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Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Billie Eilish: A masterclass in introverted pop for extroverted occasions
Billie Eilish makes the kind of music that suits an expensive pair of headphones: introspective, meticulously produced bedroom pop, elegant earworms that benefit from repeat listens rather than offering instant gratification. Not an arena's natural bedfellow, then – the kind of venue the 23-year-old from Los Angeles has been required to play since her 2019 debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? turned her into a star at the age of 17. But on the first night of the UK leg of a lengthy world tour, she furnished her songs with lasers, flames, and a titanic sound system, providing a masterclass in introverted pop for extroverted occasions. Eilish was in Glasgow to promote her third album, Hit Me Hard And Soft, and the tour's staging resembled a tennis court: a rectangular central stage with a live band separated to each side of the court in sunken pits. But it was less Wimbledon, more nightclub. Both the band and the plumes of pyro they were positioned alarmingly close to added necessary oomph, evident on opening trio Chihiro, with its imperceptible electronic build, the supple single Lunch and 2021's NDA, revamped into a thudding power ballad. An illuminated cube sometimes rose and sank in the middle of the stage, Eilish performing from within a dangling inner cage, clipped to a floor tether that made her look a bit like a cartoon prisoner. That image played neatly into the themes of entrapment that colour Eilish's work. Celebrity has come at an obvious price: she wears shapeless clothes to keep her body from media scrutiny, and has taken out restraining orders on stalkers. Like her most obvious predecessor, Lorde, growing up fast has resulted in preternatural maturity, and the young audience treated Eilish like an enduring legend. Early in the set, she received a long ovation as if an actress; incidentally, she's the youngest person to have won two Oscars (for her James Bond and Barbie soundtrack contributions). Poised somewhere between starlet and goth – Hollywood good looks in teen garb – she leapt around the vast stage like an athlete, never once leaving it during the 90-minute show. She worked briskly through her hits, from 2019 breakthrough Bad Guy, with its generational 'duh' to the pulsing coda of L'Amour de Ma Vie. A maelstrom of lasers assisted Oxytocin, while communal fury accompanied TV's line 'while they're overturning Roe v. Wade'. But it was Guess – her 2024 remix of the Charli XCX track – that earned the biggest screams of the night. Those screams often overwhelmed Eilish's own gossamer croon – save for when she requested total silence in order to create live vocal loops on her song When The Party's Over. She sat on the floor and began a Gregorian-like hum: canny proof she was singing live despite the digitised staging. Otherwise, the show mostly worked best when using loud, hi-tech frills to lift up her normally subdued style of pop. Yet closer Birds Of A Feather – an eyelash flutter of a song – needed little more than a mist of confetti: evidence that sometimes you can hit hard by hitting soft.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bobby Sherman, '60s teen idol from music and TV, dies at 81
Bobby Sherman, the singer and actor whose boyish good looks and sweet if unshowy vocals made him a teen idol in the overlapping worlds of television and pop music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has died. He was 81. His death was announced Tuesday by wife Brigitte Poublon Sherman via friend John Stamos' social media. 'It is with the heaviest heart that I share the passing of my beloved husband, Bobby Sherman," she wrote. "Bobby left this world holding my hand — just as he held up our life with love, courage, and unwavering grace through all 29 beautiful years of marriage. I was his Cinderella, and he was my prince charming. Even in his final days, he stayed strong for me. That's who Bobby was — brave, gentle, and full of light." No cause of death was given, nor was a specific date of death. The former teen idol had been battling Stage 4 kidney cancer, his wife said in April. A textbook heartthrob of the shaggy-haired SoCal variety, Sherman put four singles in the Top 10 of Billboard's Hot 100 in less than a year, starting with 'Little Woman,' which peaked at No. 3 in October 1969; after that came 'La La La (If I Had You),' which got to No. 9 in January 1970, 'Easy Come, Easy Go,' which hit the same position three months later, and 'Julie, Do Ya Love Me,' which reached No. 5 in September 1970. The cheerful, catchy tunes — each a certified gold-seller — helped define the bubblegum pop sound that also encompassed the Archies, Tommy Roe and the Ohio Express. At the same time that he was scaling the charts, Sherman starred on ABC's 'Here Come the Brides,' a western comedy series set shortly after the Civil War in which he played one of the owners of a family logging business determined to find love interests for the company's lumberjacks. The multimedia exposure drew the adoration of the era's teenyboppers, who raced to spend their allowance money on T-shirts, lunch boxes and magazines featuring the face of Bubblegum Bobby, as he was known. 