State Champ Radio Pop
Page: 510
On July 27, 1983, Madonna released Madonna, a self-titled debut that introduced the world to a Michigan-born, New York City-based woman who would become one of the most influential pop stars of all time. The album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 190, eventually hitting No. 8 and producing three top 20 singles on the […]
Just hours after the news broke that Sinead O’Connor had passed at age 56, P!nk found the most fitting way to pay tribute to the powerful, pioneering vocalist whose calling card was emotional poignancy and fierce independence.
On the first U.S. date of her neon-lit, fittingly titled Summer Carnival tour, the acrobatic singer stopped spinning for a few minutes, turned down the bright lights and acknowledged that the world had lost one of its most cherished voices, one that had meant everything to teenage Alicia Moore back before the world knew her power.
“When I was a little girl, my mom grew up in Atlantic City and I used to go down to the Ocean City Boardwalk with my ten dollars and I would make a demo tape… I would make a little cassette tape and imagine it was my demo for the record company,” P!nk told the crowd while standing center stage with piano player Jason Chapman as a hush came over the sold-out baseball stadium.
“And it would always be either ‘Greatest Love of All’ by Whitney Houston or ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ by Sinead O’Connor. So in honor of Sinead, and in honor of my very, very talented friend Brandi Carlile I asked her if she would come out here and sing this song with me.”
The last-minute addition to the tightly scripted and choreographed show featuring the headliner and her opening act was a tall hill to climb at best. O’Connor’s famous rendition of the Prince-penned ballad is one of modern music’s most moving, gut-wrenching love laments. More subdued than the equally untouchable Houston song, “Nothing Compares” is perhaps even more of a vocal challenge because of an implicit, rending emotion that’s impossible to fake.
The heartache in O’Connor’s version, however, could not have been in better hands than P!nk and Carlile’s, however, as the two friends hugged midstage and proceeded to put on a masterclass in impromptu song interpretation. (Keeping in mind, however, that there is plenty of YouTube evidence of both women having sung the song before, so they clearly know its contours.)
“It’s been seven hours and 15 days/ Since you took your love away/ I go out every night and sleep all day/ Since you took your love away,” P!nk sang gently over minimal piano and keyboard accompaniment, her voice floating crisply over the rapt audience.
With tears visible on a number of fans on the stadium’s packed floor, Carlile took over, crooning, “I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant/ But nothing, I said nothing can take away these blues,” the signature crack in her voice adding an extra layer of sorrow on what was already a very sad day for music.
Matching her grit, P!nk leaned into the second verse, wailing, “where did I go wrong?” before they came together to power through the verse, “I went to the doctor and guess what he told me/ Guess what he told me/ He said, ‘Girl you better try to have fun no matter what you do’/ But he’s a fool.”
Carlile then let out a high, lonesome wail as both women appeared to get in their feelings about the Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 ballad that turned O’Connor into a global superstar, for good and ill. Neither made the song about them. But what made the song theirs in that moment was the clear conviction that it meant something special to both women, and to all of us, a gift they honored by sharing it with their most adoring fans as the raw feelings were still very fresh.
“You never know what people are going through,” P!nk said after the performance. “It’s not that hard to give people a smile… we’re all learning that lesson together now.”
It was a wise and painful message on what was an otherwise joyous night. And without saying it, they ended by looking deeply into each other’s eyes and beautifully singing the words that will now cement O’Connor’s memory in our hearts and minds forever: “Nothing compares to you.”
Watch video of the performance below.
[embedded content]
J-pop idol Shinjiro Atae is ready to open up to the world about his sexuality.
During a free fan event at Line Cube Shibuya in Tokyo on Wednesday (July 26), the Kyoto-born singer officially came out to his fans as a gay man. Speaking to a crowd of approximately 2,000 fans according to a press release, Atae spoke at length about his decision to come out and what he hoped it meant for fans struggling with a similar process.
Atae then took to his Instagram to announce the news to the rest of his fans who were unable to attend the event. “To all my fans, today was a very special day for me,” he wrote. “For years, I struggled to accept a part of myself … but now, after all I have been through, I finally have the courage to open up to you about something. I am a gay man.”
Acknowledging that for a long time he “could not even say it” to himself, the J-pop singer said that he eventually accepted who he was and decided to share his truth with the world. “I’ve come to realize it is better, both for me, and for the people I care about, including my fans, to live life authentically than to live a life never accepting who I truly am,” he wrote.
Atae first debuted as a founding member of the popular J-pop group AAA, which debuted in 2005 and went on hiatus in 2021. Since joining the group, Atae also began his own solo music career, which has garnered him over 11,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
To celebrate his coming out, Atae released a new song and music video titled “Into the Light.” Throughout the English track, Atae details living life as different versions of himself before stepping into the titular light, telling his fans that “You opened the door/ So I could open my heart.”
