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      Demi Lovato Confirms Collaborations With Saweetie and Noah Cyrus for New Album

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      The ‘Cool for the Summer’ hitmaker reveals two more names of her collaborators for upcoming studio installment ‘Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over’.

      Mar 24, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Demi Lovato’s upcoming album features collaborations with Saweetie and Noah Cyrus.

      The 28-year-old singer recently told The New York Times that “Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over” features a tune with Ariana Grande. And now, Demi has told PAPER magazine that the record also includes duets with Saweetie – on “My GFs Are My BFs” – and Noah.

      Ariana provided backing vocals on “Met Him Last Night” while Demi’s previously released Sam Fischer duet, “What Other People Say”, will also be on the LP.

      Over the past couple of days, Demi has been sharing brief preview clips of the instrumentals to the songs on her social media pages.

        See also…

      It’s already known that there is a track called “Melon Cake”, which is about taking back control and is named after the watermelon and fat-free cream she would be given instead of a birthday cake.

      And “California Sober”, which is described as “strummy mid-tempo,” reflects where she is in her sobriety.

      She admitted in a recent interview, “I haven’t been by-the-book sober since the summer of 2019. I realised if I don’t allow myself some wiggle room, I go to the hard (expletive). And that will be the death of me.”

      The follow-up to 2017’s “Tell Me You Love Me” – which is released on 2 April (21) – is set to act as a companion to her upcoming Michael D. Ratner-helmed documentary series, “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil”, which explores aspects that led to the singer’s nearly fatal overdose in 2018, and her “awakenings in the aftermath.”

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      Paul Jackson, Funk Bassist With Herbie Hancock, Dies at 73

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      He was an integral member of Mr. Hancock’s jazz-funk band the Headhunters, whose albums reached millions in the 1970s.Paul Jackson, whose springy and grooving electric bass lines drove much of Herbie Hancock’s pioneering jazz-funk in the 1970s, died on Thursday at a hospital in Japan, where he had lived for more than 30 years. He was 73.Mike Clark, a drummer and lifelong Jackson collaborator, said the cause was sepsis brought on by complications of diabetes.In 1973, inspired by the music of Sly Stone and the Pointer Sisters, and frustrated by many jazz musicians’ habit of dismissing groove-based music offhand, Mr. Hancock started the Headhunters, with Mr. Jackson on bass.“I didn’t want to make a record that combined jazz and funk,” Mr. Hancock remembered in “Possibilities,” his 2014 autobiography, written with Lisa Dickey. “I wanted pure funk.”The band’s first album, “Head Hunters,” became a smash. It was the first jazz LP to sell over a million copies, and it hit No. 13 on the Billboard albums chart. Combining the rich acoustic-electric layering of Mr. Hancock’s previous band, Mwandishi, with a brawny backbeat, the group modeled a new brand of slyly sophisticated funk. And Mr. Jackson’s restless bass playing had everything to do with it.“Paul Jackson was an unusual funk bass player, because he never liked to play the same bass line twice, so during improvised solos he responded to what the other guys played,” Mr. Hancock wrote. “I thought I’d hired a funk bassist, but as I found out later, he had actually started as an upright jazz bass player.”Paul Jerome Jackson Jr. was born on March 28, 1947, in Oakland, Calif., one of four siblings raised by two piano-playing parents, Rosa Emanuel and Paul Sr., in a musical household.His father was a heavyweight boxer and later a contractor who sometimes worked as a security guard for music venues. Paul Sr. befriended a number of famous musicians, including James Brown and the trombonist J.J. Johnson, who sometimes hung out at the family house.When he worked security at concerts, Paul Sr. often brought along his son, and later in life Mr. Jackson would treasure the memory of hearing the Miles Davis Quintet perform at the Blackhawk in San Francisco, with Paul Chambers on bass.“As soon as I heard that bass, man, I said, ‘Oh!’” Mr. Jackson said in an interview with ukvibe.org. “I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to go and try that out, man.’ So I went back to my junior high school music teacher and picked one up. And that’s when I found out what was happening!”Mr. Hancock, foreground, and Mr. Jackson performing on the television show “Soul Train” in 1974. Soul Train, via Getty ImagesLetting his devilish sense of humor peek through, he added: “Playing wood bass, the first thing you do is you grab it and you put in between your legs. You play that E string and it vibrates your adolescence! I said, ‘I like this instrument. I really like this instrument. I’m going to play this.’”He is survived by his wife, Akiko Suzuki, and a sister, Denise Perrier. A previous marriage ended in divorce, and a son from that marriage died.Mr. Jackson was early in his career when he became friends with Mr. Clark. When the Headhunters’ original drummer, Harvey Mason, left the band, Mr. Jackson recommended Mr. Clark for the job.With the friends at the center of their four-piece rhythm section, the Headhunters went on to record three more albums with Mr. Hancock in the mid-1970s — the widely influential “Thrust” (1974), “Man-Child” (1975) and “Flood” (1975), recorded live in Tokyo — followed by two without him, “Survival of the Fittest” (1975) and “Straight from the Gate” (1977), both for Arista.With the Headhunters, Mr. Jackson started to show off his homey, gravel-road voice, first on “God Make Me Funky,” the opening track on “Survival of the Fittest.” A from-the-hip soul shuffle, featuring background vocals from the Pointer Sisters, “God Make Me Funky” — like many Headhunters tunes — would be widely sampled by hip-hop producers, including on classic albums by N.W.A., Eric B. & Rakim, De La Soul and the Fugees.In 1978 Mr. Jackson released a venturesome debut album of his own, “Black Octopus,” for the Eastworld label. In its first track alone, his band glides from free improvisation to briskly swinging jazz to funk.Mr. Jackson in 1998. He became an in-demand side musician, heard on albums by the Pointer Sisters, Santana and the saxophonists Stanley Turrentine and Sonny Rollins.Peter Van Breukelen/RedfernsBy then Mr. Jackson was an in-demand side musician, appearing on recordings by, among others, the Pointer Sisters, the Latin rock bands Santana and Azteca, and the jazz saxophonists Stanley Turrentine and Sonny Rollins.The Headhunters reunited in the late 1990s, releasing “Return of the Headhunters” (1998) with Mr. Hancock as a special guest. Four more albums followed.Speaking to ukvibe.org before a concert in 2013 with a quartet he had formed, Mr. Jackson described performing as a process of attuning oneself to the audience. “I look at the audience,” he said. “The first thing I do during the first song is engage. I figure that if I can get 20 percent of the first row to roll their eyes back in their heads, then I’ve got them.” More

