The musical will premiere at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC, on June 2026. by Rainia Aniftos TLC’s story is heading to the stage. Bill Diggins’ Diggit Theatrical Group is producing a musical about the beloved Grammy-winning trio that will premiere in 2026. CrazySexyCool – The Musical  will tell the “mostly true” story of Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas as they formed TLC and broke down barriers as women in the music industry. Diggins is producing the musical with Stephen Gabriel serving as executive producer. Kwame Kwei-Armah ( One Love: The Bob Marley Musical ) wrote and directed the piece while Chloe O. Davis created the powerful choreography to some of TLC’s biggest hits including “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg,” “Waterfalls,” “Creep,” “Unpretty,” and “No Scrubs.” “TLC completely changed the game,” Diggins said in a press statement. “Their music gave a voice to women everywhere, empowering them to be confident and unapologetic. But this isn’t just a story about the music; it’s about the sisterhood between these women and what kept them together through both unimaginable challenges and chart-topping success.” T-Boz added, “Bringing this story to the stage is a dream come true. We have performed in a lot of different venues all over the world throughout our career but bringing our story and music to the theater  is a totally new and exciting challenge.” Chilli agreed, noting, “We have some of the best people in the business working on this project. Audiences will get to hear our story – mostly fact with a sprinkle of fiction – told in our own way, and of course it’s set to all your favorite hits!” CrazySexyCool   – The Musical  will host its world premiere at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC, June 2026 for eight weeks as part of the venue’s 75th anniversary season. For more information on the show, check out the official website here.

Just six years after Scooter Braun infamously took control of Swift’s back catalog, the superstar musician now owns the rights to all of her own music. By Matthew Strauss Taylor Swift Taylor Swift  has bought back her master recordings. She made the announcement with a note  on her website , sharing happily, “All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me.” It’s the first time she has ever owned the rights to all of her own music. Infamously, in 2019, Scooter Braun’s media holding company, Ithaca Holdings LLC, acquired Big Machine Label Group. With that acquisition came the rights to Swift’s first six studio albums. Swift denounced the acquisition and criticized Braun and his “bullying.” She also said, “Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.” (In a new statement, regarding Swift’s acquisition of her masters, Braun said, “I am happy for her.”) Following the acquisition, Swift—who left  Big Machine Label Group in 2018 to sign a deal with Universal Music Group— pledged to re-record her albums so that she could own the new master recordings. She made it two-thirds of the way through, releasing new editions of Fearless , Red , Speak Now , and 1989 . According to her announcement, she finished the new version of her self-titled debut , but is not yet sure when it could be released. She also said she did not yet finish re-recording Reputation —a re-recorded album that was widely expected to come out soon due to her previewing of “ Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version) .” Before Swift released any of her Taylor’s Version  albums, however, Braun and his company sold the musician’s masters to the Los Angeles investment firm Shamrock Capitol. At the time of the acquisition, Shamrock said, “Taylor Swift is a transcendent artist with a timeless catalog. We made this investment because we believe in the immense value and opportunity that comes with her work.” In her statement, Swift thanked “everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. The way they’ve handled every interaction we’ve had has been honest, fair and respectful. Thanks to you and your goodwill, teamwork, and encouragement, the best things that have ever been mine… finally actually are." Elated and amazed, Taylor

