Add to playlist: Kashus Culpepper's ‘southern sounds' and the week's best new tracks
From AlabamaRecommended if you like Luke Combs, Tony Joe White, Charles BradleyUp next Supporting Leon Bridges in the US
Kashus Culpepper's story has something of the Hollywood movie about it. A former firefighter who went on to enlist in the US Navy, he only picked up a guitar five years ago to entertain his fellow troops when they were locked down in barracks during the pandemic. On his return to the US, he began working for a cement company while posting clips of covers and his own songs to social media: one attracted the attention of Samuel L Jackson, who reposted it to his 9 million followers. Within a few months, Culpepper had both a record deal and a co-sign from another navy veteran, country star Zach Bryan. By the end of last year, Culpepper was performing at Nashville's legendary Grand Ole Opry.
It's obvious why his career has been fast-tracked. The handful of songs he's released so far take a smart, often witty route through the classic Nashville topics of romantic despair, boozing and the struggles of everyday life, performed in a style he classifies as 'southern sounds', based on 'the music in the cars on the freeway, in the restaurants and in the churches' in his home town of Alexander City, Alabama. More traditional and rootsy than the current wave of country-pop, it flits between country, blues, soul, folk and southern rock, occasionally over the course of a single song, as on 2024's Out of My Mind. Most importantly, Culpepper has an incredible voice: raw, vulnerable, the product of an upbringing in a Baptist church. He's referred to his approach to performance as 'singing like it's my last day on Earth', but his future looks assured. Alexis Petridis
SL – Paranoia
The balaclava'd south London MC has such endearingly musical inflections to his raps – quizzical then crestfallen – even when slowly rolling through a brooding, smoke-filled track like this.
Durand Jones & the Indications – Flower Moon
The classic soul revivalists' drummer Aaron Frazer takes the lead vocal here, with doo-wop levels of harmonised romance over a funk backing as crisp yet soft as a hearthside rug.
Zara Larsson – Pretty Ugly
Reminiscent of glorious high-street-nightclub trash such as Hollaback Girl, Like a G6 and Christina Aguilera's Dirty, the Swede's return has the dizzy buzz of a Wednesday-evening round of shots.
Full of Hell – Knight's Oath
Relatively clean and accessible business here from the returning grindcore band – which is to say that despite the big, bright riffing, it's still got its fair share of hellacious screaming.
Kara-Lis Coverdale – Freedom
Trumpet lines wobble in heat haze and French horns sound hopeful notes through an almost tropically lush wall of strings and synthesised sound: another imaginative work by the Montreal composer.
Quadeca – Monday
Once a YouTuber and video-game commentator, then a rapper and now a singer-songwriter, Quadeca tries to get through a rocky relationship patch over Sufjan-leaning cellos, flutes and more.