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      A Malcolm X Opera Will Get a Rare Revival in Detroit

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      Michigan Opera Theater announced the return of indoor performances and named an associate artistic director: the star soprano Christine Goerke.When Anthony Davis’s sprawling, genre-blending biographical opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” premiered in 1986 at New York City Opera, it drew a notably diverse audience and was considered a commercial success. Yet it has rarely been revived.A new production is coming, though, as part of Michigan Opera Theater’s 2021-22 season — the first under its new artistic director, Yuval Sharon. Opening in May 2022, “X” will be directed by Robert O’Hara (“Slave Play”) and star the bass-baritone Davóne Tines, who will also be the season’s artist in residence.“My first interview for this job was shortly after the murder of George Floyd,” Sharon, who is also an innovative stage director, said in an interview. “I thought: This is a moment for change. Casting singers of color is really easy, but my focus has been on composers, librettists, conductors. I’m thinking about this season as a statement of principles, and that’s what I hope for going forward.”As part of the season announcement, on Tuesday, Michigan Opera Theater also said that Christine Goerke, a reigning Wagnerian soprano who sang the role of Brünnhilde last fall in “Twilight: Gods” — Sharon’s drive-through abridgment of “Götterdämmerung” in a Detroit parking garage — would join next season as associate artistic director.In an interview, Goerke said that her family would be moving from New Jersey to Detroit, where she has relatives. But, aware that the news of her appointment might surprise fans of her performances, she clarified that she didn’t plan to reduce her performance schedule any time soon.“I’m not stepping away from singing,” she said. “I’m stepping toward what’s going to come eventually.”“I’ve been doing this for 27 years,” she added. “We’re always thinking about what’s next. And I want to be on the other side of the desk. My relationship to opera is not going to end when I’m done singing.”The soprano Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde in “Twilight: Gods” last fall at Michigan Opera Theater, which has named her its associate artistic director.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesAll of the productions next season come with backup plans, as the course of the coronavirus pandemic appears hopeful yet is still uncertain. But what Michigan Opera Theater unveiled on Tuesday puts off a return to live indoor performances at the Detroit Opera House until at least April 2022.Until then, productions will be staged outdoors, or at unconventional venues. The season will open on May 15 with a concert performance of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana,” with Goerke making her role debut as Santuzza. It will be presented at the Meadow Brook Amphitheater in Rochester Hills, Mich., and conducted by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra music director Jader Bignamini.In September, Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s opera “Blue,” about a family in Harlem navigating the American Black experience, will receive a new production, by Kaneza Schaal, following its premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2019; Daniela Candillari will conduct. The location and timing have not yet been determined, but the following production, staged by Sharon, will be “Bliss,” Ragnar Kjartansson’s marathon performance piece that loops the same three minutes from Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” for 12 hours.Michigan Opera Theater will return indoors on Feb. 26 for Robert Xavier Rodríguez and Migdalia Cruz’s “Frida,” conducted by Suzanne Mallare Acton, the company’s assistant music director. It will be a revival of Jose Maria Condemi’s 2015 staging, performed at Music Hall in downtown Detroit.Then the company will return to its theater, the Detroit Opera House, on April 2, for Sharon’s production of “La Bohème,” conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni. The concept is something Sharon has discussed in interviews before: He will present the four acts of Puccini’s opera in reverse.“The reverse order means that we’re starting with death, and ending with love and hope,” he said. “We’ll all be coming from a place of death — at least I hope that this will be post-Covid. And I love that this thing everyone is hearing, the first thing in the theater in two years, is something they’ve never heard.”“X,” in a newly revised score by Davis, will bring the season to a close in May, conducted by Kazem Abdullah. Writing for The New Yorker after Davis won the Pulitzer Prize for Music last year, the musicologist Ryan Ebright noted that the opera had received only one full revival, at Oakland Opera Theater, in 2006. San Francisco Opera once suggested that “X” be staged as part of its inner-city parks performances, and Davis countered by asking whether they would put on Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach” in a park.“I tried to make them realize,” Davis told Ebright, “that it’s about time that America got over thinking of Black art as being what’s done in the playground, or what’s basically the social-service part of culture.” More

