Pop
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Rihanna‘s 2012 smash “Diamonds” is staying true to its title 12 years later by earning diamond certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Monday (April 22). Roc Nation officially announced the news via X on Monday morning, revealing that the single has accumulated 10 million equivalent song units. According to the RIAA, […]
Looking for some motivation to help power you through the start of another work week? We feel you, and with some stellar new pop tunes, we’ve got you covered. These tracks from artists including Alfie Templeman, Debbii Dawson, Nxdia and more will get you energized to take on the week. Pop any of these gems into […]
Taylor Swift called on all the tortured poets with the release of her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department on Friday (April 19). What was originally slated to be a standard 16-track album turned into a 31-song anthology when Swift surprised fans just hours after release with an additional second half of the project. […]
It’s take two for BTS and UNICEF. The K-pop superstars and United Nations Children Fund announced the #OnMyMind initiative on Monday (April 22), the second chapter of their Love Myself campaign. The new initiative aims to improve and support the mental health youth around the world. To help kick off #OnMyMind, BTS, label Big Hit […]
Now that you’ve spent the entire weekend obsessively poring over all the lyrics on Taylor Swift‘s sprawling, 31-track The Tortured Poets Department, the singer has graciously stepped forward to offer Swifties some additional context.
On Monday morning (April 22), Amazon Music launched a track-by-track album experience featuring Swift providing commentary on the songs interspersed throughout the album’s tracks; Swifties can also listen to the album with Taylor’s full commentary by saying, “Alexa, I’m a member of The Tortured Poets Department” or in the Amazon Music app.
Describing the first single, “Fortnight,” which features Post Malone, Swift says, “‘Fortnight’ is a song that exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout this album. One of which being fatalism — longing, pining away, lost dreams. I think that it’s a very fatalistic album in that there are lots of very dramatic lines about life or death. ‘I love you, it’s ruining my life.’ These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say. It’s that kind of album.”
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Speaking of another song fans have cued in on, “Clara Bow,” Swift says it was inspired by her experiences in the entertainment industry and the tendency to pit female artists against each other. “‘Clara Bow’ is a song that I wrote as a commentary on what I’ve seen in the industry that I’ve been in over time,” Swift says. “I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid. And they’d say, ‘you know, you remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her, ‘but you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like you could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you.”
Her collaboration with Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, “Florida!!!,” is described as being inspired by true crime. “I’m always watching Dateline. People have these crimes that they commit; where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida,” Swift says. “They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’ And so that was the jumping off point. Where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida!”
The singer’s 11th studio album instantly became the most-streamed album in its first day on Amazon Music on Friday on its way to selling 1.4 million copies in its first day of release in the U.S.
Other bits of insight Swift shares include the origin of “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” which she says is a metaphor woven from the perspective of a child’s toy. “Being somebody’s favorite toy until they break you and then don’t want to play with you anymore. Which is how a lot of us are in relationships where we are so valued by a person in the beginning, and then all of the sudden, they break us or they devalue us in their mind,” she says “We’re still clinging on to ‘No no, no. You should’ve seen them the first time they saw me. They’ll come back to that. They’ll get back to that.’”
K-pop girl group aespa posted a teaser trailer for their upcoming debut full-length studio album on Sunday night (April 21). The four-woman act revealed that Armageddon will be released on May 27 in a 30-second clip that opens with ominous keyboard sounds and an overhead shot of a watery, crop circle-like formation featuring a cryptic formation.
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At press time no additional information was available on the collection, which will reportedly be fronted by the first single “Supernova” on May 13.
Before that, KARINA, WINTER, GISELLE and NINGNING will take a trip to the big screen for a limited run of their live film aespa: WORLD TOUR, which will take fans inside the group’s U.K. live debut at London’s O2 Arena during their 2023 Synk: Hyper Line world tour. The 125-minute film directed by Yoon Dong Oh (NCT Nation: To the World) and Hamin Kim that will hit theaters worldwide on April 24 and 27 includes behind-the-scenes interviews alongside performance footage. Tickets are on sale now and fans can find screening details and participating countries at aespaworldtourincinemas.com.
