State Champ Radio Pop
Page: 498
Doja Cat is looking on the bright side after she lost nearly 300,000 followers across social media due to a since-deleted Threads spree blasting her fanbase. “Seeing all these people unfollow me makes me feel like I’ve defeated a large beast that’s been holding me down for so long,” the 27-year-old “Need to Know” singer wrote […]
Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift both have a number of projects in the works at the moment, but re-doing their 2017 collaboration “End Game” for Swift’s imminent Reputation (Taylor’s Version) isn’t one of them. Not yet, anyway.
The ginger-haired pop star revealed in a recent interview on Andy Cohen’s Deep & Shallow SiriusXM podcast that he and Swift still haven’t reunited in the studio to take a second stab at “End Game,” which also originally featured Future and served as the third single from Reputation. “No, I haven’t,” he confirmed. “No. No. But 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is the next one coming out. That’s the next one.”
Swift has released three “Taylor’s Version” records so far, with 1989 set to become the fourth in October. That means that only her self-titled 2006 debut album and Reputation, the final album she released under her former record label Big Machine, are left for her to re-record. And while “End Game” is still on the to-do list, 2021’s Red (Taylor’s Version) did already bring along two Swift-Sheeran duets: “Everything Has Changed (Taylor’s Version)” and “Run,” a previously unreleased From the Vault track.
The “Anti-Hero” singer announced last week that 2014’s 1989 was next in line at her final U.S. leg 1 stop on the Eras Tour — which Sheeran says he’s hopeful he’ll be able to attend once the trek makes its way to Europe. “I would love to go and see Taylor’s show, but we’re all playing on the same dates every single weekend,” the “A Team” musician, whose currently embarked on his record-breaking Mathematics Tour, told Cohen. “I think there’s a chance next year when she’s in the UK…”
Sheeran himself is busy gearing up to release a new record of his own, which he confirmed to Cohen is coming soon. The revelation comes after the Grammy winner’s repeated “Autumn is coming” messages to fans on Instagram, which turned out to be teasers for the fall-themed LP he has in store.
Fans even recently pieced together a possible release date based on numbers printed on the jerseys Sheeran wore at a pair of recent concerts: 9/29, or September 29th. “It’s an album about Autumn and I kind of have no expectations for it,” Sheeran shared, not confirming the project’s release date. “It was the album I was trying to make, and then Subtract happened. So I kind of have finished it over the last year and, yeah, it’s ready to come out, so I’m gonna put it out.”
One thing’s for sure, though: You probably won’t ever catch Sheeran singing the new songs, or any of his music, for that matter, as a headliner at the Super Bowl. “I think it’s an American thing,” he explained. “I think I, I don’t have pizazz… I don’t, you watch Prince, you watch Michael Jackson, you watch Katy Perry, you watch Lady Gaga, you watch Rihanna, you watch Beyoncé. Like all of these amazing performers. I’m just not that, I’m not gonna have dancers on stage.”
Check out clips from Ed Sheeran’s interview with Andy Cohen below:
[embedded content]
[embedded content]
[embedded content]
Barbie summer isn’t over yet — not if Charli XCX has something to say about it. On Wednesday (Aug. 16), the “Beg For You” singer released her long-awaited music video for “Speed Drive,” nearly one month after the theatrical release of Great Gerwig’s Barbie. The English pop star kept the visual somewhat simple, appearing alongside […]
Doja Cat has love in her heart and Hollywood on her mind. In the 27-year-old superstar’s new Harper’s Bazaar cover story — one of three “Icons” issues by the publication this month — she opened up about her transition from being a “serial dater” to falling in love with her partner and shared plans to pause her music career someday in order to pursue acting.
“I love love,” confessed Doja, who’s reportedly dating comedian and Twitch streamer J. Cyrus.
“I’m possibly a serial dater,” she continued. “I definitely have had that in me a little bit. But right now I’m in a different place in my life where I am very committed and very much in love in a different way than before. I think I’ve evolved… I feel like a woman who is coming into her own.”
The “Kiss Me More” artist, who’s threatened to quit music altogether multiple times in the past, went on to share her dreams of taking a break from her current occupation to dip her toes into acting — and possibly stand-up comedy. “[Stand-up] is something I’ve definitely considered,” she told the publication. “I actually went onstage recently with Craig Robinson. He’ll get on a piano and just play songs, but he’ll do it in his own Craig Robinson, funny-ass way.”
“I would love to do movies that I believe in,” Doja continued. “I would have to stop the music for a minute. But I would be down to immerse myself in acting for a certain period of time. I love comedies and action films. I want to learn martial arts and be in a film like John Wick.”
Doja is fresh off the release of her second single of 2023, “Paint The Town Red.” The track debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is expected to appear on the star’s upcoming fourth, as-yet-untitled album, along with June’s “Attention.”