Along with revealing that he would be releasing the full footage of his speech from the fan event on Thursday (July 27), Atae closed his Instagram post by thanking his fans for their unwavering support throughout his career. “When I think of my work in the entertainment industry and the many things for which I am grateful, it is my relationship with my fans that first comes to mind,” he wrote. I thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for standing beside me over the years. I’d also like to thank my family, friends, staff members and my fellow AAA members for providing me their full support throughout this process.”
Check out Shinjiro Atae’s full Instagram post, as well as his music video for “Into the Light,” below:
[embedded content]
Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. That’s all Travis Kelce has left since his attempts to slip Taylor Swift his digits went awry.
On the latest episode of his New Heights podcast, The Kansas City Chiefs tight end recounted his foiled plan to begin wooing the “Karma” singer.
The football star attended Swift’s Eras Tour stop at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium earlier this month, one of many shows on the record-breaking worldwide trek. Known for showstopping moments like an ever-rotating vault of surprise songs, special guests, and music video debuts, the Eras Tour has also found a defining element in fans’ friendship bracelets. Inspired by the lyric “So make the friendship bracelets / Take the moment and taste it” from Midnight’s “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” fans have been trading homemade jewelry at each Eras Tour stop.
“I was disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs that she sings,” Kelce said, “so I was a little butt-hurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her.”
Further explaining the phenomenon to his brother, Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, the 2023 Super Bowl champ said, “If you’re up on Taylor Swift concerts, there are friendship bracelets. I received a bunch of them being there, but I wanted to give Taylor Swift one with my number on it.” Of course, to give Taylor Swift a bracelet, one would have to see Taylor Swift in person first, which is a bit hard to do when a tour has no scheduled meet-and-greets.
Evidently, Kelce’s plan was not successful. “She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal,” he quipped. In response, his brother teased, “She probably just hasn’t gotten over the Super Bowl yet. She’s a big Eagles fan, so maybe she just made something up and didn’t want to talk to you.” Seeing that T-Swift is a Pennsylvania native, he might not be far off.
Check out a clip of the Kelce brothers’ Taylor Swift convo here:
Sinead O’Connor has died at age 56, according to The Irish Times.Billboard has reached out to her reps.
With her bald head, piercing eyes and fierce bearing, O’Connor burst onto the music scene in the late 1980s, serving as a rebuke to the parade of sexist tropes that dominated the era’s hair metal scene. She gave notice of her bold path away from the typical packaging of female pop stars from the very first notes of her 1987 debut, The Lion and the Cobra, which she recorded while pregnant at 20 with her first child.
A mix of driving rock (“Mandinka”), alluring hip-hop (“I Want Your (Hands on Me)” and intense ballads (“Jackie”), O’Connor emerged as a fully formed force to be reckoned with, her powerful voice a haunting howl full of pain and mystery one moment, a steely suit of armor at others. Not concerned with the typical trappings of pop stardom, O’Connor’s public face — the shaved head, slouchy wardrobe and curious mix of dance, rock, folk, Irish balladry and devotional tropes — was an instant hit on alternative radio, as well as dance clubs, where remixes of “Mandinka” and “I Want Your Hands (On Me)” became staples for many party DJs.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Though her debut brought raves from both sides of the Atlantic, it was 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got that served as both O’Connor’s career high and turning point. With the run-away success of her gripping cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” as well as the chilling video for the track, the singer was thrust into the international spotlight, a place she seemed uneasy with at times. The album laid bare her personal struggles and feelings of loss in a striking manner, weaving the words from a Frank O’Connor poem with Celtic melodies and a sample of the James Brown “Funky Drummer” beat on the eerie “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.”
In between, she hits pop highs (“The Emperor’s New Clothes”) amid personal turmoil and touches on wrenching real-life drama (“The Last Day of our Acquaintance”) with massive beats, while mixing in a six-minute a cappella dirge and a prescient elegy for the police-involved death of a black London youth.
[embedded content]
Even as her star was rising, O’Connor refused to play the music industry game, controversially defending the sometimes bloody tactics of the Irish Republican Army in interviews, lashing out at longtime cheerleaders U2 and refusing to perform and refusing to perform on Saturday Night Live in May 1990 alongside comedian Andrew Dice Clay. She earned the ire of Frank Sinatra a few months later when she refused to perform at a New Jersey venue when she found out the national anthem would play before she took the stage. The move caused some stations to pull her music from airwaves and resulted in Sinatra threatening to “kick her in the a–.”
The controversy continued two years later, when O’Connor was again booked on SNL, where she performed an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War” and, in a surprise to producers, stared into the camera at song’s end and tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and said “fight the real enemy” as a protest against the Catholic church’s cover-up of child abuse by clergy; O’Connor would later say she she was abused as a child.
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born on Dec. 8, 1966, in Glenageary, County Dublin, Ireland, to Sean and Marie O’Connor, who split when the singer was 8 years old. She claimed over the years that she and her two siblings were physically abused when they went to live with their mother after the divorce. Her teenage years were spent getting sent to reform schools and boarding schools due to bouts of shoplifting and other bad behavior and her discovery at 15 by the drummer for the Irish band Tua Nua, who heard her singing Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen” at a wedding.