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The group’s label, SM Entertainment, recently revealed that member WINTER, 23, underwent preventive surgery to treat a collapsed lung. In a statement, SM said that the procedure was intended to treat a pneumorthorax, a condition in which air accumulates in the chest, applying pressure on the lungs and possibly leading to collapse. “Winter is recovering from recent pneumothorax surgery. As the disease is prone to recurrence, the decision was made as a preemptive measure based on the opinions of the medical staff after sufficient discussion,” read a statement from the label.
The statement noted that WINTER’s recovery is a priority and that “future schedules will be made with Winter’s recovery status as the top priority.”
To date, aespa have released four mini albums, including their 2021 debut, Savage, as well as Girls (2022), My World (2023) and Drama (2023). They were most recently heard on the Rebel Moon – Songs of the Rebellion EP, which also features original songs by Jessie Reyez, Tainy, Tokischa, TOKiMONSTA, Black Coffee and Kordhell inspired by Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon movie series. aespa will kick off a run of SYNK: Parallel Lines tour dates on June 29-30 with two nights in their native Seoul, South Korea.
Check out aespa’s Armageddon album announcement below.
“Come one, come all, it’s happening again.” Taylor Swift‘s sad lyrics invade The Tortured Poets Department in a way that will have listeners down bad, crying in the gym (or wherever they are), right alongside the poet herself. Swift asks “Am I allowed to cry?” nine songs into the album. What does it say about […]
The Starting Line, the group behind the 2003 pop-punk classic “The Best of Me,” got a name-check on Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department album and posted a response to the pop star after hearing the song.
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Swift references The Starting Line on the emotional ballad “The Black Dog,” found on one of four deluxe editions of her Tortured Poets physical release, and as track No. 17 on Swift’s complete 31-song The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, made available on streaming services and via digital download on April 19.
The song begins with Swift’s realization that her former flame forgot to disable location tracking on his phone. It goes on to set the scene of what she imagines is playing out without her at a London pub.
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“I just don’t understand/ How you don’t miss me in The Black Dog/ When someone plays The Starting Line/ And you jump up, but she’s too young/ To know this song that was intertwined/ In the magic fabric of our dreaming,” Swift sings on the chorus of “The Black Dog.” “Old habits die screaming.”
Later, Swift’s hurt turns to anger as her words shift to “And I hope it’s shitty in The Black Dog/ When someone plays The Starting Line/ And you jump up, but she’s too young/ To know this song that was intertwined/ In the tragic fabric of our dreaming/ ‘Cause tail between your legs, you’re leavin’.”
In a note posted on The Starting Line’s Instagram account on Friday, the band wrote: “Dear Taylor, we heard the song, thank you for name checking our band. We feel flattered and humbled by the reverberations of love that have come back to us as a result. It’s an honor to have TSL memorialized on such a lovely song. You didn’t have to do that, but you did, and we appreciate it wholeheartedly. Respect!”
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Although Swift doesn’t name the song by The Starting Line she’s hearing in her head on “The Black Dog” — nor does she identify the romantic interest the song is about — her lyric could be alluding to “The Best of Me,” the lead single from TSL’s debut album, Say It Like You Mean It.
The 1975’s Matty Healy — who by all appearances Swift briefly dated in 2023 after also briefly being linked together a decade ago — happened to play a snippet of “The Best of Me” live on tour in New Zealand on April 21, 2023, and again on May 3, in the Philippines. On May 5, Healy was spotted attending Swift’s Eras Tour in Nashville. This was the first of several times he was photographed around or with her during the time period, sparking dating rumors for the pair.
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“Shout-out to people in their 30s,” Healy said with a smile after his short “The Best of Me” cover, as seen in the clip above from The 1975’s show a year ago.
Fans have pointed out signs indicating Healy as the possible muse of title track “The Tortured Poets Department,” among other songs, on Swift’s latest release.
