2025 ceremony takes place in Nashville on Wednesday night

© Invision

Singer recently called for billionaires including Mark Zuckerberg to donate their wealth

© Getty Images

Swim Shady officially launched in 2024 after rebranding from Slim Shade

© Getty Images for The Rock and Ro

Gracie Hunt, the daughter of Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, tore into the decision to have Bad Bunny perform the Super Bowl LX halftime show.

Swim Shady officially launched in 2024 after rebranding from Slim Shade

© Getty Images for The Rock and Ro

Bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, Erivo leads a fine cast in a zingily scored conclusion to the hit origin story

Director Jon M Chu pulls off quite a trick with this manageably proportioned second half to the epic musical prequel-myth inspired by The Wizard of Oz – and based, of course, on the hit stage show. It keeps the rainbow-coloured dreaminess and the Broadway show tune zinginess from part one, and we still get those periodic, surreal pronouncements given by the city’s notables to the diverse folk of Oz, those non-player characters crowding the streets. But now the focus narrows to the main players and their explosive romantic crises, essentially through two interlocking love triangles: Glinda the Good, Elphaba the Wicked and the Wizard – and Glinda, Elphaba and Prince Fiyero, the handsome young military officer with whom both witches are not so secretly in love, as well as possibly having feelings for each other.

Jeff Goldblum is excellent as the Wizard, who pretty much becomes the Darth Vader of Oz: a slippery carnival huckster who is realising that his seedy charm is corroding his soul. Jonathan Bailey pivots to a much more serious, less campy, more passionate Prince and Ariana Grande is, as ever, delicate and doll-like as Glinda, though with less opportunity for comedy. But the superstar among equals is Cynthia Erivo, bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, and revealing a new vulnerability and maturity. Elsewhere, Marissa Bode returns as Nessarose, Elphaba’s wheelchair-using half-sister; Ethan Slater is Boq, the Munchkin working as her servant; and Michelle Yeoh brings stately sweetness to the role of the Wizard’s private secretary Madame Morrible.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

© Photograph: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

© Photograph: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

German pop duo who last year said their wish was ‘to leave together’ had joint assisted death at their home in Grünwald

Alice and Ellen Kessler, the pop singing sisters who were famous in Europe in the 1960s, especially in Italy where they were credited for bringing glamour to the country’s TV network, have died aged 89.

The identical twins had chosen to have a joint assisted death at their home in Grünwald, close to Munich, on Monday, said Wega Wetzel, a spokesperson for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Humanes Sterben (DGHS), a Berlin-based assisted dying association.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images

© Photograph: Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images

© Photograph: Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images

Singer recently called for billionaires including Mark Zuckerberg to donate their wealth

© Getty Images

From Chicago to Stan & Ollie, the Oscar-nominated actor has sung on screen for years. Now he arrives on stage – inside a trunk – to serenade the audience

In one of Hollywood’s nicer ironies, character actor John C Reilly finally made it big with a song about being invisible. His Oscar-nominated performance as the duped and devoted schmuck Amos Hart in Kander and Ebb’s Chicago was defined by his solo, Mister Cellophane. Director Rob Marshall had him sing it in an empty theatre so Amos doesn’t even get an audience for his big number.

More than 20 years later, Reilly has dusted off a not dissimilar tailcoat and rouged his cheeks once more under a new moniker, Mister Romantic, and this time there’s a full house. Backed by a four-piece band he is here to win our hearts with 90 minutes of jazz standards and popular songs, plus the odd chanson and comic verse. After a dozen or so dates in the US, the show has a short run this week in London at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, whose beautifully restored interior and history as a music hall fits Mister Romantic like a glove.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Bobbi Rich

© Photograph: Bobbi Rich

© Photograph: Bobbi Rich

Choreographers hear, somehow, a larger heartbeat; it’s fascinating and revelatory to have them reinterpret your compositions, writes the US musician, ahead of a triple bill featuring his music coming to Sadler’s Wells.

