album

WHILE most shy away from pain, Ellie Goulding leans into hers for new album I Know Too Much.

And it makes the ten-track record, out today, one of her greatest pieces of work.

Her searingly honest lyrics shine a light on the last two years of her life, while the mix of pacy beats and stripped-back acoustic ballads elevate her ethereal voice.

Part heartbreak, part rebirth, I Know Too Much takes listeners on a journey through deceit and betrayal before ending in a place of euphoria with final song Ravers.

The end of her marriage to art dealer Caspar Gopling has most definitely inspired some of the tracks.

But you can also see how fans might link some lyrics to her apparent unhappiness with her old management team, with whom she is now locked in a nasty legal battle after they parted ways earlier this year.

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Two ultimate diss tracks, Always Thinking Of You and Misremember You, are sure-fire hits for the broken-hearted.

Lyrically, the latter is raw, with Ellie singing: “All my friends would die if they knew I still see you in a good light from time to time. But I won’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

“I’ll leave out all the details that don’t add up to your glory.”

On Always Think Of You, Ellie chides: “Run your mouth, when I post a pretty picture you would make me take it down.

“The s**t you did then I would never put up with now.”

She continues: “Losing your s**t over something small, throwing a fit like you’re two feet tall, blame it on me, or the alcohol, what do you know now, Mr know it all?”

For Your Entertainment and Loser are my stand-out favourites, with the lyrics on Loser enough to make any of her former flames cringe.

“See you got a new job, new life, got a new girl that’s fine, you’re not fooling anybody,” Ellie sings.

“You can change all your clothes, baby you’re still a loser.

“Change your cologne, you still smell like a loser.”

I’ll be singing that on repeat any time someone gets on my wick.

MELANIE C is in fine shape after raking in £1million last year from her solo work and Spice Girls royalties.

New accounts for Mel’s touring company, Red Girl Media Ltd, show Sporty Spice raked in £550,000 from solo shows in the year to 31 August 2025.

During that time Mel embarked on a DJ tour of the UK, Ibiza and Australia.

Latest paperwork for her publishing firm, Red Girl Productions Ltd, shows she took home a further £300,000 last year from solo royalties.

She also earned her share of Spice Girls royalties worth £600,000.

The money is set to keep rolling in for the recently married singer, as the accounts don’t cover the release of her latest album Sweat earlier this year.

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The 52-year-old, is also set to start a solo world tour, including gigs in London, Birmingham and Glasgow in October.

Last week Mel shared her new tattoo tribute to her summer nuptials and wild honeymoon.

The Spice Girl married partner of three years Chris Dingwall in a stunning ceremony in the grounds of The Country House Cumbria in July.

The happy couple were surrounded by their loved ones and a host of celeb guests, including her bandmates – bar Victoria Beckham who was away supporting husband David at the World Cup.

Shortly after saying I Do, Mel and Aussie model Chris were seen snogging in the sea during their Ibiza honeymoon – and her latest body art marks their first trip as husband as wife as well as her work on the White Isle.

In a new video posted to TikTok, Mel was seen having a cherry icon tattooed onto her forearm.

The cute design, which featured the striking red fruit on its stalks, also commemorated her fifth year DJing at Ibiza club Pacha, which has the twin cherry as its emblem.

Grammy-winning singer Jill Scott brought her “To Whom This May Concern” album — her first in more than a decade — to life at Inglewood’s YouTube Theater last week. Backed by a razor-sharp 11-piece all-male band (including background singers fittingly dubbed “Freeman”), Scott moved effortlessly through a two-hour set filled with songs from the genre-expansive album along with several fan favorites like “He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat)” and “Gettin’ in the Way.”

Enforcing a phone-free policy at her personal request, the North Philadelphia native kept the audience intensely locked in — hanging onto her every word and every seemingly impossible note she struck with ease. Before long, it was easy to forget that we didn’t have our devices. Smiles filled the intimate room. Couples danced together. Strangers sang to each other in joyful unison, while others closed their eyes or held their hands on their chest in complete awe of witnessing a veteran artist in her element.

Jill Scott is on tour for “To Whom This May Concern,” her first album in over a decade.

(Jada Imani M)

In her only interview during the tour thus far, we caught up with Scott backstage to talk why she never performs a song the same way twice, how removing devices makes concerts better and why she thinks “To Whom This May Concern” deserves several accolades.

I’m still coming down from all of the energy from the show. How are you feeling post-show?

I am hot from the inside, and it’s gonna take me hours to calm down. [Laughs]

You’ve always described music as an intimate, two-way conversation between you and the audience. For this tour, you created a strictly phone-free space. Why did you decide to do that and how did this shift the experience for you as a performer?

In a couple of ways. One part is that it’s terrifying because there’s no buffer between me and them, so that’s actually scary, but I embrace it. The other part of it is that it’s wonderful because people initially come in kind of nervous about not having a buffer between myself and the space or themselves and space. Then I watch them gradually release, and I get a kick out of that every night. That’s my favorite part.

I’m surprised to hear that it’s scary for someone like you who’s been performing at such a high level for so many years.

Because I care. It matters to me. I really want them to have a good time. I really want them to release some things, allow themselves to be. If you want to make out, if you want to dance, if you want to cry, if you want to shout, or put up your hands in the air, or sit still, I want them to be able to do that. I think it’s important. That’s the relationship. That’s the real relationship between artist and fans of the music. It’s the connection between the music. I’m here to [be of] service. I’m here to push the ship along, but it’s really their relationship with the music and I’m a conduit. That part is probably one of my other favorites. You have to relinquish your id and allow the thing to be the thing. I think sometimes you can practice the joy and the life out of a thing. We practice a lot, but then we forget everything we practice so that it’s alive. My musicians’ freedom is mandatory. It’s a part of the job. So if they show up and play the exact same thing in the exact same way every night, they’re probably not going to be around very long. I need them to be wide open and to rediscover the music every night from their perspective. It’s their 11 perspectives on stage, and then of course there’s the lighting designer. I need him to be free. Don’t give me the same light at the same time every night. Even front-of-the-house sound engineer as well as our in-ear monitors, everybody is playing a part. “What does she need? Let’s read her. Let’s, you know, pay attention. What does she want?” It’s a lot of fun.

