
Madonna's Quarter-Century-Old Song Almost Breaks Back Into The Top 10
For months now, Madonna has assured her enormous fanbase that she is hard at work on her next chapter — or chapters.
The pop icon had been writing a screenplay intended to tell the story of her life, but after the movie was scrapped, she pivoted to television. It now appears that a limited series based on her rise to superstardom is in the works.
At the same time, Madonna is also putting the finishing touches — or so it seems — on her next album. She has referred to the project as Confessions 2, making it sound like a sonic sequel to her Grammy-winning full-length Confessions on a Dance Floor. Nothing has been heard yet from the highly anticipated set (at least not by the general public), but people are already excited as the world waits to hear the first taste of Confessions 2.
One of Madonna's oldest singles returns to multiple charts in the U.K. and nearly becomes a top 10 smash once again amidst all the excitement and uncertainty around what's coming next for her.
'Erotica'' Returns to the Charts
"Erotica" appears this week on the Official Vinyl Singles and Official Physical Singles tallies. It's common for a tune to end up in similar positions on both rankings, as one focuses solely on the bestselling songs available on vinyl, while the other looks at the top-selling tracks of any style, as long as they are sold on a physical format, with vinyl being perhaps the most important at the moment.
"Erotica" breaks back onto the vinyl-only list at No. 12 and lands at No. 17 on the Official Physical Singles chart.
Madonna's Former No. 1
"Erotica" debuted at No. 1 on the Official Vinyl Singles chart in November 2022 and has since racked up 24 appearances on the format-specific ranking.
Its journey on the Official Physical Singles chart is a bit different. On that list, "Erotica" opened at No. 88 in the summer of 2017. The smash wasn't seen for years, and when it returned in November 2022 — at the same time it debuted on the vinyl tally — it soared to a new peak of No. 2.
"Erotica" has spent almost twice as long on the Official Physical Singles chart as it has on the vinyl ranking, as it is now up to 43 stays on that roster.
'Erotica' Introduced Madonna's Album of the Same Name
Madonna originally released "Erotica" in the fall of 1992, coming up on a quarter-century ago. The track was another major hit for the pop superstar, peaking at No. 3 on both the main singles list in the U.K. and the Hot 100 in America. "Erotica" introduced the album of the same name, which also features beloved hits like "Deeper and Deeper," "Bad Girl," and "Fever."
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Indianapolis Star
2 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Ozzy didn't corrupt America's youth. He exposed the hypocrisy of their elders.
Ozzy Osbourne is dead, and some Christians may believe that the devil ushered him straight to the gates of hell. Few pop culture icons were as important, or as controversial, as Osbourne. The British-born rocker became the avatar of American culture wars more than a half-century ago by attempting to showcase the hypocrisy of modern religion. Osbourne launched his career in the late 1960s. Sensitive to cultural currents, he recognized what was happening not just in music, but also in religion and politics. He used it to build on the image of rock as subversive and countercultural. From the start, Osbourne understood how to bring attention to his art. Calling his band Black Sabbath sent a clear message. He aimed to subvert, not honor, Christianity. He integrated crosses, demonic imagery and symbols of the devil such as bats into his performances to highlight what he saw as the absurdity of organized religion. Osbourne sang lyrics in his first album about a 'figure in black' that directed him, and in another song, he took on the persona of Satan himself: 'My name is Lucifer, please take my hand.' In Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" album, released at the height of the Vietnam War, he sang 'War Pigs,' a song in which Satan laughed and spread his wings as political and military elites led the Western world to the doorstep of the apocalypse. Opinion: How faith becomes a weapon: 'If I can't understand it, it's not Christian' Such allusions to the demonic continued in album after album. Osbourne's career developed parallel to a new understanding of Satan. In the post-World War II era, the devil assumed a more prominent role in American life. Anton LaVey's founding of the Church of Satan in 1966 celebrated Satan as a symbol of rebellion, individualism and secular liberation. In other words, Satan was the opposite of everything anxious Cold War parents wanted to instill in their kids. Artists drew on this revamped Satan in their work. Films like "The Exorcist" (1973) and "The Omen" (1976) brought Satan − and fears of Satan's ability to inhabit human bodies − into the imaginations of millions of people. Osbourne made those themes central to his music. In the 1980s, while Osbourne was still releasing albums, fears of satanic ritual abuse swept across the United States. Christian conservatives fretted that Dungeons & Dragons, Ouija boards and horror films were gateways to demonic influence. High-profile cases like the McMartin preschool trial and the publication of memoirs about escaping satanic ritual abuse fueled widespread panic. Law enforcement agencies conducted seminars on occult crime, therapists uncovered repressed memories of ritual abuse and talk shows amplified claims of underground satanic cults. The panic revealed deep anxieties about child safety, cultural change and the perceived decline of Christian values in American society. Perhaps, parents and religious leaders wondered, was Osbourne driving kids into satanism? Perhaps his music was brainwashing the nation's youth? Conservative Christians − including evangelicals, Catholics and Latter-day Saints − believe in a cosmic battle between angels and demons that directly influences human affairs. They believe that unseen spiritual