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Tag: Pop music

  • Gloria Estefan gets loud, Teddy Riley swings and Jeff Lynne rocks at Songwriters Hall induction

    Gloria Estefan gets loud, Teddy Riley swings and Jeff Lynne rocks at Songwriters Hall induction

    NEW YORK — Gloria Estefan sang a medley of her hits, Post Malone sang one of his forgotten gems, Teddy Riley swayed to New Jack Swing and Jeff Lynne rocked out to “Mr. Blue Sky” at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony Thursday night.

    The gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City celebrated a diverse group of songwriters, with Broadway represented by lyricist Tim Rice, pop from Glen Ballard and a Nashville twang from Liz Rose. Each inductee spoke about how important music was to them growing up and how it connected them to the past and future.

    “To those fans that have found in my music what I found in the music of the life-changing songwriters that nourished my soul throughout my life, I thank you for that privilege,” said Estefan, the first Hispanic woman to be inducted. “And I can assure you that it is just as magical from the other side of the song.”

    Lynne, of the prog-rock Electric Light Orchestra, who worked with the Travelling Wilburys and Tom Petty, was the first to be honored, with guitarist Joe Walsh introducing his friend as a “a one-man Renaissance artist” and playing ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down.”

    Lynne recalled a day in 1977 when he was in a Swiss chalet trying to write his next album but for weeks it had been dark and misty. Then he woke to the sun shining and blue sky. He soon wrote 14 songs, one of which was “Mr. Blue Sky,” which he performed.

    Rose recalled being a single, working mom with three children who turned to songwriting in her late 30s. She co-wrote many songs with Taylor Swift beginning when the singer-songwriter was 14, including “You Belong with Me,” “Teardrops on My Guitar” and “White Horse.” Rose doesn’t sing or play an instrument and thanked all the artists.

    “The cool thing about songwriting is that you get to hang out with your friends and you get to have therapy and you get to cry and drink wine and eat Cheez-Its,” Rose said. “I just love to dig in and just see that song come out at the end of the session. There’s just nothing like it.”

    Broadway star Heather Headley introduced Rice and sang “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the musical he wrote with Andrew Lloyd Webber. Rice, who is already in the hall, was honored with the Johnny Mercer Award, the highest honor bestowed by the event.

    Miles Frost, another Broadway star from the Michael Jackson musical “MJ,” helped introduce Ballard, who helped write and produce Alanis Morissette’s monster 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill” and was involved in the recording and writing of several Jackson albums, including “Thriller,” “Bad” and “Dangerous.”

    “The journey of a songwriter is quixotic and occasionally exotic. Never a straight line, but always serpentine,” Ballard said. “I’ve been writing songs from age 4, not for money but because I had to.”

    Doug E. Fresh and Keith Sweat inducted Riley, the singer, songwriter and producer credited with creating New Jack Swing, which fuses hip-hop, R&B, dance and pop, and its top anthems such as Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative.” The trio did a medley of hits that included “I Want Her,” “No Diggity” and “Rump Shaker.”

    Producer Louis Bell introduced Malone, having met him when he was 19 in a recording studio: “Not only is he one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing a room with, more importantly he’s also one of the purest, most beautiful souls I’ve ever met.”

    Malone, 27, received the Hal David Starlight Award, given to “gifted young songwriters who are making a significant impact in the music industry.”

    Malone thanked his baby and his fiancee, removed his suit jacket, picked up an acoustic guitar and played “Feeling Whitney,” a deep cut from first album “Stoney,” with the lyrics: “To each their own and find peace in knowin’/Ain’t always broken, but here’s to hopin.’”

    “I’m sorry that I played a song that nobody knows,” he said to laughter.

    The last performer of the night was Estefan, who is credited for popularizing Latin rhythms with such crossover smashes as “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” and “Let’s Get Loud.” I

    “Music has saved my life,” she said.

    Joined by her husband, Emilio, and 11-year-old grandson, Sasha, Estefan ended the night with a medley of songs that got people on their feet: “Reach,” “Words Get in the Way,” “Anything for You,” “Can’t Stay Away from You,” “Don’t Wanna Lose You,” “Let’s Get Loud” and “Rhythm Gonna Get You.”

    Snoop Dogg, whose hits include “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and “Gin & Juice,” deferred his induction to next year. Sade also deferred her induction.

    The Songwriters Hall of Fame was established in 1969 to honor those creating popular music. A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song.

    Some already in the hall include Carole King, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Lionel Richie, Bill Withers, Neil Diamond and Phil Collins.

    ___

    Online: http://www.songhall.org

    ___

    Follow Mark Kennedy at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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  • BTS is 10 years old: Seoul landmarks to be lit up in purple to celebrate K-pop band’s anniversary

    BTS is 10 years old: Seoul landmarks to be lit up in purple to celebrate K-pop band’s anniversary

    SEOUL, South Korea — Skyscrapers, bridges and other landmarks in South Korea’s capital will be lit up in purple on Monday as the country begins celebrating the 10th anniversary of K-pop band BTS, whose global popularity is a source of national pride.

    The lights will provide the backdrop for various social media-driven events marking the 2013 debut of the seven-member group, which is now taking a hiatus as its singers begin to serve their mandatory military duties.

    From Monday evening, numerous Seoul structures, including City Hall, the 123-story Lotte World Tower, several Han River bridges, and the futuristic DDP – a Zaha Hadid-designed aluminum and concrete dome that’s often used for visual art – will be bathed in purple, a color associated with BTS, according to city officials and the group’s management company, Hybe.

    Messages congratulating BTS were displayed on digital screens in buildings across Seoul, while postal authorities issued stamps marking the group’s anniversary, which will be available at post offices starting Tuesday.

    Seoul officials hope that the celebrations, which will continue for around two weeks, will boost tourism. The city has designated more than a dozen sites associated with BTS, including places where the group held major performances or shot some of their famous videos.

    Fireworks are planned at a park near the Han River on Saturday night, hours after one of the BTS singers, RM, holds a live talk with fans that will be broadcast online.

    Quickly garnering huge followings in Asia following their debut, BTS’ popularity expanded across the globe with their 2020 megahit “Dynamite,” the band’s first all-English song that made it the first K-pop act to top Billboard’s Hot 100. BTS has since performed in sold-out arenas around the world and was invited to speak at United Nations meetings, supported by a legion of global followers who call themselves the “Army.”

    BTS’ activities as a full group are currently on hold as the artists begin to serve in the military. Two BTS singers – Jin and J-Hope – have already started their compulsory 18-month service and other members are to follow in coming months, which likely means the group will reconvene around 2025.

    In South Korea, all able-bodied men are required to serve in uniform 18-21 months under a system meant to deter aggression from rival North Korea.

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  • Songwriter Cynthia Weil, who had hits with husband Barry Mann, honored at California memorial

    Songwriter Cynthia Weil, who had hits with husband Barry Mann, honored at California memorial

    BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — As guests filed into Sunday’s music-filled memorial for Cynthia Weil, they smiled in recognition and sang along to a string of hit songs she co-wrote that were played on speakers in a lush courtyard of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

    Weil, the Grammy-winning lyricist who enjoyed a decades-long partnership with husband Barry Mann and helped compose “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “On Broadway,” “Walking in the Rain” and dozens of other timeless tunes, died last week at age 82.

    Singer Tony Orlando, who hosted the private event from a small stage with a grand piano, admonished attendees that despite the cloudy skies the day was not to be mournful, but a sunny celebration.

    “I want the applause to be loud!” he said. Orlando performed “Bless You,” the 1961 ballad that gave Weil and Mann their first top 20 hit. They were married within months of the song’s release.

    White-coated waiters distributed trays of bright green apple martinis, Weil’s favorite cocktail, to her friends, family members and show business contemporaries. Among those raising their glasses were Mann, record producer Lou Adler, singer Carol Bayer Sager and songwriters Carole King, Jeff Barry, Mike Stoller and Diane Warren.

    Weil and Mann were one of popular music’s most successful teams, part of a crew of young songwriters based in Manhattan’s Brill Building neighborhood, near Times Square. With such hit-making duos as King and Gerry Goffin and Barry and Ellie Greenwich, the Brill Building hit factory turned out many of the biggest singles of the ’60s and beyond.

    The couple was collaborators with producer Phil Spector on songs for the Ronettes (“Walking in the Rain”), the Crystals (“He’s Sure the Boy I Love”) and other singers, and also provided hits for everyone from Lionel Richie to Leo Sayer.

    Their most famous collaboration, a song that would become historic, was “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” a soulful anthem produced by Spector with epic strings and sung with desperate intensity by the Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” topped the charts in 1965 and was covered by numerous other artists.