By Mark Savage BBC Music Correspondent Sir Paul McCartney says he has employed artificial intelligence to help create what he calls "the final Beatles record". He told BBC Radio 4's Today program the technology had been used to "extricate" John Lennon's voice from an old demo so he could complete the song. "We just finished it up and it'll be released this year," he explained. Sir Paul did not name the song, but it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon composition called "Now And Then". It had already been considered as a possible "reunion song" for the Beatles in 1995, as they were compiling their career-spanning Anthology series. Sir Paul had received the demo a year earlier from Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. It was one of several songs on a cassette labelled "For Paul" that Lennon had made shortly before his death in 1980. Lo-fi and embryonic, the tracks were largely recorded onto a boombox as the musician sat at a piano in his New York apartment. Cleaned up by producer Jeff Lynne, two of those songs - Free As A Bird and Real Love - were completed and released in 1995 and 96, marking the Beatles' first "new" material in 25 years. The band also attempted to record "Now And Then", an apologetic love song that was fairly typical of Lennon's later career, but the session was quickly abandoned. "It was one day - one afternoon, really - messing with it," Lynne recalled. "The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn't finish." Sir Paul later claimed George Harrison refused to work on the song, saying the sound quality of Lennon's vocal was "rubbish". "It didn't have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it," he told Q Magazine. "[But] George didn't like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn't do it." There were also said to have been technical issues with the original recording which featured a persistent "buzz" from the electricity circuits in Lennon's apartment. In 2009, a new version of the demo, without the background noise, was released on a bootleg CD. Fans have speculated that this recording may not have been available in 1995, suggesting it was stolen from his apartment, along with other personal effects, after his death. In the intervening years, Sir Paul has repeatedly talked about his desire to finish the song. "That one's still lingering around," he told a BBC Four documentary on Jeff Lynne in 2012. "So I'm going to nick in with Jeff and do it. Finish it, one of these days." It would seem that technology has now afforded the musician a chance to achieve that goal. The turning point came with Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary, where dialogue editor Emile de la Rey trained computers to recognize the Beatles' voices and separate them from background noises and even their own instruments, to create "clean" audio. The same process allowed Sir Paul to "duet" with Lennon on his recent tour and for new surround sound mixes of the Beatles' Revolver album to be created last year. "He [Jackson] was able to extricate John's voice from a little bit of cassette," Sir Paul told Radio 4's Martha Kearney. "We had John's voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, 'That's the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar'. "So when we came to to make what will be the last Beatles' record, it was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John's voice and get it pure through this AI. "Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway." However, the musician admitted that other applications of AI gave him cause for concern. "I'm not on the internet that much [but] people will say to me, 'Oh, yeah, there's a track where John's singing one of my songs', and it's just AI, you know? "It's kind of scary but exciting, because it's the future. We'll just have to see where that leads." The star was talking to Radio 4 ahead of the launch of a new book and accompanying photography exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Alyssa Bailey February 7th, 2024 Taylor Swift announced a new album during her first 2024 Grammys speech of the evening...and it wasn’t Reputation (Taylor’s Version)  despite rampant fan speculation. Swift instead shared she has an entirely new release coming. “Hey, this is my 13th Grammy,” she started. “My lucky number. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that. I wanna say thank you to the members of the Recording Academy for voting this way. But I know that the way that the Recording Academy voted is a direct reflection of the passion of the fans. So I wanna say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19th. It’s called The Tortured Poets Department,  and I’m going to go and post the cover right now backstage. Thank you. I love you. Thank you.” On Monday, February 5, Swift dropped the 17-song track list. It added further evidence to fans that the album could have several Joe Alwyn breakup songs, especially with track five being called “So Long, London” after Swift had released “London Boy” on Lover years earlier. Fans also noted Swift’s Tampa, Florida stops on her Eras tour were her first after news broke of her and Alwyn’s breakup, perhaps what “Florida!!!” is referencing. Here’s the full list: Side A: Fortnight ( feat. Post Malone ) The Tortured Poets Department My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys Down Bad Side B: So Long, London But Daddy I Love Him Fresh Out the Slammer Florida!!! ( feat. Florence + the Machine) Side C: Guilty as Sin? Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) loml Side D: I Can Do It With a Broken Heart The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived The Alchemy Clara Bow Bonus Track: The Manuscript Swift revealed during her February 7 Tokyo concert that she began work on the album two years ago in early 2022. Swift wrote Midnights track “You’re Losing Me,”  believed by fans to be a song about the end of her romance with Joe Alwyn o n Dec. 5, 2021. "I've been working on Tortured Poets since right after I turned in Midnights, ” she said. “So you turn in an album months in advance so you can make finals, make sure it’s the best. So I started working on it immediately after that and I’ve been working on it for about two years. I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour and when it was perfect in my opinion, when it was good enough for you, I finished it. And I am so, so excited." "Soon you’ll get to hear it. Soon we’ll get to experience that together. And I’m just like, I’m over the moon about the fact that you guys care about my music. It still blows my mind. I love doing this. I know I keep saying that, but that’s because it’s true. Everyone’s like, ‘Why do you make so many albums?’ I’m like, ‘Man, because I love it! I love it so much. I’m having fun."

