A Los Angeles judge overseeing the long-running conservatorship of Britney Spears’s career and personal life declined on Tuesday to immediately remove the singer’s father as the head of her estate, despite her lawyer’s claim that she could not work with him in charge.“My client has informed me that she is afraid of her father,” Samuel D. Ingham III, Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, told the judge, according to The Associated Press. “She will not perform again if her father is in charge of her career.”“We are really at a crossroads,” Ingham added.The lawyer called Spears, who did not participate in the hearing, a “high-functioning conservatee” and said that she had not spoken to her father, Jamie Spears, in a long time.Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny said she would consider further petitions for Jamie Spears’s removal “down the road.” Penny did, however, name a corporate fiduciary, the Bessemer Trust, as the co-conservator of Spears’s estate, as the singer had requested.Since 2008, after a string of public meltdowns, Spears has lived under a unique conservatorship, sometimes known as a guardianship, a complex legal arrangement typically reserved for the old, ill or infirm. For more than a decade, the pop singer went along quietly with the setup, which controlled her finances, as well as aspects of her day-to-day life, like her mental health care, and where and how she could travel.Spears, 38, who has not released an album since 2016 and has slowed down substantially since her early 2000s peak, announced an “indefinite work hiatus” in January 2019, at the time citing the health of her father, who had suffered a ruptured colon. But in August, she moved for the first time to make substantial changes to the conservatorship in court “to reflect the major changes in her current lifestyle and her stated wishes,” according to her lawyer. She also kept open the possibility that she would seek to get rid of the arrangement altogether.Representatives for Jamie Spears have said that his stewardship of her career protected her from financial ruin, turning her estate into a nearly $60 million business, and likely saved her life. In court filings, Jamie said that his “sole motivation has been his unconditional love for his daughter and a fierce desire to protect her from those trying to take advantage of her.”On Wednesday, Jamie Spears’s lawyer, Vivian Lee Thoreen, said in court that Ingham’s comments about the father-daughter relationship were merely hearsay and should not be admissible.Complicating the family and financial drama has been the ongoing presence of an especially vocal, activist wing of fans calling themselves the #FreeBritney movement, who have sought to portray the conservatorship as a money-hungry means of total control over Spears. For years, the Spears family largely ignored those accusations, but recently, the singer has signaled her appreciation for their support, which many have taken as implicit encouragement.Dozens of #FreeBritney fans were present at the courthouse on Tuesday, the A.P. said, and some sat in on the hearing in the courtroom, despite it taking place over videoconference because of the coronavirus.Also present and vocal at Tuesday’s hearing was a lawyer for Jamie’s ex-wife and Britney’s mother, Lynne Spears, who has not held a role in the conservatorship, but was considered an interested party. She called Britney’s relationship with Jamie “toxic,” and said she believed it was “time to start fresh.” The lawyer added that Jamie had referred to his daughter as “a racehorse who has to be handled like one.”“It has broken Lynne’s heart that things have come to this point,” the lawyer, Gladstone N. Jones, said. More

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The British music awards is criticized for lack of female nominees but the chief defends the nominations and insists they simply reflected a strong 2019 for male acts.
Feb 19, 2020
AceShowbiz – Brit Awards boss Geoff Taylor has hit back at Charli XCX and Anne-Marie’s criticism of the lack of female nominees for this year’s British Album of the Year prize.
Anne-Marie and Charli have both expressed frustration at the lack of women on a shortlist for Tuesday’s February 18, 2020 ceremony that features Dave, Stormzy, Lewis Capaldi, Harry Styles, and Michael Kiwanuka.
However, Geoff, the chief executive at awards organisers the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), points out that three of last year’s five nominees, who included Anne-Marie, were women – although all-male band The 1975 won on the night.
“There’s been a lot of success for male acts in 2019 – and with grime and hip-hop doing very well, they are more male-dominated genres,” he tells Britain’s Music Week magazine. “That is different to 2019.”
“We had a really strong showing from female (nominees) last year with the same (gender) balance in the academy. So last year it was all about Dua Lipa, Anne-Marie, Jorja Smith, Florence (Florence and the Machine), and Jess Glynne.”
The BPI chief went on to say that the nominations simply reflected a strong 2019 for male acts.
“When you look at the Album of the Year nominees, they all released absolutely fantastic records,” he says. “We have an academy that’s made up equally of men and women, and that academy decided that these were the best releases of this particular year. I think we need to respect that.”
Anne-Marie told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper the lack of female representation this year “does p**s me off,” while Charli, who could win the British Female Solo Artist prize at the event at the O2 in London, expressed fury about the lack of gender-balance.
“What the f**k is that about?” she raged. “It’s what everyone has been saying. Women don’t just deserve to be in the female categories, we’re not the subplot, the warm-up act, we’re the main event.”

