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Who’s that girl? It’s Madonna, showing off her latest snapshot and a little sense of humor, after the internet criticized how she looked at the 2023 Grammys.
Madonna shared a new photo of herself staring down the camera on Twitter Monday (Feb. 20). The pop icon is dressed casually in the picture, wearing ripped jeans, a jacket and a black cap reading “SPIRITUALLY HUNGRY,” with her hair styled in braids.
“Look how cute i am now that swelling from surgery has gone down. Lol,” Madonna tweeted about her face, with a crying-laughing emoji.
At the Grammys earlier this month, the singer had introduced Sam Smith and Kim Petras for a performance of their Grammy-winning “Unholy.” Following the telecast, her speech was seemingly overshadowed by her appearance, as people on social media shared their opinions about how different she looks in 2023, throwing out accusations about botched plastic surgery.
Two days later, Madonna fired back at critics with an Instagram post: “It was an honor for me to introduce Kim Petras and Sam Smith at the Grammys,” she wrote. “I had wanted to give the last award which was Album of the year, but I thought it was more important that I present the first trans- woman performing at the Grammys— a History making moment!! And on top of that she won a Grammy!! Instead of focusing on what I said in my speech which was about giving thanks for the fearlessness of artists like Sam and Kim- Many people chose to only talk about Close-up photos of me Taken with a long lens camera By a press photographer that Would distort anyone’s face!! Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny That permeates the world we live in. A world that refuses to celebrate women pass the age of 45 And feels the need to punish her If she continues to be strong willed, hard-working and adventurous.”
“I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start,” she added at the time.
See Madonna’s new photo on Twitter.
Harry Styles treated himself to a big gulp out of his own shoe in Perth, Australia, Monday night (Feb. 20).
While making casual conversation with the crowd in between songs at HBF Park, Styles seems to have decided that this particular Love On Tour stop was the perfect time partake in an interesting Australian drinking tradition: doing a shoey.
To do a shoey, one must pour alcohol into one’s shoe — not water, as Styles learned Monday night — and chug it.
“Does anybody have a drink that they wouldn’t mind lending?” Styles asked fans in the audience and then pondered, “Can we do a shoey with water or is that against the rules? No?”
Before dumping a drink into his mouth straight from his shoe, which appears to be the Adidas x Gucci Gazelle sneaker, the Harry’s House hitmaker commented, “This is one of the most disgusting traditions.”
Post Malone and Kacey Musgraves are among the fellow music arts to have joined in on the Australian rite of passage on previous tours.
Watch Styles do a shoey in the video clip below, beginning at the 7:07 timestamp.
Kya Monée’s 2023 American Idol audition, a heartfelt tribute to late contestant Willie Spence, made everyone in the room emotional on the show’s premiere Sunday night (Feb. 19).
Spence, the Georgia singer who placed second on the 2021 season of American Idol, died in October 2022. He was only 23 years old.
“We grew a very, very close friendship … Losing Willie was just very, very hard for me,” Monée, a singer from Texas who performed a duet of Rihanna and Mikky Ekko’s “Stay” with Spence during Hollywood Week in 2021, said on Sunday’s Idol episode. “He passed in a tragic car accident and I’m still trying to cope with that.”
Through tears, she said, “Willie, he always told me, ‘No matter what, you’ll always be a singer.’ Three days before he passed, Willie was telling me, ‘You have to go back. You have to chase your dream. I’m gonna go with you to American Idol.’ He made me want to do it and I’d really love to make it further. But most of all, I wanna make Willie proud.”
“He was actually supposed to be here with me today for my audition,” Monée told judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan. “It’s just very hard to not have that support anymore. But I know he would want me to be here … The song that I’m singing today is a song that we picked together. I’m singing ‘I’m Here’ from The Color Purple.”
Perry, Richie and Bryan were visibly moved by Monée’s performance of “I’m Here,” and agreed that the singer would be advancing on to the next round in the competition.
“That’s how you sing through crying,” Perry commented, leading the trio of judges in a standing ovation for Monée.
Richie wiped away his own tears, handed Monée a handkerchief and embraced her in a hug. “What you’ve given us was everything we’ve been trying to tell all of these kids,” he said. “That performance was so emotional, so heartfelt, so divinely guided in the glorious name of our dear brother Willie.”
“I’ve lost some people in my life. When you go to sing, you just sing like Willie’s still here,” Bryan noted.
“It was on another level. It was so connected to the pain, and everybody’s feeling this loss but we also feel connected together because you are authentic, just like he was,” Perry added.
Watch the moving performance from Monée below.
Huey “Piano” Smith, a beloved New Orleans session man who backed Little Richard, Lloyd Price and other early rock stars and with his own group made the party favorites “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Rockin’ Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu,” has died. He was 89.