You could see really feel that from you and your entire band.

Tonight was a different audience. They were very attentive. Last night they danced all night long from the very beginning. I couldn’t even see the floor. Tonight they were listening. I know it’s a Wednesday night. Everybody’s got to go to work [the next morning], but they were beautiful. The listening audience is probably my favorite. They get quiet and I’m like “Oh, it’s so scary. Am I doing the right thing?” [Laughs] But that means they’re listening. Who doesn’t want to be heard?

Your son came out with you tonight. How was that experience for you?

It’s beautiful to see. He told me Tierra Whack is not traveling with us because she has a new album out, “Whack’s Museum,” so she’s a little busy. He was like, “Mom, how do you feel about me doing the second verse?” and I was like “Be at sound check tomorrow with a mic in your hand.”

He looked so comfortable on stage.

He does. It’s kind of scary. Super exciting. I don’t know what he’ll want to do, but he’s working our set, so he’s a part of the crew. So after he does his performance, he puts back on his blacks and he does his job, and I love that for him, to have that sense of responsibility. He’s exceeding anybody’s and everybody’s expectations. He’s so good at this. All the clothes you see, he steamed up.

He’s really working his way up.

Yes, you must earn your way.

Your album “To Whom This May Concern” released in February, and it feels like a love letter from your favorite auntie. There’s lessons about learning from your mistakes, honoring your ancestors and loving yourself. Now that your fans have been living with these songs for several months, I’m curious if performing them live has shifted your relationship with them at all?

No. On a great night, I like telling the stories that I’ve read. I like embodying them in front of other people. I like watching them experience them in a new way. I’m a fan of that. It just makes it more and more true. Then I see how many people are singing along and how many people are looking at me, and I’m like “Yesss.” It’s reaching the people and I know it’s going to be different because there’s a different audience every night. So I’m thrilled about the project and how it’s touching people. You hope you don’t work this hard at a thing for it to fall on deaf ears, and I know how microwavable music has been, but I believe the cream rises to the top. It’s been a beautiful 26 years. I look forward to 26 more — in my way.

Your album has been receiving a lot of praise from fans and critics. There’s still a few months before the Grammy nominations are announced, but at this point in your career, how important is that recognition to you? Is it as important as it was when you first started your career?

I think I deserve it. That’s all. [Flashes a smile]

I mean everything about this project from beginning to end is blood, sweat and tears. I stayed up many nights just to write, a hunger in my belly and a savage appetite. And I mean it. Everything is true and I love that for me. That’s the kind of thing that takes time and I think musically, it’s incredible. I think the stories are awesome and intentional, and everything about it, from the planning of it to the marketing, has been from my soul, and I think it deserves several.

WHEN Brandon Flowers was a kid, his dad tried to teach him how to fight.

The lad had been picked on at school, so his father Terry talked him through what to do if it happened again.

Decades later, a memory of that time helped inspire the title of Flowers’ third solo album, Thrasher.

The Killers’ frontman still remembers sitting beside his father Terry in his old 1946 Chevy truck. “I was in fifth grade, so only 11 years old,” he recalls.

“My dad grew up fighting and I still remember him trying to explain to me how to fight.

“You can explain to me all day, but I’m not a fighter.

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“He’d say, ‘You don’t just swing. You think about when you’re going to throw your punch and you have to block yourself’.

“When I’m on stage, I find myself doing it so much. You have this crazy relationship, boys and their dads. I’m still trying to show him that I can do it.”

Flowers is all smiles when we meet at his central London record label. He’s just back from a week in Scotland with his family and feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.

Thrasher arrives 11 years after his last solo album, The Desired Effect. It is inspired by country and western, the music his dad listened to when Flowers was growing up.

“Much has been said about how my love of music came from my brother [Shane].

“Yeah, it did, but at the same time, I was hearing country music from my dad. His favourites were the heavy hitters — Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard — along with some of those who were not as famous. There’s a guy named John Conlee who he listened to, who I really love.

“As a teenager, I felt I had to choose — the kid who listens to New Order doesn’t also listen to Waylon Jennings.

“As I get older, I just seem to gravitate back to my father’s music.”

Flowers says he has become closer to his father, and increasingly like him, as he has grown older — and admits he is still trying to prove himself to his dad.

He says: “I’m trying to show my dad that I can do what he does. He’s a good man. He’s doing pretty good.

“He had open heart surgery at 81, which is a difficult thing. He’s five months past it now and is pretty good.”

Ideas for Thrasher began shortly after Flowers finished The Killers’ last record — 2021’s Pressure Machine.

He says: “I really enjoyed making this. It was a very important record to me. I didn’t want to leave it alone, so I just continued. It was such a revelation.

“I had all these memories, all these characters and sadness — all of this stuff that I could now find a place for and turn them into something.

“These songs don’t feel like Killers songs — they’re quite personal, so it felt natural that it should be a solo record. It’s been nearly ten years since the last one — I can’t believe it.”

Thrasher is a beautifully observed, emotionally affecting record.

The first single Plans “picks up where Pressure Machine left off”, says Flowers.

“It does a good job of representing the record. There’s some strong emotional material on this album.”

One of the most moving songs on Thrasher is One Of Us, a tribute to his sister’s late husband.

Flowers, the youngest in his family, jokes that he was always told he was “a surprise” — until he was eight, when a friend’s dad bluntly informed him he was “a mistake”.

“I have a sister who is 17 years older than me so her husband was around since I was a little boy.

“He was my brother, so when he passed, it was just heartbreaking and completely unexpected. He was just out of heart surgery. You just want to pay tribute to them and my sister loves it.”