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      Phoebe Bridgers, Perfume Genius and Run the Jewels Land Top Nominations at 2021 Libera Awards

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      Beside going head-to-head for Record of the Year at the annual awards from A2IM, the trio are also shortlisted for Video of the Year as well as Best Live/Livestream Act among other nods.

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Singers Phoebe Bridgers and Perfume Genius and rap duo Run the Jewels have landed top nominations for the independent music industry’s 10th annual Libera Awards.

      “Punisher” by Bridgers, “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” by Perfume Genius, and “RTJ4” by Run the Jewels will go head-to-head for Record of the Year, alongside “It Is What It Is” by Thundercat, “Saint Cloud” by Waxahatchee, and “Heaven to a Tortured Mind” by Yves Tumor.

      The top acts are also shortlisted for Video of the Year, with Bridgers’ “Savior Complex”, Perfume Genius’ “Describe”, and “Ooh La La” from Run the Jewels named with FKA twigs’ “Sad Day”, Christine and the Queens’ “La vita nuova (Because Music)”, and “Fruit&Sun” by ford..

      Additionally, they are each nominated for Best Live/Livestream Act.

      Run the Jewels stars Killer Mike and El-P have snagged further mentions for Best Hip-Hop/Rap Record and the A2IM Humanitarian Award, a category which also features hip-hop sensation Megan Thee Stallion, while Bridgers’ “Punisher” album will also compete for Best Alternative Rock Record.

      Other notable nominees include Margo Price (Best Country Record for “That’s How Rumors Get Started”), Arlo Parks (Breakthrough Artist/Release), Lucinda Williams (Best Americana Record for “Good Souls Better Angels”), and Bad Bunny (Best Latin Record for “El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo”).

      The celebration, organized by officials at the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) trade organization, will take place virtually for the second year in a row, due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the winners unveiled on June 17.

      The nominees for the 2021 Libera Awards are:

      Record of the Year

      Phoebe Bridgers – “Punisher” (Dead Oceans)
      Run the Jewels – “RTJ4” (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      Perfume Genius – “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” (Matador Records)
      Yves Tumor – “Heaven to a Tortured Mind” (Warp Records)
      Thundercat – “It Is What It Is” (Brainfeeder)
      Waxahatchee – “Saint Cloud” (Merge Records)

      Video of the Year

      FKA twigs – “Sad Day” (Young Turks)
      Perfume Genius – “Describe” (Matador Records)
      Phoebe Bridgers – “Savior Complex” (Dead Oceans)
      Run the Jewels – “Ooh La La” (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      Christine and the Queens – “La vita nuova” (Because Music)
      ford. – “Fruit&Sun” (Foreign Family Collective)

      Best Live/Livestream Act

      Run the Jewels (Jewel Runners, LLC.)
      Phoebe Bridgers (Dead Oceans)
      Fontaines D.C. (Partisan Records)
      Perfume Genius (Matador Records)
      Arca (XL Recordings)

      Breakthrough Artist/Release (Presented by Ingrooves)

      Arlo Parks (Transgressive/[PIAS])
      Bonny Light Horseman (37d03d)
      Overcoats (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Arlo McKinley (Oh Boy Records)
      Orion Sun (Mom + Pop Music)

      A2IM Humanitarian Award

      Rev. Moose (Marauder/NIVA)
      Killer Mike & El-P of Run the Jewels (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      Megan Thee Stallion (300 Entertainment)
      Paul Redding (Beggars Group)
      Kevin Liles (300 Entertainment)

      Best Alternative Rock Record

      Phoebe Bridgers – “Punisher” (Dead Oceans)
      Soccer Mommy – “Color Theory” (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Car Seat Headrest – “Making a Door Less Open” (Matador Records)
      Lido Pimienta – “Miss Colombia” (Anti- Records)
      Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – “Sideways to New Italy” (Sub Pop Records)

