British singer Chris Rea has died at the age of 74.
Announcing the news on Monday afternoon, a spokesperson confirmed that the musician had died earlier that day following what was described as a “short illness”.
“It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Chris,” the statement said.
“He passed away peacefully in hospital earlier today following a short illness, surrounded by his family.”
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The Middlesborough-born singer was perhaps best known for his festive hit Driving Home For Christmas, first released as a single in 1988, which has gone on to become a festive classic, resurfacing in the charts in the run-up to Christmas each year due to streaming.
","type":"video","meta":{"author":"Chris Rea","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLv5ILj45GGVUKO9e_1d-Fw","cache_age":86400,"description":"The official lyric video for Driving Home For Christmas by Chris Rea. Voted the nation’s favourite Christmas song and considered to be one of the top 10 Christmas singles.\n\n🎄 Watch more Christmas videos here https://RhinoUK.lnk.to/BestChristmasSongs2019AY\n\n🔔 Subscribe to Chris Rea’s channel and ring the bell to turn on notifications https://RhinoUK.lnk.to/SubscribeToChrisReaAY\n\nLyrics:\n\nI’m driving home for Christmas\nOh, I can’t wait to see those faces\nI’m driving home for Christmas, yeah\nWell I’m moving down that line\nAnd it’s been so long\nBut I will be there\nI sing this song\nTo pass the time away\nDriving in my car\nDriving home for Christmas\n\nIt’s gonna take some time\nBut I’ll get there\nTop to toe in tailbacks\nOh, I got red lights all around\nBut soon there’ll be a freeway, yeah\nGet my feet on holy ground\n\nSo I sing for you\nThough you can’t hear me\nWhen I get through\nAnd feel you near me\n(Driving in my car)\nI’m driving home for Christmas\nDriving home for Christmas\nWith a thousand memories\n\nI take a look at the driver 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As well as a love of music, Chris was a car fanatic, with BBC News pointing out that this inspired many of his songs (not least his signature festive hit).
Over the course of his career, Chris had several hits including 1978’s Fool (If You Think It’s Over), 1987’s Let’s Dance and 1988’s On The Beach, as well as the top 10 The Road To Hell.
He also released 25 studio albums, most recently in 2019, and enjoyed back-to-back number ones in 1989 and 1991 with The Road To Hell and Auberge.
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In his lifetime, Chris was nominated three times for the Best British Male prize at the Brit Awards.
In 1994, when he was still in his early 30s, Chris was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, for which he underwent an operation to remove his pancreas, gallbladder and part of his liver. He also suffered a stroke in 2016.
Chris had been married to his wife Joan Lesley since 1968, with the pair sharing two daughters, Josephine and Julia.
This article has been updated to correct a typing error.
The accolade is noteworthy for a number of reasons, not least because XMAS is an Amazon Music exclusive, meaning it’s not available to stream on the most popular platforms like Spotify, Apple Music or Tidal.
Kylie is also celebrating her first UK number one in more than two decades, having last topped the charts in 2003 with Slow.
Kylie Minogue performing at the Jingle Bell Ball earlier this month
David Fisher/Shutterstock for Global
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In response to her first solo Christmas number one – and her eighth overall – the Australian pop superstar enthused: “It’s hard to put into words how special this feels. Being Christmas number one really is the most wonderful gift!
“I’m so thankful to everyone who’s been listening and sharing the love and I’m wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!”
As for the rest of the chart, Wham!’s Last Christmas gets the silver medal for this week at number two, while Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You is at three.
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Rounding off the top five are Brenda Lee’s classic Rockin’ Around The Christmas Is You and Together For Palestine’s new charity single Lullaby.
Kylie is now the only woman to have had number one in four different decades – the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2020s – with only Elvis Presley, Elton John and Queen being able to boast the same.
XMAS is taken from the reissued version of Kylie’s seasonal album Christmas, which was revamped earlier this year in celebration of its 10th anniversary.