battles determine real-world outcomes, particularly in culture, politics and morality. Opinion: Kan-Kan Cinema is elevating Indy's cinema culture Many of them also believed they had to protect children from music like Osbourne's. This framework encouraged social conservatives to interpret issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and the de-Christianizing of culture as evidence of demonic influence, necessitating counteraction through prayer, activism and political engagement. Osbourne and the genre of hard rock that he helped to promote contributed to their fears. In their minds, Osbourne was encouraging youth to rebel. And he was. Osbourne's fans understood what the rock star was doing. They loved it. The more angry Osbourne could make their parents, and the more he could rile up moral crusaders, the better. And he agreed. Playing with the devil became a hallmark of his long career. Briggs: Born into Jim Crow, she lived to witness DEI debates From witch hunts in Salem to conspiracy theories driving QAnon, Americans have used Satan to facilitate a politics of fear. They have used him to justify persecution, fuel moral panics, shape political and cultural battles, and assess global crises and war. But there has always been another side to Satan, the one Osbourne captured. His devil wasn't the horned villain of Christian nightmares but a trickster, a rebel, a symbol of freedom from sanctimony. In Osbourne's hands, Satan gave a theatrical middle finger to hypocrisy and lifted up a mirror to a society obsessed with sin, and he laughed. His life reminds us that sometimes, dancing with the devil is really just refusing to march in lockstep with the saints.


Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Christian MAGA Singer Vows To Continue Despite Canada Protests
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Sean Feucht, a prominent American Christian worship leader and vocal supporter of the MAGA movement, says he will press on with his tour of Canada, despite a wave of public protests, security concerns, and event cancellations in multiple cities. Newsweek contacted Feucht for comment via email on Sunday. Why It Matters Feucht's tour has become a flash point in Canada's ongoing debate over freedom of expression, public safety, and the role of religious and political ideologies in public spaces. As communities respond to his messaging—often framed around conservative Christian values and American right-wing politics—the backlash highlights tensions between freedom of speech and protecting marginalized groups from perceived harm. Despite the setbacks, Feucht remains determined to complete his tour. He is continuing to organize events at alternative venues and actively posting about it on social media. On Saturday, Feucht posted on his Facebook and Instagram accounts: "We've been canceled, banned, protested and smoke-bombed in Canada, but the MOVE OF GOD ONLY GROWS STRONGER! "The greater the resistance, the greater the breakthrough! See you today Ottawa and tomorrow Toronto!" Sean Feucht is seen at Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 19, 2024. Sean Feucht is seen at Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 19, 2024. Rebecca Noble/AFP/Getty Images What To Know As reported by Newsweek, Feucht is a pro-Trump American Christian singer-songwriter who unsuccessfully ran as a Republican candidate in California's 3rd congressional district in 2020. Feucht has previously been criticized over remarks he has made about the LGBTQ+ community and for his pro-life stance. He first rose to prominence with his "Let Us Worship" tour in the latter half of 2020, which protested COVID-19 lockdowns. In April of 2022, he helped to lead a protest against The Walt Disney Company for their opposition to anti-LGBTQ legislation. In early 2023, he announced a "Kingdom to the Capitol" tour co-sponsored by Turning Point USA, the nonprofit that advocates for conservative politics at high schools and university campuses. Several Canadian cities, including Halifax, Quebec City, Charlottetown, and Moncton, have canceled Feucht's scheduled events in recent days. Officials cited public safety concerns, protest activity and logistical complications. In Halifax, Parks Canada revoked a permit for a concert at the York Redoubt historic site after consulting with police and local residents. The event was moved to Shubenacadie, about an hour away, where hundreds of attendees gathered. Despite the relocations and cancellations, protests have continued to follow Feucht's appearances. In Montreal, demonstrators set off smoke bombs inside a venue, and at least one person was arrested. Critics of the tour, including advocacy groups and local officials, argue that Feucht's rhetoric is inflammatory and harmful to community cohesion. Some have also pointed to Feucht's political affiliations, which they believe are inconsistent with Canada's inclusive values. Feucht has accused Canadian authorities and media outlets of discriminating against his religious beliefs, claiming his events are being unfairly targeted for expressing traditional Christian values. He has maintained that his message is peaceful and spiritual in nature, not political. What People Are Saying Feucht posting on his X account on Saturday: "I've led worship and preached in Africa, the Middle East and all across the world in 2025. The most intense persecution was not in Iraq or Turkey - but CANADA! Didn't have that on my bingo card." The city of Vaughan, where Feucht was due to perform on Sunday, said in a statement, per CTV News: "The City of Vaughan has denied a Special Event Permit for a music event to be held at Dufferin District Park on July 27 on the basis of health and safety as well as community standards and well-being." What Happens Next City officials in other planned tour stops are assessing whether to grant permits, and national law enforcement agencies are monitoring developments closely. As protests persist, the debate over who gets access to public spaces—and under what terms—is likely to intensify in the days ahead.


