All posts tagged: Pop

A Beguiling Film About the Downsides of Pop Stardom

A Beguiling Film About the Downsides of Pop Stardom

Published by Sam Flores

Mother Mary begins with a straightforward problem: The titular character, a pop star played by Anne Hathaway, is looking for a showstopper of a dress. But the complications quickly stack up. Mary needs it made over the weekend; she needs it to serve as the centerpiece of her career relaunch after a long and mysterious absence from the public eye; most crucially, she needs it designed by her former collaborator Sam Anselm (played by Michaela Coel), from whom she’s been estranged for years. When Mary storms into Sam’s office with her demand, Sam calmly replies that it’s impossible, unless the singer is somehow able to stop time. Mary raises her hand, snaps her fingers in the air, and pronounces it done. If only it were so simple—but Mary, the viewer understands, is someone who has spent most of her adulthood defying the laws of reality. How else to define the life of a superstar, someone who bends everyone else’s needs around her own in order to satisfy the millions of fans awaiting her next move? …

Holly Humberstone: ‘Being pretty is seen as currency for women in pop. The same rules don’t apply to men’

Holly Humberstone: ‘Being pretty is seen as currency for women in pop. The same rules don’t apply to men’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter I’d love to say I’d be a gorgeous elf,” says Holly Humberstone with an impish grin, “but let’s be real: I’d be a f***ing hobbit.” The 2022 Brits Rising Star winner is talking about who’d she be in The Lord of the Rings – she discovered the films aged 15 at a New Year’s Eve party she didn’t want to be at, and has been lost in Tolkien’s universe ever since. “There’s a story called ‘Beren and Lúthien’,” she says. “It’s really, really sad and heartbreaking. That’s maybe my favourite.” She pauses. “The fans will come for me with pitchforks if I get the lore wrong.” The Lord of the Rings, in its way, explains a lot: the escapism, the dark fairytales, the compulsion to build whole mythologies out of feeling. Cruel World, Humberstone’s second album, is steeped in all of …

Holly Humberstone: Cruel World review – Taylor Swift fave trades gothic melancholy for pop glow-up | Music

Holly Humberstone: Cruel World review – Taylor Swift fave trades gothic melancholy for pop glow-up | Music

Published by Sam Flores

As a profession, pop stardom has been in existential crisis for some time. It used to be simple – a hit single was the only real qualification – but in a post-monocultural world, the job title is often bestowed as a result of more piecemeal success: a Brit rising star award and Taylor Swift support slot here, 4m monthly Spotify listeners and a Top 5 album there. Cruel World album artwork. This, specifically, is the CV of Lincolnshire’s Holly Humberstone, who has established herself in the pop sphere without ever troubling the singles chart. While an undeniable banger has eluded the 26-year-old, her sound is faultlessly chart-friendly. Like Swift, Humberstone delivers earnestly wordy lyrics in intimate, near-ASMR tones atop 80s synth-pop decorated with a deluge of hooks. For this second album, she has dropped the hint of gothic melancholy that accompanied her debut, Paint My Bedroom Black. Cruel World is peppy bordering on euphoric: inordinately sunny break-up song To Love Somebody is powered by a stadium-ready pre-chorus, while the brilliantly catchy White Noise plugs into …

‘Nobody looks like me and sounds like me’: flowerovlove redefines what pop stardom means

‘Nobody looks like me and sounds like me’: flowerovlove redefines what pop stardom means

Published by Sam Flores

“Everybody says [redacted] is saving pop. No, Joyce is saving pop,” a fan declares on a voice note at the outset of flowerovlove’s single “muse.” Joyce Cissé, known by her artist moniker flowerovlove, is a breezy, deeply thoughtful and remarkably confident singer-songwriter from South London. Her discography leans into bubblegum pop, igniting the giddy teen emotions of a newfound crush. On other tracks, she stands on business, solidifying her status as a major catch and refusing to compromise for a subpar man. Cissé doesn’t wait around for things to happen. Since her first high-fashion campaign for Gucci at 15, the now 21 -year-old music artist and model demands attention and has the talent to back it up. Her résumé is already significantly more stacked than most people who recently exited their teens. The singer previously opened for Olivia Rodrigo, Halsey, Khalid and Haim and performed at Glastonbury, Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza. Now, she is preparing for her Coachella debut on April 12 and 19. Many fans discovered her via the track “new friends,” an …

‘I lost a m brand deal. I was like: OK, losers!’ Swedish pop provocateur Zara Larsson on fame, fun and fighting the power | Music

‘I lost a $3m brand deal. I was like: OK, losers!’ Swedish pop provocateur Zara Larsson on fame, fun and fighting the power | Music

Published by Sam Flores

On a warm spring day, Brooklyn’s century-old Paramount theatre has been transformed into a base camp for all things Zara Larsson. Stage techs scurry past entourage members, managers furiously tap smartphones and various figures patiently await their moment with the Swedish superstar. Down a plushly carpeted flight of stairs, Zara Larsson is on all fours, saying “puss puss” (Swedish for “kiss kiss”) into a camera. Despite all the craziness around her, she is locked in, wearing electric-blue stockings, tangerine booty shorts and a tiny blazer that makes her look like Malibu Barbie at graduation. A man powers up a leaf-blower, sending Larsson’s blond hair flying. After hitting a few poses, she tippy-taps over in maribou-trimmed stilettos and offers me a can of water. “Cheers!” she says as we clink. Larsson’s career is moving at lightning speed and there’s not a moment to waste, or to indulge in much celebration beyond designer mineral water. In the week we meet, her irresistible spot on PinkPantheress’s Stateside has risen to No 1 on Billboard’s global charts after Olympic …