O’Connor studied voice and piano at Dublin’s College of Music before moving to London in the early 1980s, where she collaborated with U2 guitarist the Edge on a song for the soundtrack to 1986’s The Captive.
Her career was marked by an unpredictability, including the pop standards album she released in 1992, Am I Not Your Girl?, which failed to reach the success of its predecessors and began a slow commercial decline. She laid low for several years after the SNL incident — and another one shortly after in which she was roundly booed at a Bob Dylan tribute concert in New York — returning in 1994 with the underappreciated Universal Mother solid, which featured a moving Nirvana cover (“All Apologies”) and several songs that laid brutally bare her fierce drive to protect children from dangerous mothers.
[embedded content]
The years that followed included stories about her retirement, a permanent ban on talking to the press, a return to her Irish folk roots on 200’s Faith and Courage and 2002’s Sean-Nós Nua, a detour into covers of reggae songs on 2005’s Throw Down Your Arms and 2007’s two-disc Theology collection. O’Connor’s final album, 2014’s I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, was widely praised for its return to her honest, emotionally charged songwriting and unique pop craft.
O’Connor had been very open about her mental health issues, which include a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, later amended to PTSD, including depression and suicidal tendencies, canceling a tour in 2012 after a doctor ordered her to get some rest following what was described as a “very serious breakdown.”
In January 2022, the singer suffered a massive loss when her 17-year-old son, Shane, was found dead in Ireland after she reported him missing to authorities. The singer-songwriter tweeted that he “the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God. May he rest in peace and may no one follow his example. My baby, I love you so much. Please be at peace.”
She is survived by three children.
Calling all Swifties who use Spotify — this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The streaming service has unveiled a brand new interactive experience designed to let users officially decide their five favorite Taylor Swift albums, also known in the community as: “Eras.” To try out Spotify’s new “My Top 5: Taylor Swift’s Eras” […]
It’s undeniable that BLACKPINK is one of the biggest bands in the world, past and present. And in a new interview, Jisoo — one fourth of the K-pop girl group — was candid about the impact she and fellow members Lisa, Rosé and Jennie have had on their genre. Sitting down with Elle Korea for […]
Troye Sivan was having some fun last month when he made a playful plea to his followers to help him track down his celebrity crush. While teasing his thumping new single, “Rush,” Sivan posted a thirst trap fan edit of Stray Kids singer Hyunjin in which the 23-year-old pop star was depicted dancing in slow […]
BTS’ Jimin is now the proud owner of a six-stringed slice of pop-culture history — Ken’s guitar from the Barbie movie.
Ryan Gosling, who stars as Ken in the Margot Robbie-led hit, had reached out to the K-pop star with the “humble offering” of the instrument, an admission that Jimin had captured the Western Ken look first, and did it “best.”
The Hollywood star has delivered on his promise.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Jimin is now in receipt of the customized guitar, which is emblazoned with Ken’s name and a horse image, and got a workout in the film as Gosling performed a cover of Matchbox Twenty’s “Push”.
In “Hi Ryan and hi Ken, it’s Jimin. Congrats on your big release,” Jimin comments in a new message, from one Ken to another. “My fans are excited to see your video, so thank you so much. I could see that you look great in my outfit. Thank you for this guitar. I really love it and I look forward to watching Barbie. Go, Barbie!”
The video is accompanied with the caption, “Thanks for having my outfit in #BarbieTheMovie! You rocked it, Ken.”
Earlier, in a video message shared prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Gosling explained, “I notice that your ‘Permission to Dance’ outfit is the same as my Ken outfit in the upcoming movie Barbie. I have to give it to you — you wore it first. You definitely wore it best and there’s an unspoken Ken code that if you bite another Ken’s style, you have to give them your most prized possession.” He added, “I hope you’ll accept Ken’s guitar as my humble offering. Besides, Ken doesn’t really play anyway, so…it’ll be much better in your hands.”
Barbie has been a global hit, clocking one of the biggest openings since the pandemic and scoring the top opening of the year to date. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film took $162 million at the North American box office over July 21-23, smashing the opening-weekend record for a female director.
Speaking with the The New York Times, the director admitted she was “at a loss for words” after seeing the film’s success. “It’s been amazing to walk around and see people in pink,” she added. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine something like this.”
Jimin has more than enough star power of his own. In April, he led the Billboard Artist 100 chart, thanks to the release of his new solo album, FACE (via BigHit Music/Geffen/Interscope Records), and its breakout track, “Like Crazy.”
That single blasted to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Jimin’s first solo No. 1 outside BTS, which has scored six chart leaders.
Camila Cabello has been enjoying a relaxing vacation in Puerto Rico, and the 26-year-old singer took to Instagram on Monday (July 24) to share a glimpse into her tropical getaway. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the photo dump, Cabello is seen swimming naked in a […]