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She was previously a featured vocalist on the oft-overlooked second version of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, which was released in 1989 and topped the Christmas chart in the UK that year, though XMAS is her first festive number one as a solo performing.
Sabrina Carpenter has hit out at US president Donald Trump’s administration after the White House used her song to soundtrack a video she has described as “evil and disgusting”.
Responding on the same platform on Tuesday afternoon, the Grammy winner wrote: “This video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”
“This post honestly makes me sick,” she responded. “My music is about love, unity, and spreading positivity – never about division or hate.”
Katy Perry has a message for those speculating that she relied on generative AI to create her latest music video.
Earlier this year, the Grammy nominee unveiled the stand-alone single Bandaids, alongside an accompanying music video which took inspiration from the Final Destination horror films.
In the clip, Katy plays a character who has several brushes with death over its four-minute runtime, including one sequence in which she is seen sawing through a tree-branch she’s sitting on, before falling straight to the ground.
Certain visual elements of the video led some to question if artificial intelligence tech was used to help create it, but Katy set the record straight in a behind-the-scenes Instagram post showing her on set, shared on Tuesday night.
“For those of you that thought this was AI… it wasn’t,” she wrote in the caption. “Cool dude.”
Bandaids is the first new music from Katy since her split from her long-time partner Orlando Bloom, prompting some suggestions that the lyrics were inspired by the break-up.
“It’s not what you did, it’s what you didn’t, you were there, but you weren’t,” the California Gurls star sings in the opening verse, adding: “Got so used to you letting me down, no use trying to send flowers now, telling myself you’ll change, you don’t, Band-Aids over a broken heart.”
The TV and music mogul mentored Liam during his and his One Direction bandmates’ time on The X Factor in 2011, and later signed them to his now-defunct Syco record label for the duration of their time together.
During a new interview with Rolling Stone, Simon was asked about Liam’s death, stating: “When I heard the news, it really hit me. I saw him a year before this happened. He came over to my house. We talked about his son and being a dad.
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“I remember saying, ‘Music is not everything. Don’t let it run your life anymore. Find something else that you are passionate about’.”
Liam Payne pictured in 2017
via Associated Press
Simon continued: “You ask yourself that question: ‘Could I have done anything more? What would’ve happened to Liam if he hadn’t been in the band?’.
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“Having spoken to his mum and dad recently, all they kept telling me was he was so proud of what he had achieved. I wish I could turn back the clock, of course. When I spoke to him that day, I felt really good about him. I thought, ‘Wow, you seem in a really good place’.”
Asked about those who would put the blame on him for the circumstances leading to Liam’s death, the Britain’s Got Talent judge insisted he doesn’t “read any of this stuff because if I did, you would just torture yourself”.
“The idea that you are essentially responsible for somebody’s life, 10 years after you’ve signed someone? You can’t do that,” he added.
If there’s one thing to know about the singer-songwriter Eli, it’s that she loves pop music. Like, really loves it, with an appreciation that stretches right back to her childhood, a knowledge that verges on encyclopaedic and a passion that shines through not just in her music and her visuals, but also when we catch up with her just days before the release of her debut album, Stage Girl.
The first time Eli recalls being stopped in her tracks by pop music was hearing Mariah Carey’s Christmas album as a child in her family home.
“My parents would play that album during the holiday season, and it was one of the first times that, in an insanely impactful way, I was hearing something and I was like, ‘what the fuck is entering my ears right now?’.
“I hate to say this, because people say this about a lot of singers and it’s cliché, but it felt like heaven’s gates were opening. Hearing her, while I was hanging ornaments on the tree, I was like, ‘I need to Shazam this’ – too scared to ask my parents like, ‘hey, who is this?’.”
“I live for Hannah Montana,” Eli enthuses. “Now, later in life, I’m owning the fact that she was such a big influence, because maybe from 15 to 20 or something, I would not want to say that. I would be like, ‘no, I love Björk’, or like, ‘I’m really into cool shit’. But Hannah Montana is cool as fuck.”