Annea Lockwood – On Fractured Ground
The octogenarian NZ composer visited the peace walls that divided zones in Belfast, 'playing' them with hands, leaves and stones: history shivers through this nape-prickling work.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Rachel Keenan
Subscribe to the Guardian's rolling Add to Playlist selections on Spotify.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Metro
7 days ago
- Metro
Script for Top Gun 3 ‘already in the bag' after Tom Cruise's blockbuster sequel
The script for Top Gun three has already been 'cracked', according to scriptwriter and producer Christopher McQuarrie. The original hit the big screen in 1986, following Tom Cruise as cocky naval aviator Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell' as he trains at the US Navy's Fighter Weapons School alongside pal 'Goose' (Anthony Edwards) and rival 'Iceman' (Val Kilmer). In the 2022 follow-up, titled Top Gun: Maverick, the 62-year-old's character was drawn back to the fighter pilot academy to train a new set of graduates for a special assignment. It was a huge success and grossed more than $1.4billion at the global box office but, while there has been speculation of another sequel on the horizon, no one has given concrete answers about Maverick's return. Thankfully, Christopher – who worked with Tom on the Mission: Impossible franchise – has finally shared a much-needed update during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, revealing that the idea for the plot has already been figured out. When host Josh Horowitz questioned if the third installment was 'harder to crack' than the second movie, he didn't skip a beat, replying: 'No. It's already in the bag. I already know what it is, it wasn't hard. 'I thought it would be, and that's a good place to go from, as you walk into the room going, 'Come on, what are we going to do?' 'Ehren Kruger [Maverick co-writer] pitched something and I went, 'Hmm actually…'. We had one conversation about it, and the framework is there so no, it's not hard to crack.' 'The truth of the matter is, none of these are hard to crack … why these movies are made the way they are, it's not the action, it's not even the level of intensity or the scope and scale of the action, the engineering around the action – it's none of these things. It's the emotion.' The blockbuster was set more than three decades after the events of the first film, and focused on Maverick returning to the Top Gun training school to teach the latest batch of graduates, including Rooster (Miles Teller) and Hangman (Glen Powell). Shedding light on how they finally settled on the plot for the wildly successful second movie, Christopher added: 'Getting to that place, finding the right emotional balance, wherein you have a conflict between these two characters… 'They kept saying, 'We want more scenes with them together', because they wanted to recreate Maverick and Goose, which, of course, we understood. Your desire is to rush right to what the audience wants. The minute their relationship is resolved, the movie is over. 'Tom, and I inherently understood that balance, and everyone else around us was was pushing for what they wanted in the movie, in the micro, and Tom and I were focused entirely on the macro.' His comments come just days after Tom was asked about the future of Maverick and co, as well as the other projects he has on his plate. More Trending Popping up on the Today show in Australia, he told the hosts: 'Yeah, we're thinking and talking about many different stories and what could we do and what's possible. 'It took me 35 years to figure out Top Gun: Maverick, so all of these things we're working on, we're discussing Days of Thunder and Top Gun: Maverick. 'There's numerous other films that we're actively working on right now. I'm always shooting a film, prepping a film, posting a film. 'I just finished a film with Alejandro Iñárritu too, who did The Revenant, that was an extraordinary experience and [Christopher McQuarrie] and I are always working on several different films.' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you.
Daily Mail
25-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Chilling mystery of the missing teenage Scarface actress whose final months were consumed by paranoia someone was 'coming to get her' after witnessing something 'distressing' at a Hollywood wrap party
As the 1980s got into full swing and Tammy Lynn Leppert turned 18, the model and actress who starred alongside Al Pacino had the world at her feet. But the Florida-born starlet's rise to fame was abruptly stopped in 1983 when she vanished from Cocoa Beach. More than four decades on, no sign has ever been recovered of Tammy Lynn, while her loved ones remain haunted by chilling details of her final months before her disappearance which were marred by paranoia. In the years since she vanished, Tammy Lynn's friends have revealed the actress had become 'fearful' and was a 'different person' after witnessing something distressing at a cast party on the set of Spring Break, a sex comedy film directed by Sean S. Cunningham. So intense was her paranoia that when Tammy's big break came with a small role in gangster movie Scarface, in which she played a bikini-clad girl who distracted a lookout car, she hysterically ran off set in tears after watching the cast act out a murder scene. After the incident, she quit the film altogether and moved back home with her mother. While film fans may not remember