Atlantic
6 hours ago
- Atlantic
Why No One Knows What's Happening Tonight
About a year and a half ago, I was scheduled to play a concert in Vermont when word came that the gig would be canceled due to an approaching nor'easter. I checked out of the hotel early, lobbed my suitcase into the rental car, and hightailed it to New York as menacing clouds darkened the rearview mirror. Brooklyn had been home for the better part of two decades, but after a move to the Pacific Northwest, I was returning as a tourist, and the show's cancellation augured a rare free evening in the city. There was just one problem: How was I going to figure out what to do with my night on the town? This used to be easy. You grabbed The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time Out New York, or The Village Voice and checked out the event listings. When I graduated from college and moved to the city in 2003, Time Out quickly became my bible, syllabus, and road map. The listings guided me through the cobwebbed bowels of St. Mark's Church and into the Ontological-Hysteric Theater hidden within, where Richard Foreman's mind-bending plays made an indelible impression on me. The listings brought me to Southpaw to hear Neko Case's bloodshot voice; to the Village Vanguard for Jason Moran or Paul Motian; and to a tin-ceilinged basement bar in Park Slope, where I saw a baby-faced Sharon Van Etten sing her earliest songs, and then bashfully hand out CDs burned with her demos, rich with high-frequency hiss from the tape deck onto which she'd recorded them. But over the past decade, event listings have all but disappeared. The New York Times killed its weekly arts listings at the end of 2016, and its online arts-and-entertainment guide remains frozen, like a butterfly pinned and dried, in March 2020: 'New York Arts Institutions Closed Because of Coronavirus' reads the top headline. The Village Voice folded in 2018. (It has recently been revived but has no listings section to speak of.) The New Yorker 's Goings On About Town section was slashed in 2023 to just a page or two, now offering one recommendation per discipline. And Time Out, that veritable doorstop of weekly listings, now previews one or two concerts a month. From the June 2025 issue: Is this the worst-ever era of American pop culture? This is, in part, a familiar story about declining ad revenue, about changing pressures and priorities in the journalism business. When listings began to disappear, many imagined that the internet would simply fill the void—that artists and their fans (as well as nonprofit institutions and their audiences) would find new ways to connect. But a world in which clicks are dollars has led to an ouroboros of cultural journalism in which what is already popular must be written about—which increases its popularity, which means it must be written about, which increases its popularity—and a social-media ecosystem in which artists, no longer able to rely on legacy media for visibility, must create content to please an algorithm instead of their fans or themselves. As mainstream culture grows ever narrower, once-robust subcultures are struggling for survival. Perhaps social-media influencers are today's critics and curators, but even as our feeds promise 'discovery,' they mostly serve us what we already like. We have no idea what we're missing. The listings were my lodestar. And that star's orbit was maintained, at least in part, by a journalist named Steve Smith. Smith was a music editor at Time Out New York from 2001 to 2014. He'd gotten his start at a classical radio station in Houston, introducing Brahms symphonies by day and playing in a rock band in biker bars—he was the drummer—by night. This stylistic mishmash would become a trademark of his sensibility. When we spoke last month, Smith mentioned Karlheinz Stockhausen; the Clash; Billy Idol; John Zorn; John Coltrane; Scandinavian metal; Kronos Quartet; Kiss; Steve Reich; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; and Beethoven—all within the first 10 minutes of our conversation. Time Out 'was a magazine that was basically nothing but the listings,' Smith told me. 'Nobody said, 'Oh, that obscure thing that's happening on a loading dock in Tribeca? No, that's too weird.' I was basically told, 'List what's interesting; list what people will want to know about.'' A coveted red asterisk denoted a critic's pick. 'I had the privilege,' he said, 'of making a difference in the lives of a number of composers and performers. And that, to me, was the most gratifying piece of the job.' One of the lives he changed was mine. The first review I ever received as a singer-songwriter, for a set at Tonic, was written by Smith, for his blog Night After Night. A 33-word listing in Time Out came soon after—a blurb that would remain in my press kit for years. In 2009, he interviewed me for a New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure profile. The morning after the story ran, Lincoln Center called my manager and offered me a debut on its American Songbook performance series. Who reviewed that concert for the Times? None other than Steve Smith. These listings weren't just a boon for artists like me—they were also a teeth-cutting opportunity for cub