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The Weeknd’s new album, “After Hours,” lost 69 percent of its sales in its second week out, but in another slow week for new music it still had enough to stay atop the Billboard 200 chart.“After Hours” had the equivalent of 138,000 sales in the United States last week, according to Nielsen — down from its opening of 444,000, which was the biggest debut for any album this year. The latest tally for “After Hours” included 47,000 copies sold as a complete package and 119 million streams (down from 221 million). Its total was helped by the addition of three new songs to the album, as well as what Billboard counts as more than 90 deals on the Weeknd’s website offering copies of the LP with sales of merchandise.For about a month now, the coronavirus epidemic has been changing online listening patterns. The effect is complex, and may be tied to shifts in people’s listening habits. Some genres, like classical and children’s music, are seeing gains, as are older hits, perhaps as listeners seek solace in their favorites.But one change is clear: Streams of the top 200 songs on Spotify have been sliding. Last week, listeners in the United States streamed those songs 530 million times, according to publicly available data from the service. That is the third straight weekly decline in this metric, and its lowest for the entire year. It is even lower than the 554 million recorded for the last week of 2019, a period when listening usually drops. How much lower will it go?Also on this week’s chart, the Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer reached No. 2 with its latest, “Calm,” and Lil Uzi Vert’s hit “Eternal Atake” dropped one spot to No. 3. “Future Nostalgia,” the new album from Dua Lipa, the pop singer who won the Grammy Award for best new artist last year, opened at No. 4, and Pearl Jam’s “Gigaton” opened at No. 5. More

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The ‘Yummy’ hitmaker insists he didn’t mean any disrespect and he, instead, hopes to help spread the awareness of racism and the importance of Black Lives Matter.

Apr 1, 2021

AceShowbiz –
Justin Bieber has answered critics who slammed his decision to feature a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech on his new album, “Justice”, insisting he just wants to continue the Black Lives Matter “conversation.”

The MLK Interlude wasn’t popular with many people, even though the pop star sought permission to use the civil rights icon’s words from the King estate.

And after debuting Justice at the top of the charts, Bieber has tackled the issue head on in a new chat with Kristal Terrell, one of the co-founders of Clubhouse’s Bieber Nation.

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“Being Canadian… they didn’t teach us about Black history,” he said. “It was just not a part of our education system. I think for me, coming from Canada and being uneducated and making insensitive jokes when I was a kid and being insensitive and being honestly just a part of the problem because I just didn’t know better… For me to have this platform to just share this raw moment of Martin Luther King in a time where he knew he was going to die for what he was standing up for (sic).”

Bieber was also criticised for opening the album with a King speech at the beginning of its first track “2 Much”, and for the placement of the MLK Interlude, just before “Die For You”, a love song to his wife.

But Justin insists he made the right choice, “I want to keep growing and learning about just all social injustices and what it looks like for me to be better, what it looks like for my friends to be better,” he added. “And I know I have a long way to go. I love that when people are listening to my album, these conversations are coming up and they’re like, ‘Well, how is he going from Martin Luther King into a love song?’ ”

“I’m not trying to make a connection between me and Martin Luther King. That’s why I never try to talk about social injustice or I didn’t want to be the one to talk about it, because I just have so much more learning to do. But I have this man who was ready to die and what he believed to be true. If I’m not willing to face some sort of ridicule or judgment of people wondering my motives or whatever that is, for me, it was a no brainer.”

