Pop

Madonna opened up about her health scare over the summer that led to the Queen of Pop being induced into a coma for 48 hours in the ICU.

“The fact that I’m here right now is the f—ing miracle,” Madonna told the crowd at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Saturday night (Dec. 16) amid her Celebration tour, as seen in a video shared by a fan to X (formerly known as Twitter). “There’s very people in the room tonight who were with me in the hospital.”

The “Material Girl” superstar went on to thank a “very important woman,” named Shavawn, who “dragged” her to the hospital after she “passed out on my bathroom floor and woke up in the ICU.” Madonna added that Shavawn “saved my life.”

Madonna also shouted out her Kabbalah teacher, Eitan Yardeni, who was also in the audience and stayed by her side throughout her induced coma for two days. “The only voice I heard was his,” she recalled.

“A couple of things I thought about when I first became conscious and saw my six incredible children around me,” she continued, before joking, “By the way, I had to almost die to get all my kids in one room.”

Madonna noted, “And I was thinking, ‘What if I left my children?’ That would destroy me to leave my children at this moment in their lives. I wasn’t thinking about me. I was thinking about them, and I was thinking about my mother and how scared she must have been to know that she was going to leave us all behind.”

“I don’t take any of this s— for granted,” she concluded. Madonna is mom to Lourdes Leon, 26, Rocco Ritchie, 23, David Banda, 18, Chifundo “Mercy” James, 17, and twins Stella and Estere, 11.

In June, Madonna spent several days in the hospital due to a bacterial infection. The hospitalization has forced the star to put her massive, career-spanning Celebration tour on pause, though the rescheduled dates are now underway.

Madonna released her first statement after her hospitalization in July, thanking fans for their positive energy and assuring that she’s feeling better. “I have felt your love. I’m on the road to recovery and incredibly grateful for all the blessings in my life,” wrote the singer.

Add new music from OneRepublic to things you can look forward to next year. The group’s Grammy-winning singer and songwriter, Ryan Tedder, broke the good news to fans on Sunday (Dec. 17), tweeting that he is “working on New @OneRepublic,” tracks and noting that he’s been “quietly gathering loads of songs for 2024.”

Even better, the prolific producer/writer added, “think we have the next single picked ? (praying hands, raising hands and heart emoji).”

Tedder has written and produced hits for everyone from Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift, Lil Nas X, Adele, Paul McCartney and, most recently, Tate McRae (“Greedy). He has also been the mastermind behind his own band’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 2 hits “Counting Stars” and “Apologize.” The group that also includes guitarist Zach Filkins, multi-instrumentalist Drew Brown, drummer Eddie Fisher, keyboardist Brent Kutzle and keyboardist Brian Willett released their most recent album, Human, in 2021; the LP topped out at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 albums charts.

In the period since, OneRepublic released the single “I Ain’t Worried” from the Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack in May 2022, followed by this May’s “Runaway” single and September’s “Mirage” from the Assassin’s Creed Mirage video game.

OneRepublic was one of the headliners for this summer’s inaugural Bud Light Backyard Tour summer concert series, a four-city tour that also included sets from Midland, Dashboard Confessional, Bush and Lindsay Ell. In September, OneRepublic released a majestic, re-recorded version of their breakthrough hit, “Counting Stars,” the song that Tedder said in an Instagram post “changed the trajectory of our band.”

See Tedder’s tweet about the new music for 2024 below.

Lorde seems to be gearing up to share some new music, but in an enigmatic Instagram post on Sunday (Dec. 18) the 27-year-old singer teasingly kept fans at arms-length when it came to sharing what’s on her playlist these days. Rocking a pair of AirPods Max and striped pajamas, the “Stoned at the Hair Salon” star shared a pair of pics in which she’s seemingly listening to something, staring at the camera in one and taking a selfie from above in the other with the tantalizing caption, “Listening to myself.”

Lorde has not released a new album since 2021’s Solar Power, her third full-length collection, though she did tease a pair of fresh tracks during a headlining gig at the Boardmasters Festival in the U.K. this summer; fans have speculated that the songs are called “Silver Moon” and “Invisible Ink.”

Before you get too amped up, though, the singer responded to a comment on the post, in which a fan gushed that “L4 SEASON IS UPON US. Lorde is TEASING NEW MUSIC on her Instagram post this is NOT a drill!!!!!!” The comment also claimed that the singer archived her Solar Power cover art from her feed and changed her profile pic.

Lorde — whose Insta feed only contains two pictures at the moment — responded to the comment, writing, “We’re not CLOSE close you guys… i’m just getting so hype n needed to let u know .. start ur excitement on a low flame and bring it up to a gentle simmer .. we building stamina for this chapter.”

In August Lorde also appeared to tease that the L4 era was ramping up, writing on Instagram alongside a post of her swimming in a green-lit pool. “These times are beautiful and they freak me out and there’s so much to tell you,” she said. “No this is not the start of anything out there, just want u to know there’s a light on inside me .. show it to you soon.”

Lorde typically keeps a low-profile between projects, but in September, she opened up to fans in a lengthy emotional letter, revealing that she’s “living with heartbreak again.” The note unveiled what she described as both emotional and physical pain she’s endured recently, explaining, “It’s different but the same. I ache all the time, I forget why and then remember. I’m not trying to hide from the pain, I understand now that pain isn’t something to hide from, that there’s actually great beauty in moving with it. But sometimes I’m sick of being with myself.”

The post did not touch on any news about her current professional endeavors, but instead focused on what she said was the “really inflamed’ status of her body and the long process of learning to listen to those warning signs. “It might seem funny or be easy to forget, but I make records because I need to,” she added. “The songs are spells; a spell to let go of something, a spell to unlock a door. Every time I put something into words just as I see it, set it to the right music, a knot comes loose in me. But it hurts too, confronting the knots.”

For fans always in search of a clue as to her next era, though, it ended on a potentially promising note. “I know I’m gonna look back on this year with fondness and a bit of awe, knowing it was the year that locked everything into place, the year that transitioned me from my childhood working decade to the one that comes next,” she said. “One that even through all this, I’m so excited for. It’s just hard when you’re in it.”

Check out Lorde’s post below.