Sweden, Ukraine and the Netherlands qualify for Eurovision final
Sweden, Ukraine and the Netherlands have qualified for the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. Dutch act Claude Kiambe, 21, went through with his track C'est La Vie, a blend of English and French that promotes a message of dealing with life as it is, as did current favourites KAJ with the Swedish song Bara Bada Bastu, about Nordic sauna culture. The first semi-final of the 2025 contest, taking place in Basel, Switzerland where the competition began in Lugano in 1956, also saw Estonia's Tommy Cash with the silly Espresso Macchiato, which referenced typical Italian phrases, as well as Poland's Justyna Steczkowska with her dramatic Gaja progress.
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Matildas star Katrina Gorry in tears over teammates' act
Katrina Gorry broke down in tears as she recalled a touching gesture from her Matilda's teammates during the 2023 World Cup. The emotional moment came during a sit down interview with to discuss her recently released memoir, Katrina Gorry: A Matilda's hero's story of football, motherhood and breaking down barriers. In the book, Gorry, 32, writes about battling an eating disorder, having a child on her own through IVF, and of course her stunning Matilda's career which has seen her play more than 100 games for Australia. In one of the most moving parts of the book, Gorry shares a story about what happened in the changerooms before Australia's quarterfinal clash against France during the 2023 World Cup. Gorry was a bit distracted before the game due to an upsetting phone call she'd received from her partner, Clara (who was in Sweden), two days prior. 'She said, 'it's about my dad (Peter) … he's had a heart attack and died,'' Gorry told 'I just couldn't believe it,' the Matilda's star said as she started crying. Gorry hadn't shared the heartbreaking news with anyone, but decided to tell one of her teammates in the rooms before the quarterfinal. ' They obviously informed the staff what had happened and all the girls just rallied behind me,' Gorry said. Unbeknownst to her, the Matilda's players made a snap decision to honour Clara's dad, Peter. 'We were in the changerooms and everyone put black arm bands on for him and I just turned around and realised, this is a team. It was a really special moment,' Gorry said. That wasn't the only special moment of the night. The quarterfinal against France ended up going to penalties after each team failed to score during the match. It was 4-3 France's way when Gorry was called up to take a penalty. If she missed, Australia would have been out of the World Cup. 'I had him (Peter) watching over me in that moment,' Gorry told about the penalty kick. 'It was dead silent in the crowd, I can still feel it right now, I can see the grass moving,' she said. Gorry ran in, kicked the ball, and smacked it into the back of the net. As the Brisbane crowd erupted, Gorry ran back to her teammates and kissed a piece of tape that was strapped around her left wrist. asked Gorry what the significance of the tape was, to which she replied, 'I had his (Peter) name on my wrists'. The Matilda's went on to win the match against France but lost to England in the semi-final, finishing fourth in the World Cup. In Gorry's interview with the star footballer also spoke about how her parents reacted when she told them she was gay, what is was like to miss a crucial penalty during the 2016 Rio Olympics, and how she overcame her eating disorder. You can watch the full interview in the video player at the top of this article.
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Sly Stone's biggest songs tell us everything about his impact on modern music and culture
The tragic truth is that Sly Stone's recording career was only a very short part of his life. The singer and bandleader, who died this week at 82, was a groundbreaking figure in popular culture of the 1960s and 70s known for his open-minded approach to creating music. His band, Sly & the Family Stone, was one of the first prominent mixed-race, mixed-gender, mixed-genre bands to gain mainstream support. They broke musical boundaries as well as social ones, bringing rock'n'roll, funk and soul together in a heady melange we now take for granted. His work hasn't just influenced artists over the past 60 years, it has provided the architecture for so much modern music. Funk, soul, hip hop and even pop music have all been shaped in some way by the leaps made by Sly Stone's band, who broke the mould at a time when such behaviour was unheard of. While much of his life was marred by drug addiction and homelessness due to financial mismanagement, the impact he had on music has never dulled. The music and the message has remained relevant for decades. Here are five songs to start with if you're not yet across some of the biggest moments Sly Stone gave us in his early career. Sly and the Family Stone's debut album, A Whole New Thing, didn't sell a lot of copies upon release and didn't garner the same critical acclaim that would come with their next albums. They came out of the gates strongly though, 'Underdog' — the first track from their first album — set the tone for the energy they were set to inject into American pop culture in the coming years. Recorded live, it's a clear display of the band's sheer brilliance as individual musicians and as a unit. The song sounds like a party from the moment they all kick in after its 'Frère Jacques' intro, and Sly Stone sounds every bit the formidable leader he was as he barks about the feeling of being underrated and under-appreciated. It's a brilliant piece of music, and that was clearly enough for Sly Stone to realise success was worth chasing. After failing to shift the needle on their first album, Sly Stone took his band in more of a pop direction on second album 1968's Dance To The Music. The band was good, they just hadn't captured the public's attention yet. The title track, which opens the album, took care of that. While they were unapologetically shooting for broader audiences, that didn't stop them from breaking ground. This is the song perhaps most responsible for the explosion of psychedelic soul music that was to come in its wake. Rock bands began to embrace the grooves and spirit of soul music, soul groups dug into