His daughter, Acquelyn Donsereaux, told The Associated Press that he died in his sleep Feb. 13 at his home in Baton Rouge. She did not cite a specific cause.
A New Orleans native who performed nationwide but always returned to Louisiana, Smith was one of the last survivors of an extraordinary scene of musicians and songwriters who helped make New Orleans a fundamental influence on rock ‘n’ roll. He was just 15 when he began playing professionally and in his 20s helped out on numerous ’50s hits, including Price’s “Where You At?”, Earl King’s “Those Lonely Lonely Nights” and Smiley Lewis’ “I Hear You Knocking.” Little Richard, Fats Domino and David Bartholomew were among the many other artists he worked with.
In 1957, he formed Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns and reached the top 10 with “Rockin’ Pneumonia,” a mid-tempo stomp which featured the vocals of John Marchin and Smith’s buoyant keyboard playing, and the equally rowdy and good-natured “Don’t You Just Know It.” The Clowns also were known for “We Like Birdland”, “Well I’ll Be John Brown” and “High Blood Pressure.”
One Smith production became a major hit and rock standard, for another performer. Smith and his group wrote, arranged and recorded “Sea Cruise,” but Ace Records thought the song would have more success with a white singer — as Smith learned bluntly from local record distributor Joe Caronna — and replaced the Clowns’ vocals with those of Frankie Ford, whose version became a million seller.
“I was crying as he (Caronna) said that,” Smith told biographer John Wirt, whose Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Rocking Pneumonia Blues came out in 2014. “I had been drinking a little bit. It hurt me to my heart when he told me he was taking that.”
Artists covering “Sea Cruise” and other Smith songs included John Fogerty, the Beach Boys, Aerosmith and Jerry Garcia. In 2005, Ford would deny “stealing” the song, alleging that he had written the words. “Huey sorta went through a period and ‘forgot’ a lot of things,” Ford told Offbeat Magazine.
Smith’s popularity faded after the Beatles arrived and by 1980 he had quit the business, settled in Baton Rouge with his wife, Margrette, and become a Jehovah’s Witness. Like many rock musicians from the ’50s, he fought to be paid and credited for “Sea Cruise” and other hits and spent decades in legal battles and financial trouble. Local musicians, meanwhile, continued to cite him as an inspiration.
“To me he was the man who got more out of simplicity than anybody in New Orleans,” drummer Earl Palmer told Wirt.
In 2000, Smith received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and he was honored a year later by the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame. Admirers would cite him as one of the most vital performers not to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
He is survived by his wife, 10 children, 18 grandchildren and 47 great grandchildren, his daughter told the AP.
Smith grew up in the Uptown section New Orleans, his father a roofer, his mother a laundry worker. As a boy, Smith took up piano, learning by watching his uncle play, and he soon mastered the eight-bar progression that anchored countless blues songs. He played obsessively, sometimes to the annoyance of his neighbors, and in high school he helped start the band the Joy Jumpers.
He was still in his teens when he met another young New Orleans musician, Eddie Lee Jones, who as “Guitar Slim” influenced countless musicians and gave Smith his “Piano” nickname. Lewis’ own work initially drew upon the blues-boogie woogie of Professor Longhair. But he would eventually absorb a wide range of styles, whether the jazz of Jelly Roll Martin or the rock-rhythm and blues of Fats Domino.
“I took up to tryin’ a variety of music other than just one individual style,” he told Wirt. “I like my own style, but my own style is completely different than rhythm-and-blues, or calypso or any of that. It’s just deep down funk.”
After winning the BAFTA supporting actress award last year for West Side Story, Ariana DeBose returned to open the 2023 ceremony on Sunday (Feb. 19).
The actress — also known for Hamilton and Westworld — performed an exclusive contemporary song inspired by this year’s nominees on stage at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Richard E. Grant serves as the host of the ceremony.
Alongside DeBose, Mercury Prize-winning artist Little Simz was also set to perform and will sing a track from her album, No Thank You. The pioneering hip-hop artist and actress — who has starred in Top Boy (which also stars this year’s BAFTA best-supporting actor nominee Micheal Ward) — has won MOBO, Ivor Novello and BRIT awards.
Last year, iconic Welsh singer Dame Shirley Bassey raised the curtain on the 75th edition of the BAFTAs with a rendition of the classic James Bond theme “Diamonds Are Forever” in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the film franchise.
All Quiet on the Western Front led the pack of nominees for this year’s BAFTA awards with a record-equaling haul of 14 nominations. Netflix’s acclaimed anti-war epic entered the Sunday ceremony competing for best film, director (for Edward Berger), adapted screenplay and supporting actor (for Albrech Schuch) alongside almost every single below-the-line category.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
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