    Appearing at the memorial via a recorded video, Bill Medley said Weil and Mann didn’t just write the Righteous Brothers a hit, “They wrote us a career!” According to Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), no other song was played more on radio and television in the 20th century.

    Dolly Parton, who also appeared on video, recalled her career being sent “out into space” when the country star scored a crossover pop hit in 1977 with “Here You Come Again,” written by Weil and Mann.

    “She left a great body of work,” Parton said.

    Weil and Mann were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. They were supporting characters in the hit Broadway musical about King, “Beautiful,” which opened in 2013 and documented the intense friendship and rivalry between the two married couples. Mann and Weil’s musical “They Wrote That?” had a brief run in 2004.

    On Sunday, with Paul Shaffer on piano, King performed “Somewhere Out There,” a song Weil wrote with James Horner for the soundtrack of “An American Tail.” It won Grammys in 1987 for best song and best song for a movie or television, and was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe.

    Weil’s daughter, Dr. Jenn Mann, said the songwriter died last Thursday at her home in Beverly Hills, California. She remembered her mother Sunday as a loving wife to Mann, a devoted grandmother to her two girls, a lover of animals, and a soft-hearted romantic who could surprise people with her no-nonsense business sense.

    While many of Weil’s peers struggled once the Beatles caught on in the mid-1960s, she continued to make hits, sometimes with Mann, or with other partners. Weil helped write the Peabo Bryson ballad “If Ever You’re In My Arms Again”; James Ingram’s “Just Once”; and the Pointer Sisters’ “He’s So Shy.” In 1997, she was in the top 10 again with Hanson’s “I Will Come to You.”

    And her talents extended beyond love ballads. She and Mann wrote one of rock’s first anti-drug songs, “Kicks,” a hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1966. The Animals had a hit with her tale of working class frustration, “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place.” The Crystals’ “Uptown” was a 1961 hit that touched upon race and class in ways not often heard in rock’s early years.

    Appearing on video, rocker Paul Stanley of KISS recalled being a fledgling songwriter as a teenager in New York and scouring the credits on his favorite records.

    “Invariably, songs that I loved, I would see her name on it,” Stanley said.

    ___ Associated Press writer in Hillel Italie in New York contributed.

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  • Cynthia Weil, Grammy winning lyricist who had hits with husband Barry Mann, dead at 82

    Cynthia Weil, Grammy winning lyricist who had hits with husband Barry Mann, dead at 82

    NEW YORK — Cynthia Weil, a Grammy-winning lyricist of notable range and endurance who enjoyed a decades-long partnership with husband Barry Mann and helped write “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “On Broadway,” “Walking in the Rain” and dozens of other hits, has died at age 82.

    Her death was confirmed Friday by Interdependence Public Relations, which represents Mann’s daughter, Dr. Jenn Mann. A spokesperson did not immediately have further details.

    Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, married in 1961, were one of popular music’s most successful teams, part of a remarkable ensemble recruited by impresarios Don Kirshner and Al Nevins and based in Manhattan’s Brill Building neighborhood, a few blocks from Times Square. With such hit-making combinations as Carole King and Gerry Goffin and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, the Brill Building song factory turned out many of the biggest singles of the ’60s and beyond.

    Weil and Mann were key collaborators with producer Phil Spector on songs for the Ronettes (“Walking in the Rain”), the Crystals (“He’s Sure the Boy I Love”) and other performers, and also provided hits for everyone from Dolly Parton to Hanson. “Don’t Know Much,” a Linda Ronstadt-Aaron Neville duet they helped write, was a top 5 hit that won a best pop performance Grammy in 1990.

    Their most famous song, a work of history overall, was “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” an anthem of “blue-eyed soul” produced by Spector as if scoring a tragedy and sung with desperate fury by the Righteous Brothers. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” topped the charts in 1965 and was covered by numerous other artists. According to Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), no other song was played more on radio and television in the 20th century.

    But when Weil and Mann first played “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” for the Righteous Brothers, the response from singers Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield was “dead silence.”

    “Bill said, ‘Sounds good for The Everly Brothers not the Righteous Brothers,’” she told Parade magazine in 2015. “We thought ‘Oh, God.’ Then Bobby said, ‘What am I supposed to do while the big guy’s singing?’ and Phil (Spector) said “You can go to the bank.’”

    While many of Weil’s peers struggled once the Beatles caught on, she continued to make hits, sometimes with Mann, or with such partners as Michael Masser, David Foster and John Williams, with whom she wrote “For Always” for the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.” Mann helped write Parton’s pop breakthrough “Here You Come Again”; the Peabo Bryson ballad “If Ever You’re In My Arms Again”; James Ingram’s “Just Once”; the Pointer Sisters’ “He’s So Shy”; and Lionel Richie’s “Running With the Night.” In 1997, she was in the top 10 again with Hanson’s “I Will Come to You.”

    “When they are successful, songs are like little novels. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. You feel what the person is feeling who’s singing it and it paints a picture of the human condition,” Weil, who eventually published the novel “I’m Glad I Did,” told Parade.

    Her talents reached well beyond love ballads. She and Mann wrote one of rock’s first anti-drug songs, “Kicks,” a hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1966. She also had a knack for lyrics about ambition and aspiration, such as “On Broadway” and its unforgettable opening line, “They say the neon lights are bright/on Broadway.” The Animals had a hit with her tale of working class frustration, “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place.” The Crystals’ “Uptown” was a 1961 hit that touched upon race and class in ways not often heard in rock’s early years.

    ____

    Downtown he’s just one of a million guys

    He don’t get no breaks

    And he takes all they got to give

    ‘Cause he’s got to live

    But then he comes uptown

    Where he can hold his head up high

    Uptown he knows that I am standing by

    _____

    Weil and Mann were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, with King introducing them at the Rock Hall ceremony. Mann and Weil were supporting characters in the hit Broadway musical about King, “Beautiful,” which opened in 2013 and documented the intense friendship and rivalry between the two married couples. Mann and Weil’s musical “They Wrote That?” had a brief run in 2004.

    Weil, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, was born in New York City and studied piano and ballet as a child. She majored in theater at Sarah Lawrence University, but was encouraged by an agent to try songwriting. By age 20, she was working for the publishing company of “Guys and Dolls” composer Frank Loesser, and would soon meet her future husband.

    “I was writing with a young Italian boy singer, the Frankie Avalon of his day, named Teddy Randazzo, when Barry came in to play him a song,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2016. “I asked the receptionist, ‘Who is this guy? Does he have a girlfriend?’ She said, ‘He’s signed to a friend of mine, Don Kirshner, and if I call Donny, maybe you can go up there to show him your lyrics and meet Barry again.’ So that’s what she did. And that’s what I did. He didn’t have a chance.”

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  • WATCH: Emily Kinney on Her Latest Single, ‘Walking Dead’ Memories

    WATCH: Emily Kinney on Her Latest Single, ‘Walking Dead’ Memories

    Earlier this month, Emily Kinney released “Walkin’ Round Your Dreams,” a warm, retro pop song that recalls ’60s girl groups and Rilo Kiley. The track is off of her upcoming album Swim Team, due out in September.

    Fans of Kinney may know her from roles like Beth Greene on the The Walking Dead and Anna in the Broadway musical Spring Awakening. For more than a decade, she’s been writing and performing original music. In fact, she was working on an EP when she landed the role on The Walking Dead.

    In this episode of It’s Real, Kinney talks to Jordan Edwards and Demi Ramos about the musical side of her career and what it was like to join one of the most popular shows on television.

    Emily Kinney | It’s Real with Jordan and Demi

    For more from Emily Kinney, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

    Staff

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  • Ed Ames, ’50s pop singer with Ames Brothers and ’60s TV star in ‘Daniel Boone,’ dies at 95

    Ed Ames, ’50s pop singer with Ames Brothers and ’60s TV star in ‘Daniel Boone,’ dies at 95

    Ed Ames, the youngest member of the popular 1950s singing group the Ames Brothers, who later became a successful actor in television and musical theater, has died. He was 95.

    The last survivor of the four singing brothers, Ames died May 21 from Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Jeanne Ames, said Saturday.

    “He had a wonderful life,” she said.

    On television, Ames was likely best known for his role as Mingo, the Oxford-educated Native American in the 1960s adventure series “Daniel Boone” that starred Fess Parker as the famous frontiersman. He also was the center of a bit on “The Tonight Show” that — thanks to his painfully uncanny aim with a hatchet — became one of the show’s most memorable surprise moments.

