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Halsey is celebrating the 1st birthday of their adorable son, Ender Ridley Aydin.
The 27-year-old pop star took to social media on Thursday (July 14) to share a heartfelt tribute to her baby boy, whom she shares with boyfriend Alev Aydin. The Instagram post included a reflective photo gallery documenting Ender’s first year of life with his loving mother alongside him.
“my little tiny baby is a big one year old today! time flies, and I want to land the plane. permanently. your baba and I love you so much,” the artist captioned the cute snapshots. “you are smart and fiercely determined and sweet and curious and funny. I am so lucky that you found me Ender Ridley!”
Halsey wasn’t the only one celebrating Ender’s big day. The baby’s father also shared a loving birthday tribute to his son, which included a snapshot of the toddler watching his mom’s “So Good” music video.
“PETIT PRINCE IS ONE TODAY!! Mama and I love you, Ender,” Aydin captioned the gallery on Instagram. “To the moon, kid, to the moon.”
Ender was born prior to the release of Halsey’s fourth album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in September 2021. After the baby’s birth, the musician posted a pair of black-and-white images of the newborn resting on their chest while the singer-songwriter gazed lovingly at Aydin.
Check out Halsey’s birthday tribute to their son here, and see Aydin’s post here.
Perhaps the most talked-about new category for the upcoming 65th annual Grammy Awards is songwriter of the year, non-classical. The Recording Academy shed more light on the award and how the nominees will be determined in its “rules and guidelines” handbook, which it put online on Thursday (July 14).
Voting members of the Academy will first vote in the category. Their top 30 choices will be presented, in alphabetical order, to nominating committees comprised of songwriters that will be formed in each of the Academy’s three “regions” — East, South and West.
(The East region is comprised of the Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., chapters. The South region is comprised of the Atlanta, Florida, Memphis and Nashville chapters. The West region is comprised of the Los Angeles, Pacific Northwest, San Francisco and Texas chapters.)
The Recording Academy will hand-pick the members of these three regional nominating committees. The Academy says that the members will be “diverse” (which usually means balanced along racial and gender lines, with some attention also paid to LGBTQ status and age) and “highly relevant” (which is likely coded language for “currently active,” rather than someone whose main credits are years or decades in the past).
It’s often hard for the Academy to get “highly relevant” people to participate in committees like this because they’re so busy working, but the Academy says that the nominating committee will meet just once — so the time commitment would not be prohibitive.
Members of all three regional committees will listen to the submitted material, discuss it, and submit “in secret” a weighted ballot of their top five selections. The ballots from all three regional committees will be tallied to determine the final nominees.
Each songwriter may submit up to nine songs for consideration, so each committee may be charged with listening to up to 270 songs (30 times nine), a formidable task. (They most likely won’t listen to all the songs all the way through, but will cherry-pick and listen to the ones under discussion.)
The award will be the only category in a new songwriting field. It will not be in the “general field” (commonly called the Big Four), which includes song of the year.
Here are the rules governing the committees, taken directly from the “rules and guidelines” handbook, with minimal editing, mostly to conform to Billboard style on such matters as capitalization.
“Functioning in the same way as a craft committee, the regional songwriter of the year nominating committees will be comprised of diverse and ‘highly relevant’ songwriters across all genres and areas of the craft. The committees will be assembled by the Recording Academy. Suggestions for nominating committee candidates will come from the chapters and be vetted by the awards department in consultation with the CEO [Harvey Mason jr.] and Recording Academy chair [Tammy Hurt]. The final population of these committees will be done by the CEO and Recording Academy chair. The nominating committees will meet once. They will be given a list of the voters’ top 30 choices from the first-round voting in alphabetical order.
“The nominating committees will be provided the submitted material, both audio and lyrics, from the songwriters on this list, to listen to and review, and then discuss it amongst themselves. At the end of the nominating committee meeting each committee member will submit in secret a weighted ballot of their top five selections. These ballots will then be tallied to determine the final nominees.
“Nominating committees will be chaired by a voting member in conjunction with an Academy staff member. … The chair’s job will be to guide the committee through the process. Although the chair shall be impartial on the decisions taken by the committee, they will be a voting member of the committee.”
Here is general information about the new award, also taken directly from the “rules and guidelines” handbook. This was previously reported when the Academy first announced the new category, one of five being added this year, on June 9.
“This category recognizes the written excellence, profession and art of songwriting for non-performing and non-producing songwriters.
“This category is for songwriters whose body of work released for the first time during the current eligibility year represents artistic excellence in the area of songwriting.
“Songwriters must have written a minimum of five songs in which they are credited ‘solely’ as a songwriter or co-writer. Songs in which the songwriter was also credited as a primary or featured artist, producer or any other supporting role do not qualify to achieve a minimum song threshold for consideration.
“Songwriters may supplement their core five song submission with up to four more songs in which the songwriter has songwriting credits as well as additional credits such as primary or featured artist, producer or any other supporting role.
“The maximum number of songs cannot exceed nine entries, which is comparable to the number of submissions allowed for consideration in the producer of the year, non-classical category.
“Songs from albums released in a previous year are not eligible, even if released as a single or added to a new album released during the current eligibility year. Re-released, covered, remixed, reissued, and historical recordings of songs are not eligible.”