The warm, wistful Paradise finds Flowers imagining the life he might have led, had music not taken him away from home.

“I always thought I would be a valet parker. That was my goal,” he says with a chuckle.

“And if music didn’t work out, it was my Plan B.

“I would be really happy to support my family and be a valet. That’s what my cousins and uncles have done — bellman and valet.

“I have a cousin, Bobby, who has spent his whole adult life as a valet parker, and he was sending me some texts one day complaining about work.

“I was sitting at the piano and just jumped on it, and used it as a launching pad for a song about an ageing valet parker.

“It’s basically him, and it’s where I would be right now if I didn’t have this incredible thing happen to me.

“I have this empathy for him and I’m exploring what could have been and what might have been. There’s sadness in it, but there are also winks and nods.

“That’s the thing I love about country music — how those can coexist.”

Thrasher was recorded quickly in Nashville with seasoned session musicians, including legendary harmonica player Charlie McCoy, whose credits include Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.

Flowers says: “He played on all those Bob Dylan records and on Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman and Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer. He played with Leonard Cohen and had great stories about them all. He’s the mascot of Nashville and so incredible.”

Flowers says that the song Red Ground came especially quickly.

“I was trying for a Lee Hazlewood vibe and that song fell into our laps. These guys do this every day for hours. They make decisions that would break a band.”

Thrasher also finds Flowers making peace with his own past.

Although Las Vegas has always been central to The Killers’ identity, he admits he once felt conflicted about his Utah upbringing.

Now he says: “It did feel like I was keeping Utah a secret because I am happy to wave the flag for Las Vegas, but had a bit of a conflict about Utah.

“Now, there’s nothing wrong with embracing both.

“I look back with more tenderness now, and I’m so grateful for my upbringing there.

“I really lived in a golden time where you’re just free. It was before phones and technology and was idyllic — like something out of Stand By Me.”

Having interviewed Flowers many times over the past 20 years, one of the biggest changes is how much more comfortable he now seems revealing parts of himself he once kept guarded, particularly his Mormon faith.

He says: “I was so shy back then. I’m still shy, but I was also unsure about interviews and you don’t know what you’re supposed to reveal.

“It’s so not rock ’n’ roll to talk about Jesus in a positive light. It’s very common in sports but I think people are less open in music.

“There is this authenticity turmoil, where you feel like we’ve always glorified hedonism and debauchery in rock ’n’ roll — and even beyond rock ’n’ roll.

“In every kind of art form, those seem to be the people that we really revere because they are outliers. But I’ve realised it doesn’t make me any less creative because I have faith. I’m just never going to be Sid Vicious.”

Flowers, 45, says coming to terms with his different identities, and simply being himself, has become easier as he’s got older.

“I’m more forgiving of my younger self, but I’m still hard on my current self,” he says.

“We all have that inner voice and it can be the worst critic.

“It’s not been easy, but I now realise I can be that guy on stage, and also a family man,” he explains. “But I was so conflicted for a while.

“Half of you feels like an imposter, and then the other half is trying to show why you belong — it messes with your mind. I was lucky to find something that I was passionate about.

“That’s what I encourage my boys to find.”

Flowers’ sons Ammon, 19, Gunnar, 17, and Henry, 15, have all grown up with their dad on stage — but they are not impressed by his status.

Flowers says: “Ammon loves fitness and being outside — he is just about to go to college in Philadelphia which he’s half excited and half scared about. My wife is sad about him leaving home.

“Then Gunnar loves horror and 90s rock and a lot of grunge, too.

“Henry is a football fanatic so when The Killers performed at the Champions League Final in Budapest, he got to meet David Beckham and was in heaven.

“Mick Jagger was there as well but it was all about Beckham, who signed a football card for him. He’s also a full-blown Oasis fan, so I need to take him to see them when they play again next year.”

Flowers remains hopeful about the future, even though he admits he is deeply troubled by Donald Trump’s America and the actions of ICE.

“This administration is scary,” says Flowers.

“It feels so un-American, and it goes against all of our values and the things that are beautiful about our country.

“You do feel a little bit hopeless and helpless.” But he still believes change can come through younger generations and the ballot box.

“We have to remember to use our voices and to fight back at the polls when the time comes.”

He adds: “Nobody from the other side is rising up at the moment. Somebody needs to rise up. Get the hell up.”

Never one to stand still for long, Flowers has always had an impressive work ethic.

Another solo album is already in the pipeline, with a new Killers record also expected in 2027.

Until then, he is excited about his solo tour, which begins next week and arrives in the UK in October, including a night at the Royal Albert Hall.

He’s already debuted songs from Thrasher at July’s Newport Folk Festival — the famous Rhode Island event where Bob Dylan went electric in 1965.

“I’ve got a band together. This tour is going to be a different experience than you are accustomed to,” he says.

“I’m going to tell more stories and take advantage of these smaller rooms — the Albert Hall is the biggest room I’m playing.

“I want to explain the story behind the songs, which you can’t do in a stadium — so I thought this would be the time to give it a shot.

“I worry people will get sick of Mr. Brightside so I feel lucky that I have different outlets for my music.”

Brandon Flowers

Thrasher

★★★★☆

AFTER referring to her new record I Know Too Much as a “divorce” album earlier this year, Ellie Goulding’s fans were convinced it was about the her marriage split.

But after having a sneak preview of her upcoming record, some might think she’s crooning about another break up, which became public earlier this week.

The Burn singer is taking legal action against her old team TaP Management.

And it’s little wonder Ellie is saying she’s so miffed.

To keep it brief, Ellie signed with Ben Mawson and Ed Millett — whose previous clients have included Dua Lipa and Cruz Beckham — in 2018.

She claims they failed to disclose that TaP’s parent company, HNOE, was partially, then fully, owned by Live Nation.

