Pop
Page: 336
Norah Jones revealed the title of her upcoming ninth studio album, Visions, on Thursday (Jan. 18), as well as the 12-song collection’s bubbling first single, “Running.” The Blue Note album from the 9-time Grammy winner is due out on March 8 and was recorded with producer/multi-instrumentalist Leon Michels (El Michels Affair, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings), who also co-wrote the single, on which he plays drums and baritone sax.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“From the first time I felt the click in my heart/ I keep running, oh I keep running away/ Try to sleep but the aching tears me apart/ I keep running, oh I keep running away,” Jones sings breathily on the slow-rolling, meditative pop tune spiked with her signature piano playing.
“The reason I called the album Visions is because a lot of the ideas came in the middle of the night or in that moment right before sleep, and ‘Running’ was one of them where you’re half asleep and kind of jolted awake,” Jones said in a statement that describes the album as “vibrant and joyous,” while tapping into “feeling free, wanting to dance, making it right, and acceptance of what life brings.”
In her statement, Jones added, “We did most of the songs in the same way where I was at the piano or on guitar and Leon was playing drums and we were just jamming on stuff. I like the rawness between me and Leon, the way it sounds kind of garage-y but also kind of soulful, because that’s where he’s coming from, but also not overly perfected.”
Visions is the follow-up to Pick Me Up Off the Floor, Jones’ last album of new songs, which was released early in the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
In addition to the album, Jones also announced the dates for her 9-show 2024 spring East Coast U.S. tour, which is slated to kick off with a May 6 show at MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston and wind down on June 30 on the Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival in Saratoga Springs, NY.
Watch the “Running” video and see Jone’s tour dates and the Visions track list below.
[embedded content]
Visions track list:
“All This Time”
“Staring at the Wall”
“Paradise”
“Visions”
“Running”
“I Just Wanna Dance”
“I’m Awake”
“Swept Up in the Night”
“On My Way”
“Alone With My Thoughts”
“That’s Life”
Spring 2024 U.S. tour dates:
May 6 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway
May 7 – Poughkeepsie, NY @ Bardavon 1869 Opera House
May 10 – Port Chester, NY @ The Capitol Theatre
May 13 – Washington, DC @ Kennedy Center Concert Hall
May 15 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia
May 16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount
May 19 – New York, NY @ Apollo Theater
May 24 – Napa, CA @ BottleRock Napa Valley
June 30 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival
Ice-T may have risen to fame in the ’90s as a rapper and fronting the band Body Count, who courted controversy with their song “Cop Killer,” but these days he’s a cop himself — at least on TV. He’s Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola on NBC’s long-running police procedural Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which kicks off its milestone 25th season on Thursday, Jan. 18, and it’s the rapper-actor’s 24th season on the Emmy-winning crime drama.
Over the show’s many seasons, it has featured countless entertainers as guest stars before they made it big (Stephen Colbert, Bradley Cooper, Adam Driver and Hayden Panettiere, for example), as well as household names (Carol Burnett, Robin Williams, Angela Lansbury and John Stamos, to name a few). But SVU has also given everything from blink-and-you’ll-miss-it guest spots to pivotal roles to musicians besides Ice, who has become a beloved staple alongside Mariska Hargitay’s Captain Olivia Benson (who one of Taylor Swift’s cats is named after).
Among them? Miranda Lambert, Heavy D, Sabrina Carpenter, Dave Navarro, Questlove (who played a dead body!) and many more.
“The one thing about [creator] Dick Wolf [and production company Wolf Entertainment] is they understand how musicians translate into acting — they have no fear of that,” Ice tells Billboard. “I think Dick Wolf’s theory is, ‘If you could be a star at something, you could be a star at anything.’”
“My whole career doing music and being on SVU, I’ve never had Dick Wolf or any people then try to talk to me about music or anything, like, ‘Oh, Ice-T did ‘Cop Killer” or this that or the other,” adds the actor-musician. “I think from the Wolf perspective, ‘The bigger the star Ice-T is elsewhere, the bigger the star I have on my show.’ So when I go win a Grammy, it’s like SVU now has a Grammy Award-wining actor. He understands power is power.”