Eli has been a pop fan since childhood, which she’s channelled into her much-hyped new album
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Looking back, it’s not too hard to imagine why Eli – growing up as a queer child in suburbanMassachusetts, with what felt like impossible hopes of pursuing her own dreams – would feel an affinity to Miley’s character in the show,an unremarkable schoolgirl by day, who could don a blonde wig and become someone else entirely.
“There were so many layers underneath what the Disney corporation was putting forward,” she says of Hannah Montana. “That is my favourite stuff, when it peeks through. It reminds me of myself, and my little repressed life.
“Until now, I feel like a lot of things were being hidden, that were trying to shine through – things that I love about myself as a human now.”
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Eli’s love for Miley continued as the former child star’s career evolved, and she shed her Disney image on songs like Can’t Be Tamed and during her headline-grabbing Bangerz era.
“Seeing it all unfold, it was so cool to see someone escape this place that may have been a bit repressed, or conservative, or ‘got to be bottled up’, ‘got to appeal to the masses’ and ‘appeal to the conservatives’ or whatever,” she says.
“I don’t want to intellectualise it too much, but it’s freaking incredible. And Hannah’s also a drag queen, and also I’m Trannah Montana – so I live for all of it.”
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There’s an obvious reason Eli’s love of pop runs so deep. For the 25-year-old, it often felt like a lifeline during the more difficult and isolating times she faced in her own adolescence.
“Growing up in the prime MTV music video era, I’m seeing Britney Spears, and I’m thinking ‘who the fuck is this woman?’, and everything I ever wanted is being reflected back at me,” she recalls. “And I’m feeling ashamed about it, and confused about it. I’m also feeling invigorated and excited.”
Eli on the cover of her new album Stage Girl
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For that reason, Eli is particularly upset about how pop has historically been so readily dismissed by so-called “serious” music critics and commentators, which she puts down to the fact it has always been a genre enjoyed by women and the queer community.
“It’s misogyny, and it’s patriarchy,” she states. “And it’s like, fuck your rock band. Fuck your boring dad music. It will never be Britney, it will never be Rihanna, it will never ever be Beyoncé, it will never be Madonna, it will never be the glitz, the glam…”
“And not even the glitz and glam!” Eli continues, interrupting her own train of thought. “They tried to do the glitz and glam with fucking glam rock. It’s such an annoying thing, too, when people value [men embracing ‘glam rock’] as high fucking art. And I’m like… from California Gurls and Teenage Dream, I’m getting double, triple, quadruple artistry in that than any of these boring rock bands.”
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“Not David Bowie,” she quickly points out. “Sorry, David Bowie, it’s not about you. But some of these examples – what? You fuck with them because they’re men, and they can wear their hair all colourful, and wear a jumpsuit, but [women] can’t? Fuck you!”
She laments that this “double standard” even permeates those who love pop, pointing out: “Growing up with Kesha and Rihanna and a lot of others, it was like, ‘they can’t sing’. And that shit got to me. I was like, ’oh can they not sing? What is this?’.
“It’s not good, because it affects everyone. You’re so young and impressionable, and there’s so much internalised misogyny, homophobia, all these horrible fucking things.”
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Because of this, Eli found that she often felt a mixture of emotions about owning up to loving the pop stars she idolised when she was growing up.
Listing key moments like seeing Katy Perry’s debut album cover for the first time at Barnes And Noble, or watching tour clips of Ariana Grande on YouTube, Eli remembers “crying in my bed, feeling like, ‘oh my god, I could never be a beautiful feminine woman who embodies everything that I feel like life is about’”.
“They felt like these incredibly important moments in my life, that for a while I was embarrassed by, because of, probably, a lot of the judgement that comes from a lot of the, like, horrible things that men do…” she admits.
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For that reason, when Eli was putting Stage Girl together, she had in the forefront of her mind that she wanted to create something her younger self would be proud of.
Eli counts pop legends like Katy Perry, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana years among some of her earliest inspirations
“Everything from the titles to the lyrics to the sound choices in my production to the cover art of the singles and the cover art of the album, it’s all about little five-year-old Eli, six-year-old Eli, 12-year-old Eli… what would have grabbed her?” she says. “What would have sucked her into this project and made her feel like, ‘I want to listen to this’?”