    Ames had guest roles in TV series such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “In the Heat of the Night,” and toured frequently in musicals, performing such popular songs as “Try to Remember” and the song that became his biggest hit single, “My Cup Runneth Over.”

    As part of the 1950s music scene, he and his brothers were one of numerous pop quartets that included the Four Aces, Four Lads, Gaylords, Hilltoppers, Lancers, Four Knights, Ink Spots and, still around from a previous era, the Mills Brothers. But the Ames Brothers — Ed, Joe, Gene and Vic — had a unique tone: they were basses and baritones, not tenors.

    Their recordings of “Rag Mop,” “Sentimental Me” and “Undecided” became big hits, and they launched a busy career appearing on TV variety shows, recording 40 albums and playing in night clubs and auditoriums across the country.

    By the end of the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll had overtaken the pop charts and singing quartets were on the decline. The Ameses, meanwhile, had tired of the constant travel and absence from their growing families. The finale for Ed came when he arrived home unexpectedly and his wife called to their 3-year-old daughter: “Who is it?” The girl replied, “One of the Ames Brothers.”

    “That did it,” he told a reporter. “My brothers and I agreed that we had all had it and should go our separate ways.” The group, which was earning $20,000 a week, played its last engagement at the Sahara in Las Vegas on New Year’s 1961.

    Ed’s efforts to establish himself as a solo singer were not immediately successful and he turned to acting. He almost lost his house before he found a role in a production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

    In the long-running musical “The Fantasticks,” he sang “Try to Remember,” which became one of his theme songs. He joined the traveling company of Gower Champion’s “Carnival” and transferred to the New York company until the show’s final performance.

    In a role that presaged his future role on “Daniel Boone,” he then won attention as the stoic Native American in the 1963 Broadway play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” with Kirk Douglas and Gene Wilder in the adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel.

    Ames earned top money at Las Vegas casinos and in hotel supper clubs and toured extensively in the musicals “Man of La Mancha,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “South Pacific” and “I Do, I Do.”

    “I Do, I Do” provided his biggest hit single, “My Cup Runneth Over,” a gold record winner in 1967. He had another hit in 1968 with “Who Will Answer?”

    It was during his run on “Daniel Boone” that he contributed to what was called the longest sustained burst of laughter in the history of “The Tonight Show.”

    For a 1965 episode he was persuaded to demonstrate the hatchet-throwing skills he learned as Mingo. The silhouette of a cowboy was painted on a piece of wood, and Ames threw a hatchet at the target. It landed on squarely on the cowboy’s crotch.

    Ames was born Edmund Dantes Urick in Malden, Massachusetts, the youngest of 11 children, four who died in childhood. Their parents were Ukrainian immigrants and their mother taught the children to read Shakespeare and to appreciate music they heard every Saturday on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.

    The four youngest boys began singing at local events as the Urick Brothers. Ed was still in high school when they moved to night clubs, but as a husky six-footer with a deep voice, he was able to pass for 21.

    In New York, comedy writer Abe Burrows advised a name change because Urick was hard to remember. Ames was the brothers’ choice.

    After the four brothers split up, the other brothers also continued performing and recording, but gained less notice than Ed. Vic died in 1978, Gene in 1997 and Joe in December 2007.

    Ames and his first wife, Sara Cacheiro, had three children: Sonja, Ronald and Linda. The couple divorced in 1978, and in 1998 he married Jeanne Arnold.

    ___

    The late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas was a contributor to this report from Los Angeles.

    ___

    This version corrects the name of Ames’ first wife to Sara Cacheiro.

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  • This 1960s trailblazer of erotic pop art died just as she was finding fame | CNN

    This 1960s trailblazer of erotic pop art died just as she was finding fame | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Untold Art History investigates lesser-known stories in art, spotlighting pioneering artists who were overlooked during their lifetimes, as well as uncovering new insights into influential artworks that radically shift our understanding of them.



    CNN
     — 

    Throughout Evelyne Axell’s short but radical career, the Belgian artist revered the female body in psychedelic hues rendered in gleaming enamel. Nude women recline in acid green or cerulean blue fields under open skies; in one portrait, bodies and landscape become indistinguishable, with rings of colors forming the volume of a perm and tufts of grass the pubic hair.

    She delighted in double meanings. Axell’s most famous artwork, of a woman licking an ice cream cone, could be both a summery advertisement or an explicit pornographic scene. She named another painting, of red heels on a gas pedal, “Axell-ération” — an implied self-portrait, like many of her works.

    But the young actor-turned-Pop artist, who was working in the 1960s and early ’70s and had been trained by the famed surrealist artist René Magritte, had her career cut short. In 1972, only a handful of years into painting, she died in a car crash and faded into relative obscurity. Only in the past decade as curators have revisited the pop art movement beyond celebrated male artists — such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton — has Axell arisen as one of the many women co-opting mass media to engage with the social structures and politics of the ‘60s.

    “If you asked almost anybody to name a woman pop artist, you would probably get a blank stare,” said Catherine Morris, a curator at the Brooklyn Museum, which hosted the touring show “Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968” in 2011. The landmark group show featured Axell and contemporaries including Pauline Boty and Chryssa.

    “(If this) period of emergence of women Pop artists had even been a couple of years later, we probably would have been more aware,” Morris continued, pointing to the 1970s as a turning point for women artists in the wake of second-wave feminism. “This whole group of women who covered this decade were dramatically overlooked.”

    Since “Seductive Subversion,” which first exhibited at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Axell’s work has been included in a host of significant group shows that take a more expansive, international view of pop art and foreground women. And in 2021, she achieved a significant posthumous milestone, with the Museum of Modern Art in New York adding “Axell-ération” to its collection. But institutional solo exhibitions remain few and far between, with retrospectives hosted by Museum Abteiberg in western Germany and the remote Swiss Alps art center Muzeum Susch 10 years apart. (Perhaps, in part, because of her limited output.)

    Now, two of Axell’s playful, erotic artworks— both painted with her signature application of enamel on plexiglass — are poised to make history at Christie’s, in her first major New York sale. “Paysage” a dreamy pastoral nude, is expected to surpass her record of $140,000, set in 2017, with a high estimate of $200,000; “L’Amazone”, a sensual blue-ombre hued portrait, could also come close at $120,000. But such sales for Axell are infrequent, according to Sara Friedlander, Christie’s deputy chairman of post-war and contemporary art.

    “She made very little work — she was 37-years-old when she died,” Friedlander said in a phone call. “So, in a way, the market doesn’t have enough to know what to do with her. These (paintings) are very special and very rare.”

    The decade following Axell’s death saw the emergence of a number of women artists who unabashedly expressed female sexuality, painting and photographing their own bodies, and subverting erotic or pornographic imagery. Artists such as Joan Semmel and Marilyn Minter believed that feminism should be inclusive of sexual agency, but as Morris explained, they faced criticism for doing so.

    Many of Axell's works are self-portraits, though she often obscured her identity by signing only with her last name.

    “The feminist artists who emerged in the 1970s and into the 1980s and 90s were very much taken to task by orthodox feminism in relationship to them utilizing their own sexuality, their own bodies, their own beauty,” she said.

    Axell might have been part of this crucial wave; curators and scholars are still unpacking her prescient feminist ideas, and the paradisical world she set them in. Instead, she hid her identity, signing her works with only her last name, after facing derision from male art critics, according to the exhibition at Muzeum Susch. Her stylistic approach — a mix of pop art influences and dreamy surrealist settings — is still underrecognized, according to Morris.

    “She acts as a historical bridge (between surrealism and pop art),” she said. “And I think that that’s something that’s dramatically unexplored.”

    Axell experimented with materials, applying enamel paint to plexiglas to heighten the dreamlike qualities of her work, as in this painting,

    Skilled at challenging expectations around her own beauty, sexuality and sense of self in her work, Axell was also politically engaged, producing portraits of the African American activist Angela Davis and a painting responding to the Kent State campus shootings in 1970.

    “Despite all aggressiveness, my universe abounds above all in an unconditional love for life,” Axell said in her only interview in 1970, according to a publication by Muzeum Susch. “My subject is clear: nudity and femininity experiment in the utopia of a bio-botanical freedom; that means a freedom without frustration nor gradual submission, and that tolerates only the limits that it sets itself.”

    One of Morris’ favorite works, shown at the Brooklyn Museum, embodies this spirit: an abstracted view of a woman’s torso, the curves of her body like peaks and valleys, her vulva covered in a real tuffet of green fur. Called “Petite fourrure verte” or “Small green fur,” the intimate perspective was based on a photograph Axell’s filmmaker husband, Jean Antoine, had taken of her.