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On Valentine’s Day in 1970, David Mancuso hosted a private party called Love Saves the Day in his loft at 647 Broadway in New York, a few blocks north of Houston Street. He was an audio obsessive with a voracious appetite for spiritual sounds and a profound sense of community, and the event was an opportunity to bring together friends in a setting unfettered by commercial demands, or the restrictions of their outside lives.Mancuso, who died in November 2016 at 72, didn’t produce music on his own and didn’t think of himself as a D.J., preferring the term “musical host.” Yet the mix of unorthodox records played at what became known as the Loft, and the inclusive ethos that he and his devotees espoused, became cornerstones for dance music. And as one of the founders of the New York Record Pool — an organization that helped distribute promotional vinyl to D.J.s — in 1975, Mancuso was at the forefront of asserting the D.J.’s role as commercial and critical clairvoyant. The responses of the dancers at the Loft could reverberate throughout the city and beyond, reshaping the American pop charts.Parties at the Loft were structured according to three “bardos,” a reference to the phases of an LSD trip — note the first party’s initials — which Timothy Leary took from “The Tibetan Book of the Dead.” First came “the calm,” giving way to “the circus” and finally “the re-entry.” Mancuso didn’t blend or beat match songs together, instead presenting them in their unadulterated form. But the Loft was still experienced as a succession of intertwined stories, each chapter crackling with an improvisatory energy and emotional heft. A single night might include jazz fusion, Broadway musicals, searing Latin funk, sumptuous disco, eerie psychedelia, exploratory African rhythms, shrieking post-punk and much more.The eclectic selection of music wasn’t the only diversity embraced at the Loft. Riding the momentum of the 1960s’ progressive politics — and with the Stonewall uprising fresh in the minds of many attendees — the parties were far more mixed than most New York night life, and Mancuso’s dance floor became a comforting, transformative space that aspired to erase the racial or sexual oppression experienced elsewhere. Free to dance however and with whomever they wanted, the Loft was where many people found their chosen families.The Loft has moved locations several times, but is still going strong with three parties a year in New York. To mark the 50th anniversary of that first Love Saves the Day event, here are 12 classics and comparatively unheralded gems that were heard at different periods on the Loft dance floor over the party’s lifetime.Chuck Mangione featuring Esther Satterfield, ‘Land of Make Believe’ (A&M, 1973)Many songs have lyrical messages that can be taken as mission statements for the Loft, but few match the impact of this live recording. Accompanied by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Chuck Mangione’s luscious arrangement surges beneath Esther Satterfield’s soaring vocals, as she references “The Wizard of Oz” and Martin Luther King Jr. The lyric “Where everything is fun, forever” reflected “the spirit everyone wanted to tap into” when entering the Loft, said Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy in an interview. (Murphy, one of the party’s current musical hosts and a longtime collaborator with Mancuso, helped release two compilations of music from the Loft via the London label Nuphonic in 1999 and 2000.) “You were entering the safe land of make believe — you could be a child, be free.”Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, ‘Missa Luba’ (Philips, 1958)This recording — of a Latin Mass in Congolese musical styles featuring a children’s choir under the helm of a Franciscan friar named Guido Haazen — wasn’t released in the United States until 1963. Mancuso had been hosting unofficial parties as early as 1966, and this album appealed to his affection both for music with an explicit spiritual message and for African percussion.Andwella, ‘Hold On to Your Mind’ (Reflection, 1970)Although the Loft is typically associated with disco, its audiences’ tastes were omnivorous, extending to throbbing, piano-inflected jams such as this one by the Northern Irish trio Andwella. With a sinuous guitar and a ringing, short-lived break, it’s one of several harder-edge slices of psych-rock that Mancuso played in the party’s early days, alongside less sinister outings like Brian Auger and the Trinity’s “Listen Here.”Nina Simone, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ (RCA/Victor, 1971)A stark, sibilant cover with abundant harp and tape hiss, Nina Simone’s take on the Beatles was a mainstay of early mornings (and afternoons) at Loft parties. Some attendees remember it always being the last song of the night during the years at 647 Broadway, the Loft’s first location, and it’s easy to imagine the