      Best Americana Record

      Bonny Light Horseman – “Bonny Light Horseman” (37d03d)
      Kevin Morby – “Sundowner” (Dead Oceans)
      Calexico – “Seasonal Shift” (Anti- Records)
      Courtney Marie Andrews – “Old Flowers” (Fat Possum Records)
      Lucinda Williams – “Good Souls Better Angels” (Highway 20/Thirty Tigers)

      Best Blues Record

      Bobby Rush – “Rawer Than Raw” (Deep Rush Records/Thirty Tigers)
      Don Bryant – “You Make Me Feel” (Fat Possum Records)
      Robert Cray Band – “That’s What I Heard” (Nozzle Records/Thirty Tigers)
      Fantastic Negrito – “Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?” (Cooking Vinyl Ltd.)
      Sonny Landreth – “Blacktop Run” (Provogue Records)

      Best Classical Record

      Erik Hall – “Music for 18 Musicians (Steve Reich)” (Western Vinyl)
      Paul Moravec – “Sanctuary Road” (Naxos American Classics)
      Echo Collective – “The See Within” (7K!)
      Niklas Paschburg – “Svalbard” (7K!)
      Vitamin String Quartet – “Vitamin String Quartet Performs Lana Del Rey” (CMH Label Group/Vitamin Records)

      Best Country Record

      Margo Price – “That’s How Rumors Get Started” (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Waxahatchee – “Saint Cloud” (Merge Records)
      Colter Wall – “Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs” (La Honda Records/Thirty Tigers)
      Various Artists – “Willie Nelson American Outlaw (Live at Bridgestone Arena/2019)” (Blackbird Productions)
      Jaime Wyatt – “Neon Cross” (New West Records)

      Best Dance/Electronic Record

        See also…

      Caribou – “Suddenly” (Merge Records)
      Arca – “KiCk i” (XL Recordings)
      Ela Minus – “acts of rebellion” (Domino Recording Co.)
      Yaeji – “What We Drew” (XL Recordings)
      Actress – “Karma & Desire” (Ninja Tune)

      Best Folk/Bluegrass Record

      Ben Harper – “Winter Is for Lovers” (Anti- Records)
      Angel Olsen- “Whole New Mess” (Jagjaguwar)
      Gillian Welch – “Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs” (Acony Records)
      Jason Molina – “Eight Gates” (Secretly Canadian)
      Laura Marling – “Song for Our Daughter” (Partisan Records)

      Best Hip-Hop/Rap Record (Presented by Virgin Music)

      Run the Jewels – “RTJ4” (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      clipping. – “Visions of Bodies Being Burned” (Sub Pop Records)
      Little Simz – “Drop 6” (AGE101/AWAL)
      The Koreatown Oddity – “Little Dominiques Nosebleed” (Stones Throw Records)
      Naeem – “Startisha” (37d03d)

      Best Jazz Record (Presented by Qobuz)

      Gil-Scott Heron & Makaya McCraven – “We’re New Again – A Reimagining by Makaya McCraven” (XL Recordings)
      Jeff Parker – “Suite for Max Brown” (International Anthem)
      Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge – “Azymuth JID004” (Jazz Is Dead)
      Christian McBride – “The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons” (Mack Avenue Music Group)
      John Carroll Kirby – “My Garden” (Stones Throw Records)
      Raul Midon – “The Mirror” (Artistry Music)
      Jyoti – “Mama, You Can Bet!” (SomeOthaShip/eOne)

      Best Latin Record

      Bad Bunny – “El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo” (Rimas Entertainment)
      Gabriel Garzon-Montano – “Aguita” (Jagjaguwar in partnership with Stones Throw Records)
      The Mavericks – “En Espanol” (Mono Mundo Recordings/Thirty Tigers)
      Buscabulla – “Regresa” (Ribbon Music)
      Jungle Fire – “Jungle Fire” (Nacional Records)

      Best Metal Record

      Architects – “Animals” (Epitaph Records)
      HUM – “Inlet” (Earth Analog Records)
      Ghostemane – “Anti-Icon” (Blackmage)
      Ingested – “Where Only Gods May Tread” (Unique Leader Records)
      Pyrrhon – “Abscess Time” (Willowtip Records)

      Best Outlier Record (Presented by The Orchard)

      Khruangbin – “Mordechai” (Dead Oceans)
      Oneohtrix Point Never – “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” (Warp Records)
      Yves Tumor – “Heaven to a Tortured Mind” (Warp Records)
      Beverly Glenn-Copeland – “Transmissions” (Transgressive/[PIAS])
      Mary Lattimore – “Silver Ladders” (Ghostly International)
      Moses Sumney – “Græ” (Jagjaguwar)