    “It’s from 1970, just a couple years before her death,” Morris said. “So for me, it really epitomizes what would have been — what was to come.”

    Top image: “Axell-ération” from 1965.

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  • Sweden celebrates Eurovision win; Ukrainian duo defiant after Russian strike on hometown

    Sweden celebrates Eurovision win; Ukrainian duo defiant after Russian strike on hometown

    LIVERPOOL, England — Liverpool cleaned up from the Eurovision Song Contest on Sunday, as Sweden celebrated victory and Ukraine remained defiant after a night of Russian bombardment, including a strike on the hometown of the country’s competitors.

    Electronic duo Tvorchi represented Ukraine at the spectacular pan-continental pop competition on Saturday night, coming sixth of the 26 finalists with “Heart of Steel,” an anthem to the country’s resilience inspired by the siege of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.

    Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine as the contest was underway in Liverpool, and Ukraine’s military said a barrage of Russian drones and missile strikes left dozens wounded. One strike hit Ternopil, home city of Tvorchi in western Ukraine.

    Ternopil was attacked again on Sunday morning, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. Civilian buildings and cars were damaged; there was no immediate information on victims.

    “Ternopil is the name of our hometown, which was bombed by Russia while we sang on the Eurovision stage about our steel hearts, indomitability and will,” the duo of Andrii Hutsuliak and Jeffery Kenny posted on Instagram late Saturday.

    “This is a message for all cities of Ukraine that are shelled every day. Kharkiv, Dnipro, Khmelnytskyi, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Uman, Sumy, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Kherson and all others. Europe, unite against evil for the sake of peace! GLORY TO UKRAINE!”

    Russia, a longtime Eurovision participant, was banned from the contest last year over its invasion of Ukraine.

    Swedish singer Loreen won the contest with her power ballad “Tattoo,” at a colorful, eclectic music competition clouded for a second year by the war in Europe. Britain hosted Eurovision on behalf of Ukraine, which won last year but couldn’t take up its right to hold the contest because of the war.

    The sights and sounds of Ukraine ran through the show, starting with an opening film that showed 2022 Eurovision winners Kalush Orchestra singing and dancing in the Kyiv subway, with the tune picked up by musicians in the U.K. — including Kate, Princess of Wales, shown playing the piano.

    The folk-rap band itself then emerged onstage in the Liverpool Arena on a giant pair of outstretched hands, accompanied by massed drummers. It was one of several Ukrainian acts to perform during the almost four-hour show.

    Now in its 67th year, Eurovision bills itself as the world’s biggest music contest — an Olympiad of party-friendly pop. Competitors each have three minutes to meld catchy tunes and eye-popping spectacle into performances capable of winning the hearts of millions of viewers.

    Loreen’s anthem of intense love had been the bookies’ favorite. She faced a strong challenge from Finnish singer Käärijä, a wildly energetic performer whose rap-pop party anthem “Cha Cha Cha” came second.

    Loreen, 39. who previously won Eurovision in 2012, said becoming only the second person to take the crown twice left her “seriously overwhelmed.” Ireland’s Johnny Logan was the first double winner, in the 1980s. Sweden’s victory is the country’s seventh, matching Ireland’s record.

    The win gives Sweden the right to host next year, the 50th anniversary of Sweden’s first Eurovision triumph — ABBA’s 1974 victory with “Waterloo.”

    The contest came down to a nail-biting finish between Loreen, who won the jury vote of music professionals across Europe, and Käärijä, who was the runaway winner in voting by the viewing public.

    The Finn acknowledged that he was disappointed.

    “Of course, to be honest, it feels bad. What I was looking for was a win,” Käärijä told Finnish media outlets in Liverpool. “You of course have to be proud of this performance. A cool performance with a Finnish song. I’ve got a slightly sad feeling. But life goes on. It’s not that serious. You’ve got to move on with life.”

    Käärijä was the undoubted star of Eurovision, and the insistent chorus of “Cha Cha Cha” is likely to be heard on dancefloors across Europe this summer.

    Mae Muller, representing host country Britain, came second-last — a far cry from 2022, when the U.K.’s Sam Ryder finished second behind Ukraine.

    Liverpool, which won a competition among U.K. cities to host the event, embraced both Eurovision and Ukraine with open arms and hearts. Businesses across the city flew Ukrainian flags and a program of cultural events introduced locals to the art, music and food of the eastern European country.

    However, organizers said they turned down a request by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make a video address. The European Broadcasting Union said that would breach “the nonpolitical nature of the event.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this story.

    ___

    For more AP coverage of Eurovision, visit https://apnews.com/hub/eurovision-song-contest

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  • Don’t miss next week: Jack Harlow on screen, Kesha, Anna Nicole Smith doc and Scott brothers on HGTV

    Don’t miss next week: Jack Harlow on screen, Kesha, Anna Nicole Smith doc and Scott brothers on HGTV

    Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music and video game platforms this week.

    NEW MOVIES TO STREAM

    — Three decades after Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson mixed it up on the black top, a new “White Men Can’t Jump” has next. A remake of that 1992 film teams Sinqua Walls and rapper Jack Harlow as a pair of basketball players who hustle hoops for money and compete in a lucrative three-on-three tournament. The film, which debuts Friday, May 19, on Hulu, is directed by Calmatic and co-written by Kenya Barris (“black-ish”). In it, Harlow makes his acting debut.

    — Anna Nicole Smith gets the Netflix documentary treatment in “Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me.” The film, debuting Tuesday, chronicles Smith’s life as a model, Playboy playmate and reality star. Smith died in 2007 at the age of 39 from an accidental overdose. “You Don’t Know Me” includes home video of Smith, whose birth name was Vickie Lynn Hogan.

    — Cristian Mungiu’s “R.M.N.” is one of the cinematic highlights of the first half of 2023. The latest from the acclaimed Romanian filmmaker (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”) is a powerful microcosm of a migrant drama that has played out all around the world. A mountainous Transylvania village is increasingly torn apart by violent nationalist impulses that course through the town’s civic life in response to a handful of foreign workers. Mungiu, the pioneering filmmaker of the Romanian New Wave, crafts an unflinching societal portrait both gripping and grim. Currently playing in theaters, “R.M.N.” is available on-demand beginning Friday, May 16.

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    NEW MUSIC TO STREAM

    — Check out Kesha’s new album for what “post-pop” sounds like. That’s what the ever-changing pop star is calling her Rick Rubin-produced record “Gag Order.” Single “Fine Line” is an introspective, beatless ballad with the lyric “Am I bigger than Jesus/Or better off dead?/There’s a fine line between genius and crazy.” There’s also “Eat the Acid,” an experimental, mournful number. Her team says the album excavates “the deepest recesses of her soul to date.”

    — Def Leppard are following in the footsteps of Metallica, the Scorpions and Bring Me the Horizon with an orchestral reworking of their catalogue. “Drastic Symphonies,” features their greatest tracks reimagined by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Fifteen of the hard rockers’ hits like “Animal,” “Love Bites,” “Hysteria” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” have a new sound. Some songs — “Rock of Ages,” “Photograph” and “Let’s Get Rocked” — didn’t work and were left off.

    — May turns out to be a great month for 11-time Grammy-nominated singer- songwriter Brandy Clark. Her Broadway musical “Shucked” was nominated for best original score and she’s got a new self-titled album out Friday, May 19. Produced by Brandi Carlile, the album showcases Clark’s tenderness, with the 11 songs including the heartbreaking “Buried,” a celebration of her home in “Northwest” and a loving tribute to her grandma with “She Smoked in the House.”

    — Ahead of their first post-pandemic album, Dave Matthews Band has released two strong singles, including the nostalgia-drenched “Monsters,” with the lyrics “Chutes and ladders/Pick up sticks/Counting cards and counting bricks/Driving past that old five and dime/Can’t get nothing for a nickel since a long long time.” The first single, “Madman’s Eyes,” leans into Middle Eastern rhythms for a darker song about the madness of violence. Both songs will be on the album “Walk Around the Moon,” out Friday, May 19, and the band says it “is as much a reflection on the current times as it is an urge to find common ground.”

    — AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy

    NEW SERIES TO STREAM

    — Stock up on tissues because home renovation twins Drew and Jonathan Scott’s series “Celebrity IOU” is back with new episodes on HGTV. Each episode features a Hollywood star who dreams up a home renovation project for someone they want to give back to. Enter the Scott brothers who use their knowledge of construction to make it happen. The episodes follow each project from start to finish with a heart-warming, emotional presentation at the end. This batch of eight episodes features Heidi Klum, Kristin Chenoweth, Glenn Close, Taraji P. Henson, Emma Roberts, Jay Leno, Derek Hough, Kristin Davis and Emma Roberts. “Celebrity IOU” returns Monday.