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During her seven years with TaP, Ellie signed agreements with Live Nation for tours and merchandise, plus a documentary film which she argues financially benefited Mawson and Millett.

Ellie pumped in almost £4million as part of those deals, unaware her managers had a vested interest.

When I first listened to I Know Too Much — which I think is Ellie’s most powerful body of work lyrically — I immediately connected the dots to her ex-hubby Caspar Jopling.

The couple, who have a five-year-old son, split in 2024.

But now I know about her row with TaP and looking back over my notes, it seems some of it could have been influenced by Ellie’s experiences in the music industry.

This is Ellie’s first album since Higher Than Heaven hit No1 three years ago.

And she’s already hinted that she opens some old wounds on the record, saying of her new album’s title track: “It’s probably the most honest song I’ve written. It is what it is. I know too much.

“It’s tongue in cheek but it’s also some kind of comment on my life so far and music. I couldn’t think of a more apt title for everything I was singing about.

“I do know too much. Way too much.”

I’m sworn to secrecy on the album, which comes out on September 4, and would be strung up if I gave too much away.

But if you take a quick glance at the lyrics to Black Prada Dress, the single Ellie released earlier this year, you’ll see what I mean.

“I heard what you said, just as I was tasting freedom,” Ellie sings at the top of the track.

“Don’t want the pills, but you kinda make me think I need ’em.

“I’m tryna be a Hollywood baby, cause you made me think that London hates me.”

Intriguing. The gloves are off.

PHOEBE BRIDGERS received the worst 32nd birthday gift on Monday – appendicitis.

he US singer, who is set to top the album charts tomorrow with Lost Weekend, has had to postpone intimate shows in Kingston, Brighton and Bristol.

She told fans: “I got appendicitis for my birthday. But I’ll make it up to you!”

Phoebe got a boost from Taylor Swift who bigged up her record to her 273million Instagram followers.

Tay wrote: “Haven’t been able to stop listening. This album is an absolute triumph in every way.”

ROBBIE WILLIAMS has teamed up with Ukrainian DJ and producer Miss Monique for single Beauty In Us, which they performed for in Ibiza at the weekend.

He said the track, out on September 18, is “inspired by our different but equally defining experiences of electronic music and clubbing in Stoke-on-Trent and Kyiv . . . from the Nineties to the 2010s.”

YOU could be in Guy Ritchie’s next movie.

A walk-on role in one of the upcoming films Guy is directing is up for grabs as Children With Cancer UK puts on its most showbizzy auction yet.

You could bid for afternoon tea with EastEnders’ Natalie Cassidy, or a Picasso painting and VIP festival tickets. While Mel C, Katherine Jenkins and Jack Whitehall are offering meet and greets.

It is all to raise funds for groundbreaking research into the prevention and treatment of childhood cancer, as well as support for affected families. The auction runs from today at 8am until Friday.

• See thereallybigauction.com.

Maura’s totes gorgeous

MAURA HIGGINS looks absolutely fabulous in her latest major fashion campaign – seven years after Love Island changed her life.

She is the new face of Guess as it launches its Allegra bag – which she modelled in this photoshoot as she opened up about her upcoming stint on America’s answer to Strictly, Dancing With The Stars.

Maura, who will start on the show on September 15, told Grazia: “Confidence isn’t something you magically wake up with every day.

“I still get nervous. But I trust the people around me to help me feel my best once I’m on set or in front of a camera.

“Dancing With The Stars is definitely a different kind of pressure because you’re learning something completely new every week and have to perform live to an audience of millions watching, but that’s also what makes it exciting.

“Growth only happens when you push yourself a bit.”

Matt’s date tops the bill

THE MOLOTOVS’ MATT CARTLIDGE looks to have found a Hollywood love interest after growing close to actress Kathryn Newton.

The notoriously private rocker was reluctant to be drawn on their relationship, but his bandmate sister Issey let slip the pair met on The Jonathan Ross Show.

Londoner Matt took the Big Little Lies star to LA’s Beverly Hills Hotel, and one thing he wasn’t quiet about was the cost.

Chatting to him at King’s Cross Summer Sounds, in partnership with Lightroom, home of David Bowie: You’re Not Alone, I asked how much it came to, and he said: “For an omelette at the Beverly Hills Hotel?

“Omelette –  ham and cheese, two coffees and pancakes, but she got all the add-ons, you know, like strawberries. It was $80 – way more than I wanted to spend, mind you.”

The band go on tour next month and there are still tickets for their show at London’s O2 Kentish Town Forum on September 26. That should help pay for the second date.

Joan makes Billy Ray’s day

NOW here’s a holiday snap I didn’t think I’d see.

Elizabeth Hurley and her director son Damian, posing in the sunshine with her boyfriend Billy Ray Cyrus. . . and Dame Joan Collins.

Liz shared snaps on Instagram of their surprising trip, revealing they joined Joan and her husband Percy on an “enchanting holiday” at their home in St Tropez.

Superstar Joan still manged to look super cool in the pool with Liz, who also posed in a chic summer dress.

The most-liked comment on Liz’s post said: “Billy Ray hit the jackpot.” I couldn’t agree more.

Weeknd’s fireworks fall flat

By Jack Hardwick

WITH 129million record sales and a seriously big budget behind him, expectations were high as The Weeknd took to the stage at Wembley Stadium.

From the get-go, it was clear that money was no object, thanks to a giant cross-shaped stage with a 40ft silver “sexy robot” in the middle.

But after a cult-like opening with 30 cloaked dancers, I have to admit things all felt a bit samey.

He’s spent four years touring the world and The Weeknd’s vocals were flawless throughout the two-hour spectacle.

The mammoth 38-track set was punctuated with hits including Can’t Feel My Face, Star Boy and Save Your Tears, before building to a finale including Blinding Lights and his Swedish House Mafia collaboration Moth To A Flame.

But once you get over the giant robot and the stage shooting out pyrotechnics, things all start to blend into one.

