All posts tagged: music industry

Taylor Swift fans head to Europe for cheaper Eras Tour tickets

Taylor Swift fans head to Europe for cheaper Eras Tour tickets

Published by Sam

Thousands of ride-or-die Taylor Swift fans who missed out on her U.S. concert tour last year or didn’t want to buy exorbitantly priced tickets to see her again found an out-of-the-way solution: Fly to Europe.  The pop star is scheduled to kick off the 18-city Europe leg of her record-setting Eras Tour in Paris on Thursday, and planeloads of Swifties plan to follow Miss Americana across the pond in the coming weeks. The arena where Swift is appearing said Americans bought 20% of the tickets for her four sold-out shows. Stockholm, the tour’s next stop, expects about 10,000 concertgoers from the U.S.  A concert might sound like an odd raison d’etre for visiting a foreign country, especially when fans can watch the Eras Tour from home via the documentary now streaming on Disney+. Yet online travel company Expedia says continent-hopping by Swift’s devotees is part of a larger trend it dubbed “tour tourism” while observing a pattern that emerged during Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour.  Some North American fans who plan to fly overseas for the …

Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated record ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ drops

Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated record ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ drops

Published by Sam

Taylor Swift released her highly anticipated record “The Tortured Poets Department” on Friday — the 11th studio album from the megastar who is already having a blockbuster year. “New album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Out now,” she wrote on her Instagram account, ending the announcement with a heart emoji. Two hours later she posted: “It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.” Swift had revealed the album’s release at the Grammys in February, a night that saw the 34-year-old billionaire win a record-breaking fourth Album of the Year prize. With the drop of “Tortured Poets” in the United States at midnight Eastern time (0400 GMT Friday), the artist could be on track for a fifth. Taylor Swift, shown here performing as part of her Eras World Tour in Sydney, …

Just Enough Blues | FT

Just Enough Blues | FT

Published by skeptic

Many hardworking artists toil at the lowest rungs of their profession their entire careers, and many great successes would have stayed there had it not been for a lucky break. For the British pop band Wham!, that break was a slot on the Top 40 show Top of the Pops in the fall of 1982. Their second single, “Young Guns (Go for It!),” had stalled at forty-two on the charts, but when another band couldn’t make their booking, “we got this miracle phone call out of the blue.” The duo met in 1975 when they were both twelve, after Andrew Ridgeley raised his hand on the first day of school and volunteered to look after the new boy, Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, whom Ridgeley promptly renamed “Yog.” Born in England, the descendant of Cypriot shepherds, Yog was, by his own description, a “very awkward, slightly porky, very strange-looking bloke . . . and quite shy.” Both boys had English mothers and immigrant fathers; Ridgeley’s father was an Alexandrian Jew who left Egypt at the time of the Suez Crisis.  In 1979 Ridgeley, …

Why So Many People Believe Taylor Swift Is an Op

Why So Many People Believe Taylor Swift Is an Op

Published by skeptic

You’d have to go back to the peak years of Bob Dylan’s cultural relevance, when one critic cum stalker started searching the songwriter’s garbage for clues about his lyrics, to find a musician who attracts as many amateur code breakers as Taylor Swift does. Swift has fed the frenzy by declaring that her songs, her liner notes, her social-media posts—basically everything around her—might have hidden meanings embedded in them. As she told The Washington Post in 2022, she and her fans have “descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.” That scavenger-hunt mentality can lead would-be decoders in directions the singer might not prefer, as with the “Gaylors” who search for signals that Swift is secretly queer. Now a different subculture is getting in on the act: A chunk of the GOP has been conjuring alleged evidence that Swift is a deep-state psy-op, and that maybe—we’re just asking questions here—the NFL is in on it. This theory got its first burst of mainstream attention last month, when Fox’s Jesse Watters aired …