    — If you watched the “To All the Boys” movies, you probably remember scene-stealer Anna Cathcart as the confident, chatty kid sister, Kitty, to Lana Condor’s Lara Jean. Cathcart has landed her own spinoff series called “XO, Kitty.” Created by “To All the Boys” author Jenny Han, Kitty travels to Korea to attend an elite boarding school that her long-distance boyfriend is a student at. It’s also the same school where her late mother went as a teen. Kitty imagines a seamless transition to a new school in a new country and a romantic reunion with her boyfriend but quickly realizes life doesn’t always go as planned. All 10 episodes drop Thursday on Netflix.

    — Wilderness expert and adventure-seeker Bear Grylls has never encountered a mountain he won’t climb or a random creature he won’t eat for fuel. We’ve seen him on TV venture into the great outdoors with celebrities but now he’s taking everyday people out of their comfort zone in a new show, “I Survived Bear Grylls.” With the help of comedian co-host Jordan Conley, Grylls uses simulated challenges to test contestants on their survival skills, physicality, and gross-out tolerance. Get ready for the hardest, the dirtiest, the most disgusting day of your life,” Grylls says in the trailer. “I Survived Bear Grylls” debuts Thursday on TBS.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    NEW VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY

    — The Lego brand encompasses all sorts of pop culture icons, from “Star Wars” to “Seinfeld.” But sometimes you just want to build a Lego car and take it for a spin. In 2K Games’ Lego 2K Drive, you can assemble a high-speed racer brick-by-brick, then compete against your friends to find out who’s got the zippiest monster on the track. If you want to go off-road, you can turn your car into an all-terrain vehicle, a boat or even an aircraft. Visual Concepts, the studio behind the NBA 2K franchise, is promising a huge open world in which you can you take your driver from rookie to world champion — or just tool around smashing into things. Your Lego garage opens for business Friday, May 19, on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One, Nintendo Switch and PC.

    — “I awoke one morning to find I was a dog” is a heck of a way to open a video game. Humanity gets weirder from there. The dog is a glowing Shiba Inu, and his mission is to guide the human masses toward salvation at the end of the world. Sounds heavy, but the result is the sort of hypnotic puzzle game you’d expect from Enhance, the developers responsible for Tetris Effect and Rez Infinite. It’s reminiscent of the 1990s classic Lemmings in that you’re trying to steer crowds of mindless creatures away from a gruesome demise, but once the hordes start fighting each other, this pup’s got a whole new set of problems. With 90-plus levels and the tools for users to build their own, Humanity could last for an eternity. The herding begins Tuesday on PlayStation 5/4 and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment.

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  • Jury finds Ed Sheeran didn’t copy Marvin Gaye classic

    Jury finds Ed Sheeran didn’t copy Marvin Gaye classic

    NEW YORK — British singer Ed Sheeran didn’t steal key components of Marvin Gaye’s classic 1970s tune “Let’s Get It On” to create his hit song “Thinking Out Loud,” a jury said with a trial verdict Thursday, prompting Sheeran to joke later that he won’t have to follow through on his threat to quit music.

    The emotions of an epic copyright fight that stretched across most of the last decade spilled out as soon as the seven-person jury revealed its verdict after over two hours of deliberations.

    Sheeran, 32, briefly dropped his face into his hands in relief before standing to hug his attorney, Ilene Farkas. As jurors left the courtroom in front of him, Sheeran smiled, nodded his head at several of them, and mouthed the words: “Thank you.” Later, he posed for a hallway photograph with a juror who lingered behind.

    He also approached plaintiff Kathryn Townsend Griffin, the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-created the 1973 soul classic with Gaye and had testified. They spoke about 10 minutes, hugging and smiling and, at one point, clasping their hands together.

    Sheeran later addressed reporters outside the courthouse, revisiting his claim made during the trial that he would consider quitting songwriting if he lost the case.

    “I am obviously very happy with the outcome of this case, and it looks like I’m not going to have to retire from my day job, after all. But at the same time, I am unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all,” the singer said, reading from a prepared statement.

    He also said he missed his grandmother’s funeral in Ireland because of the trial, and that he “will never get that time back.”

    Inside the courthouse after the verdict, Griffin said she was relieved.

    “I’m just glad it’s over,” she said of the trial. “We can be friends.”

    She said she was pleased Sheeran approached her.

    “It showed me who he was,” Griffin said.

    She said her copyright lawsuit wasn’t personal but she wanted to follow through on a promise to her father to protect his intellectual property.

    A juror, Sophia Neis, told reporters afterward that there was not immediate consensus when deliberations began.

    “Everyone had opinions going in. Both sides had advocates, said Neis, 23. ”There was a lot of back and forth.”

    The verdict capped a two-week trial that featured a courtroom performance by Sheeran as the singer insisted, sometimes angrily, that the trial was a threat to all musicians who create their own music.

    Sheeran sat with his legal team throughout the trial, defending himself against the lawsuit by Townsend’s heirs, who had said “Thinking Out Loud” had so many similarities to “Let’s Get It On” that it violated the song’s copyright protection.

    It was not the first court victory for a singer whose musical style draws from classic soul, pop and R&B, making him a target for copyright lawsuits. A year ago, Sheeran won a U.K. copyright battle over his 2017 hit “Shape of You” and then decried what he labeled a “culture” of baseless lawsuits that force settlements from artists eager to avoid a trial’s expense.

    Outside court, Sheeran said he doesn’t want to be taken advantage of.

    “I am just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy,” he said. “I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake.”

    At the trial’s start, attorney Ben Crump told jurors on behalf of the Townsend heirs that Sheeran himself sometimes performed the two songs together. The jury saw video of a concert in Switzerland in which Sheeran can be heard segueing on stage between “Let’s Get It On” and “Thinking Out Loud.” Crump said it was “smoking gun” proof Sheeran stole from the famous tune.

    In her closing argument on Wednesday, Farkas said Crump’s “smoking gun was shooting blanks.”

    She said the only common elements between the two songs were “basic to the tool kit of all songwriters” and “the scaffolding on which all songwriting is built.”

    “They did not copy it. Not consciously. Not unconsciously. Not at all,” Farkas said.

    When Sheeran testified over two days for the defense, he repeatedly picked up a guitar resting behind him on the witness stand to demonstrate how he seamlessly creates “mashups” of two or three songs during concerts to “spice it up a bit” for his sizeable crowds.

    The English pop star’s cheerful attitude on display under questioning from his attorney all but vanished under cross examination.

    “When you write songs, somebody comes after you,” Sheeran testified, saying the case was being closely watched by others in the industry.

    He insisted that he and the song’s co-writer — Amy Wadge — stole nothing from “Let’s Get it On.”

    Townsend’s heirs said in their lawsuit that “Thinking Out Loud” had “striking similarities” and “overt common elements” that made it obvious that it had copied “Let’s Get It On,” a song that has been featured in numerous films and commercials and scored hundreds of millions of streams spins and radio plays in the past half century.

    Sheeran’s song, which came out in 2014, was a hit, winning a Grammy for song of the year.

    Sheeran’s label, Atlantic Records, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing were also named as defendants in the “Thinking Out Loud” lawsuit, but the focus of the trial was Sheeran.

    Wadge, who was not a defendant, testified on his behalf and hugged Sheeran after the verdict.

    Gaye was killed in 1984 at age 44, shot by his father as he tried to intervene in a fight between his parents. He had been a Motown superstar since the 1960s, although his songs released in the 1970s made him a generational musical giant.

    Townsend, who also wrote the 1958 R&B doo-wop hit “For Your Love,” was a singer, songwriter and lawyer who died in 2003. Griffin, his daughter, testified during the trial that she thought Sheeran was “a great artist with a great future.”

    ___

    Associated Press Writer Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report. Find more AP stories about Ed Sheeran: https://apnews.com/hub/ed-sheeran

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  • ‘Some Like It Hot’ leads Tony Award nominations with 13 nods

    ‘Some Like It Hot’ leads Tony Award nominations with 13 nods

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — “Some Like It Hot,” a Broadway musical adaptation of the cross-dressing movie comedy that starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, waltzed away Tuesday with a leading 13 Tony Award nominations, putting the spotlight on a show that is a sweet, full-hearted embrace of trans rights.