As New York’s largest free outdoor arts festival, the Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage has long championed a diverse range of artists in its nearly 40-year history. This year, a full-fledged, multi-artist K-pop collaboration joined the legendary mix that takes place annually in Central Park.
On July 10, KOREA GAYOJE presented SummerStage the first K-pop show in the City Parks Foundation series, in association with the Korean Cultural Center New York. Viral girl group Brave Girls, boy band Golden Child, plus soloist and American Song Contest champion AleXa all performed at the free concert as an opportunity for the artists to visit and connect directly with their NYC fans.
According to organizers, fans were lined up in the early morning hours to ensure they could be close when their favorites performed that evening.
“The response from fans has been unbelievable,” says Paula Abreu, director of programming for City Parks Foundation SummerStage. “Our digital and social media responses have been off the charts. The fans, and the artists themselves, were deeply engaged leading up to this date. As expected, we had lines forming as early as 5 a.m. to get into the venue. I have never seen an audience so committed and enthusiastic about a concert.”
While SummerStage has hosted a range of Korean artists in the past (the series points to Korean rock band Ssing Ssing, Korean-American rap group Year of the Ox, and TOKiMONSTA, the SoCal DJ-producer who is of Korean descent), 2022 marks their official introduction into the K-pop fandom and all it has to offer.
“This year is the first time we have K-pop on our stage and we are thrilled,” Abreu adds. “The fans knew all the lyrics, held up signs, and were even ‘waving’ to their favorite artists on stage — and many waved back! This was a true demonstration of how artists and audiences are so connected. It was beautiful to see the diversity as well. We have done shows where the majority of the audience is from the same ethnic group of the bands on stage, and this audience was so diverse.”
Conveniently, SummerStage acted as the New York tour stops for Brave Girls and Golden Child’s ongoing U.S. tours. But this was the first time AleXa performed a set for such a large crowd after entering the scene just months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down touring and live performances.
“I am so happy and grateful to have been able to perform in front of such a large audience for the first time,” AleXa reflects on the performance post-show. “Being able to perform for SummerStage KOREA GAYOJE in Central Park was such a fun experience that left me walking away with such positive energy from the crowd.”
Adds Kim Junhong, CEO of ZB LABEL / Zanybros that manages AleXa: “SummerStage hosts so many of New York’s greats, and it is such an amazing honor to be invited. Because this was her first time performing in New York, I was so proud for AleXa to showcase a powerful K-pop stage. As a native English speaker, she created an interactive experience for the audience that filled them with energy. We hope we were able to truly show New Yorkers that AleXa is the beginning of a new trend.”
While AleXa joins the growing trend of K-pop integrating into mainstream American spaces, SummerStage sees a “promising future” for more.
“Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage loves to keep up with trends in the music industry and make sure we are always presenting the latest and greatest,” Paula Abreu. “We love our festival to be a place for discovery. While it may be too early to know, we were thrilled with the audience’s responses to this show and felt it was definitely a success. We curate each season with a lot of planning, thought and intention as dates are limited and competitive. Based on last night, I would say it’s a promising future at SummerStage but we will wait and see what the next season brings.”
SummerStage continues throughout various parks in New York City through Oct. 1.
Ye (Kanye West) is facing a new lawsuit that claims he owes $7.1 million in unpaid fees to a production company that worked on his Donda 2 release show as well as his canceled Coachella performance.
In a complaint filed Thursday (July 14) in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Phantom Labs say the design and production firm “faithfully performed” the work requested by Ye, deploying “countless hours of in-house talent” and also making advanced payments to numerous other vendors.
“Event after event, Ye and his representatives promised that if Phantom continued work on the budgeted and approved projects, Phantom would be paid promptly for the balance and the new work,” wrote Howard King, a well-known entertainment attorney who is repping Phantom.
“More recent events have made clear that defendants have no intention of paying Phantom,” King wrote. “Despite receiving multiple demand letters from Phantom, defendants continue inexplicably to withhold payment.”
Phantom’s lawsuit comes days after Billboard first reported that Ye was facing a different lawsuit from high-end fashion rental service David Casavant Archive, which claims that the superstar has failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and neglected to return a dozen “rare, esteemed pieces.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Phantom said the lawsuit was a last resort: “We are incredibly proud of the work that we did with Ye and are disappointed that such a fruitful relationship has come to this. A celebrity weaponizing fame and reputation to take advantage of eager collaborators is simply unacceptable.”
A spokeswoman for the rapper, who legally changed his name to Ye last year, did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
According to Phantom’s lawsuit, the company also worked on four weeks of “Sunday Service,” as well as Ye and Drake’s “Free Larry Hoover” concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The firm says it was paid millions in fees over the years, but that “significant overdue invoices began to pile up” as time went by. Phantom says it continued to take on work in hopes of being paid the outstanding balance, up until Kanye’s well-publicized withdrawal from Coachella.
“Just weeks after promising to make Phantom whole from the reported $9 million payday he was to receive for performing at Coachella, Ye suddenly pulled out of the festival—not only reneging on promises to pay Phantom’s multi-million-dollar balance, but also saddling Phantom with an additional $1.1 million in Coachella-related cancellation fees and other expenses incurred doing work on Coachella at defendants’ request,” the suit added.
All told, Phantom says it’s owed $7,154,177, plus interest.
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