She also touched on what’s to come with her next musical project for the Harper’s Bazaar “Icons” trilogy, which also featured cover stars Paul Mescal and Kendall Jenner. “This new album is more introspective, but I’m not leaning so hard into that to where it becomes boring,” Doja revealed.
“So I want to give stories and bops. It’s a nice mixture of both,” she added. “I think this project is a really fun canvas for me to play with my rap skills and talk about what’s going on in my life. But I’m not abandoning who I was and what I know about pop and singing and that aspect of music.”
See Doja Cat grace the cover of Harper’s Bazaar below:
Mario Sorrenti
After kicking off their Born Pink World Tour last October, K-pop superstars BLACKPINK are set to conclude their worldwide trek with two new shows in Seoul, South Korea. The girl group announced the new gigs, dubbed the tour’s “finale,” on their Instagram page on Wednesday (Aug. 16). Through a meticulously curated series of posts that […]
On the 15th-anniversary deluxe edition of Snowman Melting, Jim “Soni” Sonefeld brought in a very special guest to reimagine the album’s “Sitting in the Green Grass”: his Hootie & the Blowfish bandmate Darius Rucker.
The new version, which premieres below, marks the first time any members of the band have recorded new music together since Hootie & the Blowfish’s 2019 album, Imperfect Circle, and is the first time two members have worked together on music outside of the official band.
The stripped-down song is a lovely testament to escaping from the city and taking time out to breathe in nature as the two band members trade verses. Tiffany Turner, wife of the song’s producer Lee J. Turner, provides backing vocals.
“This [song] seemed almost to be written for [Darius],” Sonefeld told Billboard. “I thought the acoustic, sort of Americana style would suit him well, and he absolutely knocked it out of the park, in my opinion.”
[embedded content]
Furthermore, “I thought ‘Sitting in the Green Grass’ was a nice message that represented a little bit of what Darius has gone through, his double career in rock music and country music, having to balance the busyness of the machine that is the music business with trying to find peace in your life as well,” Sonefeld separately said in a statement.
“Friendships definitely change through decades. Darius and I don’t see each other as much,” he continued. “When you have kids and partners and distance, it’s hard to be the same people you were driving around in a van in the early ’90s. But we’re still family, we’ve been able to watch our kids grow up and see them onto their journeys. And so ‘Sitting in the Green Grass’ I thought was a good fit for Darius. We’re both in a place where our kids are leaving the house, in college or done. It’s not as if we’re going out to pasture, but it is a big moment of time, this season in our lives.”
While the 15th anniversary of Snowman Melting arrives this year, next year marks a big anniversary too: the 30th anniversary of Hootie & the Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View, which catapulted the band into superstardom and has sold more than 21 million copies in the U.S. As to how the band will commemorate, Sonefeld says it’s too soon to tell. “We’ve been talking about how we might approach a tour/recording opportunity as a band,” he says, “But we haven’t come to any conclusions about supporting that anniversary with either a tour, or new music, or both.”
For now, the band’s only plan is to support its Hootie & the Blowfish Foundation with its annual fundraiser, which will take place in the spring.
Snowman Melting, originally released in 2008, was produced and co-written by Francis Dunnery and captured a transitional time for Sonefeld. “Snowman Melting comes out of a time in my life when I was trying to figure out who I was,” Sonefeld said. “A period where a guy who was old enough to know better was still learning life lessons. My life was changing so rapidly – separation, divorce, the band’s last tour and indefinite dormancy for Hootie & the Blowfish. And then a remarriage and a quickly enlarged family. The songs paint a clear picture of what my life looked like in 2006-2008. I can always look back and clearly see the pain, the joy, the transition.
The deluxe edition, out Sept. 29 via Vere Music, also includes a new rendition of “No Reason” with Edwin McCain.
The re-release comes after Sonefeld published his memoir last year, Swimming With the Blowfish: Hootie, Healing and One Hell of a Ride, and a solo EP, Remember Tomorrow.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier to pay attention in class if the subject was your favorite pop star? Imagine taking notes on Taylor Swift lyrics instead of calculus, reviewing flash cards about Kanye West‘s impact on pop culture instead of biology, or taking a quiz on Miley Cyrus‘ fashion statements instead of geography. For […]
Taylor Swift has grown into one of the biggest superstars on the planet — and a new Arizona State University course is digging in on what psychologists can learn from her career. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The course, called Psychology of Taylor Swift — Advanced […]
On her new song “bad idea right?,” Olivia Rodrigo tries to talk herself out of a late-night reunion with her ex — with “talk” being the operative word. The latest taste of Rodrigo’s upcoming sophomore album GUTS (due Sept. 8) dropped last week, and the verses and chorus are almost exclusively spoken, with only a […]
Is new Miley Cyrus music on the way? Signs are pointing to yes, as the “Flowers” singer took to Twitter on Tuesday (Aug. 15) to share a cryptic new teaser that points to a potential new project. “I know I used to be crazy. I know I used to be fun. You say I used […]