    With songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and starring Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee, who all got nominations, the show follows two musician friends who disguise themselves as women and join an all-girl band to flee Chicago after witnessing a mob hit. Like the movie, there are men in dresses trying to pass as women. But this time, the dress awakens something in Ghee’s character, akin to a transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly.

    The message of self-acceptance and respect for all was echoed across Broadway, from a revival of “Parade” to a Black actor-led “Death of a Salesman” to the new play “Ain’t No Mo.’”

    “I think the pandemic put a lot of things in perspective, both in terms of improvements we needed to make in the community and also just the way that everybody’s feeling about the world and about being a human,” said Ben Platt, nominated for “Parade.” “The art people are making has a real urgency and a real purpose.”

    Three shows tied with nine nominations each: “& Juliet,” which reimagines “Romeo and Juliet” and adds some of the biggest pop hits of the past few decades, “New York, New York,” which combined two generations of Broadway royalty in John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and “Shucked,” a surprise lightweight musical comedy studded with corn puns. The critical musical darling “Kimberly Akimbo,” with Victoria Clark playing a teen who ages four times faster than the average human, rounds out the best musical category.

    In the best new play category, nods were distributed to Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which explores Jewish identity with an intergenerational story, and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” set at a Black family’s barbecue in the modern South.

    The rest of the category is made up of “Ain’t No Mo,’” the short-lived but critical applauded work by playwright and actor Jordan E. Cooper, Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Cost of Living,” parallel stories of two caretakers and their respective patients.

    “Ain’t No Mo,’” which earned six nominations, begins with the United States government emailing every Black citizen with the offer of a free plane ticket to Africa, and each scene explores how various personalities respond to the offer.

    Cooper learned he’s been nominated twice — as best playwright and as lead actor — while visiting his childhood home in Texas. He and his family were in the living room where as a 6-year-old, he put on his first plays.

    “It is a little bittersweet,” Cooper said. “We only got a chance to do about like 60 performances and this cast and this creative team were like some of the most talented you’ve ever seen. It was unfortunate that people don’t get a chance to experience it because we really felt like it was something special. Audiences felt like it was something special. And it’s just so beautiful to know that the work that we put in — that blood, that sweat and tears — are not in vain.”

    “Parade,” a doomed musical love story set against the real backdrop of a murder and lynching in Georgia in pre-World War I, earned six nods, including for Platt, hoping to win a second Tony after his triumph in 2017 with “Dear Evan Hansen,” and rising star and first-time nominee Micaela Diamond.

    Wendell Pierce, who has won a Tony for producing “Clybourne Park,” earned his first nomination as an actor on Broadway for a blistering revival of “Death of a Salesman” and Jessica Chastain, an Oscar-winner for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” got her first Tony nomination for a stripped down version of “A Doll’s House.”

    Pierce will face-off against both stars of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog” — Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins — as well as former “Will & Grace” star Sean Hayes from “Good Night, Oscar,” and Stephen McKinley Henderson, who earned his second nomination, having gotten one in 2019 for “Fences.”

    Jodie Comer, the three-time Emmy nominated star of “Killing Eve” earned a nomination in her Broadway debut — although her play, “Prima Facie,” did get a best new play nod — and Audra McDonald, who has won six Tony Awards can extend her reign if she beats Comer as best leading actress in a play for “Ohio State Murders.” The last slot in the category went to Jessica Hecht, staring in the play “Summer, 1976.”

    Another show that closed quickly nevertheless picked up nominations — “KPOP,” which put Korean pop music on Broadway for the first time. “KPOP” got three — including best original score.

    Andrew Lloyd Webber’s frothy and widely panned “Bad Cinderella” earned zero nods, as did “A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical,” a stage biography of the singer-songwriter who has had dozens of top-40 hits. But Samuel L. Jackson earned his first Tony nod for “August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.”

    Two well-received revivals from the late Stephen Sondheim — “Sweeney Todd” with Annaleigh Ashford and Josh Groban, and a star-studded “Into the Woods,” were recognized. “Sweeney Todd” received eight nominations including for Groban and Ashford, and “Into the Woods” earned six, including for Brian d’Arcy James and Grammy Award-winning Sara Bareilles, her third Tony nomination.

    “Almost Famous,” the stage adaptation of Cameron Crowe’s autobiographical coming-of-age story, earned just one nomination — for music by Tom Kitt and lyrics by Crowe and Kitt. And choreographer Jennifer Weber had two reasons to smile Tuesday: Weber earned nominations for “& Juliet” and “KPOP,” her first Broadway shows.

    Ariana DeBose will host the June 11 awards celebration from New York City’s United Palace theater live on CBS and on Paramount+. It is her second-straight stint as host.

    ___

    Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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  • K-pop star Moon Bin found dead at home

    K-pop star Moon Bin found dead at home

    Moon Bin, a singer from South Korean boyband Astro, has been found dead at his home in Seoul, according to his management agency

    ByKIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press

    SEOUL, South Korea — Moon Bin, a singer from South Korean boyband Astro, was found dead at his home in Seoul, his management agency said Thursday.

    The 25-year-old was reportedly found by his manager who went to the singer’s home Wednesday evening because he wasn’t responding to contacts. Police are investigating his death but have so far found no signs of foul play, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. Officials at Seoul’s Gangnam district police station did not respond to calls for comment.

    Moon Bin’s management agency, Fantagio, confirmed his death in a statement, saying that he “suddenly left us and became a star in the sky” and that fellow artists and company officials were mourning him with “very deep sadness and shock.”

    Fantagio said Moon Bin’s funeral will be held “as quietly as possible,” with the attendance mostly limited to family, close friends and colleagues, based on the wishes of his relatives.

    Moon Bin debuted in 2016 with the six-member boyband Astro, which was launched shortly after the singers appeared in a TV reality show. The group quickly found success in South Korea and Japan and was listed on Billboard’s top 10 list of new K-pop groups that year, with the magazine praising them for their “bright, synthpop sound that won over K-pop lovers from around the world.”

    Moon Bin also performed as a member of the duo Moonbin & Sanha, with the other half being fellow Astro member Yoon San-ha. Indonesian event promoter Lumina Entertainment on Wednesday announced the cancellation of the duo’s performance in Jakarta due to “unforeseen circumstances beyond our control.”

    Several South Korean singers and actors have died by suicide in recent years, which has touched off soul-searching about harsh competition in the fast-growing entertainment industry, an abusive online culture and failure by management to address the mental health problems of their stars.

    Last week, 26-year-old actress Jung Chae-yull was found dead at her home. Her agency did not say what caused her sudden death.

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  • Guitarist Mark Sheehan of Irish band The Script dies at 46

    Guitarist Mark Sheehan of Irish band The Script dies at 46

    Ireland’s president has led tributes to Mark Sheehan of Irish rock band The Script after the guitarist’s death at age 46

    LONDON — Ireland’s president has led tributes to Mark Sheehan, guitarist with Irish rock band The Script, after his death at the age of 46.

    The band said Sheehan died in a hospital on Friday after a brief illness. In a statement, The Script called him a “much loved husband, father, brother, band mate and friend.”

    Formed in Dublin in 2001 by Sheehan, singer Danny O’Donoghue and drummer Glen Power, The Script topped U.K. and Irish charts with its self-titled debut album in 2008. It included the hits “We Cry,” “Breakeven” and “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved,” which reached No. 1 in five countries.

    The band’s pop-inflected rock sound made it one of Ireland’s biggest bands in the 2010s. The Script went on to have six Top 10 albums in the U.K. and one top three album in the U.S.

    Irish President Michael D. Higgins praised the band’s “originality and excellence” and sent condolences to Sheehan’s family.

    “Through their music, Mark and The Script have played an outstanding part in continuing and promoting this proud tradition of Irish musical success across the world,” Higgins said.

    Sheehan is survived by his wife, Rina Sheehan, and their three children.

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  • Guitarist Mark Sheehan of Irish band The Script dies at 46

    Guitarist Mark Sheehan of Irish band The Script dies at 46

    Ireland’s president has led tributes to Mark Sheehan of Irish rock band The Script after the guitarist’s death at age 46

    LONDON — Ireland’s president has led tributes to Mark Sheehan, guitarist with Irish rock band The Script, after his death at the age of 46.

    The band said Sheehan died in a hospital on Friday after a brief illness. In a statement, The Script called him a “much loved husband, father, brother, band mate and friend.”

    Formed in Dublin in 2001 by Sheehan, singer Danny O’Donoghue and drummer Glen Power, The Script topped U.K. and Irish charts with its self-titled debut album in 2008. It included the hits “We Cry,” “Breakeven” and “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved,” which reached No. 1 in five countries.