Tammy Lynn's fledgling career, they will likely recognise the bikini body used to promote Spring Break, which is thought to be her torso and legs. Tammy Lynn Leppert began modeling in beauty pageants at the age of four, taking home 280 crowns from the 300 pageants she entered. Throughout her teenage years she worked primarily as a model before dipping her toes into acting shortly before she went missing. And her star was rising fast after landing the role of a boxer in the 1983 comedy Spring Break - before a fateful cast party after filming had wrapped changed the course of her life forever. Tammy Lynn attended the party unaccompanied but, according to her friend Wing Flannagan, she came home 'a different person'. She refused to divulge exactly what she saw on the night of the party, but kept insisting 'they' would come after her. She also refused to eat or drink out of fear that she would be poisoned. In the weeks following her departure from Scarface, Tammy Lynn's mental health began to decline even further. She reportedly smashed all the windows of her house with a baseball bat when she was locked out, in a frantic panic to get back in. Her mother, Linda Curtis, who was a theatrical and modeling agent and guided Tammy's career, saw the change in her daughter and has since revealed she expressed fears that someone was trying to kill her. Linda recalled: 'Then she said Mom, what would you say if I told you somebody was trying to kill me. I just took a deep breath, and I said, 'do you think somebody's trying to kill you, Tammy?' She said, 'yes.' Linda checked her daughter into a mental health facility, where an evaluation revealed that Tammy was not abusing drugs or alcohol. It was also determined Tammy did not suffer from any significant mental illness and she was released after a 72-hour observation. She insisted that Tammy should report her safety concerns to the police, however even though she did go to the police she did not mention that she felt her life was in danger. For two weeks Tammy went into isolation at home, staying in her room and getting people to test her food to see if it had been poisoned. A frightened Linda was unsure if her daughter's fears were paranoid delusions or real concerns. She was adamantly insisting that she had 'seen something awful, that she was not supposed to see' at the Spring Break cast party. However things took an even more bizarre turn when Tammy left her house without brushing her hair, which her mother found to be out of character, to meet a male friend, Keith Roberts. Tammy and Keith drove to the local beach where, according to Detective Jim Skragg of the Cocoa Beach, Florida Police Department, they started to argue. Keith told authorities he left Tammy in the car park at the Glass Bank building in Cocoa Beach, near an Exxon gas station on State Road A1A, which was about five miles from her house. According to Detective Skragg, it was the last time she would be seen alive. When her daughter never returned home, Linda made a missing person report to police on July 11, 1983. According to the police report, she was wearing a blue shirt with floral appliques, a blue denim skirt, carrying a gray purse and wearing flip-flops. In the days after her disappearance, local newspaper Florida Today ran a front page article with the headline Have You Seen Tammy-Lynn? Keith gave an interview in which he said Tammy Lynn had called him and asked him to pick her up on the day she went missing. She asked to borrow $300 and they fought because he would not drive her to a friend's home in Fort Lauderdale. He said: 'At that point, she said, 'Let me out! Let me out!' So I just said 'OK, whatever you want' and that's the last time I saw her.' After getting out of the car Tammy Lynn walked a short distance to a local petrol station where she made three frantic telephone calls to her aunt Ginger Kolsch, who never answered the phone. Tammy Lynn's sister Suzanne previously said she thought Tammy might have been three months pregnant at the time of her disappearance but this was never confirmed. Meanwhile her friends told police that they thought she had run away because she was unhappy with her home life. Linda claimed she didn't believe her daughter 'ran away,' as she had made plans to go to Hollywood for three months to shoot films. This theory strengthened when shortly after Tammy's disappeared, the Cocoa Beach police received a call from an anonymous woman claiming to know Tammy, who said she was 'alive and well'. She insisted that the actress had chosen to abandon her life and was attending school to become a nurse. Some other rumours that circulated suggested that Tammy might have been a victim of a serial killer. Vampire rapist John Crutchley, suspected of killing 30 women, moved to Brevard County in 1983. However in 2002, Crutchley committed suicide while in prison. A second suspect was Christopher Bernard Wilder, a roaming serial killer who had killed at least 12 women between California and Florida in early 1984. Wilder lured his victims by telling them that he was a photographer for a magazine. He was killed by police when he resisted arrest. Linda passed away on October 4, 1995 at the age of 54, never knowing what had happened to her daughter. To this day, 42 years on, Tammy Lynn remains missing and police have no new leads over her disappearance.
Scottish Sun
22-05-2025
- Scottish Sun
When is The Grand Ole Opry 100 coming to London's Royal Albert Hall and how can you get tickets?
