Madonna, Confessions Tour 2006 at Wembley Arena in London. It was the first concert I had ever went to on my own, as the tickets even back then were so expensive and none of my friends wanted to go. Before it started I went to a shoddy, back street pub nearby and had three pints of beer to build up some Dutch courage.
Even as listeners' attention spans have dwindled, the art of making and promoting an album persists. In 2021, Adele convinced Spotify to remove shuffle as the default option for playing an album, telling fans, "Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended." Around the same time, Taylor Swift shifted her strategy to release albums in their entirety, instead of teasing fans with a breadcrumb trail of singles.
"I had been sitting on all of this music long enough that there was like a tiny man in my soul beating down the door of my soul," Hobert, 26, said on a recent rainy morning at Swingers Diner in Hollywood. This week, the L.A. native sets out on her Staircase to Stardom tour across North America, Europe and Australia. Intimate venues will see her perform from her debut album, "Who's the Clown?," released via RCA Records in August.
A star-studded mix of pop icons, Broadway casts, K-pop phenoms and holiday-classic favorites is marching straight into Thanksgiving morning. Consider your coffee stirred by a drumline: the 99th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade rolls out Thursday, November 27 at 8:30am and the talent list is stacked like a float full of stuffed animals. Big pop names, Broadway casts, a YouTube hot-sauce interrogator, Olympic-level skaters and the Rockettes will all clock in before you've carved the first crescent of pie.
"I feel like my career is kind of funny like that, because it's almost like people are rediscovering me every couple of years or so," Larsson says, squinting, as if trying to visualise her career's skew-whiff path. Or perhaps she's still waking up, despite looking remarkably fresh-faced, calling over Zoom from a hotel. Last year, "Symphony" resurfaced thanks to a bizarre TikTok meme which put the song's treacly chorus over photos of dolphins, alongside depressing messages.
The 26-year-old singer took to the stage at the MTV VMAs in New York on 7 September, beginning his performance in period style attire, complete with a bejewelled, red velvet cape, puffy sleeves, and toussled hair. He lowered down his seemingly deceased stage partner, My Life With Walter Boys actor Corey Fogelmanis, onto a bed of flowers à la Romeo with Juliet in Shakespeare's tragic tale.
Clarkson performed with dozens of musicians to bring her cathartic pop-rock hits and evocative ballads to life, never using a single pre-recorded track, making the show feel both polished yet spontaneous.
"Ordinary's" somber tone is notable given Warren's background as a founding member of Hype House and his early fame from TikTok. His music combines moody theatrics with polished production, positioning him uniquely in the pop landscape.
Billie Eilish's performance features a striking balance of theatricality and intimacy, showcasing both mega-watt staging and intricate emotional narratives throughout her live act.
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