“Sounds like run-on sentences”: Manilow wonders what happened to pop hooks

“Sounds like run-on sentences”: Manilow wonders what happened to pop hooks

Published by Sam Flores

Barry Manilow is still obsessed with craft. Ahead of his 55th album, the “Mandy” singer took a deep dive into modern pop. He wanted to take a crack at writing like artists like Billie Eilish, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Speaking to The Times of London, he said that radio pop in 2026 is one long ramble. “I really studied what’s going on out there — artists like Billie Eilish. I tried to write like her but I just couldn’t because I’m used to verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, ending — but pop music now just sounds like run-on sentences,” he said. “Where is the chorus? Hook? Song after song is like that.” It is perhaps unsurprising that Manilow reached for Eilish as his guide to modern pop. Beyond her megahits, Eilish’s sexuality fueled tabloid gossip for years. Manilow has been a relationship with his now husband since the late ’70s, but he only publicly came out as gay in 2018. He told the Times that coming out at the time would …

Anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ rallies pop up in thousands of US cities

Anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ rallies pop up in thousands of US cities

Published by Sam Flores

TRUMP POSES “EXISTENTIAL THREAT”, ACTOR DE NIRO SAYS In Minnesota, a flashpoint in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, a massive rally was held outside the state capitol in Saint Paul. Many held aloft posters bearing photos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, US citizens fatally shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis this year. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2024, told the crowd that their resistance to Trump and his policies makes them “the heart and soul” of everything good about the US. “They call us radicals,” Walz said. “You’re damn right we’ve been radicalised – radicalised by compassion, radicalised by decency, radicalised by due process, radicalised by democracy, and radicalised to do all we can to oppose authoritarianism.” US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Trump critic who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, also addressed the event in Minnesota. Musician Bruce Springsteen performed his song “Streets of Minneapolis” – a ballad criticising Trump’s immigration crackdown and lamenting the deaths of Good and Pretti. “We will …

Add to playlist: the coffee-shop pop of Gianna and the week’s best new tracks | Music

Add to playlist: the coffee-shop pop of Gianna and the week’s best new tracks | Music

Published by Sam Flores

From LondonRecommended if you like All Saints, Frou Frou, Nelly FurtadoUp next EP out now; on tour with After in May The first time I heard Gianna’s Shadow of a Bird, I was instantly transported to a place that smelled of Impulse body spray. It is a track that has perfectly nailed the polished boho-pop of early 00s Nelly Furtado, All Saints and Corinne Bailey Rae – the sort that features arpeggiated acoustic guitar, vaguely trip-hop beats and a gently distinctive voice swooping through them. Other clear influences on the 23-year-old Camdenite’s debut EP Behind the Wings are the cinematic sweep of Everything But the Girl and the rave-adjacent Ray of Light-era Madonna, but also Gianna’s own childhood steeped in Albanian television and folk songs. When she started writing songs to combat the boredom of lockdown, she wrote them in Albanian over beats she found on YouTube. You hear tiny hints of that Balkan aesthetic in her new music, though Shadow of a Bird was inspired by an experience dozing in her parents’ native Kosovo. …

‘I didn’t think anyone would be into it’: Slayyyter turns midwest trash into pop gold | Pop and rock

‘I didn’t think anyone would be into it’: Slayyyter turns midwest trash into pop gold | Pop and rock

Published by Sam Flores

For the past several months, nothing has gotten me through this brutal New York winter quite like Crank, a fiendishly chaotic concoction by the electropop artist Slayyyter. The track is deliriously overstimulating; the singer tweaks out over record-scratches and squelches and ferociously barrels through a chorus that sounds – and I mean this as a sincere compliment – like a plane crash. In these times of global catastrophe, I have found this soothing. Slayyyter’s new album Worst Girl in America scratches a similar anarchic itch. Immediate, vertiginous and diabolically cheeky, the after-hours record finds her channelling a ferality that feels rare in our slop-ified pop culture (cue the rock-tinged Cannibalism), and has garnered breathless hype among those in the know. All five singles released from the project to date have the jet propulsion of someone fueled on years of pop star study and frustrated by, as she bluntly puts it, “my ninth year on the up-and-coming list”. In that time, the 29-year old artist born Catherine Grace Garner has lingered on the clubby outskirts of …

Pop Stars in Upcoming Classic Book Adaptations

Pop Stars in Upcoming Classic Book Adaptations

Published by Jenni Sidey

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. We love reading the classics, and we love listening to music from our favorite pop stars. But what happens when those worlds collide? Pop stars have been making the crossover into acting forever, and sometimes they have made appearances in classic adaptations. Brandy and Whitney Houston’s iconic roles in the 1997 Cinderella comes to mind. But in recent bookish news, it seems like we’re seeing more and more pop stars attached to upcoming classic adaptations. Here’s all the recent news coming out about pop stars who have been considered for roles in classic adaptations! Sabrina Carpenter in Alice in Wonderland Pop singer Sabrina Carpenter has long been a fan of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and now the pop star is producing and starring in her own Alice adaptation. Carpenter is producing the project alongside Marc Platt through the Universal-based Marc Platt Productions. Leslie Morgenstein and Elysa Koplovitz Dutton will also produce through Alloy Entertainment. According to sources, …