Paris gets ‘Rue David Bowie’ on 77th birthday of late rock icon

Paris gets ‘Rue David Bowie’ on 77th birthday of late rock icon

Published by Sam

The city of Paris is immortalizing late British music icon David Bowie by naming a street after him in the city’s southeast on what would have been his 77th birthday on Monday.   Issued on: 08/01/2024 – 16:38 1 min The inauguration of rue David Bowie was first announced in 2020 by Jérôme Coumet, mayor of the 13th arrondissement. Bowie died of cancer in 2016. The new street, situated between two modern office buildings, including the headquarters of news publications Le Monde and L’Obs, opens onto avenue Pierre-Mendes-France and will connect to the future bridge linking the avenue to boulevard de l’Hopital, near Austerlitz train station and Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital.  The inauguration features a concert and an exhibit. The development reflects the ongoing transformation of the district, which now celebrates the legacy of Bowie along with other notable figures. The tribute celebrates Bowie’s first Paris performance in 1965 — his first outside the United Kingdom — and his lasting impact on music, fashion and culture. Bowie’s influence on music, with hits like “Space Oddity” and “Let’s Dance,” …

The day the music died! The most touching songs written in tribute to late celebrities

The day the music died! The most touching songs written in tribute to late celebrities

Published by Sam

‘The Endless River’ Pink Floyd musician and co-founder Richard Wright died from lung cancer aged 56 in 2008 and the band released an album, ‘The Endless River’, as a tribute six years later. Guitarist David Gilmour told Uncut magazine: “There’s a bit of Rick speaking I pinched. Rick loved sailing. I miss his ability and out common intuition, or telepathy, which is pretty obvious on ‘The Endless River’ album. It’s a great shame Rick wasn’t around to help out on this one.”” ©BANG Showbiz Source link

Britney Spears firmly declares she will ‘never return to music industry’ | US | News

Britney Spears firmly declares she will ‘never return to music industry’ | US | News

Published by skeptic

Britney Spears has said she will “never return to the music industry” as she shut down speculation that she is working on a new album. The 42-year-old pop superstar made the statement on social media in response to US outlets claiming songwriters were gearing up to pen songs for a 10th studio album. Spears put the rumours to bed, writing on Instagram: “Just so we’re clear most of the news is trash!!! “They keep saying I’m turning to random people to do a new album… I will never return to the music industry!!!” She also said that when she writes now she does so “for fun” or for other artists, revealing that she has written more than 20 songs in the past two years for various people. Spears added: “I’m a ghostwriter and I honestly enjoy it that way!!!” The singer-songwriter also put an end to speculation that her new memoir, The Woman In Me, was released without her approval, which she said was “far from the truth”. The book received rave reviews, with critics …

The year’s best movies, TV shows, and books

The year’s best movies, TV shows, and books

Published by skeptic

Spend time with our writers’ picks this weekend. Universal Pictures December 29, 2023, 5 PM ET This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This was the year of the sold-out stadium tour, double-feature mania, celebrity memoirs (and documentaries), and superhero fatigue. It was also the year of the Hollywood strike, controversy over book bans, and the rise of AI music. The Atlantic’s Culture team looked back on 2023 and compiled lists of the year’s best movies, TV shows, albums, books, and podcasts. Spend some time with their picks this weekend. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Best of 2023 Dusty Deen for The Atlantic The 10 Best Films of 2023 By David Sims “I opted for a mix of old and new, small and giant … from a modest YouTube documentary to a near-billion-dollar-grossing dramatic extravaganza. The business is still figuring itself out, …

How Taylor Swift built her music empire | News

Published by Sam

This has been a huge year for Taylor Swift. The Eras tour, which is expected to gross about $1.4bn, is a journey through all her albums, from her early country records to her more recent chart-topping pop classics. “It’s like being bludgeoned with delight,” the Guardian’s deputy music editor Laura Snapes tells Hannah Moore about her experience at an Eras concert in Los Angeles. “The screaming was crazy, it was the loudest thing I have ever heard.” Since her first album in 2006, Swift has been breaking records and growing her fanbase. Laura explains how she’s achieved this phenomenal success through her songwriting, PR decisions, business acumen and her relationship with her fans. “I have been a Swifty since 2007,” says Melissa Rogers, who has seen Swift perform live seven times. Melissa tells Hannah how much Swift’s music meant to her when she worked as a nurse. “I would constantly listen to Taylor’s music before I would go into work and if I felt myself getting overwhelmed during work, I would sing her songs in …