Pop
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Everyone has that one music video that they go back and watch over and over again. That’s certainly true for Chappell Roan, and her pick might surprise you. In a post to her Instagram Stories on Sunday (Nov. 24), Roan shared a clip of “my fav music video” — a Sims version of Lady Gaga’s […]
If anyone understands what it means to have a very sudden fandom thrust upon you, it’s former James Bond star Daniel Craig. Now, the star of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer is giving praise to Chappell Roan for the way she’s handled fans who don’t respect her boundaries. In a new interview with The New York Times, […]
Elton John has been plagued by a series of health issues over the past few years. But in an interview with Good Morning America on Monday (Nov. 25), the indefatigable Rock and Roll Hall of Fame icon said an eye infection he suffered this summer has turned into the loss of vision in his right eye, which is impacting his ability to create.
John, 77, told Robin Roberts that “it’s been a while” since he’s worked on new music, something he’s been unable to figure out because of his poor eyesight. “I unfortunately lost my eye sight in my right eye in July because I had an infection in the South of France,” said John in the interview during which his eyes were somewhat obscured by a pair of green framed eyeglasses with a yellow tint to on the lenses. “It’s been four months now since I haven’t been able to see. And my left eye is not the greatest.”
Roberts flew to England to talk to John about his new doc, Never Too Late, noting that at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year he teased a new album, a project whose future is now up in the air due to his poor vision. “There’s hope and encouragement that it will be okay,” John said. “But I’m kind of stuck in the moment, because I can do something like this, but going into the studio and recording… I don’t know. Because I can’t see a lyric, for start.”
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John said he’s working on getting his eyesight back, but the infection has “floored” him for the moment because he can’t see, or watch anything. When Roberts suggested that, after all his health struggles, John is “still standing” — as he sang on his 1983 hit “I’m Still Standing” — the singer had to agree. “I’m so lucky. I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he said.
John has released 32 studio albums during his half century-long career, with the most recent being 2021’s Regimental Sgt. Zippo, a Record Store Day reissue of an shelved album from the late 1960s.
John has been open in the past about his various health struggles, including hearing loss, knee and hip replacement surgery, as well as prostate cancer and a the implantation of a pacemaker to treat an irregular heartbeat. He recently told Rolling Stone: “I don’t have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix,” in reeling off his many surgeries. “I don’t have a prostate. I don’t have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee. In fact, the only thing left to me is my left hip.”
Never Too Late, directed by R.J. Cutler and John’s husband, David Furnish, will begin streaming on Disney+ on Dec. 13.
Watch the full interview here.
John Mayer is launching a new interview series, “How’s Life,” on his Life With John Mayer channel on SiriusXM and he’s kicking it off in style. The debut of the interview series in which Mayer will speak to some of the music industry’s biggest names will feature an in-depth sit-down with Billy Joel premiering at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday (Nov. 28).
Not only does Joel, 75, chop it up with Mayer about some of his career highlights and biggest songs, but he also discusses a never-before-heard tune from his archives.
In a preview clip (see below), Mayer talks to Joel about songwriting, with the Piano Man answering the host’s probing question about where the songwriter goes when he stops writing new songs; in February, Joel released his first new song in 17 years, “Turn the Lights Back On.”
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“Where does the writer go… is the writer present when you’re listening to new music, do you listen as a writer?” Mayer asks Joel. “Do you go, ‘oh, you’re gonna put a minor fourth there? Are you really gonna put a minor fourth chord?’ Do you think like a writer still even if you’re not writing?”
“Yeah, he never goes away,” says Joel. “The writer thing is a curse that you take with you throughout life. And when I listen to material, or listen to other people’s songs the writer is always at work. ‘Well, I would have done it this way.’ Or, ‘why did he go to that chord?’ And constantly trying to improve on what you did.”
Joel describes how as a young writer you don’t edit yourself as much, but as you mature you get better at it, until you get so proficient that “you’e gotten good enough so that nothing is good enough.”
Mayer’s most important question — especially for Joel fans who are constantly saying their prayers to the pop gods that the singer will get back to writing radio-friendly songs — was whether Joel ever writes lyrics or lyric ideas on his phone. “I never write down lyrics until I’m actually songwriting,” Joel says. “I start from the music first, always.” The only exception? His very wordy 1989 class “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
Mayer will be on air all day on Thanksgiving, beginning at 2 p.m. ET, when he will start taking calla and playing music in the lead-up to the Joel chat. Future guests on the show include Shawn Mendes and Maren Morris. Mayer’s year-round SiriusXM channel Life With John Mayer can be found on Ch. 14. or anytime on the SiriusXM app.
Watch a preview of “How’s Life” with Billy Joel below.
On the first night of his Stairway to the Sky tour on Saturday (Nov. 23) Zayn Malik paid tribute to his late One Direction bandmate Liam Payne. According to fan photos and videos, the homage to the singer who died at age 31 after a fall from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina on […]
Charli XCX is bringing her Party Girl series to London next summer with a huge outdoor show. Charli will curate a day at LIDO Festival in east London’s Victoria Park on June 14, 2025, as well as put on a headline performance – marking her first U.K. festival topline slot. Explore Explore See latest videos, […]
Taylor Swift‘s “Cassandra” was the only song from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology that had never been performed live, until Friday night (Nov. 22) in Toronto, where it stole the show in a three-song piano medley brimming with rage.
