The singer told the crowd that one of the things that inspired her to play the venue was the memory of the only time she was able to sit and enjoy a Parton show at the Hollywood Bowl.
The 29-year-old singer, who is currently on his global tour after releasing his third album 'Chuck Timely & the Hourglass,' is embracing his new era with "sunglasses and this weird pathetic drunk guy character."
The DOJ and FTC filed a complaint against a San Diego-based ticket broker, claiming the company had violated the BOTS Act by using thousands of accounts to obtain millions of tickets to resell at considerable markups.
Why do great ideas and works of art sometimes get forgotten? And why do some get revived? These are among the questions explored by musician, writer and visual artist David Byrne in his new book, "Sleeping Beauties." Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown recently joined him in Brooklyn for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.
At Muse Music’s Jaipur retreat, Hindustani masters stayed steadfast to their genre while Carnatic experimenters and practitioners of Sufi pop embraced the non-conformist and entertained the nouveau patron.
A campanha da azeitona no Alentejo já cemeçou e as previsões apontam para uma produção superior à do ano passado, bem como para azeites de boa qualidade, de acordo com a reportagem da SIC.
Na zona de Évora, há produtores que começam agora a colher as primeiras azeitonas. Um pouco mais cedo do que é habitual, mas já se prevê uma boa campanha.
Mais quantidade e mais qualidade, é o que se espera desta campanha que ainda agora começou na região do Alentejo e que vai prolongar-se pelos próximos meses.
Os custos de produção aumentam, mas o preço do azeite está a descer. Um desafio que coloca em risco algumas explorações.
A previsão é, no entanto, de uma produção de grande qualidade, que irá reforçar o reconhecimento do azeite português e a sua posição nos mercados nacionais e internacionais.
Portuguese priest-turned-DJ Father Guilherme has made his debut in the world’s top 100 DJs, becoming the only Portuguese artist to feature in the 2026 ranking published by British electronic music
Artists pour their souls into recording studios, but success can create a peculiar kind of regret when one song comes to overshadow everything else they have accomplished. Fans may cherish a familiar anthem forever, while the musician who recorded it must sing the same words night after night, answer the same questions, and watch one […]
Audiophiles are sometimes described in terms reserved for cults; a 1956 New Yorker story, referenced in Colin Vanderburg’s exceptional tour of extreme listening, refers to “a remarkably articulate group of zealots” and “an almost mystical reverence for sound.” Vanderburg travels among the believers, tracing the decades-long promise of “consumer audio innovations” to their technological apex: the New York International Audio Show, where audiophiles sample six-figure sound systems in pursuit of a signal as pure as the world they already inhabit.
More than anything, I have spent long passages of this earthly life sitting on my ass, listening. I listen to music, but what I hear is sound. Texture, timbre, and tone; clarity and detail; space and depth. And I hear, even more acutely, what thwarts sound. Shrill treble, muddled bass — for me these are worse than peeves. They offend hearing. They diminish the human sensorium. Earbuds repulse me; laptop speakers grate; a tabletop Bluetooth unit is a kind of vandalism.
The word audiophile — etymologically, one who “loves to hear” — has a wine-sipping pretension that I hate, but sometimes an ugly shoe fits. Like similarly suffixed psychopathologies, the term suggests a state of warped dependence, of inbent sublimation. I didn’t set out to be this way, but neither have I ever sought help. My symptoms are apparent, their causes obscure. What, after all, do we love when we love sound?
In the year of the 250th anniversary of US independence, the bipartisan US Semiquincentennial Commission released “America’s Soundtrack: The Sound of 250 Years.” Perhaps unsurprisingly – because the initiative was planned over the course of a decade with the support of corporations like Amazon, Oracle, and Palantir – the playlist is a romantic ode to the most paternalistic and militaristic sides of the United States.
However, activists have pointed out that there are “Two Americas at 250.” In other words, there is a working-class history and culture that directly contradicts the imperialist project of the billionaire class. Therefore, we must study another soundtrack: one based on the struggles, desires, and traditions of the people. One person that represents this soundtrack is “America’s favorite blues man,” 34-year-old Buffalo Nicols.
Music characterized Carl Nichols’s upbringing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Though not surrounded by musicians, he always had the sounds of jazz on the radio, his mother‘s music collection, his older brother’s hip-hop, and his older sisters, R&B, punk, and metal. This was the context in which he taught himself to play his sister’s guitar at the age of 12.