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Much has been made of the Y2K aesthetic Eli appears to be leaning into in the sound and visuals for her new music, something many other pop artists have had success with in the last few years.
For Eli, though, there’s a deeper meaning to it all.
“It’s not a Y2K project, it’s not trying to recreate any kind of sound from the past,” she insists. “But it’s using sounds and things that existed at a time when I was not feeling safe, and was feeling dysphoric and very detached and a lot of the hard things that [still] make me [sad] – and reclaiming and to trying to give newer generations a place to escape into.”
Eli affirms that she’s happy she’s reached a place where she feels more comfortable “really showing up as me, and really letting myself exist as I am, even in a time when it’s scary to me”.
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“It’s always, I guess, been scary to some extent,” she says, pausing, before changing tact. “But also fuck that, who cares? Let’s ignore the fact that it’s scary. No it’s not scary, actually, pause! I’m living!!”
At this, she beams a smile and lets out an excited scream.
“Being able to be in my body and showing up to music in such a new and exciting way for myself” is something she suggests “subconsciously unfolded” more and more as work on Stage Girl got underway.
“Everything was falling into place as I made pop songs that were just kind of out of… inauguration [terror],” she explains. “The [2024] election to the inauguration is when it started. It was like, ‘maybe I will be locked up and killed’, I was very scared, and still am scared! But…” she trails off again. “Ugh, we’re back to the scared.”
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“But,” she insists. “I wanted to to lean into the joy, and lean into the glamour, and I think that is the driving force.I need that example, and I needed that example, and I had that example from women. And under the family tree of women, how amazing would it be if I’d had that from a trans woman?”
“It’s a small part of the work to be done,” she concedes. “But I do think art has an important place to [create that space] where a young trans woman or a young queer kid could dive into and could exist in, and – on the surface level, – dress up in a costume and have some fun.
“But under all of that, they could really explore, and unpack, and reclaim things that newer generations will also have to face because unfortunately, things are regressing in some ways. I would love to exist on the joyful side, or exist on the side where I am providing the escapism that I needed.”
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Eli hopes that Stage Girl can be an antidote to some of the fear and anxiety many within the LGBTQ+ community are feeling in the current political climate
And it’s not just her own complicated past she wants to reclaim on Stage Girl.
For the last few years, there’s been something of a reckoning over 2000s pop culture, whether that’s the way certain female pop stars were treated by the media, the overworking that many young musicians faced or the exploitation of contestants on shows like The X Factor and American Idol (Eli notes that she tried out for almost all these shows, but never got anywhere with any of them).
Alongside the Stage Girl album, Eli’s accompanying visuals have centred around a fictitious reality series of the same name, with which she hopes to create a more inclusive and welcoming space out of something that could previously have been associated with bullying and toxicity.
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“There were some lovely, incredible things about seeing somebody who I saw myself in, who was like, ‘I’m working this day job’, or ‘I’m a 16-year-old girl and I’m from a random town and here I am, Jordin Sparks, here to perform’,” she says of her younger years spent watching American Idol. “That is amazing in itself. Her standing up there and showing the endless bounds of talent she has, that is beautiful.
“What’s not beautiful is… I don’t know if I should go into detail. But even watching back Jordin Sparks’ audition, I’m a little off-put by the way these male judges treated her. I mean I’m very off-put, honestly, by a lot of the moments that happened in all of those seasons. There were so many examples.”
Eli’s exposure to those kinds of shows from a young age, and the “abuse and bullying” faced by the contestants even led her to question whether the music industry was for her.
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“I loved singing when I was little,” Eli explains. “I loved singing so much, it felt so joyful. But for the person who grew up watching all those shows – and has now made a project that touches upon talent shows and that kind of thing – there was something so horrifying, that I carried with me for years, watching these judges abuse and bully people, who were showing up with their ambition or with their dreams, and just getting completely made fun of in a very terrifying way.