'I could have sang 'Auld Lang Syne' and they would have bought it,' he said of his rabid fanbase in a 1989 interview with The Times. 'My audience was so young and impressionable, they would buy everything associated with Bobby Sherman.' Robert Cabot Sherman Jr. was born July 22, 1943, in Santa Monica and grew up in Van Nuys, where he played football at Birmingham High School. When he was a sophomore at Pierce College, Sherman went to a Hollywood party celebrating the premiere of 1965's 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' and ended up singing with a band that included several guys he'd gone to high school with; among the party's guests were Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and Jane Fonda, whose praise led to a successful audition for Sherman to be a singer on the TV variety show 'Shindig!' Read more: How Earth, Wind & Fire made its masterpiece In 1967, Sherman made a cameo on 'The Monkees' as a teen idol named Frankie Catalina — a not-so-veiled reference to the real-life Frankie Avalon — and in 1971 he appeared in an episode of 'The Partridge Family' that set up a short-lived spin-off series called 'Getting Together' in which Sherman played a songwriter. Sherman's musical career cooled about as quickly as it had heated up. 'Together Again,' the last of his 10 entries on the Hot 100, topped out at No. 91 in February 1972. 'It was inevitable,' he told The Times, blaming the 'oversaturation' of the bubblegum market. He continued acting in TV shows including 'The Mod Squad' and 'The Love Boat' but later found a second life in public service in the 1980s and '90s, serving as a volunteer paramedic and teaching first aid to recruits at the Los Angeles Police Department Academy. Sherman became a technical reserve officer for the LAPD and a reserve deputy sheriff for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. He published a memoir, 'Still Remembering You,' in 1996 and toured in 1998 with Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits and the Monkees' Davy Jones. In 1993, he told The Times about a recent ride-along he'd been on with fire department medics as they responded to a call in Northridge. "We were working on a hemorrhaging woman who had passed out,' Sherman said. 'Her husband kept staring at me. Finally he said, 'Look, honey, it's Bobby Sherman!'' The woman came to, Sherman recalled, and "said, 'Oh great, I must look a mess!' I told her not to worry, she looked fine.' Wife Brigitte wrote on Tuesday that as Bobby rested, she "read him fan letters from all over the world — words of love and gratitude that lifted his spirits and reminded him of how deeply he was cherished. He soaked up every word with that familiar sparkle in his eye. And yes, he still found time to crack well-timed jokes — Bobby had a wonderful, wicked sense of humor. It never left him. He could light up a room with a look, a quip, or one of his classic, one-liners. She added, "He lived with integrity, gave without hesitation, and loved with his whole heart. And though our family feels his loss profoundly, we also feel the warmth of his legacy — his voice, his laughter, his music, his mission. Thank you to every fan who ever sang along, who ever wrote a letter, who ever sent love his way. He felt it." In addition to his wife, Sherman is survived by sons Tyler and Christopher and six grandchildren. Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
New York Times
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Bobby Sherman, Easygoing Teen Idol of the 1960s and '70s, Dies at 81
Bobby Sherman, an actor and singer who became an easygoing pop-music star and teen idol in the late 1960s, and who continued performing until well into the 1980s, has died. He was 81. His wife, Brigitte Poublon, announced his death on Tuesday morning on Instagram, providing no other details. She revealed in March that Mr. Sherman had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, though she did not specify the type of cancer. Mr. Sherman was 25 when he was cast in the comedy western that made him a star. On 'Here Come the Brides,' a one-hour ABC series, he played a bashful 19th-century Seattle lumberjack. George Gent, reviewing the show for The New York Times, declared Mr. Sherman 'winning as the shy and stuttering youngest brother,' although he predicted only that the show 'should be fun.' 