the freedom and experimentation that came with psychedelic rock and, perhaps most importantly, the listening public got used to these worlds colliding. If 'Dance To The Music' was the band's introduction to a mainstream audience, 'Everyday People' was — and still is — the song that would cement them in the annals of pop culture forever. The band's first number one single is the most prominent example of the peaceful politics that drove much of the band's early work. It remains an anthem for equality almost 60 years later and perhaps speaks to the band's ethos more clearly than any of their work. That it was a hit was no accident. Stone knew precisely what he was doing. "I didn't just want 'Everyday People' to be a song, I wanted it to be a standard," he wrote in his 2023 autobiography Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). "Something that would be up there with 'Jingle Bells' or 'Moon River'. And I knew how to do it. It meant a simple melody with a simple arrangement to match." At just two minutes long, it feels like it's all over before it begins. While it doesn't overstay its welcome, that simple melody sticks in your head well after the track is over. 'Everyday People' is still everywhere in pop culture, thanks largely to its appearances in TV advertisements and innumerable cover versions, the latest of which to go viral features pop icon Cher and mumble rap superstar Future. Sly's lyrics start to sound a bit more paranoid and cautious at this point, as he sings of a wrestle with the devil, later proclaiming that "Flamin' eyes of people fear burnin' into you" and how "dyin' young is hard to take, sellin' out is harder". As for that title: it's more than sensational spelling for the sake of it. "Mice, elf, small humble things that were reminders of how big the rest of the world was," he wrote in his autobiography. "You had to stand up straight to be seen at all. And there were forces working against standing up straight. I tried to get to them in the lyrics." This song has perhaps the most practical example of the immense musical impact of this group: it is widely considered the song that introduced the concept of slap bass, courtesy of Larry Graham, a style of playing omnipresent through various genres of music to this day. Thanks to that, the influence of this song is too broad to accurately chart, but the clearest example is probably Janet Jackson's career-defining song 'Rhythm Nation', which is built from a sample of this track. In 1971, the civil rights movement was losing momentum, flower power and the energy it had inspired was also waning, and Sly Stone's lifelong battle with drug addiction was beginning to take a serious toll, leading to infighting, missed concerts, and general unreliability that hampered his personal and working relationships. On their dark fifth album, There's A Riot Goin' On, Sly and the Family Stone threw the positivity of their late-60s records in the fire and turned in a series of druggy, pessimistic takes on modern life. It's a dour but brilliant record and its centrepiece, 'Family Affair', remains one of Stone's finest works and biggest hits. His lyrics, about the complexities of familial love, aren't groundbreaking but its chorus, sung by Sly's sister Rose Stone, makes it both sweet and sad in a haunting kind of way. The tensions within the band meant the line-up on this track wasn't the Family Stone as they'd previously existed. Billy Preston, fresh from his turn with The Beatles, played keys, Bobby Womack played guitar, while a drum machine replaced founding drummer Greg Errico. Admittedly, this primitive electronic beat-making proved hugely influential on the development of hip hop years later. It's been covered extensively: Lou Reed's version is the pick, though takes from reggae pop star Shabba Ranks and Aussie favourite Stephen Cummings warrant investigation too. It's also been heavily sampled: most notably in the Black Eyed Peas 2000 jam 'Weekends'.
News.com.au
6 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Scary': Stage invader grabs Katy Perry at Sydney concert
Touring superstar Katy Perry was left momentarily stunned during her Sydney concert on Monday night, when a fan stormed the stage and managed to grab ahold of the star before eventually being tackled by security. Perry, who is in Australia performing a string of arena dates as part of her Lifetimes tour, was onstage at Sydney's Qudos Bank Arena on Monday night when the security scare happened. She was standing on one of the circular catwalks in front of the show's stage that jut out onto the arena floor, allowing her to get closer to fans. Perry was mid-song, stood at her microphone stand with guitar in hand, when an excited fan bounded onto the stage and threw an arm around her. Perry couldn't hide her shock but still barely missed a beat, continuing with the song she was midway through – the 2008 smash Hot N' Cold – while stepping to one side and waiting for security to take care of the incident. Within seconds, two men dressed in black were also on stage, bundling the fan off in the opposite direction. 'There's never going to be another show like this, so just enjoy it!' Perry instructed the audience, as a team of four men now bundled the fan offstage and into the crowd – and presumably, to the nearest exit. Seconds later, Perry was back at the mic stand, unflappably launching into the song's next chorus. The star herself is yet to speak out about the security scare on social media, but the hapless fan's 'scary' antics haven't gone down well among the rest of her fanbase. Some on X wondered whether the incident was 'staged,' with one person commenting that 'if it's real, that's seriously worrying.' 'If you rush the stage mid performance, don't cry when security handles you. Actions have consequences,' another scolded. Another voiced their concerns that it appears to be 'actually really dangerous and ridiculous that she is so easily attainable.' Perry's Lifetimes tour continues with one more show in Sydney tonight, before moving to Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide for the rest of June. While Perry's latest album 143 and its accompanying singles didn't set the charts alight, she's still a touring force to be reckoned with, booking 15 arena shows across the country for the Australian leg of her tour.