“There was a period of years, where I was like, ‘well I can’t be a singer, because not only am I going to be bullied by these people and judged and ridiculed, also how do I know how what I’m showing up as, and what I think sounds beautiful, is going to be received?’”
As for Eli’s own pop dreams, they’re something that were established when she was a young child and “never left” her.
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“My parents always tell this story,… we were at some kind of family gathering and I was just jumping on the tables at, like, four years old singing The Wiggles, trying to perform,” she enthuses. “And then I would put on shows for my family. My brother and I thought we were like The Jonas Brothers. And then [came] the internet – freaking singing on the internet, because where else was I gonna do it?
“I went behind my parents’ back because they were a little conservative. They were like, ‘you can’t make a social media account’ – which maybe is kind of fabulous of them, looking back. But I didn’t listen. I was just posting covers with tons of hashtags… I had a business email in my bio, and I was like, ‘I’m going to be a fucking star’.”
“And that never went away. I’m still mentally ill,” she adds with a laugh.
","type":"video","meta":{"author":"Eli","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYX-1Ym1DT6a0jIXVdSI_tg","cache_age":86400,"description":"STAGE GIRL SEASON 25 \n\nListen to \"Girl of Your Dreams\" here – https://eli.lnk.to/goyd\n\nFollow Eli: \nhttps://www.instagram.com/journalofadoll/\nhttps://www.tiktok.com/@journalofadoll\nhttps://www.youtube.com/@documentaryofadoll\nhttps://eli.lnk.to/listen/spotify\nhttps://eli.lnk.to/listen/applemusic\n\nCredits: \nDirected by Ayleen Valentine and Eli \nEdit by Ayleen Valentine and Eli \nColor by Ayleen Valentine \nOlive Ugly as Adrianna Germanotta\nBen Gordon as Kevin Z. \nDaniel Avenue as Cody Sean \nEmory as Sue\n\n#GirlofYourDreams #OfficialVideo #StageGirl","options":{"_cc_load_policy":{"label":"Closed captions","value":false},"_end":{"label":"End on","placeholder":"ex.: 11, 1m10s","value":""},"_start":{"label":"Start from","placeholder":"ex.: 11, 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Anyone who’s engaged with Stage Girl so far will know that Eli’s sense of humour is an important part of her personal brand. Her videos have a home-made, DIY feel that allow her warmth and charm to shine through, and she’s also not afraid to lean into the ridiculous side of things to raise a smile or a laugh.
Eli says it’s “refreshing” to be releasing music at a time when other artists (she specifically lists Sabrina Carpenter, Audrey Hobert, Zara Larsson and Chappell Roan, while also pointing out that early Katy Perry was also an influence on her) are allowing their senses of humour to shine in their artform.
“It’s disarming, and it’s also so inviting,” she says. “We need to laugh!”
However, she admits that injecting humour into her art is also something she’s still “trying to find the balance” with.
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“Obviously laughing is actually the life force, laughter is amazing,” she says. “But it’s also sometimes used to mask up serious things, and I’m trying to make sure I stay away from that.
“I sometimes lean into the humour to take away from my sincerity. Sometimes. So, as much as, yes, in my music there’s always going to be humour, and I also think humour is being explored a lot more in pop music in a fierce fucking way, and I also love being able to have the humour and also be like artistic seriousness and have them exist at the same time and have that be a beautiful collage of it… this past month for a second I was like, ‘OK, wait, I’m being a little too silly’.”
“I just don’t want to make a mockery of myself,” she admits. “I don’t want to be a parody act. I hate that word. Sometimes industry people call the Girl Of Your Dreams music video a parody, and I’m like, ‘baby, no’.”
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Eli points out that her humour has also had its uses while navigating the music industry behind the scenes, too.
“I thought I needed to show up to a big label meeting with all the big dogs, and really wear my business casual whatever or serious suit, serious face,” she shares.