As for his run on the procedural, Ice — who’s up for a 2024 People’s Choice Award for drama TV star of the year — tells Billboard it’s not just his acting abilities that keep Fin on the drama. “[Wolf] sits back, he watches not only a performance but what are you bringing — kind of like what I always say is he looks at a show and goes, ‘If anybody’s tuning in to see Ice-T, yes, he stays on the show.’ If you’re on the show and they don’t think they’re tuning into see you, you can get one in the back of the head in the parking lot, you know?” the Grammy winner says. “For some reason, he likes me. I think I’ve done more television with Dick Wolf than anybody in his camp. I’m on five shows; I’ve been on seven, counting crossovers.” (The Law & Order franchise has boasted a total of seven different shows to date.)
As for how much longer Ice can see himself playing Fin, the answer is a long time. “Yeah, I’ll stay on it. I have nothing better to do,” he shares. “Like I said, right now, it’s an easy gig for me. I’m still able to do Body Count, my music, I gig on the weekends; I got a daughter in school — it’s much easier. When you’re touring, you have to do 200 days a year on the road. … I said when Law & Order ends — whenever it does end — I’ll just go out and read for all Samuel L. Jackson’s parts!”
But until then, he’s happy to keep carrying Fin’s shield, and having musicians guest star on SVU alongside him. “I just love it when they bring hip-hop artists on,” Ice tells Billboard. “It’s one of those shows where if you got a fanbase and you throw your name in the hat, they might call you.”
While Ice isn’t sure which musician he’d like to see on the police procedural next, there are a few who have stood out in his mind as some of the most notable guest roles. Read on to see which five musicians are Ice-T’s favorite cameos on Law & Order: SVU.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit airs on NBC on Thursdays. Catch up on past seasons — as well as other shows in the Law & Order franchise — on Peacock.
Big Boi
Image Credit: Will Hart/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
From her brief stint as a Waffle House waitress in Alabama to her recent cover of “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Lana Del Rey has been embracing a rootsier aesthetic – and her latest song teaser is no exception.
On Wednesday (Jan. 17), the 38-year-old alt-pop star shared a snippet of an unreleased recording on Instagram, which she simply captioned, “Henry, come on.” “Do you think I’d really choose it?/ All this off and on, Henry come on,” she croons over folksy acoustic guitar, her sultry voice drenched in her trademark reverb.
“Baby come on, do you think I’d really lose it on ya?/ If you did nothing wrong, Henry come on,” she continues in the clip, whispering in some places. “Last call, hey ya, hang his hat up on a wall.”
Del Rey provided no other details about the project, although she did pair the audio with a hazy black-and-white Polaroid of her wiping her eye with her thumb. “country era is coming,” one fan commented, while another person added, “Ah, so is this what you’ve been cooking up here down south? 😍 Sounds absolutely beautiful!”
Indeed, the “Summertime Sadness” singer has been spending a lot of time below the Mason Dixon Line in recent months. In addition to mysteriously serving customers at a Waffle House in Florence, Ala., she was also spotted getting her nails done at a seemingly random salon in Birmingham over the summer. And just days before she released her take on John Denver’s “Country Roads,” she stopped by Memphis, Tenn., to perform “Unchained Melody” in Elvis’ honor on the live NBC special Christmas at Graceland.
Del Rey’s potential song teaser comes less than a month ahead of the 2024 Grammys, at which she’s nominated for five awards, including album of the year for Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd and song of the year for “A&W.” She was also recently announced as one of three headliners at this year’s Coachella alongside Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat, about which she wrote on Instagram: “It’s a little bit crazy but we’re going back to Coachella! I think you should come it’ll be fun.”