Maybe we’ve been spoiled by the high standards of pop shows in recent years but I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed as I left.

And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, either.

In the beginning of 2025, Taylor Olin had decided she’d seen enough of Echo Park and decided to relocate to a cozy ranch up in Altadena. There, she’d begun to plant her roots in an artistic community, spending most of the last year and some change nestled in with her new flock of bohemian neighbors.

It would be the perfect sanctuary for the Something Specials frontwoman, that doubled as a creative space.

By the first week of January, she moved her belongings into a rented stationary camper situated on a ranch owner’s sprawling land, that they’d lived on for more than 25 years. In the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, her L.A. chronicle would continue, as dreamed.

But within a week of settling down, she’d receive a knock on her door, step out of her home, and see flames burning a nearby hillside. When she saw the fire she knew to leave, packing as much as she could before making a run for it.

“Every successive update we would get from her was just unbelievably surreal,” said Josh Augustin, who plays drums and keys and does production for the band.

She didn’t know it yet, but all that was left of her camper was its frame; it’s burned, twisted metal was another casualty of the L.A. wildfires. For the next couple of weeks, she’d couch surf until ultimately sleeping in her van, waking up early to wait tables at an oyster bar on Sunset Boulevard.

The remains of Olin’s rented camper.

(Taylor Olin)

“From there, I went back to Florida, and I put on a benefit show for some specific people in Altadena that I wanted to give some funds to,” Olin said.

She’d then relocate to Europe and start fresh with aid from a GoFundMe created by a friend. Roughly a year and a half later, she’s still there and has had time to reflect on the experience.

“As much as I was directly affected, I really have held the space in my heart for those who have been there for their entire lives,” she said.

“My commitment to the community had only been a year … whereas they had invested so much and lost so much.”

But something fascinating was happening behind the scenes, coinciding with the disaster that had sent Olin overseas and left her bandmates, Augustin and Nathan Slone — located in New York City — shocked.

One year earlier, the band had released “Love,” a pleasantly sweet, folky, country-adjacent tune that melts easily into eardrums. Though it hadn’t received much attention at the time, it began to gain some traction on social media right after Olin settled down in Europe, frequently appearing in short-form videos across Instagram.

“We had no idea where we were getting it from,” she said of the new listeners. “It was picked algorithmically and put at the top of recommended songs on stories and reels, and so we started seeing thousands of reels being used with its intro.”

The band unwittingly stumbled into virality.

“We would get maybe a few hundred listeners in a day across our entire discography,” Slone, guitarist and bassist, said. “It’s … come to life, die, come back to life, and died. Now our whole discography seems to be in a ‘high tide lifts all ships’ moment.”

At that time, “Love” was floating around 1 million listeners on Spotify. Today, it sits at nearly 20 million, with the band’s average monthly listeners at 1.2 million. Small highlights include being featured in a Reese Witherspoon carousel and Ashley Tisdale French gardening video on Instagram, the latter containing their other hit, “Aces.”

Now, the trio is gearing up to release its debut album, “Somewhere Up There,” on Friday. At just shy of an hour, the project is split almost evenly between new music and previously released tunes.

Album art for “Somewhere Up There.”

(Taylor Olin / The Something Specials)

Impressively, the band has met in person only three times, one of which was when they first agreed to work together. Better yet, when Olin and Slone first met, it was shaking hands on stage at the Echoplex before the band’s first show.

They’re all skilled musicians, having done their due diligence in different music groups, but nothing has clicked like the parasocial success that is the Something Specials.

“We need each other all the way through — we each bring a different thing to the project,” Slone said.

“I’ll go and write the bass of the song, and a riff if there’s a riff. Josh helps with keyboards and drums. We refine it a little bit together. We send it to Taylor. Taylor records over it. We get it back. We might add a part or two. We mix it. All say yes. Send it for mastering and upload it.”

In a modern world, it’s not unusual to hear of music production being done in such a way, but it’s the group’s limited personal relationship that makes it shine.

The plan is to keep being nonchalant about the whole thing, and hopefully their fan base will continue to grow. On Oct. 28, they’ll play the Sultan Room in New York City, their third time together as a band.

“It’s bizarrely easy,” Slone adds.

“With very few exceptions, if things are flowing well, we can wrap something up in a week or two,” Augustin adds about the outfit’s remote recording process.

They’re still winging it at this point, unsigned and with no representation, but “winging it has served us well,” Olin said.

“We’ve been approached many times [by labels],” Slone continues. “But we do pretty darn well on our own, and record labels don’t really have much to offer us, frankly.”

Olin says that in a time where the use of artificial intelligence is so prevalent, and particularly in creative spaces, doing things “DIY” is the best approach. They’re starting with an initial run of around 500 vinyl records, with plans to release the album on CD and cassette later down the line.

“With this kind of band — with our sound, with our aesthetic— I think that as old-school as possible feels best,” she said.

Grammy winner Jon Batiste placed his summer performing duties on hold as he “navigate[s] some personal circumstances.”

The Connecticut festival Westville Music Bowl on Wednesday published a statement from the composer-singer-multi-instrumentalist and former “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” bandleader announcing that he has canceled “a portion of my upcoming performance dates.” That includes his appearance at the New Haven fest on Thursday, according to the social media statement. The notice did not specify the additional cancellations but included mention of Batiste’s new releases including his piano-centric albums “Monk Meditations” and “Monk Movements.”

“My team and I are finding new ways and opportunities to share live music with you,” Batiste continued in the statement. “There’s so much more to come, and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead.”

People reported that Batiste’s shows in Pennsylvania and New York have also been canceled and ticket refunds will be available for the three canceled shows. A representative for the Grammy-winning musician did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for more information on Thursday.

Batiste, who will also release the album “Black Mozart” on Friday, is still scheduled to play several of his remaining tour stops including those in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio; Atlanta and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. He is set to close off his tour at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on Oct. 3.