When I’m writing music, one of the primary challenges is figuring out how to notate rhythm in a way that is clear to the interpreters. When I hear a phrase in my head it is free of the confines of bar lines, but, in practical application, eventually it needs to get squeezed into recognisable shapes and containers. Every composer has their own strategy (some eschew bar lines entirely, or use alternative notational strategies outside the traditional western systems), but it’s always a negotiation: does the way the composer notates the rhythm correspond to how it should best appear on the flute player’s music stand?

I have distinct memories of being 13, hearing a piece (specifically, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements), basically memorising it from the recording, and then being absolutely shocked when I finally saw the score. “That’s where the downbeat is?!” Stravinsky’s sense of time and my understanding of the same were at variance in a way I still find exciting: the idea that there are infinite superimpositions of a practical system (notation) over a medium (sound) most often experienced by an audience without the score. Understanding that notating rhythm is artificial yet crucial requires both personal precision and empathy with future interpreters.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Erin Baiano

© Photograph: Erin Baiano

© Photograph: Erin Baiano

‘Parasocial’ crowned Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year as ‘unhealthy’ relationships with celebrities rise

If you’re wondering why Taylor Swift didn’t respond to your social media post offering congratulations on her engagement, then Cambridge Dictionary has a word for you: parasocial.

Defined as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know”, parasocial has been chosen by the dictionary as its word of the year, as people turn to chatbots, influencers and celebrities to feel connection in their online lives.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP

© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP

© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP

Eminem claims consumers may mistakenly think he is linked to the Sydney beach brand – but Australia is no stranger to lawsuits from US rappers

Eminem has launched legal action against the Australian beach brand Swim Shady, alleging its name is too close to that of his trademarked alter ego, Slim Shady.

The 53-year-old rapper, real name Marshall B Mathers III, filed a petition to cancel Swim Shady’s US trademark days after it was successfully granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in September.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Aaron J Thornton/Getty Images

© Photograph: Aaron J Thornton/Getty Images

© Photograph: Aaron J Thornton/Getty Images

The 26-year-old’s debut album I Love My Computer has already netted her some of Australia’s most prestigious prizes – and it’s all about the delight and depravity of growing up on the internet

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

Ninajirachi is having a dream run with her debut album I Love My Computer – and between leading this year’s Aria nominations with eight nods and the rapturous crowds at sold-out shows, she knows it.

“I want to live up this one before I move on, because it might be hard to come back to this headspace and time,” says Nina Wilson. “I don’t want to rush into the future.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Billy Zammit

© Photograph: Billy Zammit

© Photograph: Billy Zammit

Styx's Dennis DeYoung slams Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for delaying inductions until artists are too old to perform or dead, citing Bad Company's Paul Rodgers as example.

Singer’s sister, Kashmira Bulsara, said that striking the first coin was an ‘emotional and proud moment’ for her

© Royal Mint/PA Wire

The rapper faces up to five years in prison if convicted

© REUTERS/Alison Dinner

Rapper to give address on Tuesday after supporting Trump’s post condemning Nigerian government

The US-based Trinidadian rapper Nicki Minaj will work alongside the White House to highlight claims of Christian persecution in Nigeria.

Minaj is expected to deliver a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday, according to a Time journalist who first posted about the collaboration on Sunday, adding that it was arranged by Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to Donald Trump.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

© Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

© Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

Archive director in Germany says ‘missing piece of puzzle’ now in place to verify authorship after decades of research

Two long-lost organ pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach have been performed in Germany, roughly 320 years after the composer wrote them as a teenage music teacher.

Entitled Chaconne in D minor BWV 1178 and Chaconne in G minor BWV 1179, the pieces were added to the official catalogue of Bach’s works on Monday and played in public for the first time in three centuries inside Leipzig’s St Thomas Church, where Bach is buried.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jens Schlueter/BACH ARCHIVE/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jens Schlueter/BACH ARCHIVE/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jens Schlueter/BACH ARCHIVE/AFP/Getty Images

British musician said his brother was found collapsed on a street in Birmingham after they spent an evening together as he tours the UK

© Gary Numan/Instagram

Sydney Hardeman’s priceless response to pop superstar’s 2018 Coachella show became a trending meme

© Getty/Netflix

Rapper was on a livestream with Jack Doherty at the time

© Getty