    The band’s pop-inflected rock sound made it one of Ireland’s biggest bands in the 2010s. The Script went on to have six Top 10 albums in the U.K. and one top three album in the U.S.

    Irish President Michael D. Higgins praised the band’s “originality and excellence” and sent condolences to Sheehan’s family.

    “Through their music, Mark and The Script have played an outstanding part in continuing and promoting this proud tradition of Irish musical success across the world,” Higgins said.

    Sheehan is survived by his wife, Rina Sheehan, and their three children.

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  • Paul Cattermole of UK pop group S Club 7 dies at 46

    Paul Cattermole of UK pop group S Club 7 dies at 46

    Paul Cattermole, a member of early-2000s British pop group S Club 7, has died at the age of 46

    LONDON — Paul Cattermole, a member of early-2000s British pop group S Club 7, has died just weeks after the band announced a reunion tour. He was 46.

    The band and Cattermole’s family said Friday that “it is with great sadness that we announce the unexpected passing of our beloved son and brother Paul Cattermole.”

    They said Cattermole was found at his home in Dorset, southwest England, on Thursday and pronounced dead later that afternoon.

    “While the cause of death is currently unknown, Dorset Police has confirmed that there were no suspicious circumstances,” they said.

    In a statement on social media, members of S Club 7 said they were “truly devastated by the passing of our brother Paul. There are no words to describe the deep sadness and loss we all feel.”

    “We were so lucky to have had him in our lives and are thankful for the amazing memories we have,” the band said.

    Formed in 1998 by Simon Fuller, the music mogul behind the Spice Girls, S Club 7 was launched – like The Monkees – through a TV show about a pop band, in which the members played fictionalized versions of themselves.

    S Club 7 had a string of upbeat U.K. hits including “Don’t Stop Movin’,” bubblegum pop classic “Reach” and ballad “Never Had a Dream Come True,” which was also a top 10 hit in the United States.

    In 2002, the group performed at a Buckingham Palace concert to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s 50 years on the throne.

    Cattermole left the band the same year. In February, all the original members of S Club 7 announced a 25th-anniversary tour, due to begin in October.

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  • Ellie Goulding thinks we all need to be more selfish

    Ellie Goulding thinks we all need to be more selfish

    LOS ANGELES — Throughout her career, Ellie Goulding has been candid about the drawbacks of fame. Although she remembers being a self-conscious teenager, Goulding said her struggles with panic attacks, anxiety and insecurity about how she looks were exacerbated in the early stages of her stardom.

    “I was kind of thrust into this world,” she recalled. “I didn’t really get a chance to sort of do that thing that everyone gets to do where they kind of come out of that teenage phase, like start to find yourself.”

    But as Goulding gears up to release her fifth studio album, “Higher Than Heaven,” on Friday, the British pop star declared she is done caring about what other people think.

    “I can’t allow those comments and those opinions to affect me. I can’t. Life is too short,” Goulding said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press. “I think we all need to be way more selfish and stop doing things for other people.”

    But even as she professes to put herself first more, Goulding does want to use her clout to speak up for those “who don’t have a voice,” including the people most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the planet itself.

    As she finalizes the details of her upcoming tour, the outspoken climate activist and U.N. Environment goodwill ambassador is putting her money where her mouth is by only agreeing to play venues that can meet her standards of environmentally sustainable practices.

    “We’re trying to figure out a tour that’s very green and has the smallest possible carbon footprint,” she said. “I really care about that stuff and it just takes a little bit more time and energy and effort to figure it all out.”

    Goulding is cognizant of the amount of pollution and waste that results from a typical tour, from the travel involved to the merchandise sold and large quantities of plastic used.

    “There’s like so much plastic backstage,” she said.

    But for her, the extra work is worth it to return to the stage. Like many artists at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Goulding was unable to take her last album on tour when it was released in July 2020.

    “As a performer, I didn’t realize how much it was really holding me together. Even just the act of singing is really a powerful thing,” she said. “I was doing it all the time and then I stopped. And suddenly my anxiety came back and I felt something was really missing.”

    While she is happy to return to the familiarity of performing and making electronic music, a genre she said she grew up on, Goulding mused that she would consider new collaborators and possibly even new styles of music in the future.

    “I think for the next album I might experiment a bit,” she said.

    “My voice carries everything I do and so, I feel like I could put out a classical album tomorrow and people would be like, ‘Yeah, that’s Ellie, isn’t it?’ So, I feel like I can get away with that,” she laughed.

    Goulding’s outlook on pleasing others isn’t the only thing that has undergone profound shifts since the singer rose to fame more than a decade ago. In that time, the way people listen to and discover music has fundamentally changed, as well as the way artists are often expected to engage with fans.

    “I do feel a little bit lucky that I came through as an artist in a time when there was no social media,” the 36-year-old said as she reflected on the current ubiquity of platforms like TikTok and Instagram and the influence they have on the music industry.

    Although she is looking forward to fans hearing the “uplifting, upbeat” sound of “Higher Than Heaven,” Goulding said her expectations surrounding album releases have been tempered in recent years.

    “Every other album gets like a big build up and a big release. And it feels like something has shifted,” she said. “People are just really on a kind of quest for more and more information, more and more songs and music, more behind the scenes with songs, more collaborations.”

    In the midst of the industry’s insatiable appetite for more, Goulding finds solace in “Sex and the City” reruns and regular exercise, something she still prioritizes after becoming a mom.

    “It’s kind of always been a constant thing in my life. Everything else is chaotic and the one thing I can rely on is running and going to the gym,” she said, adding that working out helps her stay mentally “in the best possible place” for her son, Arthur.

    ___

    Follow Krysta Fauria on Twitter at https://twitter.com/krystafauria

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  • Lindsay Lohan, other celebs settle with SEC over crypto case

    Lindsay Lohan, other celebs settle with SEC over crypto case

    LOS ANGELES — Actress Lindsay Lohan, rapper Akon and several other celebrities have agreed to pay tens of thousands of dollars to settle claims they promoted crypto investments to their millions of social media followers without disclosing they were being paid to do so.

    Lohan, Akon, recording artists Ne-Yo, and Lil Yachty, boxer and internet personality Jake Paul, and adult film performer Michele Mason all agreed to pay more than $400,000 combined in disgorgement, interest and penalties to settle the claims, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.

    None admitted or denied the SEC’s findings as part of the settlement. Two other celebrities named in the SEC’s complaint, rapper Soulja Boy and pop singer Austin Mahone, did not reach a settlement with the SEC, the agency said.

    In response to a request for comment, Lohan’s publicist Leslie Sloane said the actress was contacted in March 2022, was unaware of the disclosure requirement, and agreed to pay a fine to resolve the matter. Lohan, who last week announced she is pregnant, was called to give up the $10,000 she was paid, plus interest, and pay a $30,000 fine, according an SEC complaint.

    A spokeswoman for Paul declined to comment. Emails left with representatives for the other celebrities named in the SEC complaint weren’t immediately returned Wednesday.

    In the complaint filed by the SEC in federal court in New York, the agency claims the celebrities were paid to promote Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT), both crypto asset securities that were offered for sale by three companies owned by Justin Sun, a Chinese national. Sun is the permanent representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization and may be living in Singapore or Hong Kong, according to the complaint.

    Starting at around August 2017, Sun allegedly offered to sell billions in the unregistered securities and engaged in manipulative trading, while also creating secondary markets on which Tronix and BitTorrent could be traded, according to the complaint.

    “Although the celebrities were paid to promote TRX and BTT, their touts on social media did not disclose that they had been paid or the amounts of their payments,” according to the complaint. “Thus, the public was misled into believing that these celebrities had unbiased interest in TRX and BTT, and were not merely paid spokespersons.”

    Many celebrities and athletes have used their influence and massive social media followings to promote cryptocurrencies in recent years, including Matt Damon, Tom Brady and Reese Witherspoon. But doing so without disclosing when they’re being paid to do so is illegal, and has landed some big names in hot water with securities regulators. Last fall, Kim Kardashian agreed to pay a $1 million fine to settle federal charges that she recommended Ethereum Max tokens, a crypto security, to her millions Instagram followers without making clear that she was paid to do so.

    In 2020, actor Steven Seagal agreed to pay more than $300,000 as part of a similar settlement with the SEC, which also banned him from promoting investments for three years.

    ___

    Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton contributed to this report.

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  • Lindsay Lohan, other celebs settle with SEC over crypto case

    Lindsay Lohan, other celebs settle with SEC over crypto case

    LOS ANGELES — Actress Lindsay Lohan, rapper Akon and several other celebrities have agreed to pay tens of thousands of dollars to settle claims they promoted crypto investments to their millions of social media followers without disclosing they were being paid to do so.