“Tell me what you thought about when you were gone/ And so alone/ The worst is over/ You can have the best of me,” The Starting Line’s Kenny Vasoli sings on the group’s “The Best of Me.” “We got older/ But we’re still young/ We never grew out of this feeling that we won’t give up.”
See the band’s thank-you letter to Swift for the shout-out on “The Black Dog” below.
Taylor Swift‘s The Tortured Poets Department has topped this week’s new music poll.
Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (April 19) on Billboard, choosing the pop superstar’s new double album as their favorite new music release of the past week.
The Tortured Poets Department brought in nearly 75% of the vote, beating out new music by DJ Snake featuring Peso Pluma (“Teka”); Nicki Minaj featuring Travis Scott, Chris Brown and Sexyy Red (“FTCU (Remix)”); Pearl Jam (Dark Matter); and Cloud Nothings (Final Summer).
The Tortured Poets Department is Swift’s eleventh studio album and her her first release of new music since 2022’s Grammy-winning Midnights. The 31-track double album features collaborations with Florence + the Machine and Post Malone, as well as writing and production contributions from Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner.
On Instagram, Swift described the project as “an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”
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Although The Tortured Poets Department is Swift’s first album of new music since Midnights, she has steadily pumped out her re-recorded Taylor’s Version albums in the interim. In between the two aforementioned albums, Swift topped the Billboard 200 with both Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the latter of which became the star’s record-extending sixth album to debut with over one million pure sales in its first week.
The Tortured Poets Department is already off to a stellar start in the U.S. Upon its first day of release on Friday (April 19), the set sold 1.4 million copies in traditional album sales, according to initial reports to data tracking firm Luminate. That marks Swift’s biggest sales week ever for any album in the U.S.
The Tortured Poets Department had also broken numerous Spotify records at press time, including becoming the first album in the streaming service’s history to have more than 300 million streams in a single day. The set’s first single, “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone, also became Spotify’s most streamed song in a single day.
Trailing behind The Tortured Poets Department on the poll is DJ Snake and Peso Pluma’s dance floor hit “Teka,” which dropped just in time for Peso’s performance at Coachella weekend two. The team-up brought in 10% of the vote.
See the final results of this week’s new music release poll below.
The Spice Girls reunited for an impromptu performance during Victoria Beckham’s 50th birthday party on Saturday (April 20).
All five members of the legendary 1990s girl group — Beckham, Geri Halliwell-Turner, Emma Bunton, Melanie “Mel C” Chisholm, Melanie “Mel B” Brown — rejoined for a brief dance routine to their 1997 song “Stop” during the celebration, held at the private club Oswald’s in London.
The surprise moment was caught on video by Victoria’s husband, David Beckham. “I mean come on,” the retired soccer star captioned the clip on Instagram.
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Victoria Beckham, who performed as Posh Spice in the group, also shared the video on Instagram. “Best night ever! Happy Birthday to me! I love you all so much!” she captioned the post, adding the hashtag #SpiceUpYourLife.
Mel B (aka Scary Spice) reposted the clip on her Instagram Story, writing, “About last night” and including the hashtag #tourdatescomingsoon.
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The Spice Girls formed in 1994, and had a global phenomenon two years later with their debut single, 1996’s “Wannabe.” The catchy track logged four weeks at the summit of the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1997, and is one of the group’s nine U.K. No. 1 singles. The Brits’ debut LP Spice spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and 15 weeks at the summit of the Official U.K. Albums Chart (followup Spiceworld logged three weeks at No. 1 in the U.K. in 1997).
The group went on hiatus in 2000, returning in 2007 for a global tour and again in 2018-2019, though without Beckham, who has not participated in the Girls’ activities for more than a decade. The last time all five women shared a performance stage was at the London Olympics in 2012.
In early January, Mel B teased that the Girls were planning yet another reunion this year to mark three decades of empowerment. “I’ve been saying it forever. But now we’re actually going to be releasing some really good news in about a few weeks that involves all five of us,” she said at the time on Today. “It’s going to be the gift that keeps on giving, without saying too much about it. I’m going to get myself into so much trouble.”
See the Spice Girls reunite at Victoria Beckham’s birthday party on Instagram below.