regulars floating comfortably back to their lives on the strength of the hopeful outro.War, ‘City, Country, City’ (United Artists, 1972)The twangy harmonica on “City, Country, City,” the track that closes out the first side of War’s 1972 album “The World Is a Ghetto,” might seem an unlikely candidate for dance floor impact. But the spiraling intensity of the saxophone, percussion and organ build toward a powerful climax. “Everybody downstairs knew it from the first chord and was running upstairs to it,” the New York D.J. and Body & Soul co-founder Danny Krivit said in a 2018 oral history of the Loft on Red Bull Music Academy Daily. “When I went upstairs and I saw this explosion as it got to this busy part of the song, it was something I had never experienced in a club before that.”Manu Dibango, ‘Soul Makossa’ (Fiesta/Atlantic, 1972)The inescapable refrain “mamako-mamasa-mako makossa” may never have infiltrated American popular music without the Loft. Mancuso originally uncovered this track in the racks of a record store in Brooklyn, and its addictive, memorable chorus and bleating saxophone earned a passionate response at Loft parties. In 1972, Atlantic licensed and rereleased the original version in America, where it reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and gave the Cameroonian Dibango one of the first mainstream disco hits. A number of citations and interpolations, legal and covert, have kept it in the bloodstream of American music ever since.MFSB, ‘Love Is the Message’ (Philadelphia International, 1973)This passionate fanfare and call to action has likely been heard at every Loft party since its initial release. It’s arguably Gamble & Huff’s most direct songwriting statement, and undoubtedly what many Loft devotees would play strangers to try to communicate the party’s philosophies, musical or otherwise.Blackbyrds, ‘Walking in Rhythm’ (Fantasy, 1975)The Blackbyrds’ plaintive, twinkling lament for a distant lover, with its repetitions of “walking in rhythm/moving in sound,” captured the essence of the freedom found at the Loft. “The music would not stay at one level all evening long,” Ernesto Green, who has attended the Loft since 1975 and now helps organize the parties, said in an interview. “This was one of the ones played as the music started getting more intense, to start you up on the climb.”Ashford & Simpson, ‘Stay Free’ (Warner Bros., 1979)The ecstatic interplay of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson was a regular presence on the New York club circuit from the time they first made their name as songwriters, and their own recorded music had a seismic impact, too. “Stay Free” is a slinky tour de force, with orchestral accents bouncing toward an instrumental peak. There are few sneakier and sadder kiss-offs than the duo’s melisma on the word “lonely,” which threatens to spin the song out of control before the rubber-band bass snaps back.Steve Miller Band, ‘Macho City (Long Version)’ (Capitol, 1981)“David never cut records or stopped them in the middle,” Green said. “He always felt the musician took their time to create this music, and they should be credited by hearing the entire recording played.” This was the case even with the 16-plus-minute version of “Macho City,” a slow-burning parody of American military intervention set in a psychedelic key. A riot of alien effects, dub affectations, skronking synths and an irresistibly funky bass line, it’s a laugh-out-loud indictment of a political establishment whose work could feel anathema to the Loft’s message of love and unity.Code 718, ‘Equinox (Heavenly Club Mix)’ (Strictly Rhythm, 1992)Released on an iconic house label, executive produced by the undersung Gladys Pizarro, written by the New York club mainstay Danny Tenaglia, and featuring piano by the future Hillary Clinton political adviser Peter Daou, “Equinox” samples the circular burble of Manuel Göttsching’s prog-ambient classic “E2-E4” and a terse Grace Jones vocal. It was a hit at the time when the Loft was operating in the East Village, on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C, and is one of the many songs that reflects the party’s engagement with contemporary sounds.Karma, ‘High Priestess’ (Groove Attack Productions, 1995)“High Priestess,” a bit of Latin-inflected soulful house with ballooning bass, was the first-ever attempt by Lars Dorsch, the store manager of Groove Attack record shop in Cologne, Germany, to make music. But he wasn’t aware that the song had been getting play at the Loft — as well as other New York parties like Body & Soul — until 1998, when the licensing request came in for the song to be included on Nuphonic’s indelible compilation of Loft classics. “I was quite familiar with David’s legacy at that point already, and was totally blown away by the fact that he played it,” Dorsch said in an interview. “I’m still floored thinking that we shared a track list with music of that caliber.” More