Pop

Sympathy is a knife, but Charli XCX and Ariana Grande are watching each other’s backs.
In a new interview with Variety published Wednesday (Dec. 4), the 32-year-old alt-pop star opened up about her bond with the 31-year-old Wicked singer-actress — whom Charli says gave her a lot of support on multiple career fronts as they were working on their October remix of fan-favorite Brat track “Sympathy Is a Knife.” “She had a lot to say,” the “Von Dutch” artist began of her collaborator.

Noting that Grande “gravitated” toward “Sympathy Is a Knife,” Charli added, “We went back and forth on the lyrics, talking about all the knives that we both felt in this industry.”

The “Yes, And?” artist also apparently encouraged Charli’s acting ambitions, which, in the near future, will include parts in Benito Skinner’s Overcompensating series, Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex film, Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death remake and Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero graphic-novel adaptation. Grande, who hosted Saturday Night Live in September, also showed the “Apple” artist the ropes before the latter helmed a November episode of the comedy series.

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“She’d obviously just done [‘SNL’] and killed it, so I was getting tips,” Charli told the publication. “She was just like, ‘You’re gonna be amazing, just relax, it’s so fun.’”

Grande’s spin on “Sympathy Is a Knife” was just one of numerous remixes on Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, a companion LP to Charli’s blockbuster sixth studio album. On the track, both women delve into their least favorite aspects of fame and the music industry, singing, “It’s a knife when you’re finally on top/ ‘Cause logically the next step is they wanna see you fall to the bottom.”

Billie Eilish, Lorde, Troye Sivan, Addison Rae, Tinashe, The 1975 and more were also featured on the Brat remix album, which dropped Oct. 11. The project served to build on the career-boosting whirlwind started by the original record, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in June — Charli’s first-ever top five album.

“Crash was me kind of playing at being a major-label pop artist,” the star told Variety, reflecting on her unexpected success with Brat. “It’s funny now to see how Brat has dwarfed it, because I was so prepared for this record to be just for my audience.”

ROSÉ of BLACKPINK is giving her apt. some holiday spruce.
While at BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge Tuesday (Dec. 3), the 27-year-old pop star covered Wham!’s 1984 classic “Last Christmas” as well as performed a solo rendition of her smash Bruno Mars duet “APT.” For the former, she channeled her inner George Michael, melancholy while sitting on a stool, reading the heartfelt lyrics off a music stand in front of her, and dancing along during the Billboard Hot 100 No. 4 hit’s musical high points. 

“A face-on lover with a fire in his heart/ A man undercover, but you tore him apart,” she sang before letting her New Zealander side shine through with a spoken-word “Well, maybe next year, mate.” 

“I’ll give it to someone, I’ll give it to someone special,” ROSÉ softly crooned to finish out the track, clapping her hands. 

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For “APT.,” the K-pop phenom ramped up the energy, joining her backup singers and keyboardist in doing hand movements to pay homage to the Korean drinking game that inspired the song’s title. Without Mars on hand for the second verse, ROSÉ confidently rapped her duet partner’s parts while dancing along. 

“It’s whatever, it’s whatever, it’s whatever you like,” she belted. “I’m talking drink, dance, smoke, freak, party all night.”

ROSÉ’s pair of performances arrive as “APT.” spends its sixth week at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 chart. The musician’s debut solo album, rosie, is set to drop Dec. 6, featuring 12 tracks including November single “Number One Girl.”

In a recent interview with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, the star opened up about feeling “pressure” to deliver a solid LP during her limited time away from full-band duties with BLACKPINK, which is currently on break until some time in 2025. “We got together and decided, ‘Let’s promise ourselves a good year to be inspired,’” she said of bandmates JENNIE, LISA and JISOO. “The first thing that happened was anxiety, because I was privileged to have this one year in my hands to do whatever I wanted with it, but I wanted it to be the right decision and it had to feel right … What if I don’t believe in my thing? And what if I’m in a place where I’m having to do things that I don’t feel like it’s me?”

Watch ROSÉ cover “Last Christmas” above, and check out her performance of “APT.” below.

It’s the end of the year, so that means it’s time to see what lists Taylor Swift is topping as we all reflect on 2024. And, no surprise, the singer who has dominated the charts, the box office, touring and our bookshelves over the past 12 months is at the pole position on yet another year-end tally.
According to the Associated Press, Yale University’s list of 2024’s most notable quotations is, of course, ruled by Swift’s quip endorsing failed Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. As you might recall, kitty lover Swift threw her fedora in the ring for Harris in an Instagram post in September that she signed “Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady.”

The zinger was a response to a comment made by Vice President-elect JD Vance several years ago, when he described Democrats as being beholden to “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

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Number two on the list was President Biden’s Dec. 1 announcement that he’s pardoning his son Hunter — “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter” — followed by a false claim from President-elect Donald Trump during his only debate with Harris. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats,” Trump said, boosting an untrue rumor spread by his campaign about Haitian immigrants in the small Ohio town that resulted in a number of bomb threats, harassment and the cancellation of school days for children in the city.

Trump was also at No. 5 on the list with his “Fight! Fight! Fight!” rallying cry after his ear was grazed by a bullet during a rally in Butler, PA. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, slipped into the No. 4 slot with his misstatement “I’ve become friends with school shooters,” after trying to refer to befriending school shooting survivors.

“Please note that the items on this list are not necessarily eloquent or admirable quotations, rather they have been picked because they are famous or important or particularly revealing of the spirit of our times,” said the annual list’s curator, Fred Shapiro, associate director at the Yale Law Library.

Right wing Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s October post falsely claiming “Yes they can control the weather,” in reference to her endorsement of a conspiracy theory claiming that the government used weather control technology to aim Hurricane Helene at Republican voters was at No. 6, followed by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harris Butker’s May 11, commencement address at Benedictine College in Kansas in which he told women that they “may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”