journalists, one that demanded brutal concision. Smith, a master of the miniature, stood on the shoulders of those such as Robert Christgau, a longtime Village Voice music editor and the self-proclaimed dean of American rock critics. About a Patti Smith show, from the April 7, 1975, issue: 'Funny, frightening, and just polished enough, Smith shifts from rock and roll to poetry reading like someone who really believes in street literature.' In its heyday, the Voice 's newsroom reverberated with the chaotic counterpoint of freaky choristers, all covering New York City with an obsessive commitment to hyperlocalism: Scenesters haunted hardcore shows at warehouses in Brooklyn; theater nerds ventured to East Village basements for experimental one-acts; dance lovers frequented Lower East Side nightclubs to cover bawdy performance art and contortionist spectacles. Here was a newspaper that, through dogged documentation of small and sometimes-fragile artistic microclimates, came to wield wide-reaching influence over national aesthetic trends as it championed unknown artists like Smith, the Talking Heads, Philip Glass, and so many others. That New York media have turned away from the local in favor of established celebrities may ultimately result in its irrelevance. Sixteen years after that first profile in the Times, I am fortunate to still be making a living playing music. But mine was a transitional generation: I came of age just in time to benefit from the old models and media apparatuses, only to watch them crumble around me. Few emerging musicians today could dream of a two-sentence blurb previewing a Monday-night set at a small club on the Lower East Side, let alone a thousand-word profile. The demise of listings is 'tangled up with the erosion of review coverage,' the jazz critic Nate Chinen told me, while stressing that 'the fundamental utility of a publication is bringing people out' to see a gig: 'The immediate danger is that artists play and people don't know about it.' Chinen would know. He wrote the jazz listings at The New York Times from 2005 until 2016. Those blurbs, he understood, could mean the difference between a standing-room-only show and one where the musicians outnumbered the audience. Today, it's harder than ever for aesthetically adventurous artists to make ends meet. Some have left the business, and others limp along, subsidizing their income with teaching gigs and odd jobs. Meanwhile, pop stars are doing great. The decline of listings followed the broader trend toward 'poptimism,' a critical movement that began as a corrective to the white-male-dominated popular-music journalism of the late 20th century. In a now-canonic broadside published in 2004, the critic Kelefa Sanneh argued that the snobbery of those white-male critics was bathed in racism and sexism, and often resulted in the neglect of music by women and people of color. Poptimists believed that music that was actually popular—the guilty-pleasure radio hits we wail in the car, many of them performed by nonwhite, nonmale artists—ought to be treated with the same reverence granted to the art rockers. Fair enough! But what Sanneh and like-minded critics could not have anticipated was the extent to which their goal would collide with the economic imperatives of internet-based journalism. In the 21 years since Sanneh's essay was published, poptimism has become the status quo in mainstream music criticism, reaching its apotheosis in 2023 with USA Today 's hiring of a full-time Taylor Swift reporter, Bryan West, who would go on to file—you may want to sit down— 501 articles about Swift during her Eras Tour. In such a climate, it's easy to forget that poptimism was once driven by the impulse to lift up marginalized voices. Indeed, much of today's cultural coverage reflects a different societal more, one in which, as the political philosopher Michael J. Sandel has written, we measure the value of people's contributions to the common good solely by 'the market value of the goods or services they sell.' In other words, covering what's popular doesn't just serve journalism's economic bottom line; it also expresses our beliefs. In a society in which dignity and status accrue to the powerful, it's no wonder that outlets once dedicated to nurturing subcultures now publish endless paeans to celebrities. A reader might object: Aren't you just complaining about the cultural version of natural selection? If niche genres can't hack it in today's algorithm-driven world, maybe they deserve extinction. But if they are allowed to die, popular music will also suffer. The terms highbrow and lowbrow conceal a broader ecology in which the raw materials of art move easily from one genre to another. Classical composers have long ransacked folk music to furnish their symphonies with great tunes. Similarly, there would be no Beatles' White Album without Karlheinz Stockhausen's tape music, no Rosalía's Motomami without the vocal arrangements of the Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Caroline Shaw. If we want the next Billie Eilish to be able to work with the next Attacca Quartet, we should ensure that lesser-known artists enjoy a bare minimum of support. To look at a page of event previews was to understand how a collection of artists related to one another. This, according to the opera critic Olivia Giovetti, was one of Smith's great gifts as an editor. 