“Thank you for your understanding and continued support,” Batiste said in the statement published by Westville Music Bowl. “I truly can’t wait to come back and perform for you soon.”

Batiste, 39, will share his trio of new albums four years after he won the coveted prize for album of the year at the 2022 Grammy Awards for his 2021 release “We Are.” Batiste, in addition to his late-night TV work, is also known for composing original works for the soundtrack of Disney’s 2020 animated film “Soul.”

Hugo Lara and Manolo Cabrera — the Mexican DJ pair better known as RØZ — casually strolled through Sightglass Coffee in Hollywood, one gripping a half-melted iced coffee, the other an empty Erewhon juice bottle.

To any onlooker, they might appear as two standard Gen Z Angelenos in sardonic streetwear: 22-year-old Cabrera flaunted a hat that referenced the 2008 financial crisis while 25-year-old Lara’s faded tee read, “You don’t dream of a better version of yourself.”

But over the past year, this fresh-faced pair from Querétaro, a small state just outside Mexico City, has dominated the festival world circuit. Spinning heart-thumping electronic beats and Latin house rhythms, RØZ has taken the stage at many a popular event, such as the most recent Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Lollapalooza Chicago, Hard Summer, EDC Las Vegas and Sueños.

“We’ve had huge crowds at festivals, even the workers on stage are like, ‘No way, you filled more venues than yesterday’s headliner,’” Cabrera told The Times. “We filled it up and people started leaving for the next person, which is obviously not cool. It feels awful. But you do think: good! They value Latinos and Mexicans now.”

Besides regaling ravers at their concerts — which will continue for the remainder of the calendar year, including a 20-city North American tour that kicks off in Boston on Oct. 21 — RØZ has landed another major artistic goal.

“Everyone will give [the album] a different interpretation, but I think the through line is the idea of drama, or poetic essence,” said Hugo Lara.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Last Friday, they released their first full-length album, “Se Esta Haciendo Tarde.” It’s a 19-track, introspective debut that solidifies the duo’s standing in the EDM world as both masterful mixers and vocalists.

“We are neither fully DJs, or fully singers, but artists,” said Cabrera. “Our shows, with the album, are going to be us playing synths, at another point singing and at another point we mix some songs.”

Featuring cameos from Latin superstars like Peso Pluma, J Balvin and Ryan Castro, the LP itself is hard to define as simply house music; RØZ is known best for peppering its EDM with a heavy dose of Latino sazon. It’s a sonic recipe that the two former schoolmates have been mastering since they were under lockdown from COVID.

This era also saw the commercial rise of other Mexican artists in their generation: Natanael Cano and Latin Mafia were among the most prominent Mexican acts who maximized their creativity during the isolation period and used social media platforms like TikTok to gain traction.

“It’s like if Fred Again, Skrillex, Frank Ocean, Mora and Bad Bunny adopted a child and raised him,” said Cabrera about their own music, which they began uploading to the streaming platform Soundcloud in 2022.

At the start of their disc jockey journey, they remixed already established songs, from Bad Bunny and Bomba Estéreo’s “Ojitos Lindos” to Bellakath’s “Gatita.” By 2024, they would release their frosty original track, “Cora de Hielo” under Warner Music Mexico; this featured Natt Calma and Mau Moctezuma, artists whom they met through the local indie scene.

Their subsequent releases went viral — including the dark-synth pop “Flashes” with Yng Lvcas and atmospheric “Apaga la Luz” with a rather mellowed performance from Peso Pluma — which were released under LT:Vision Records, Queens Road Music and Atlantic Records.

“At that time, emotions were secondary [in the music],” said Cabrera when looking back on those early songs. “Perhaps we didn’t resonate with the artist’s lyrics, we might have helped with some ideas. But with this [new] project, we wanted to find more of a balance — we want to be transparent, while also releasing f— bangers.”

Inspired by the transient beauty of cherry blossoms, known in Japan as sakura — which is illustrated in their album cover, alongside a dark pegasus — much of the LP also hinges on melodrama. Glitchy beat drops in “Acelero Lento” (featuring Chitra) fade into acoustic ballads. The bouncy freestyle rhythm in “Soho” melts into feverish pop harmonies. There’s also an interlacing spiritual hymn in “Yo Gospel” (featuring Rodrii) that showcases the heavenly vocals of an American-style church choir.

“Everyone will give [the album] a different interpretation, but I think the through line is the drama, or poetic essence,” said Lara. “Perhaps in 10 years we will listen to the same song and have a different interpretation.”

The new LP is imbued with various Latin genre fusions. In “Ya es de Noche” (featuring Rodrii and Olisso) they open with neo-perreo rhythms that slowly wade in and out of a cumbia-guided trance. In “Hanami,” named after the traditional Japanese custom of observing a floral bloom, RØZ is joined by Colombian producer Sky Rompiendo, whose pulsating reggaeton beats undergo a warping process, as their lyrics harp on romantic tension.

“Cherry blossoms only last a while, so it was our way of saying that we must appreciate the moment in which beauty exists,” said Lara.

The magnetic pull of RØZ — whose stage name is pronounced like the second syllable in “arroz” — cannot be overstated. They’ve already sold out six shows in their upcoming tour, which will wrap up Feb. 27 in their home state of Querétaro. Their popularity comes at a time when electronic music was registered as the largest-growing genre in the U.S. in the first half of 2026, per Luminate’s 2026 data report, which also found that casual monthly listenership in Latin music peaked at 54% of streams in the first quarter.

The growing admiration for Latin-fused EDM by Latino listeners was most visually evident during their Coachella debut in April. One attendee uploaded a video to Instagram showing the jammed entrance to the Sonora Tent, which reached full capacity before the duo began their Sunday set: “Coachella underestimating the Latino crowds like [what do you mean] I can’t see RØZ [because] it’s at full capacity both weekends,” the subtext on the video read.