Performing with bands throughout high school, Carl found kinship among the West African community. As he played a cheap banjo along with a friend on the instrument known as the xalam, he embraced music as an opportunity to learn about other cultures. Traveling through countries like Senegal, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine in his early 20s and learning their sonic traditions, motivated him to study Black American music with the same rigor.
Performers like Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie left a lasting mark on him, specifically relating to communal and commercial music. Similarly, the writing of Etheridge Knight, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka helped him understand the blues as “a living thing” rather than a set of important names and dates. He said, “There’s always been this connection between activism and folk music because I think trying to exist as an artist in America has been a political thing.”
His 2025 song “Belly of the Beast“ is one example of this because it asks about the responsibility which domestic victims of US imperialism have for protecting victims abroad. Written during the heightened media coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the song calls attention to the relationship between Black Americans and Palestinians. He conceptualized the song following a period of political education defined by a collection of Malcolm X speeches and Régis Debray’s 1967 “Revolution in the Revolution?”
I live in the belly of the beast
Though I only meant to look into his mouth
It was not opportunity but chains he used to capture me
And every day I’ve tried to get back out
While these lines of the chorus speak from the individual or first person perspective, Nichols uses them to describe a common experience.This is why the song ends with the collective “we live in the belly of the beast.” The song is neither nihilistic or romantic in its allusion to topics like police killings, occupation and ethnic cleansing. Rather, in verse four, the singer puts his hope for change in the hands of the people, saying “we cannot win ’till we get organized.”
Some, who mistake folk music as apolitical, took offense to this song. They attack him in social media comments, direct messages, and hate mail. In the spirit of the blues, Nichols said he laughs at their assumption that they can hurt him. The same minority of listeners attacked him for his 2025 song “Ice Age Blues.”
He wrote the song in response to the second Trump administration’s escalation of ICE terror. Specifically, on the widespread sense of surprise that law-enforcement would use deadly force against the US residents. He said that it reminded him of the same realization among new activists during the 2020 uprising for George Floyd. However, Nichols shows that he was not shocked by the contradiction – he ends the song by asking,
You think all that money is for war fought abroad?
They won’t hesitate to kill you in your own backyard.
They’d be happy to kill you in your own backyard.
Nichols said that political finger pointing will not help identify the common perpetrator of a shared oppression. Instead, he urges readers to understand the state and how it works against the people; to study the basis of its patterns and changes. By doing so, he calls listeners attention to the basis of repression rather than simply what accelerates it.
Similarly, he recommends the new generation of blues people to “return to the root.” That is, to disregard stereotypes about their Black art and study those – like Zora Neal Hurston – who preserved long-standing traditions. By reclaiming their legacy, he said that culture workers can affect consciousness on a mass level.
I know no artist really wants to be a role model or to be representing an entire people but the reality is that Black culture is such a fragile, delicate and important thing that we have to be more mindful of how we share it and how we interact with it.
Buffalo Nichols is currently touring through states like West Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, and Minnesota.
Mary Austin was the woman behind Freddie Mercury, quietly supporting him for decades, from their intense early romance to the long years they remained close friends after accepting that he was gay. The vast legacy he left her—his home, much of his fortune, and his most personal belongings—has been a mixed blessing that she has spent her life trying to navigate with loyalty and discretion. As Simon Hattenstone explores Austin’s life in this interview, the unresolved emotion of the shared past with Mercury is still palpable.
Did the piano change him? “Yes, there was much more purposeful energy. He would sit at the piano, play the odd key, hum a bit and he looked very happy. Transported.” By now they were spending less time together. When she was working at Biba, he would often be sleeping. When she returned home, he would be preparing for a gig.
They’d been living together for four years when Mercury said he had something to tell her. He struggled to get the words out. He said, ‘I think I’m bisexual.’ I said ‘No, Freddie, I think you’re gay.’” He didn’t argue. Was that a huge upset? “No, it was a huge relief, because I wasn’t sure whether we were travelling in the same direction any more. Some time earlier I saw a dress and thought, that would be a really nice wedding dress. I asked Freddie, is it worth me buying it, and he looked at me and shook his head. So I knew from there on …”
'It is with great shock and deep sadness that we have learned of the passing of our Miss Austria 2024, Lucia Sisic,' Mission Austria announced on its official Facebook page.
'It is with great shock and deep sadness that we have learned of the passing of our Miss Austria 2024, Lucia Sisic,' Mission Austria announced on its official Facebook page.
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