Latest news with #popmusic
CBS News
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Star of "& Juliet" tour shares connection with show ahead of Denver performances
On June 4, some of the greatest pop hits from the last 30 years will come to the stage at the Buell Theatre as the Denver Center for the Performing Arts presents "& Juliet." The musical, which explores the concept of what would have happened to Juliet if she did not die alongside Romeo, features some of the most popular songs that most Americans listen to regularly. Rachel Simone Webb as Juliet DCPA "The music is so much fun, this is the music of a lot of our childhoods," said Rachel Simone Webb, who portrays "Juliet" for the tour. Webb said she quickly fell in love with the storyline of the show, as well as the message. "I read the script and saw how funny it was and knew it was something I wanted to be a part of," Webb said. Of course, the hits of mega stars being featured throughout the musical only underscored her desire to be a part of the production. "I grew up listening to Brittany Spears, Kesha, and Katy Perry," Webb said. "'Roar' was a song I practiced with my vocal coach when I was 11 years old. Now, I get to sing it every night." Rachel Simone Webb CBS While the music is fun for the cast to sing and the audience to hear, the lyrics also help guide the story. "Initially, (audiences) laugh, and then they realize the songs go in pretty well with the story," Webb said. "Musical theatre specifically does its job well when the songs tell the story without it having to be spoken." Webb said she also has come to love how the story uplifts and empowers women and other groups. "It doesn't come along often where you get to shift the zeitgeist of culture," Webb said. "It is important for people to consume art that pushes the envelope of female empowerment." While the show follows themes of love, empowerment, and acceptance, it also promises to leave audiences feeling joy by the final curtain. Rachel Simone Webb in & Juliet DCPA "There is glitter on stage. There is confetti. We get to smile at the end of the show, it is not a tragedy," Webb said. & Juliet plays the Buell Theatre June 4 through June 15. Tickets are available online. CBS Colorado is a proud partner of the DCPA.
Forbes
15 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Britney Spears Earns Her First New Album Debut In Almost A Decade
Britney Spears's Oops!... I Did It Again returns thanks to a twenty-fifth anniversary edition, ... More debuting at No. 41 on the Official Album Downloads chart. The singer performing on stage at Paris Zenith. (Photo by Jeremy Bembaron/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images) A quarter-century ago, Britney Spears changed pop music forever when she released her album Oops!... I Did It Again. The full-length proved she was a true force to be reckoned with in the top 40 space, and it signaled that she would be sticking around for quite a while. The singer's sophomore set produced some of her most familiar tunes – including the title track – and fans still love everything about it to this day. The set is a bestseller again in the United Kingdom, and this week, it appears on multiple charts… and even manages to earn Spears her first new placement on one list in almost a decade. Oops!... I Did It Again debuts on this week's Official Album Downloads chart, which ranks the top downloaded full-lengths and EPs across the country on platforms like iTunes, Amazon, and others. Spears's set opens at No. 41, narrowly missing out on becoming a top 40 bestseller. Amazingly, this frame marks the first time Oops!... I Did It Again has appeared on this ranking. When the project was first released, streaming didn't exist, so there weren't separate rankings for sales and general consumption when it came to songs or albums. That means older efforts, like Oops!... I Did It Again, sometimes debut on tallies such as this one well after their heyday. Spears earns her career eighth appearance on the Official Album Downloads chart this week. Oops!... I Did It Again brings the singer her first win on the list since September 2016. Just under a decade ago, Glory debuted that month and rose to No. 4, spending just three weeks somewhere on the tally. As it debuts on the Official Album Downloads chart, Oops!... I Did It Again also manages to return to the Official Albums Sales list, though it's not new to that ranking. In fact, the title has now spent three frames on the roster. It launched in 2020 and last appeared on the tally — which looks at all forms of purchases in the country — in April 2023, when it reached its all-time peak of No. 52. To celebrate Oops!... I Did It Again turning 25, Spears released a special anniversary edition of the album on May 16. The project, available digitally as well as on collectible vinyl, included multiple alternative recordings and remixes, expanding the set considerably.