Even before their breakout year, on the night of their first U.S. performance on the rooftop of the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles last August, the line to get inside stretched across the Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk with attendees eager to hear the pair’s early tracks.

Still, it doesn’t surprise RØZ that a Latino act like themselves might be early on the call sheet — or left to assemble a last-minute crew after their original team ran into visa processing delays ahead of the first Coachella weekend. “In this genre that we’re moving in, you’d never picture a Latino headliner. Latinos are always put down, down, down,” said Cabrera.

But some milestones have given them faith that the mainstream world is opening up to putting Latino acts at the top of the bill; including the fact that Colombian singer Karol G was the first Latina Coachella headliner this year. “And with music in Spanish, not English,” marveled Lara.

And rather than sulk about the conditions of Latino artists, RØZ is ready to put up a fight.

“Just because I’m Mexican or Latino doesn’t mean that I can’t connect with people the same way a person from the United States can,” said Cabrera. “Headlining is possible, without a doubt.”

Multiplatinum American rapper NBA YoungBoy has revealed that he has a heart condition — and likely “one or two” albums left in his artistic career.

While a guest on an “Open Thoughts” podcast episode uploaded on Tuesday, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Baton Rouge, La., was asked by host Funny Marco if he ever felt like pulling back after performing back-to-back shows. In response, the “Bandit” singer recalled the moment when a doctor told him the left side of his heart was swollen.

“I never told nobody, I just kept doing every show,” said YoungBoy, who also goes by YoungBoy Never Broke Again and whose given name is Kentrell DeSean Gaulden. “I finished my tour out like that.”

The rapper did not disclose the specifics of this health condition but shared that a side of his heart is “still enlarged.”

“That explains the music, though, right?” YoungBoy followed up, grabbing his chest. “She’s hurting.”

The rapper has released a total of nine studio albums in his career, gaining early co-signs from Louisiana legends including Boosie Badazz and Kevin Gates. His first four LPs — including “Until Death Call My Name” (2018), “Top” (2020), “Sincerely, Kentrell” (2021) and “The Last Slimeto” (2022) — went platinum.

But NBA YoungBoy fans should brace themselves for what is to come — or not. The singer revealed on the podcast that he only has one or two albums left in his career. “I’m going to tour one more time throughout my whole life,” the rapper said, “and that’s it.”

The podcast — which has more than 2 million views since Tuesday — was filmed in South Korea, where YoungBoy moved in an apparent attempt to start over with a clean slate after a series of run-ins with the law in the U.S.

In his youth, the hitmaker spent six months in juvenile detention after committing a robbery, an experience that inspired his 2015 debut mixtape “Life Before Fame.”

By 2016, the Louisiana native would be connected to a series of shootings in Baton Rouge. He served time for attempted second-degree murder, eventually pleading guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated assault with a firearm, for which he was sentenced to a suspended 10-year prison term and three years of active probation.

Following his release from prison in 2017, he released the Southern hip-hop track “Untouchable,” which marked his first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 and set the course for his popular-music career. By 2023, YoungBoy would become the youngest artist ever to reach 100 entries on the musical chart.

However, serious legal troubles have cast a shadow on the rap prodigy’s career, including in 2018 when he was charged with a kidnapping and assault involving his girlfriend. She later denied the allegations, despite surveillance footage that showed the artist throwing her to the ground.

In December 2024, a federal judge in Utah sentenced the rapper to a 23-month sentence on gun-related charges after he pleaded guilty to firearm possession as a convicted felon. The charges stemmed from a 2020 arrest during a music video shoot in Baton Rouge where police recovered multiple firearms and drugs on the scene. A month before his sentence, the rap star also pleaded guilty to his involvement in a years-long prescription drug fraud scheme in Utah, avoiding prison time in exchange for a $25,000 fine.

In May 2025, President Trump pardoned YoungBoy, clearing his sentence and other active probation restrictions and drug testing requirements. The artist reacted to the pardon on his Instagram story, saying that it “opens the door to a future I’ve worked hard for and I am fully prepared to step into this.”

When YoungBoy was asked by Marco if he would consider a move back to the United States, the singer replied, “Never in my life.”

Later on, the “Make No Sense” singer hinted at some other legal roadblocks ahead in his transition across the globe: “It can’t be my home until they give me my visa, right?”

Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.

The show will go on for ZZ Top.

Last week, the blues rock band canceled its Hollywood Bowl concert because longtime drummer Frank Beard had health issues, Rolling Stone first reported.

That Aug. 5 Los Angeles concert was supposed to be the kickoff for the band’s the Big One tour. But a spokesperson for the band says that frontman Billy Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis will continue the tour.

Michael Monahan will substitute for Beard for the remainder of the Big One, which will conclude its U.S. run on Oct. 9 in Port Wentworth, Ga.

The band has not said that it will reschedule the L.A. show, and all tickets, including transportation and parking passes, were being automatically refunded, according to the Hollywood Bowl.

Gibbons previously posted on Instagram that there were unexplained “insurmountable obstacles” leading to the band’s sudden cancellation at the Hollywood Bowl.

The band has released no details on Beard’s condition, although this is not the first time the drummer, 77, has faced health-related issues in his long tenure with the band. Beard joined ZZ Top in 1969, soon after the band formed, replacing founding drummer Dan Mitchell.

In March 2025, the Texan trio announced via its Instagram that Beard would temporarily step away from the band’s Elevation tour to tend to a health issue, which was later revealed to be foot and ankle problems. John Douglas — a longtime tech member, percussionist and drummer — replaced Beard in the interim, having done so previously when the veteran drummer underwent an emergency appendectomy in 2002.

In ZZ Top’s early days — following the release of the 1976 album “Tejas” — Beard dealt with issues related to substance abuse that led to the band’s three-year hiatus, which he and his bandmates opened up about in the 2019 documentary “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”

“Frank goes all out on what he does and that includes the bad things,” bandmate Dusty Hill, who died in 2021, said in the documentary. “He was sick. If you’re a very good friend, you love a guy, you don’t want to see him die. You just want to see your brother get well.”