Listen to Del Rey’s “Henry, Come On” clip below:
The NFL unveiled the lineup for the pregame entertainment for Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas on Thursday morning (Jan. 18). Before Usher takes the stage for the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime show, country icon Reba McEntire will sing the National Anthem, while Post Malone will tackle “America the Beautiful” and Andra Day will […]
Former Games of Thrones actress Sophie Turner dropped her “wrongful retention” lawsuit against ex-husband Joe Jonas over the custody of their two daughters after the former couple signed a co-parenting consent plan approved by a U.K. judge last week. According to The New York Times, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern […]
Justin Timberlake had fans buzzing on Wednesday (Jan. 17) when he posted what appears to be a taste of an upcoming musical era. “EITIW,” he captioned a series of photos on Instagram from what looks like a music video set, with fans theorizing that the single will be called “Everything I Thought It Was.” Redditors […]
It’s hard to pin down the most iconic Madonna look when you consider her four-decade career, but near (if not at) the top of that list has to be the cone-bra corset Jean Paul Gaultier created for her globe-trotting Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest […]
If anyone has cause to celebrate this week, it’s Arianators. After waiting a long four years for a new album from their idol, Ariana Grande has at last announced that her new album, Eternal Sunshine, is arriving in less than two months. The news came in a Wednesday morning (Jan. 17) Instagram post from Grande, […]
The wait is finally over, Arianators. Just days after releasing its lead single “Yes, And?,” Ariana Grande finally announced her seventh album Eternal Sunshine Wednesday (Jan. 17), sharing the highly anticipated project’s release date and cover artwork on Instagram. “eternal sunshine 𖦹 ☼ ⋆｡˚⋆ฺ,” she simply captioned her post, adding that the record’s arrival is […]
Jennifer Lopez suffers from some serious love overload in the first trailer for her upcoming Amazon original film This is Me… Now: A Love Story. The two-minute clip that dropped on Wednesday morning (Jan. 17) gives a peek at what looks like an epic tale of Lopez’s eternal search for love, complete with an all-star supporting cast that includes Fat Joe, Trevor Noah, Kim Petras, Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Sofia Vergara, Jenifer Lewis, Jay Shetty, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sadhguru, Derek Hough and more.
“I know what they say about me… about hopeless romantics,” Lopez says in voiceover amid a swell of dramatic strings and a shot of the singer/actress first sharing a passionate kiss on the ground and then on having her veil lifted on her wedding day. The she adds, “…that we’re weak. And I’m not weak.”
A quick-cut of Lopez walking solemnly in a steamy subway, staring blankly into a firepit and racing across a lake on a motorcycle before crashing out ends with the ominous warning: “Not all love stories have a happy ending.”
Longtime pal rapper Fat Joe then pops into frame as Lopez’s cozy sweater-wearing therapist before a roomful of her pals stage an intervention, telling Jen that they fear the “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” singer might be a sex addict. The preview features footage from the just-released movie musical-style video for the earworm single “Can’t Get Enough” — the first taste of JLo’s upcoming This Is Me… Now album — as part of a film a release describes as a, “narrative-driven cinematic odyssey, steeped in mythological storytelling and personal healing.”
The “genre-bending” original project promises to showcase “her journey to love through her own eyes. With fantastical costumes, breathtaking choreography, and star-studded cameos, this panorama is an introspective retrospective of Jennifer’s resilient heart.” The trailer also finds Lopez in a support group describing her childhood sharing a room with her sister, lying awake at night wondering how anyone can get shut-eye “when your heart never goes to sleep.”
The narrative-driven short film from Amazon MGM Studios was directed by Dave Meyers (Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift) and written by Lopez and Matt Walton based on a story by the singer, Meyers and Chris Shafer; it is due out on Prime Video globally on the same day as the album, Feb. 16.
In keeping with Meyers’ legendarily over-the-top, effects-laden clips for artists including Harry Styles (“Adore You”), Grande (“No Tears Left to Cry”) and Swift (“Me!”), the This Is Me film preview features futuristic landscapes, elaborate, Gene Kelly-esque dance sequences and a parade of famous faces throughout.
The cast also includes husband Ben Affleck, as well as Trevor Jackson, Paul Raci, Bella Gagliano, Brandon Delsid, Ashley Versher, Malcolm Kelner, Alix Angelis, Danielle Larracuente and Matthew Law.
In an Instagram post featuring the trailer, Lopez wrote, “I have not been this nervous, excited, scared and thrilled to share something with you in years!! The story of the journey from This Is Me…Then to This Is Me…Now is the most personal thing I’ve ever done.”
Check out the This Is Me… Now: A Love Story trailer below.