, with fans expressing frustration over their shows being dropped from the 2024 run.
One commenter noted on Reddit, “Not sure what logistical circumstances they’re trying to blame for not coming to Brisbane or even NZ. Suncorp Stadium literally has no event booked in October other than the Travis Scott show at the end of the month.” Another added, “Apparently it’s more logical to fly to Australia, fly back to the USA, fly back to Australia and then fly back again.”
Before announcing the 2024 Australian dates, The Weeknd performed numerous sold-out shows across the United States as part of the After Hours Til Dawn tour.
The U.S. leg included notable performances at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where he fans with a setlist featuring hits from After Hours and Dawn FM.
In a statement about the upcoming shows in Australia this October, The Weeknd said, “I feel a strong pull to perform in Australia before moving on to the next chapter and want to make sure you all know I hadn’t forgotten about you. When I return now, it will be the right time, and I promise it will be such a special experience. I can’t wait to see you all!”
For 2023 ticket holders, a special ‘Past Purchaser Presale‘ will be available, offering the first opportunity to secure tickets for the upcoming Australian tour dates.
The Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn tour has been a global success, with over 60 sold-out stadium dates and more than 3 million attendees across North America, Europe, the U.K., and Latin America. The tour has also broken attendance records, including a two-night run at London Stadium that drew 160,000 fans.
In other recent news, earlier this month it was revealed The Weeknd will return to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood on Sept. 5 with The Weeknd: Nightmare Trilogy, an immersive haunted house experience featuring music by The Weeknd and Mike Dean.
It follows the success of his 2022 After Hours Nightmare attraction, inspired by his Billboard 200-topping album After Hours.
The Weeknd After Hours Til Dawn 2024 Australia Tour Dates:
Oct. 5 – Marvel Stadium, MelbourneOct. 6 – Marvel Stadium, MelbourneOct. 22 – Accor Stadium, SydneyOct. 23 – Accor Stadium, Sydney
Beabadoobee has reached a dizzying new high in her career after securing her first-ever U.K. Official No. 1 album with This Is How Tomorrow Moves. The Filipino-British artist, known offstage as Beatrice Laus, saw her third studio album debut at the top of the U.K. Official Albums Chart, published Friday, Aug. 16, marking a major […]