'He crafted listings,' Giovetti told me, 'in such a way that drew out and illuminated the connections between artists, so that the reader came to understand that if they enjoyed that Victoire show at Le Poisson Rouge, they might also dig a yMusic concert at Rockwood Music Hall.' You may not have heard of either group, but you likely know the Metropolitan Opera, where Victoire's founder, Missy Mazzoli, is headed with her adaptation of George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, and you've probably heard of Paul Simon, who tapped yMusic to join him on his farewell tour in 2018. The loss of listings is, in this sense, the loss of a whole world, which historians, too, will have to contend with. Take any issue of The New Yorker from the first 98 years of its existence, and the Goings On About Town section offers a rich snapshot of the city and its subcultures. The same was true of the Times. 'On any given day,' Chinen told me, 'there would be a review of a New York–based dance company at the Joyce Theater, a Ben Ratliff review about a koto player at Issue Project Room, Jon Pareles reviewing an indie-folk artist at Joe's Pub. It was this incredibly robust account of a thriving arts community in a city that, right or wrong, considers itself to be the center of the universe. That's the garden. That's the plant mix that existed.' How will historians write the story of a city that no longer maintains a record of its own cultural life? In this new paradigm, I, like so many others, feel shackled to my Instagram account, resentful that it has become my personal marketing and public-relations departments, yet resigned to its relative efficacy as a mouthpiece. (I tried to opt out, taking a full year off from the internet and another six months away from social media, returning only when my manager begged me to do so. 'The phone has stopped ringing,' he said bluntly.) So yes, amid the gallimaufry of links, photos, and screen caps, I post bite-size songs: here, a William Carlos Williams–inspired lament for the tariff-burdened penguins of Heard Island; there, a setting of a Craigslist ad for free reptiles. A lot of my work is sober and politically minded, but I think it's important to hold on to laughter and absurdity too. Still, those miniature tunes, delivered algorithmically, often bypass my own Instagram followers, landing instead in the feeds of total strangers. For them, these songs are divorced from the broader footprint of my work, which has included oratorios about homelessness and railway travelogues documenting a divided America. Cultural journalism once created that context. Spencer Kornhaber: Taylor Swift is having quality-control issues What's to be done? Performing-arts institutions could work together to underwrite their own weekly listings website or print publication, with their financial contributions scaled according to their budget so that small operations aren't left out. Sure, there would be challenges, namely a blurring of the line between advertising and editorial. Ideally, a group of writers and editors would produce listings with total independence, shielded from pressure by funders. The other solution—plausible or not—is for outlets such as the Times and The New Yorker to reverse course: to recognize that their listings were a public good serving artists, audiences, and arts presenters alike. The societal benefit of a comprehensive guide to the cultural sector can't be readily calculated on a balance sheet. For now, Smith is still serving as the secretary, the minute keeper, the town historian for the creative-music community in New York. After Time Out, he spent two years at The Boston Globe as an arts editor, and then bounced between various jobs covering music back in the city, including a five-year stint writing listings for The New Yorker. He's now a copywriter at an arts institution. Still, he maintains a Substack newsletter, Night After Night, which shares the name of his old blog, the one on which he gave me my first review. Each week, Smith compiles a roundup of notable events in music that lives beyond that narrow mainstream. When I asked him when he returned to writing listings, he said, 'I never really stopped.' Although a comprehensive digital archive of Time Out does not exist, The New Yorker is searchable back to its inaugural issue, published in February 1925. Like any good elder-Millennial narcissist, I did a quick search of my name to look for its first mention in Goings On About Town. There it was, in the issue for April 27, 2009. What else was happening? That week, Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin were starring in a production of Waiting for Godot; Steve Wilson was at the Village Vanguard; Judy Collins was at Café Carlyle; Carnegie Hall featured appearances by Zakir Hussain, Kronos Quartet (playing the compositions of Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Osvaldo Golijov), and the soon-to-be opera superstar Eric Owens; Chick Corea was leading an all-star band at Lincoln Center; and Lou Reed was holding court at the Gramercy Theatre.