      Best Punk Record

      IDLES – “Ultra Mono” (Partisan Records)
      Protomartyr – “Ultimate Success Today” (Domino Recording Co.)
      METZ – “Atlas Vending” (Sub Pop Records)
      Viagra Boys – “Common Sense” (YEAR0001/AWAL)
      Porridge Radio – “Every Bad” (Secretly Canadian)

      Best R&B Record

      Thundercat – “It Is What It Is” (Brainfeeder)
      Khruangbin & Leon Bridges – “Texas Sun” (Dead Oceans)
      Robert Glasper – “Better Than I Imagined” (feat. H.E.R. & Meshell Ndegeocello) (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Son Little – “aloha” (Anti- Records)
      Orion Sun – “Hold Space for Me” (Mom + Pop Music)
      Steve Arrington – “Down to the Lowest Terms” (Stones Throw Records)

      Best Rock Record (Presented by Mitchell; Silberberg & Knupp LLP)

      Fontaines D.C. – “A Hero’s Death” (Partisan Records)
      King Krule – “Man Alive!” (True Panther Sounds/Matador)
      Bartees Strange – “Mustang” (Single Memory Music)
      Bob Mould – “Blue Hearts” (Merge Records)
      Caroline Rose – “Superstar” (New West Records)

      Best Spiritual Record

      Sun Ra Arkestra – “Swirling” (STRUT)
      Lecrae – “Restoration” (Reach Records)
      Jon Hopkins – “Singing Bowl (Ascension)” (Domino Recording Co.)
      Thad Cockrell – “If in Case You Feel the Same” (ATO Records)
      Wande – “EXIT” (Reach Records)

      Best World Record (Presented by Redeye Worldwide)

      Antibalas – “Fu Chronicles” (Daptone Records)
      Bebel Gilberto – “Agora” ([PIAS])
      Altin Gun – “Ordunun Dereleri” (ATO Records)
      Songhoy Blues – “Optimisme” (Fat Possum Records)
      Emel – “The Tunis Diaries” (Partisan Records)

      Best Re-Issue

      J Dilla – “Donuts (Jelly Edition)” (Stones Throw Records)
      Pylon – “Pylon Box” (New West Records)
      Hiroshi Yoshimura – “GREEN” (Light In The Attic)
      Pixies – “Bossanova 30th Anniversary Reissue” (4AD)
      Motorhead – “Ace of Spades 40th Anniversary” (Sanctuary Records)
      Elliott Smith – “Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition” (Kill Rock Stars)
      Grandaddy – “The Sophtware Slump 20th Anniversary Collection” (Dangerbird Records)

      Best Sync Usage

      Run the Jewels (Jewel Runners, Inc.) – “Ooh La La” – Season three of Netflix’s “Ozark”
      Black Pumas (ATO Records) “Colors” – Samsung Galaxy S20
      Brittany Howard (ATO Records) “You’ll Never Walk Alone” – Johnnie Walker’s #KeepWalking Campaign
      Blood Orange (Domino Recording Co.) “Tuesday Feeling (Choose to Stay)” – Season four of HBO’s “Insecure”
      IDLES (Partisan Records) “Grounds” – Watch Dogs: Legion

      Creative Packaging

      Soccer Mommy – “Color Theory” limited edition back to school binder (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Black Pumas – “Black Pumas (Deluxe Edition)” – ATO Records
      Perfume Genius – “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” vinyl (Matador Records)
      Pylon – “Pylon Box” [CD Box Set](New West Records)
      IDLES – “Ultra Mono” (Partisan Records)

      Independent Champion (Presented by Merlin)

      Bandcamp
      SoundExchange
      Secretly Distribution
      TuneCore
      The Orchard

      Marketing Genius

      Jewel Runners, LLC – Run the Jewels x Cyberpunk2077 “No Save Point”
      Beggars Group – Supporting Indie Retail #loverecordstores Campaign
      Phoebe Bridgers – “Punisher” (Dead Oceans)
      Light In The Attic – Social Media & Digital Marketing
      Perfume Genius – “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” Campaign (Matador Records)

      Label of the Year (Big) (Presented by ADA)

      Partisan Records
      Sub Pop Records
      Warp Records
      Stones Throw Records
      Ninja Tune

      Label of the Year (Medium)

      Light In The Attic
      Sacred Bones Records
      Matador Records
      Ghostly International
      Rough Trade Records

      Label of the Year (Small) (Presented by Spotify)

      Daptone Records
      Innovative Leisure
      Fire Talk Records
      International Anthem
      Hardly Art
      Oh Boy Records

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      Katy Perry Sets Twitter on Frenzy After Hinting at Possible Taylor Swift Collab

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      WENN/Instar/Avalon

      Katy’s hypothetical question quickly sparks chatter on Twitter with fans of both singers wishing the collaboration will really happen as one fan writes, ‘OMFG GOD MAKE THIS HAPPEN.’