“But how fabulous to be in those rooms [as myself]. And the humour sometimes can be used as a force to be like, ‘guys what the fuck are we doing here? Why are you doing this? Why are you exploiting me? Why are you exploiting tons of artists?’. It also challenges a lot of things that need to be unpacked within our systems, here in America, the crazy capitalistic music industry jargon and legal things that exist.”
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“It needs to be challenged by a chubby 25-year-old trans woman who is just making a mockery of some of this behaviour,” she says. “Girl. Oh my god.”
Having been “working at this forever”, Eli says she’s still a little in disbelief that her debut album is now within reach.
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“I thought I was just going to feel like every other release, like, kind of complex feelings of, like, ‘oh why am I not Beyoncé?’, but also, ’oh my god, amazing that anyone is listening to this’, which is the usual way it goes with the singles,” she admits.
“But I went to bed last night, and I had this, like, tickle in my tummy that felt like before Christmas. I was like, ’oh, it’s release week’. I was so excited.”
“In some ways… that feeling is similar to, like, when Yours Truly came out,” she admits, referring to the debut album by Ariana Grande, another of Eli’s personal idols. “That is kind of the epitome of a perfect pop album to me, a life-changing album.
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“When that came out, I was, like, on the Instagram, Twitter, social media, internet wave with her, I live for a roll-out on the internet. So, the idea of putting out an album? Living the album roll-out fantasy is, like… it’s crazy that it’s happening.”
And for the former Hannah Montana stan, her trademark 2000s-esque fedora has become like her version of the character’s transformative blonde wig, opening the door to her own op dreams.
“It really is,” she agrees, accompanied by another excited scream. “We were working with a stylist a couple of weeks ago, which is, like, a whole new thing for me, because usually it’s just me in my bedroom. And they were like, ‘girl, this fedora’. And I was like, ‘hold on!’.
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“You’ve got to fight for your art! Like, they don’t understand, this fedora represents a lot more than just an ugly hat. Like, girl…”
As soon as Lily Allen announced her return to the pop world with her fifth album West End Girl last week, it was clear the press was going to have a field day.
Lily has been a tabloid fixture since she first burst onto the pop scene more than 20 years ago, and at the height of her fame, was arguably as known for her headline-grabbing antics and personal drama as she was for her frank and confessional songwriting.
In the lead-up to her new album’s release, Lily described the collection as a “mixture of fact and fiction”, telling British Vogue it was “inspired by what went on in the relationship”, with its creation seeing her go through a mix of “confusion, sorrow, grief, helplessness”.
Lily also shared that the album was both written and recorded over an “intense 10-day period” in December 2024, the same month she announced she was taking a break from the spotlight to spend time in a residential facility to rest and focus on her mental health.
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A week after it was announced, West End Girl debuted on Friday, and as predicted, the album is truly jaw-dropping in its candour and frankness. Of course, no one but the two parties involved can really know how much artistic license was employed, but the album paints a picture of a woman whose life slowly starts to unravel when she somewhat hesitantly agrees to open her marriage to a man she’s uprooted her life and moved across an ocean for.
Lily Allen’s latest album West End Girl is quite possibly her most personal to date
Charlie Denis
The sense of dread and paranoia only grows as the story unfolds and our heroine’s husband appears to “move the goalposts” and repeatedly violate the terms of the “arrangement” that he’d set in place, ultimately taking its toll on her until she finds herself struggling to carry on.
“We had an arrangement, be discrete and don’t be blatant, there had to be payment, it had to be with strangers,” she sings on Madeline, an imagined conversation between herself and a woman she discovers her husband has been sleeping with.
On Relapse, Lily opens up about her struggles to hold onto her sobriety at the height of her personal issues, while Tennis sees her opening up about feeling like she is losing the man she loves to someone else.
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“I can’t get my head round how you’ve been playing tennis, if it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous,” she claims.
Then, there’s the much-discussed Pussy Palace, when she comes back to her marital bed to find “sheets pulled off the bed, strewn on the floor, long black hair, probably from the night before”.