News.com.au
20 hours ago
- Business
- News.com.au
‘Black-listed': Anastacia reveals the moment she realised she'd never achieve success in America
Anastacia has one of the most recognisable voices in the music industry, but heartbreakingly an entire continent never got the chance to experience it. Breaking out in the early 2000s with iconic banger I'm Outta Love, Anastacia quickly became one of the biggest pop stars in the world and she's enjoyed success ever since, and will soon be bringing her sell out NTK25 tour down under. But one place the American's tour won't be visiting is North America, and it's all because record label politics meant that one of the biggest music industry markets on earth never got the chance to get to know Anastacia's vocal talents. 'I'm at that age where I'm fine with what I've got. My resume is beautiful and I'm proud of it,' the feisty singer told 'At the beginning, I felt like what's wrong with me, because I didn't know the reason why.' As she prepared to go into the promotional tour for her second record, Anastacia finally realised the incredible success she was experiencing around the world was never going to happen in her home country. 'Then I kind of got an idea of what happened between the radio station and the record company, that it was like a power struggle thing,' she continued. 'And the radio stations made you. The record company made the radio station upset and I was the black-listed name.' 'So it wasn't that I was this rejected artist in America. It was like, they never actually knew me.' While she was never given the chance to show off her talents in the US, thankfully the rest of the world immediately embraced her powerhouse vocals and ear for a banger. After performing to sell out crowds in Europe, Anastacia has announced that she's bringing her latest tour to Australia later this year. She'll be performing in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney in September, with just a handful of tickets left remaining for fans to snap up ahead of the shows. Anastacia's Not That Kind 25 tour starts at The Forum in Melbourne on September 24, before heading to the Coliseum Theatre in Western Sydney on September 26, the Sydney's Enmore Theatre on September 27, before a final show at Brisbane's Eatons Hill Hotel on September 29.
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Something Beautiful' Review: Miley Cyrus Stays Adventurous
For pop singers of the 21st century, sustaining a career over the long haul involves a certain amount of fan service. Social media has vastly expanded and intensified the connection between superstars and their audience, and the expectation is that the artist will deliver what the masses want—new tracks, videos, collaborations and tours—at regular intervals in order to keep the faithful interested and engaged. Like Taylor and her 'Swifties,' singer Miley Cyrus has an army of followers with a nickname, the 'Smilers,' but her career path has been unpredictable, and she typically leaves her fans guessing what she might do next. In this and other respects, Ms. Cyrus stands out from her pop-star peers. While many of them tap into a fairly small pool of musical inspirations, she draws on genres from across the spectrum, including a hefty dose of classic rock from the '70s and '80s. In interviews leading up to her ninth studio release and its accompanying film, 'Something Beautiful' (Columbia), she identified Pink Floyd's 1979 album and 1982 film 'The Wall' as a particular inspiration. Nothing on the record, out Friday, evokes the sound or themes of the English band's sprawling opus. But Ms. Cyrus's aesthetic adventurousness is intact, for better and for worse.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Jennifer Lopez's career desperately needs the kiss of life. But this wasn't it
One kiss was all it took to put Jennifer Lopez back in the spotlight during her appearance at the American Music Awards in Las Vegas this week. The singer and actor, 55, kicked off her hosting duties of the event at the Fontainebleau hotel with a raunchy routine where she locked lips with her female backing dancer – a girl-on-girl moment surely calculated to provoke a reaction similar to that whipped up by Britney Spears and Madonna when they canoodled at the MTV VMAs in 2003. The difference, of course, is that 22 years ago, Britney and Madge didn't need the attention. But with Lopez, the feeling is that she very much does. If that means a cheesy girl-on-girl snog while dancing to a medley of recent pop hits by other artists – as she did at the AMAs – so be it. If she is desperate, who could blame her? Lopez came to the AMAs – America's glitzier answer to the Brits– on the back of the most horrible annus horribilis in recent celebrity history. True, it wasn't quite as awful as that experienced by Katy Perry, whose 2024 comeback album, 143, only peaked at number six in the charts and was torn apart by critics. She was then widely mocked for her trip on Jeff Bezos's vanity rocket, Blue Origin, and her high-concept new tour, which features