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Katy Perry excited fans when she randomly mentioned about a possible collaboration with fellow singer Taylor Swift. Katy made the comments in the Monday, March 22 episode of “American Idol” where she serves as one of the judges.

      Following a great duet performance by contestants Althea Grace and Camille Lamb who sang Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me”, Katy gushed over them. “That’s what queens do,” she said, before announcing that both of them were sent to the next round.

      The performance apparently was so stunning that it prompted the “Fireworks” hitmaker to think what could it be if she collaborates with the “Cardigan” songstress. “Can you imagine if Taylor and I work together, what we could do?” Katy asked her fellow judges, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie.

        See also…

      The hypothetical question quickly sparked chatter on Twitter with fans of both Katy and Taylor wishing the collaboration would really happen. “please grant our wishes, @taylorswift13 @katyperry,” one fan wrote on Twitter. “why is good morning america and american idol teasing the kaylor (katy x taylor) collab so much im scared,” another person added.

      “OMFG GOD MAKE THIS HAPPEN,” a wishful fan tweeted. “AMERICAN IDOL IF Y’ALL ARE JUST USING THIS TO HYPE UP YOUR SHOW I’M COMING THERE AND IMMA BURN THE WHOLE BUILDING @taylorswift13 and @katyperry please collab,” another comment read.

      Katy and Taylor used to be beefing for years before the singers eventually buried the hatched in 2018, when Katy sent a beautiful note and olive branch to Taylor on opening night of Taylor’s Reputation Stadium Tour. The duo also appeared together in Taylor’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video.

      “When we saw each other, it was just very clear to both of us that everything was different, that we had grown up, and that we had grown past allowing ourselves to be pitted against each other, and it just was very, very clear that we remembered how much we had in common,” Taylor previously shared. “So, both of us have been in a really good place for a while, but I don’t think either of us really knew if we were ever going to talk about it publicly.”

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      Hollywood Vampires Forced to Once Again Scrap European Tour Over COVID-19 Concerns

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      Instagram

      In a released statement, the supergroup formed by Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Joe Perry claims to have been trying to make the summer gigs happen but are hindered by travel restrictions.

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper’s supergroup the Hollywood Vampires have scrapped their summer European tour due to COVID-19 concerns.

      The band had previously rescheduled dates to August and September, but because of safety concerns surrounding the pandemic, the tour has now been canceled.

      A statement reads, “We are beyond disappointed to announce that the Hollywood Vampires must cancel our rescheduled UK/European tour this Summer.”

      “We kept trying to make it happen, but unfortunately due to the uncertainty of COVID-19 travel restrictions, it is just not possible… Thank you for understanding, and we WILL be back rocking with you once the world returns to normal!”

        See also…

      The news comes as Depp is still embroiled in two lawsuits, both linked to allegations he abused his ex-wife Amber Heard – the actor is fighting to overturn a libel ruling against him in the U.K. and land a retrial against The Sun newspaper, and he’s also suing Heard for defamation in the U.S.

      The European tour was originally set to support of the band’s second studio album, “Rise”. When it was first announced, Cooper gushed, “This show has something for everyone. I like to joke that The Vampires are the world’s most expensive bar band, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that this is a real rock band, not just some novelty.”

      “I wouldn’t keep doing it if it weren’t such a great band,” he continued. “Everybody gets along, the musical chemistry is as good as it gets and the show will be the highest energy hard rock shows you will see all year. I never get tired of playing with these guys!”

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      Michael Keaton Blames COVID-19 for Uncertainty of His Return as Batman in ‘The Flash’ More

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      Dua Lipa and Neil Patrick Harris to Make Merry Elton John's 2021 Oscars Pre-Party

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      Amid ongoing COVID concerns, the annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards event is being turned into a one-of-a-kind livestreamed special for the first time.

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Elton John has recruited Dua Lipa and Neil Patrick Harris to help celebrate the 2021 Oscars with a livestreamed pre-party special.

      The rock legend has been hosting his annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards event for the last 29 years, but with ongoing COVID concerns, he has decided to mark the run-up to Hollywood’s big show on 25 April with a virtual countdown bash.

      Actor Harris will co-host the one-hour party with Elton and his husband, producer David Furnish, while Dua will be among the performers, with others set to be announced in the coming weeks.

      “This year, we are bringing our Oscar Party into people’s homes for the first time virtually for an unforgettable evening with David, myself, our dear friend Neil Patrick Harris, and the incredible Dua Lipa plus many fabulous surprise names,” Elton shared in a statement.

      “Now more than ever, we need to ensure that one pandemic does not override another, and we cannot forget the 38 million people living with HIV globally who need our care, love and support so we hope everyone joins us for this special one of a kind Oscar pre-party.”

        See also…

      The event will stream at four different times to line up with each region’s Oscars broadcast, with North America’s taking place live at 7 P.M. ET on April 25 – just before the awards take place in Los Angeles.