    Lohan, Akon, recording artists Ne-Yo, and Lil Yachty, boxer and internet personality Jake Paul, and adult film performer Michele Mason all agreed to pay more than $400,000 combined in disgorgement, interest and penalties to settle the claims, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.

    None admitted or denied the SEC’s findings as part of the settlement. Two other celebrities named in the SEC’s complaint, rapper Soulja Boy and pop singer Austin Mahone, did not reach a settlement with the SEC, the agency said.

    In response to a request for comment, Lohan’s publicist Leslie Sloane said the actress was contacted in March 2022, was unaware of the disclosure requirement, and agreed to pay a fine to resolve the matter. Lohan, who last week announced she is pregnant, was called to give up the $10,000 she was paid, plus interest, and pay a $30,000 fine, according an SEC complaint.

    A spokeswoman for Paul declined to comment. Emails left with representatives for the other celebrities named in the SEC complaint weren’t immediately returned Wednesday.

    In the complaint filed by the SEC in federal court in New York, the agency claims the celebrities were paid to promote Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT), both crypto asset securities that were offered for sale by three companies owned by Justin Sun, a Chinese national. Sun is the permanent representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization and may be living in Singapore or Hong Kong, according to the complaint.

    Starting at around August 2017, Sun allegedly offered to sell billions in the unregistered securities and engaged in manipulative trading, while also creating secondary markets on which Tronix and BitTorrent could be traded, according to the complaint.

    “Although the celebrities were paid to promote TRX and BTT, their touts on social media did not disclose that they had been paid or the amounts of their payments,” according to the complaint. “Thus, the public was misled into believing that these celebrities had unbiased interest in TRX and BTT, and were not merely paid spokespersons.”

    Many celebrities and athletes have used their influence and massive social media followings to promote cryptocurrencies in recent years, including Matt Damon, Tom Brady and Reese Witherspoon. But doing so without disclosing when they’re being paid to do so is illegal, and has landed some big names in hot water with securities regulators. Last fall, Kim Kardashian agreed to pay a $1 million fine to settle federal charges that she recommended Ethereum Max tokens, a crypto security, to her millions Instagram followers without making clear that she was paid to do so.

    In 2020, actor Steven Seagal agreed to pay more than $300,000 as part of a similar settlement with the SEC, which also banned him from promoting investments for three years.

    ___

    Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton contributed to this report.

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  • K-pop star Se7en and actress Lee Da-hae are getting married | CNN

    K-pop star Se7en and actress Lee Da-hae are getting married | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    South Korean celebrity couple Se7en and Lee Da-hae are getting married in May.

    The K-pop singer and his actress fiancée shared the news of their upcoming nuptials in separate posts on Instagram.

    Se7en, whose real name is Choi Dong-wook, told his 551,000 followers that he had “happy news” to share.

    “I have vowed to marry my girlfriend Lee Da-hae, who always embraced me with love, and shared joy and sorrow together for the past eight years,” he said, revealing that the wedding would take place on May 6.

    Pledging his commitment to his bride-to-be, the 38-year-old singer wrote: “From now on, I will live with more responsibility as a head of a family and a husband.”

    Lee’s post on her Instagram page was accompanied by a series of wedding pictures. In South Korea, couples commonly have their wedding pictures taken ahead of the ceremony and then often use the images for digital invitations and social media.

    The post features four pictures of the happy couple in different settings and different outfits. In one, she is pictured in a sleeveless floor-length lace gown, while Se7en wears a tailored gray suit with black bow tie. Another sees the couple outside a pink hotel, with Se7en in a pink blazer and shorts, with his wife to be in a lacy mini wedding dress.

    One shot features a close-up of the bride, while the final image shows the pair in profile by the sea at sunset.

    Lee told her 207,000 followers: “It may not be a big surprising as we have been dating for eight years, but I am still shy. I pondered a lot about how I should share the news.

    “We have vowed to become a husband and wife from a long-term couple this coming May. Although I’m still used to calling him a ‘boyfriend,’ I will become more considerate and a bigger supporter of ‘him,’ who gave me big happiness by staying by my side and now will be my forever companion.

    “It will be a huge happiness for us if we can get married in your love and blessings.”

    Se7en released his debut album “Just Listen” in 2003. His career has also extended to acting. In 2007, he played the lead role in TV drama “Goong S” (Palace S.) He has also starred in four musicals and numerous commercials, including for Coca-Cola.

    Lee has featured in many popular TV dramas, including “Good Witch” in 2018 and “Chuno” (“Slave Hunters”) in 2010, and the 2013 spy movie “IRIS 2.”

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  • Q&A: K-pop star KANGDANIEL is on the pursuit of happiness

    Q&A: K-pop star KANGDANIEL is on the pursuit of happiness

    New York (AP) — KANGDANIEL is one of K-pop’s brightest stars, but at just 26 years old, he’s already learned there’s more to life than bright lights and fancy restaurants.

    “I like to pursue happiness because in the end, time is not eternal … we have to maximize our happiness and it’s almost imprinted in my brain,” explained the “Paranoia” and “Nirvana” singer. “There are times when I had to do something that I didn’t want to and I didn’t have no money, and there was no outcome that I expected. I was shocked because money didn’t give me happiness.”

    KANGDANIEL, chosen by Forbes Korea as one of its top 40 celebrities for 2022, is wrapping up his first North American tour, with the final stop in Los Angeles on Saturday.

    KANGDANIEL’S path to superstardom began in 2017 after winning the second season of the reality TV talent series “Produce 101,” which led to the formation of the K-pop boy band Wanna One. He went solo two years later. He released his debut album, “The Story,” last year.

    KANGDANIEL, who publicly struggled with depression and panic disorder in 2019, says the pursuit of happiness is not a fanciful wish but a way of life.

    “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, without money you are not happy.’ For me, those two things are separate,” said KANGDANIEL, who grew up listening to an eclectic mix of Green Day, Nirvana, Michael Jackson and Usher. “That’s why I pursue happiness above everything.”

    In an interview, the avid “Star Wars” fan talked about reaching the American audience, pursuing film roles, and the pressures of fame.

    Remarks have been edited for brevity and clarity.

    ___

    AP: This is your first tour in the U.S. K-pop is so huge all over the world. Does crossing over to American fans matter?

    KANGDANIEL: K-pop fans are all over the world but America is very special because of the Billboard chart. It has a long history, and everyone in the world has heard of it before. It’s really well known and to be included in the chart, it would be my honor. And I believe the American audience has good ears for good music. So, if I have more fans in the U.S., they would give me more motivation to work harder.

    AP: You’re considered as one of South Korea’s most influential celebrities. What does that mean to you?

    KANGDANIEL: One thing I felt for sure, even if I want it or not, I think I have more responsibility.

    South Korea is my home country and there are many stars from the country … it’s a responsibility because they recognize me as one of the celebrities. So, everything I do, and all the music I make, I feel like I have to do more and be more creative.

    AP: Would you ever reunite with Wanna One, even if it was just for one special project or song?

    KANGDANIEL: It’s not something I can just (plan) overnight. But of course, I’m very open to it. So, if there’s a good chance, I’d probably do it. And a little (while) ago, there was an awards ceremony. We performed together as a group, and I really enjoyed it. It was so much fun, and I was able to learn a lot.

    AP: You recently made your acting debut in the Disney+ series “Rookie Cops.” How was your experience as an actor?

    KANGDANIEL: It was really fun … it was a little bit different from what I expected, but then the learning process was very interesting and I enjoyed it.

    I love working on a TV series, but next time, if there is an opportunity, I’d like to make a film because I’ve always loved films. So yup, next time, if there’s a chance (to film a movie), I’d like to do it.

    AP: What was different about filming the TV show than you expected?

    KANGDANIEL: The schedule! (laughs)

    AP: K-pop is a global phenomenon and most of the artists are very young. How have you personally dealt with the fame?

    KANGDANIEL: We can say it is true that K-pop stars are relatively young compared to other artists in different scenes and different countries … but honestly speaking, age doesn’t really define the artist. It doesn’t really make a difference because in Korea, we say there is no age (limit) when learning things in education.

    I don’t really enjoy doing a lot of social media accounts, although I have one, and I don’t look at my phone for hours … I want to communicate and get inspired by others, but not too much information — just right amount because I want to understand on my own, rather than comparing myself with others.

    ___

    Follow Associated Press entertainment journalist Gary Gerard Hamilton at: @GaryGHamilton on all his social media platforms.

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