“Cassandra,” “Mad Woman” and “I Did Something Bad” suddenly existed together in a fine fury, ascending above the concept of ordering the tour’s main setlist by “eras.” (Tortured Poets, Folklore and Reputation were represented here, in one performance.)
Watch a fan-filmed video of Swift’s full performance of the mashup here.
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The live premiere of “Cassandra,” a song titled after the Cassandra of Greek mythology who received the gift of prophecy along with the curse to never be believed, came during the the acoustic section of Swift’s Friday show, the fifth of six dates total in Toronto this month. The Eras Tour acoustic set is known as the part of the concert where what she performs each night is meant to be a surprise to the audience.
“When the first stone’s thrown, there’s screaming/ In the streets, there’s a raging riot/ When it’s ‘burn the b—-,’ they’re shrieking/ When the truth comes out, it’s quiet,” Swift sang from “Cassandra” at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, sitting at her piano painted with flowers.
She continued on with the ballad’s chorus, singing, “So they killed Cassandra first ’cause she feared the worst/ And tried to tell the town/ So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say/ Do you believe me now? Do you believe me now?”
Swift surprised everyone further with a sudden shift to “Mad Woman”: “What did you think I’d say to that?/ Does a scorpion sting when fighting back?/ They strike to kill and you know I will/ You know I will.”
In the moving chorus of “Mad Woman,” she sings, “Every time you call me crazy/ I get more crazy/ What about that?/ And when you say I seem angry/ I get more angry/ And there’s nothin’ like a mad woman/ What a shame she went mad/ No one likes a mad woman/ You made her like that.”
While it feels melodramatic to type this out, the moment that Swift took a sharp turn to Reputation — with “I Did Something Bad” — actually elicited gasps heard round the stadium and the internet, where fans who weren’t at the concert searched for streams of Swift’s set.
“What a shame she went mad,” Swift sang from “Mad Woman,” casually calling back to Reputation with “They say I did something bad.”
Toward the end of the performance, that couplet became “Do you believe me now? What a shame she went mad/ Do you believe me now? They say I did something bad” in a clever rewrite that linked “Cassandra” with both “Mad Woman” and “I Did Something Bad” in the same chorus.
The mad mashup went on for a solid seven minutes, as captured on video by concertgoers.
It followed a lighter performance from Swift on acoustic guitar, “Ours” (Speak Now) mixed with “The Last Great American Dynasty” (Folklore).
Swift plays in Toronto once more Saturday night (Nov. 23). The Eras Tour, which launched in March 2023, has a break for the U.S.’s Thanksgiving week before taking its final bow in Vancouver from Dec. 6-8, 2024.
Justin Trudeau showed off his dance moves at Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour concert in Toronto.
On Friday (Nov. 22), the Canadian prime minister and his family attended the pop superstar’s second-to-last show at the Rogers Centre. In a fan-captured video from the sold-out event, Trudeau is seen busting a move to “You Don’t Own Me” during the pre-show countdown, just before Swift took the stage.
Another fan video showed Trudeau exchanging friendship bracelets with Swifties ahead of the concert.
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This marked Swift’s fifth show at the Rogers Centre, where she’ll perform one final concert on Saturday (Nov. 23) before heading to Vancouver’s BC Place to close out The Eras Tour with a three-night run from Dec. 6-8.
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Saturday’s show also featured a long-awaited mashup of Swift’s songs “Cassandra,” “Mad Woman,” and “I Did Something Bad” during the surprise songs portion of her set.
Earlier in the Toronto run, Swift reflected on her six nominations for the 2025 Grammy Awards, including album of the year for The Tortured Poets Department.
“You guys did something so amazing over the course of the last few months,” she told the Rogers Centre crowd. “I just mean what you did with embracing The Tortured Poets Department, the album. It’s truly blown my mind because its really emotional for me that this album, I wrote it during The Eras Tour.”
“I wrote that album, made that album, all [while] trying to keep it a secret from you guys,” she continued. “And then [we] announced the album, and then we basically were, like, working really hard to secretly put together a new chapter in the Eras Tour of The Tortured Poets Department and we wanted to surprise you with it, and we did.”
Swift also reflected on the album’s success on the Billboard charts, adding, “And the most recent thing that you did, because everything that happens is a direct reflection of the passion that you show, is you guys got this album nominated for six Grammys. It’s so unbelievable, so thank you.”
Khalid is opening up about his sexuality — even if it’s not something he originally intended to talk about. In a series of posts to his X on Friday (Nov. 22), Khalid officially came out as gay, simply posting a rainbow flag emoji and asking his fans to move on to the “next topic please […]
11/22/2024
From K-pop gossip to the star-studded afterparty in West Hollywood, here’s what Billboard learned and overheard during the first-ever MAMA Awards ceremony in the States.
11/22/2024