      Airings for Europe and Australia and New Zealand will take place on April 26 at 7 P.M. local time, with North American viewers offered a final repeat at 10 P.M. ET.

      Each streaming session will have room for 100,000 attendees, with tickets costing $19.99 (£14).

      For tickets and more information, visit Ticketmaster.

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      SXSW Came Back With Genuine Joy. Here Are 15 of the Best Acts.

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      The festival in Austin, which was canceled last year, returned online with more international performers and music forged during the pandemic.South by Southwest 2020 was abruptly canceled last March as the reality of Covid-19 set in. This year, it returned March 16-20 as SXSW Online, viewed remotely and downscaled to the size of a screen. Its music festival offered prerecorded virtual showcases — from studios, clubs, living rooms, backyards, city streets and odder places — for about 280 bands rather than the 1,000-plus of recent years. Though some showcases vanished after they were webcast, conference attendees can rerun many of them until April 18, and with luck the performances will make their way to a wider public afterward. For once, it’s possible to see nearly all the music at SXSW.The reduction, and the chance of replays, changed the festival’s focus. It shifted the lineup toward bands that could find management or government sponsors, which led to a much higher proportion of international performers. (Corollary: Where is federal, state or urban arts funding?) Nearly two-thirds of the festival’s acts came from abroad, including multiple bands from Britain every night.The online format also invited video ingenuity, mostly but not always low-budget, around the real-time performances that SXSW has always prized. After a year of pandemic isolation, the showcases featured the genuine joy of musicians getting together to perform, even if the audience was just a camera crew, and some showcases revisited clubs that have held out through the pandemic. The sets also unveiled songs that have emerged from a year of quarantines and reassessments. As always, there was music worth discovering, though a brief SXSW set is just a hyperlink to a career. Here, in alphabetical order, are 15 of the best acts from SXSW 2021 Online.After canceling the festival last year, SXSW returned with an online format that invited ingenuity.SXSWALIEN TANGO The singer, guitarist and keyboardist Alberto Gomez leads Alien Tango, a group from Spain that’s based in London; it was part of a Sounds From Spain showcase. Its hopped-up pop-rock songs switched between manic glee — frenzied guitar scrubbing, arpeggiators going full tilt, falsetto la-las — and sardonic crooning to match the humor in Gomez’s English-language lyrics: “You and I are gonna live a thousand years/You and I are gonna have a thousand beers.”CLIPPING The avant-hip-hop group led by the “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs appeared in a showcase selected by NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, and took “tiny” as a video mandate. As Diggs rapped into a thumbnail-size microphone, his collaborators, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, pretended (on split screens) to play miniature versions of (among other things) a laptop, guitar pedals and a windup music box, as the music warped itself from pink noise to music-box tinkle to industrial distortion to techno beats. No simulation was involved in the tour de force that was Diggs’s breakneck, virtually nonstop rapping, with rhymes that raced from free-associative wordplay to nightmare imagery to a grimly prescient 2019 song, “Nothing Is Safe.”Theon Cross performed both solo and with his band, which merged wah-wah funk with Caribbean carnival rhythms.SXSWTHEON CROSS A British project called Jazz re:freshed Outernational booked Abbey Road Studios for a SXSW showcase that included a virtuosic set by the tuba player Theon Cross. He performed with an electronic backing track and, even better, with his band, which merged wah-wah funk with Caribbean carnival rhythms as Cross hopped between holding down the bass lines and joining the band’s brassy melodic crossfire.JON DEE GRAHAM and WILLIAM HARRIES GRAHAM The deep local loyalties of SXSW were summed up in a showcase for the roots-rock songwriter and guitarist Jon Dee Graham — an Austin native with a grizzled voice and a long discography of kindly and hard-won songs — and his son William Harries Graham. They were performing at Austin’s long-running Continental Club, singing rough-hewed roots-rock songs about empathy, acceptance and willed optimism. “All the mistakes I’ve made/They brought me here to you,” Jon Dee Graham sang in his weathered, forthright rasp.HeLING Part of CaoTai Music’s showcase of electronic music from China, HeLing appeared mostly with his back to the camera in a closet-size studio surrounded by synthesizers, keyboards, computer screens and flashing lights. Pecking at controls and turning knobs, he calmly constructed a performance that evolved inexorably from rich, undulating drones through swoops, blips, chirps and hissing beats to dizzying, flat-out techno — and then ended so abruptly it risked whiplash.Jade Jackson, left, and Aubrey Sellers at SXSW Online last week.SXSWJADE JACKSON and AUBRIE SELLERS Two Los Angeles-based roots-rock songwriters with solo careers decided to write together during