By Larisha Paul The album, set for release on March 22, marks her first in seven years and features previously released collaborations with Karol G, Bizarrap, Rauw Alejandro and more. Shakira  will return with her first album in seven years, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran , on March 22 — and she’s bringing company. The musician has shared the complete tracklist for the record, which features appearances from Cardi B, Grupo Frontera, Tiësto and more. Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran  will span 16 songs including the previously released collaborations “Music Sessions Vol. 53” with Bizarrap, “TQG” with Karol G, “Te Felicito” with Rauw Alejandro, “El Jefe” with Fuerza Regida, and “Copa Vacía” with Manuel Turizo. Cardi B will join Shakira on the opening track, “Puntería,” while Grupo Frontera assists on ⁠”(Entre Paréntesis)” and Ozuna on “⁠Monotonía.” Tiësto served up an official remix of “Music Sessions Vol. 53,” and Bizarrap makes another appearance on “La Fuerte.” Rauw Alejandro also features on “Cohete.” A special collaboration appears towards the end of the album on “⁠Acróstico.” The song features Shakira’s sons Milan and Sasha, whom she shares with ex-partner Gerard Piqué. In June 2022, Shakira and Piqué announced their separation after 11 years together. “Making this body of work has been an alchemical process. While writing each song, I was rebuilding myself,” Shakira shared in a statement when announcing the album, her first since 2017’s El Dorado . “While singing them, my tears transformed into diamonds, and my vulnerability into strength.” Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran  Tracklist: “Puntería” with Cardi B “La Fuerte” with Bizarrap “Tiempo Sin Verte” “Cohete” with Rauw Alejandro “(Entre Paréntesis)” with Grupo Frontera “⁠Cómo Dónde y Cuándo” “⁠Nassau” “⁠Última” “Te Felicito” with Rauw Alejandro “⁠Monotonía” with Ozuna “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” “TQG” with Karol G “Acróstico” with Milan + Sasha “Copa Vacía” with Manuel Turiz “El Jefe” with Fuerza Regida “⁠Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” (Remix Tiësto) “Punteria” (Vinyl Version)

By Jon Blistein Beyonce's country-tinged "Cowboy Carter" is set to arrive March 29 and will serve as the second installment of Beyonce’s “three-act project” which began with 2022’s Renaissance . The album was announced with just the title Act II  back in February following a big Super Bowl ad with Beyonce sharing two singles as well: “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages.” Little else is known about the album at this point although Dolly Parton revealed a bit of info in a recent interview with Tennessee outlet Knox News. The country legend said Beyoncé recorded a version of her classic song, “Jolene,” adding: “I think it’s probably gonna be on her country album, which I’m very excited about that… I love her! She’s a beautiful girl and a great singer.” Following the release of the two singles, “Texas Hold ‘Em” climbed to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming Beyonce’s ninth solo number one . Even more notable, “Texas Hold ‘Em” hit Number One on the Hot Country Songs chart, making Beyonce the first Black woman artist to top  that chart.

by Josh Silverstein It doesn't matter how you consume music, Taylor Swift is going to break the record associated with your medium of choice thanks to The Tortured Poets Department. Hot on the heels of setting a new high-mark for streams in a day on Spotify, Taylor Swift  has now shattered her own record for vinyl sales with the staggering first-week success of her latest album. It might sound a little meta to hear that Taylor Swift has broken her own record for selling records but that's actually what she's done. By selling 700,000 copies of The Tortured Poets Department on vinyl in its first three days of release, she broke the record for most sales of a vinyl album in a week. The previous mark was held by Swift as well, for last year's release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), which sold 693,000 copies in a week. And if you're beginning to sense a theme here, you're not wrong — Swift also held the record before than, for the release week of Midnights in October 2022 when she garnered 570,000 in LP sales. Swift therefore now holds the top three spots for most weekly vinyl record sales of all time, which is pretty impressive considering most people either download or stream their music these days. Although, to be fair, vinyl sales have only been tracked since 1991, when SoundScan first began collecting sales data for album sales in the various musical formats. Still, Swift's sales figures for vinyl records are staggering and should be even more impressive when we see the final figure at the end of this first week of release for The Tortured Poets Department. Whatever the motivations for the epic sales figures, people are buying Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department  in droves on vinyl and show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

The singer-songwriter returns after suggesting that hearing loss would make it impossible for him to keep performing. By Jazz Monroe Paul Simon  will hit the road this spring, seven years after announcing  that he would be forced to retire from touring due to hearing loss. He will bring his 2023 album Seven Psalms and other selections from his catalog across the breadth of North America for "A Quiet Celebration", a tour that includes five nights apiece at New York’s Beacon Theater and Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, as well as multiple nights in each of more than a dozen other cities. The announcement follows Simon’s surprise appearance on SNL50: The Anniversary Special , where he performed with Sabrina Carpenter  on his old Simon & Garfunkel  classic “Homeward Bound.”