“Duane Reade bag with the handles tied, sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside, hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken,” Lily continues, in one of her new album’s most-cited lyrics, before questioning if she’s “looking at a sex addict”.
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Lily Allen as depicted in the striking artwork for her new album West End Girl
Nieves González
Still, as revealing as these lyrics are, it would be remiss to reduce West End Girl to just its more sensationalised moments. For one thing, it’s much smarter than the straightforward “woman scorned” narrative that is inevitably going to be applied to an album with song titles like 4Chan Stan, Monogamummy and the aforementioned Pussy Palace.
As the name West End Girl highlights, this is Lily’s first musical release since she embarked on her career in theatre, appearing in productions like Hedda, The Pillowman and her Olivier-nominated turn in 2:22 A Ghost Story. It’s a fitting name for the album, too, as West End Girl feels like a piece of theatre in itself.
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A collection that’s undoubtedly intended to be enjoyed as a piece of work from start, the album runs roughly chronologically allowing the narrative of the central break-up to play out in real-time, with Lily also taking on numerous different characters (in a spoken-word interlude at the end of the first track, she recreates a phone call in which an unheard party first floats out the idea of an open relationship, while on Madeline, she adopts the titular character’s American accent to assure our protagonist that “lies are not something that I want to get caught up in”).
Early reviews have picked up on the fact that West End Girl bounces from genre to genre, encompassing everything from bossa nova to dancehall and flamenco to drum and bass, all sprinkled with the pure pop Lily best showcased on her second album It’s Not Me It’s You (which, incidentally, is a sentiment the Brit Award winner revisits on closing track Fruityloop).
As well as showing off Lily’s skills as a songwriter, the frequent genre-hopping mirrors the unpredictability and chaos of the album’s central narrative, and a feeling of not knowing what’s next. Meanwhile, some of West End Girl’s more salacious moments are also among its sweetest-sounding – few could have predicted that a song called Pussy Palace would actually be a devastating ballad more akin to Lily cuts like Three or Littlest Things than the claws-out pop she’s often associated with (it’s worth pointing out, too, that Lily has probably never been on in better voice than she is on West End Girl, which is saying something as her vocals have always been one of the more unfairly-underrated parts of her art).
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So, while the sordid details, irreverent lyrics and tea-spilling might be what have many listeners initially hitting play on this new release from Lily, those who stick around will find there’s so much more to enjoy on West End Girl than the surface-level tabloid drama that a release like this will invariably conjure up. The fact is, Lily has set a new bar not just when it comes to her own work, the break-up album in general.
The frontman of the punk rap duo Bob Vylan has insisted he stands by the chant he performed at this year’s Glastonbury that landed the group at the centre of backlash.
Over the summer, the band provided Glastonbury with one of the year’s most talked-about sets, where they made headlines after leading the crowd in chants of “free Palestine” and “death to the IDF”, referring to Israel’s army.
During his first in-depth interview since the controversy arose, Bobby Vylan maintained on The Louis Theroux Podcast that he has no regrets about anything that transpired.
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“If I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes I would do it again,” Bobby insisted. “I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I’m not regretful of it at all.”
He continued: “The subsequent backlash that I’ve faced – it’s minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through.
“If that can be my contribution and if I can have my Palestinian friends and people that I meet from Palestine, that have had to flee, that have lost members in double digits of their family and they can say, ‘yo, your chant, I love it. Or it gave me a breath of fresh air or whatever’ – and I don’t want to overstate the importance of the chant. That’s not what I’m trying to do – but if I have their support, they’re the people that I’m doing it for. They’re the people that I’m being vocal for.
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“[In that case], what is there to regret? Because I’ve upset some right-wing politician, or some right-wing media?”
The vocalist and guitarist went on to say he didn’t anticipate the backlash Bob Vylan’s set would go on to receive, particularly as in the moment, even members of the BBC team said it had gone well.
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“It wasn’t like we came off stage, and everybody was [appalled],” he claimed. “It [was] just normal. We [came] off stage, [it was] normal. Nobody thought anything. Nobody.