quarantine, and emerged as a duo. Their video set for SXSW, with a partly masked backup band, was their first public performance. They leaned into electric Southern-rock stomps, shared modal harmonies, and introduced a new waltz about a year without concerts: “I want to go back to the way it was before we had distance between us,” Jackson sang.MILLENNIUM PARADE Live Nation Japan sent SXSW a concert-scale production with the melancholy synth-pop group D.A.N., the cheerfully arrogant rapper-singer Awich (surrounded by dancers) and the full-scale overload of Millennium Parade, a large band led by Daiki Tsuneta with two drummers, plenty of computers and keyboards and multiple lead singers, male and female. It reached back to the bustling, horn-topped R&B of Earth, Wind & Fire, added latter-day sonic heft and occasional rapping, and surrounded itself with a video barrage that rocketed it into a “Blade Runner”/anime futurescape. In “2992,” between a bruising bass line and a fluttering orchestral arrangement, Ermhoi sang, “In this life we live, everyone is made to feel confused” — confused, perhaps, but exhilarated.HARU NEMURI The Japanese songwriter Haru Nemuri started her set, which looked like a one-take video, as if it were going to be soft and gauzy. She was alone in a room and rapping in a near-whisper over a looped choir of women’s voices, with hints of Björk and Meredith Monk. But when she suddenly opened a door and ran upstairs to a rooftop, hard-rock guitars and a drumbeat came blasting in, and her vocals turned to a scream. Her next song was a shouted rap-rocker named “B.A.N.G.” and, after a breathless speech about wanting her music to “create something precious on this planet,” she was twirling and rapping at top speed over a galloping beat and dense organ chords; the song’s title, and chorus hook, was “Riot.”ONIPA Based in Sheffield, England, Onipa drew on music from across Africa. Onipa means “human” in Akan, a language in Ghana, and its music had roots in Ghana, Congo, Senegal, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Algeria, along with hints of the African diaspora. The lyrics were in English, while the grooves were fusions that put momentum first.ANNA B SAVAGE Solo on an electric guitar, the English songwriter Anna B Savage dealt in ruthless, self-lacerating confessionals, delivered in a tremulous, vehement contralto that brought drama to each phrase. Revealing her pain, she exorcised it.Squid’s performance was an inventory of cantankerousness.Thomas JacksonSQUID Headlining a British Music Embassy showcase of hard-nosed post-punk, along with Do Nothing and Yard Act, Squid was an inventory of cantankerousness. Vocals were chanted, yelped, muttered and barked, sometimes overlapping at cross purposes. The guitarist delivered barbed lines and outbursts of scrabbling chords; the keyboardist chose piercing, nagging tones; the band shared dissonant odd-meter vamps or locked into compulsive, motoric repetitions. Songs about feeling thwarted and controlled fought back, furiously.TUYO “I came here to warn you that the future is over and the people are survivors,” Lio of the Brazilian band Tuyo sang in their set, the finale of the superb Flow.Ers Agency Brazil showcase. “No need to be scared, I walk with you in this permanent hell,” she sang. The song, “Sem Mentira” (“Without a Lie”), came out in the middle of 2020. Lio and the band’s other two founders, Lay Soares and Machado, share lead and harmony vocals in songs that laced pealing indie-rock with electronics and undercurrents of Brazilian syncopation, earnest yet always graceful.Vocal Vidas sang about love and the power of music.SXSWVOCAL VIDAS This four-woman vocal group performed on a hotel rooftop in Santiago de Cuba as a tie-in to “Soy Cubana,” a documentary about them that was shown as part of SXSW’s film festival. Vocal Vidas performs Afro-Cuban songs using just voices and percussion, turning themselves into horn and rhythm sections as well as a call-and-response chorus, singing about love and the power of music; their mini-set also included a South African song: “Freedom Is Coming.”The genre-blurring Y2K92 came across as quirky and casual.Flipped Coin KOREAY2K92 Equal parts cute and baffling, Y2K92 is a South Korean duo: the producer Simo and the vocalist Jibin. The tracks were amorphous and genre-blurring: swirling flutes over sparse trap beats; loops of women’s voices over a double-time jungle-ish rush; distant distorted guitar strumming topped by someone’s whisper and strings playing a phrase of “Rhapsody in Blue”; skittering electronic plinks over shifting offbeats. Jibin, wearing a pink dress over green track pants, sang and danced with video projected on the wall behind her, and subtitles appeared as she switched between English and Korean, revealing lyrics like “I’m round and round in a hot tornado sucked in quickly./This is a jungle of silence. Parade of spiral.” It was a 21st-century pop reverie, finely constructed to come across as quirky and casual.YENDRY A Latin showcase performed at S.O.B’s in New York City included the Dominican singer and songwriter Yendry and her band in their first live set since the pandemic began. She moved easily among idioms and languages: Spanish and English, bolero, bachata, reggaeton, merengue. Her singing voice had a wiry core while hinting at the fluttering trills of flamenco; her rapping was a no-nonsense staccato. And her message was that even if she’s vulnerable, a woman has power. More