By Nina Corcoran The Oasis   reunion  isn’t just for the lads. After teasing  that Noel  and Liam Gallagher  would set aside their infamous rivalry to get the band back together, Oasis have expanded their itinerary in the United Kingdom and Ireland to include a batch of 2025 dates in North America. The band will play shows in Toronto, Chicago, New Jersey, California, and Mexico City next summer, with Cage the Elephant supporting. In a press release, the band said: This reunion tour will mark the Gallagher brothers’ first live performances together since Oasis’ bitter split in 2009. “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised,” the band wrote when breaking the news. They later clarified that these reunion shows will not include live performances at music festivals, dispelling rumors  of a headlining set at Glastonbury  in 2025. After ticketing issues  with the British and Irish shows, Oasis’ management announced that the band won’t use Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model for the North American concerts. “It is widely accepted that dynamic pricing remains a useful tool to combat ticket touting and keep prices for a significant proportion of fans lower than the market rate and thus more affordable,” management wrote. “But, when unprecedented ticket demand (where the entire tour could be sold many times over at the moment tickets go on sale) is combined with technology that cannot cope with that demand, it becomes less effective and can lead to an unacceptable experience for fans.”

By Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway Critic July 10, 2023 9:53am Following her recent health scare , Madonna has canceled her summer and fall North American tour with plans to reschedule the dates later. Plans for the European leg of the tour remain in place for October. The singer was set to celebrate four decades of her career with the “Celebration” tour beginning July 15 in Vancouver, Canada with North American dates following throughout the summer and early fall in Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Phoenix, Denver, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Cleveland, Atlanta and others. In an Instagram post, Madonna stated, “The current plan is to reschedule the North American leg of the tour and to begin in October in Europe.” Dates for the rescheduled North American shows were not announced. She also thanked fans for their “positive energy” and said she is “on the road to recovery and incredibly grateful for all the blessings in my life.” “My first thought when I woke up in the hospital was my children,” she writes. “My second thought was that I did not want to disappoint anyone who bought tickets for my tour. I also didn’t want to let down the people who worked tirelessly with me over the last few months to create my show. I hate to disappoint anyone." “My focus now,” she continues, “is my health and getting stronger and I can assure you, I’ll be back with you as soon as I can! The current plan is to reschedule the North American leg of the tour and to begin in October in Europe.”