“Even staff at the BBC were like ‘That was fantastic! We loved that!’.”
Bobby also had choice words for Damon Albarn of Blur, who previously called Bob Vylan’s chant “one of the most spectacular misfires I’ve seen in my life”, alleging the frontman was “goose-stepping in tennis gear”.
“There’s no space to be hyperbolic in that. Especially given what we were accused of,” Bobby responded. “Being accused of being anti-Semitic, it was disappointing. Because it lacked self-awareness, I think, his response.
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“I just want to say that categorising it as a ‘spectacular misfire’ implies that somehow the politics of the band or our stance on Palestinian liberation is not thought out. And as a more senior, experienced, veteran artist – he’s been in this industry for a long time – I think that there were other ways that he could have handled that question being fielded to him.”
He added: “I take great issue with the phrase ‘goose-stepping’ being used because it’s only used around Nazi Germany. That’s it. And for him to use that language, I think is disgusting. I think his response was disgusting.”
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Shortly after Glastonbury, the members of Bob Vylan said in a joint statement: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine. A machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.”
“The government doesn’t want us to ask why they remain silent in the face of this atrocity. To ask why they aren’t doing more to stop the killing. To feed the starving. The more they talk about Bob Vylan, the less they spend answering for their criminal inaction.”
Not content with dominating the music scene, Taylor Swift is apparently now taking on the art world, with hundreds of her fans making the pilgrimage to a German museum to catch a glimpse of a certain painting.
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Heyser’s painting now lives in Museum Wiesbaden in Germany, and dedicated Swifties have been paying it a visit in their droves much to the surprise of staff in the last few weeks.
“We are having an absolute Ophelia run at the moment and are quite surprised and happy about it,” a museum spokesperson told the Guardian.
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“It’s been a shock, to be honest. We have a colleague who has a friend who is a Swift fan and she noticed the video’s opening scene had a similarity [with the Heyser painting] and we thought, wow, what a coincidence – that’s exciting.”
Fortunately, Taylor’s fans are said to have been “respectful” despite the sudden interest in the painting, and the museum has even organised a reception and guided tour of the artwork to make the most of its newfound popularity.
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Taylor Swift’s video for The Fate Of Ophelia is displayed on a mobile phone in a museum showing a painting by Art Nouveau painter Friedrich Heyser of the character
via Associated Press
The Fate Of Ophelia is the lead single from Taylor’s 12th album The Life Of A Showgirl, which was received with mixed reviews, despite high hopes after the I Knew You Were Trouble singer announced she was reuniting with producers Max Martin and Shellback, who worked on some of her most popular pop albums Red, 1989 and Reputation.
Meanwhile, fans have been busy digging for easter eggs and hidden meanings in Taylor’s new album, with one popular theory suggesting the song Actually Romantic is a diss track directed at fellow popstar Charli XCX.
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One thing we do know is that Taylor won’t be following in Beyoncé and Rihanna’s footsteps and headlining the esteemed Super Bowl halftime show any time soon, after she cleared up widespread rumours that she was in consideration for the gig.
George Michael’s estate has heaped praise on the new Taylor Swift album, which features an interpolation of one of the late singer’s signature hits.
On Friday morning, the Grammy winner unveiled her new album The Life Of A Showgirl, including the song Father Figure.
Earlier this week, the writing credits for this track were revealed to include George’s name, leading many fans to speculate that Taylor’s recording would incorporate the former Wham! star’s song of the same name.
Upon the song’s release, this was confirmed to be the case, with George’s successors posting a statement in support of Taylor’s new album on Instagram.
“We were delighted when Taylor Swift and her team approached us earlier this year about incorporating an interpolation of George Michael’s classic song Father Figure into a brand new song of the same title to be featured on her forthcoming album,” they said. “When we heard the track we had no hesitation in agreeing to this association between two great artists and we know George would have felt the same.”
“A forever thank you goes out to my mentors and friends Max [Martin] and Shellback for helping me paint this self portrait. If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain…”