COUNTRY music fans are incredibly excited over the news that The Grand Ole Opry will be coming to London for its 100th anniversary. The iconic live country music radio broadcast - which is based out of Nashville but famous all around the world - will be broadcasting live from London, England for the first time ever, this September. Advertisement 9 The Grand Opry will celebrate its 100th year with a historic broadcast live from London's Royal Albert Hall Credit: Opry 9 The Grand Ole Opry is a prestigious country music broadcasting venue in the United States Credit: Alamy 9 The Royal Albert Hall will be rocking on September 26 Credit: Alamy Celebrating its 100th anniversary, the broadcast will be from London's Royal Albert Hall, with a star-studded line up. Country music icon Carly Pearce - who recently crooned a Christmas hit with Michael Buble - is headlining the show alongside several other huge names. She will perform on the bill with the likes of Luke Combs, Marty Stuart, Ashley McBryde, and Darius Rucker. The beloved country stars, who are all Opry members, will headline its first-ever live international broadcast from London's iconic Royal Albert Hall on Friday, September 26, 2025. Advertisement HOW TO GET TICKETS FOR OPRY 100 IN LONDON Tickets to the show will go on sale on Friday, May 23 at 10:00 a.m. BST via the Royal Albert Hall's website Not only will the event have a star-studded line up of country music icons, but Brits will be familiar with one of the hosts. BBC Radio 2 Presenter Vernon Kay and WSM Radio Personality and Grand Ole Opry Announcer Kelly Sutton are set to host the landmark broadcast. Colin Reed, the executive chairman of Grand Ole Opry parent company Ryman Hospitality Properties said of the event: "This milestone year for the Grand Ole Opry has arrived at the perfect time as country music enjoys an unprecedented rise in global popularity, especially here in the United Kingdom. Advertisement "Our first-ever broadcast outside of the United States will celebrate the influential music that has shaped this genre and pay tribute to the unique Opry show format that has entertained music lovers for 100 years. "With the help of some of our most treasured Opry members and some very special guests, we hope to give fans a taste of what goes on every week back in Nashville and inspire them to come visit the epicentre of country music." Maren Morris sets record straight after saying she is leaving 'toxic' country music HONOURING THE OPRY Wagon Wheel singer Darius Rucker said: "Being a member of the Grand Ole Opry is a great honour; it's always felt like the Opry was my home away from home. "To have the opportunity to bring such a big part of my musical roots to Royal Albert Hall is a full-circle moment for me while I work on a project with so many talented songwriters and producers based in London. Advertisement "I can't think of a better way to honour the Opry's global impact on country music as we share its magic with a new generation of fans." Reacting to the news of the Opry 100 show in London, one person said on Instagram: "Wow!! This is amazing lineup! So hoping to get tickets!!" 9 Carly Pearce is one of the headliners who will perform on the iconic night Credit: Getty 9 Luke Combs is another country crooner set to take to the stage on September 26 Credit: Getty Advertisement 9 Marty Stuart will also be rocking out with a packed audience Credit: Getty 9 Hitmaker Ashley McBryde - who has collaborated with Carly in the past - will also be taking to the stage Credit: AP 9 Darius Rucker is the final country crooner who is on the star-studded bill Credit: Getty Another said: "The excitement is real! We can't wait to welcome y'all to the UK." Advertisement While a third penned: "WHAT A CELEBRATION! GRAND OLE OPRY 100." HOW THE OPRY BEGAN The Grand Ole Opry is a legendary country music institution and a live radio broadcast and concert venue in Nashville, Tennessee. The Opry, which is world-renowned, is the world's longest-running radio show, originating in 1925. When it first came to be 100 years ago, it was called the WSM Barn Dance. Advertisement Two years later in 1927 it was renamed the Grand Ole Opry. The iconic venue is known for showcasing both country music legends and contemporary artists, along with bluegrass, Americana, folk, and gospel music.