By Joe Coscarelli and Ben Sisario July 26, 2023Updated 4:27 p.m. ET Sinead O’Connor, the outspoken Irish singer-songwriter best known for her powerful, evocative voice, as showcased on her biggest hit, a breathtaking rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and for her political provocations onstage and off, has died. She was 56. Her family announced the death in a statement, according to the BBC and the Irish public broadcaster RTE. “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinead,” the statement said. “Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.” No other details were provided. Recognizable by her shaved head and by wide eyes that could appear pained or full of rage, Ms. O’Connor released 10 studio albums, beginning with the alternative hit “The Lion and the Cobra” in 1987. She went on to sell millions of albums worldwide, breaking out with “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” in 1990. That album, featuring “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a No. 1 hit and MTV staple, won a Grammy Award in 1991 for best alternative music performance — although Ms. O’Connor boycotted the ceremony over what she called the show’s excessive commercialism. Ms. O’Connor rarely shrank from controversy, though it often came with consequences for her career. In 1990, she threatened to cancel a performance in New Jersey if “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played at the concert hall ahead of her appearance, drawing the ire of no less than Frank Sinatra. That same year, she backed out of an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in protest of the misogyny she perceived in the comedy of Andrew Dice Clay, who was scheduled to host. But all of that paled in comparison to the uproar caused when Ms. O’Connor, appearing on “S.N.L.” in 1992 — shortly after the release of her album “Am I Not Your Girl?” — ended an acappella performance of Bob Marley’s “War” by ripping a photo of Pope John Paul II into pieces as a stance against sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. “Fight the real enemy,” she said. That incident immediately made her a target of criticism and scorn, from social conservatives and beyond. Two weeks after her “S.N.L.” appearance, she was loudly booed at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden. For a time, the vitriol directed at Ms. O’Connor was so pervasive that it became a kind of pop-culture meme in itself. On “S.N.L.,” Madonna mocked the incident by tearing up a picture of Joey Buttafuoco, the Long Island auto mechanic who was a tabloid fixture at the time because of his affair with a 17-year-old girl. Once a rising star, Ms. O’Connor stumbled in the wake of the incident. “Am I Not Your Girl?,” an album of jazz songs and standards like “Why Don’t You Do Right?” and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and stalled on the charts at No. 27. Her next album, “Universal Mother” (1994), went no higher than No. 36. Ms. O’Connor never had another major hit in the United States after “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” from “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” although for a time she remained a staple on the British charts. But in her 2021 memoir, “Rememberings,” Ms. O’Connor portrayed her act of ripping up the photo of the pope as a righteous act of protest — and thus a success. “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career,” she wrote, “and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.” She elaborated in an interview with The New York Times that same year, calling the incident an act of defiance against the constraints of pop stardom. “I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” Ms. O’Connor said. “But it was very traumatizing,” she added. “It was open season on treating me like a crazy bitch.” Ms. O’Connor was born in Dublin on Dec. 8, 1966. Her father, John, was an engineer, and her mother, Johanna, a dressmaker. In interviews and in her memoir, Ms. O’Connor spoke openly of a traumatic childhood. She said that her mother had physically abused her and that she was deeply affected by her parents’ separation, when she was 8. She was arrested for shoplifting and sent to reform schools. “Nothing Compares 2 U” — originally released by the Family, a Prince side project, in 1985 — became a phenomenon when Ms. O’Connor released it five years later. The video for the song, trained closely on her emotive face, was hypnotic, and Ms. O’Connor’s voice, as it raised from delicate, breathy notes to powerful cries, stopped listeners in their tracks. Not long after the song became a hit, Ms. O’Connor accused Prince of physically threatening her. She elaborated on the story in her memoir, saying that Prince, at his Hollywood mansion, chastised her for swearing in interviews and suggested a pillow fight, only to hit her with something hard that was in his pillowcase. She escaped on foot in the middle of the night, she said but Prince chased her around the highway. As her music career slowed, Ms. O’Connor, who had been open in the past about her mental health struggles, became an increasingly erratic public figure, often sharing unfiltered opinions and personal details on social media. In 2007, she revealed on Oprah Winfrey’s television show that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and that she had tried to kill herself on her 33rd birthday. Her son Shane died by suicide in 2022, at 17. Ms. O’Connor said in 2012 that she had been misdiagnosed and that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from a history of child abuse. “Recovery from child abuse is a life’s work,” she told People magazine. Several years ago she converted to Islam and started using the name Shuhada Sadaqat, though she continued to answer to O’Connor as well. Information on survivors was not immediately available. In discussing her memoir with The Times in 2021, Ms. O’Connor focused on her decision to tear up the photo of John Paul II as a signal moment in a life of protest and defiance. “The media was making me out to be crazy because I wasn’t acting like a pop star was supposed to act,” she said. “It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl.”

by Gil Kaufman Jimmy Buffett , the easygoing “Margaritaville” singer/songwriter who transformed his no-worries, beachy lifestyle into a five-decade endless road trip as a performer and entrepreneur has died at age 76. The news announced on his website and social media accounts follows Buffett’s May cancellation of a show in South Carolina to get treatment for an undisclosed illness. “Jimmy passed away on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” the post reads. “He lived his life like a song 'til the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many" his website states. Renowned for his wildly enthusiastic audiences — known as “Parrotheads” — Buffett parlayed his cheeky, rum-soaked songs about pirates (“A Pirate Looks at Forty”), boozy beach bums (“It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere”), captains and sand-caked rogues (“The Captain and the Kid”) into a permanent vacation journey where every port of call was loaded with fruity drinks, colorful summer-themed outfits and precisely no cares in the world. In addition to his 13 Billboard Hot 100 charting singles — including seven top 40 hits and one top 10 — as well as 40 entries on the Billboard 200 album chart, Buffett’s no-worries mien belied a killer business instinct that parlayed the popularity of his island-spiked bar band folk rock anthems into an estimated billion-dollar personal fortune . His sprawling businesses included a series of Margaritaville and LandShark Bar & Grill restaurants across the U.S., as well as licensing agreements for Margaritaville tequila, shoes, cruises, pre-packaged food items and an Atlantic City casino. Born James William Buffett on Christmas Day 1946 in Pascagoula, MS and raised in Mobile, Alabama, the singer was one of three children born to James Delaney Buffett Jr. and Mary Loraine (Peets),who both worked for the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding company. He grew up listening to his grandfather steamship captain J.D. Buffett’s tales of high seas adventure , to whom he paid homage in “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” The latter features the memorable, salt-caked lines, “I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/ Son of a son of a sailor/ The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/ I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”