'Here Come the Brides' ran for only two seasons (1968-70), but that was more than long enough for Mr. Sherman to attract a following: He was said to be receiving 25,000 pieces of fan mail every week. He had already become a successful recording artist, beginning with 'Little Woman,' which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969 and proved to be his biggest hit. He went on to score three other Top 10 singles in 1969 and 1970: 'La La La (If I Had You),' 'Easy Come, Easy Go' and 'Julie, Do Ya Love Me.' By the end of 1972 he had seven gold singles, one platinum single and 10 gold albums. When TV Guide in 2005 ranked the 25 greatest teen idols, Mr. Sherman took the No. 8 spot, ahead of Davy Jones and Troy Donahue. (David Cassidy was No. 1.) He appeared countless times on the cover of Tiger Beat, a popular magazine for adolescent girls. Even Marge Simpson, leading lady of the long-running animated series 'The Simpsons,' had a crush on Bobby Sherman, as she confessed to her daughter Lisa in one episode. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Vogue
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
What Will the Song of Summer Be? Vogue Editors Weigh In
Need a little help curating your go-to playlist for the next few months? Fear not: We at Vogue have put our heads together to compile our songs of the summer (so far). So, what made the cut? Pop records from Miley Cyrus, Addison, PinkPantheress, and Marina have us working up a sweat, along with new releases from the likes of Role Model, Alex G, and Haim. And the season has only just begun—meaning that we have a ton more bangers to look forward to. Watch this space! Here, Vogue's early contenders for the song of the summer. 'Fame Is a Gun' by Addison Rae Addison Rae wants it: the glitz, the chintz, the glamorous life. 'Fame Is a Gun' is an ode to the unapologetic pursuit of pop superstardom set to blissed-out smoky synths, with a Gregg Araki-esque music video to match. And that choreography? Equal parts uncanny and cunt. It's the perfect sunglasses-in-the-club, chain-smoke-and-yap-on-a-fire-escape-til-sunrise anthem. 'God gave me the permission, and when you shame me, it makes me want it more,' she sings in a muffled, twinkly soprano—a mantra to propel your silliest summery decisions. —Anna Caffola 'Outside' by Cardi B
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Carly Simon Defends Sabrina Carpenter Against Album Cover Backlash: 'She's Not Doing Anything Outrageous'
Carly Simon is defending Sabrina Carpenter amid the backlash against her album artwork for Man's Best Friend In an interview with Rolling Stone, the "You're So Vain" hitmaker said the LP cover seemed "tame" Man's Best Friend is due Aug. 29Carly Simon is standing by Sabrina Carpenter. In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Wednesday, June 18, the "You're So Vain" hitmaker came to the pop star's defense amid the backlash surrounding the cover for her forthcoming album Man's Best Friend. The album artwork features a photo of Carpenter, 26, on her hands and knees as someone who appears to be a man grabs her by the hair. In the image, she's donning a short, black dress and black heels. Simon herself released a similarly controversial cover with her 1975 album Playing Possum, which featured the "You Belong to Me" artist on her knees wearing black lingerie and black leather boots. "Everybody looked at it, and people definitely had a reaction to it,' Simon, 81, told the publication of the controversial album cover. 'But they wouldn't have told me what they really thought.' When the album was shipped to stores, she was met with bolder reactions. 'Suddenly, I'm getting calls from Time and Newsweek, saying, 'This is one of the sexiest covers that has ever known,'' Norman Seeff, the photographer who shot the cover for Playing Possum, told Rolling Stone. He continued: 'There's this whole controversy around what did it represent? It felt very much like that energy in a woman, but I just thought of it as a beautiful shot. None of that stuff they were talking about was the intention." Simon also addressed the criticism Carpenter has faced for her Man's Best Friend album artwork, which she didn't understand. "She's not doing anything outrageous,' she told the outlet. 'It seems tame." Added Simon: "There have been far flashier covers than hers. One of the most startling covers I've ever seen was [The Rolling Stones'] Sticky Fingers. That was out there in terms of sexual attitude. So I don't know why she's getting such flak." Carpenter announced the release of her seventh studio album and its cover art on Wednesday, June 11. The news came after she shared the album's lead single "Manchild" earlier this month. In the days after she shared the album cover, Carpenter responded to an X user who reshared the singer's Man's Best Friend album cover, saying, 'Does she have a personality outside of sex?' The 'Espresso" hitmaker then reshared the post and said: 'girl yes and it is goooooood.' Man's Best Friend follows Carpenter's chart-topping LP Short n' Sweet, which was released last August. Read the original article on People