dancers dressed as aliens and the 13-time Grammy nominee body-popping like someone desperately needing the loo. But she at least had the opportunity to share her new songs with the world – a privilege denied Lopez, whose This Is Me…Now Tour was cancelled a month out amid underwhelming ticket sales across the US and after the album of the same name had stiffed at 38 in the US charts (before sinking entirely within the fortnight) Lopez flopped further with the accompanying movie, This Is Me… Now: A Love Story. Here was a $20 million Prime Video folly paid for out of her own pocket and featuring celebrity cameos from Jane Fonda and Post Malone (but not Taylor Swift, who wisely declined to be involved). Seemingly inspired by steam-punk science fiction and Puerto Rican mythology, this 'fictional narrative' retold the story of her on/off/relationship with Ben Affleck – with whom she had reconnected (and married) after 20 years apart following a cancelled engagement. There were lots of arresting images – such as a scene in which workers danced around a giant, engine-like representation of J-Lo's heart, which, in the story, has broken down following her separation from Affleck. As cinema, This Is Me Now was divisive, panned as an indecipherable muddle while also praised, by our own film critic, as 'an astonishing pop-art tour de force'. Regardless Lopez had to be credited for taking a risk and putting herself out there. Alas, the movie would be out of date almost as soon as it was released, with Lopez filing for divorce after two years of marriage. The strain of their marriage is obvious in the third big project that Lopez put out in 2024 – the documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which, coming on the heels of the album and tie-in movie, served as sort of a spin-off of a spin-off. Displaying an admirable disregard for brand management, it is a striking portrait of an artist deep in a career funk and with a husband less than enthusiastic about sharing their private life with the world. At one point, a flabbergasted Affleck even questions the name of the project. 'It's the greatest love story never told,' he points out to his soon-to-be ex-wife. 'And if you're making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it.' No breakup is easy, but this one had come at an especially awkward time. Not only did her decision to file for divorce in August slap an instant best-before date on the entire This Is Me… Now project. It also cast a shadow over Lopez's latest movie, Unstoppable, a biopic about one-legged champion wrestler Anthony Robles, in which Lopez plays his supportive mother, Judy, and which was co-produced by one Ben Affleck. Lopez is every bit as accomplished an actor as singer – and was regarded as unfortunate not to receive a Best Supporting Actress nomination for 2019 comedy-drama Hustlers, in which she played a stripper who turns to robbery to supplement her income. But Unstoppable, which came out last December, was met with lukewarm reviews and bombed at the box office before dropping out of UK cinemas after just one week. Amid these and other disappointments – her 2024 Netflix sci-fi movie Atlas was also panned by critics despite doing well on Netflix – one thing lacking from her downfall is schadenfreude. While few may want to go to her concerts, nobody is actively wishing for her downfall, despite Lopez's reputation as a diva. In her early years of fame, tabloids gleefully reported a list of backstage demands that included 'all white' dressing rooms decorated with white lilies or roses and a room temperature consistent at 26 degrees. But she nowadays comes across as far more self-aware – in The Greatest Love Story Never Told she openly admits that the world is not breathlessly awaiting a new Jennifer Lopez album. And so, when her tour was cancelled, it is tempting to imagine her reaction was one of weary resignation rather than shock. Similarly, on stage at the AMA Awards, she seemed in on the joke, putting in a performance almost Eurovision in its silliness (the girl-on-girl kiss was soundtracked by, of all things, Teddy Swims's party anthem Lose Control). If the AMA snog-athon – she also kissed one of her male dancers – is rock bottom, then there are indications that the clouds may soon begin to part. She and Affleck finally shifted their $60 million Beverly Hills mansion, though with a write-off of $8 million after it initially failed to sell. It was speculated that news of their divorce had led prospective buyers to hold off, knowing the couple were probably eager for a deal. Plus, critical acclaim may belatedly arrive this October with Kiss of the Spider Woman. A nightmarish art-house musical by Twilight director Bill Condon, it features J-Lo as a silent movie star as hallucinated by a prisoner of the Argentine Junta (Diego Luna). Advance buzz is strong and it's exactly the sort of project she requires at this point: adventurous, edgy and demanding. She – and the many cheering her on – will hope that the film will deliver the kiss of life she so desperately needs.