The Grammy-nominated band, which formed in Houston, is known for its edgy blues twang in popular singles including “La Grange” and “Tush” and across 15 studio albums. In November, ZZ Top will close out the Big One tour with eight performances across Mexico and South America.

TINIE Tempah has announced his first album in 10 years as he dropped his new single.

The singer’s last album Youth was released in 2027, and included songs Girls Like featuring Zara Larsson and Not Letting Go with Jess Glynne.

A decade on and Tinie, 37, has shared the exciting news that he’s releasing his fourth studio album.

The musician shared a photo of the album’s front cover, which is titled The Night’s Not Dead.

Looking back on how much has changed over the last 10 years, Tinie wrote: “Last time I announced an album, lockdown wasn’t a thing.

“The UK was still in the EU, Supreme was selling bricks, memes were taking over the world, and 1 Bitcoin was worth £500.

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“So much has happened in the world since then.

“It’s crazy to be announcing my 4th studio album, ‘The Night’s Not Dead,’ coming 16th October 2026.”

He added: “The journey of a night out starts today with Heaven Or Hell ft. Reggie. The track to start your night with. Let’s go!”

Reggie commented: “The King! Inspired me when I was a kid and still inspiring the next generation. an absolute pleasure brother.”

This fan posted: “Oooh this is gonna go crazy,” while another wrote: “Living legend.”

Just last month, The Sun revealed that Tinie was set to release a brand new album.

He exclusively told us: “I’ve not released new music in a while, but I’m back on the grind and it feels good.

“I’ve started putting new music in my sets, but the album is coming in October.”

Tinie’s debut tune, Pass Out, hit the top spot in 2010 and he’s collaborated with massive stars including Rita Ora, Zara Larsson and Ellie Goulding.

But it was way back in 2017 that he released his last album, Youth.

In this revival, Tinie is keen to turn attention to grassroots music venues, where he started out.

Last month, he took to the stage at intimate Southampton venue The Brook alongside Rizzle Kicks to shine a light on the cause.

He said: “One of the reasons I came back was the next generation of artists who may miss out with the way things are going and things are closing. It put me down a bit to think, ‘Wow, this might be an era thing’.

“Behavioural habits have changed — clubs closing, small venues closing — it’s just concerning.

“I feel, as Brits, every ten years we have come to the forefront with a new genre, with garage or grime or dubstep, and I feel like it’s partially because of these spaces that incubate the talent.

“That was one of the motivations for coming back and I feel like it’s a really exciting space to occupy.”

William Orbit, the English musician and producer best known for his work with Madonna on her beloved 1998 album “Ray of Light,” died on July 23. He was 69.

His family announced his death Friday in an Instagram post that said he died at home but didn’t specify a cause. “He will be greatly missed by us and by so many whose lives he touched through his music, friendship and kindness,” the post reads.

Born William Wainwright in London in 1956, Orbit had already established himself in the worlds of dance music and movie soundtracks — he composed the score for the 1986 hockey movie “Youngblood,” with Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze — when he linked up with Madonna at a moment of deep personal change for the pop superstar, who’d given birth to her first child and immersed herself in a variety of spiritual practices. Together the two developed a lush yet energetic sound that combined guitars, synths and throbbing club beats.

“Ray of Light,” which sold more than 4 million copies in the United States alone, spun off hit singles including “Frozen,” “The Power of Good-Bye” and the exuberant title track; the LP was nominated for album of the year at the Grammy Awards — Madonna’s only nod for that prestigious prize — and won the award for pop vocal album. Orbit won three Grammys in all over the course of his career.

In 2021, Orbit took pains in an interview with the Guardian to share credit for “Ray of Light” with the singer herself. Madonna, he said, is “a fabulous producer. When it says ‘produced by Madonna and William Orbit,’ people don’t always give her the credit for that. But she’s as responsible as me.”

Orbit and Madonna collaborated again for “Beautiful Stranger,” a Grammy-winning single from the soundtrack of 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” and for an electro-pop cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie” that featured in the 2000 movie “The Next Best Thing,” in which Madonna starred.

He also worked with Blur, U2, Beth Orton, Pink and All Saints, and he made music under his own name, including a 2000 LP, “Pieces in a Modern Style,” with high-tech interpretations of classical pieces by the likes of Samuel Barber and Erik Satie.

It may be summertime, but Karol G is unapologetically leaning into her sadness.

On Friday, the Colombian pop star released her sixth studio album “No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto,” a 14-track project that details the depths of heartache one can only access when finally tuning out the world.

Tinged with dream-pop accents and acoustic instrumentation — though still fringed with her signature reggaeton-pop flair — it is a dramatic departure from her previous album, “Tropicoqueta,” a lofty, genre-rich album that envisioned a Latina-led utopia as a tropic floral paradise.

Now, with “No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto” — which in English translates to “I Don’t Regret Feeling So Much” — Karol G swaps her vibrant, tropical facade for a soft blue vulnerability. Her special new brand of perreo melancolía features guest vocals by Drake (who sings in Spanish), Bruno Mars, Greg Gonzalez (of Cigarettes After Sex), as well as Spanish stars Judeline and Rusowsky.

The melodrama begins early on with the opening track, “Te Llevas To” — a moody EDM elegy that explores the loss of one’s self after a relationship ends. In an interview with Elle magazine, the hit maker shared that she spent a lot of time alone when creating this project, following her split from Colombian singer-songwriter Feid late last year — long before headlines caught wind of their breakup in January.

“Everything started when I went to Hawaii [last November]. I did a lot of hiking alone. I would climb the mountains alone. I would stand there gazing at the sky. I learned a lot about enjoying my solitude in this industry — we are really, really lonely. Compared to the rest of the world, you’re very isolated,” said Karol G in the Elle interview.

Rumblings of the new project first surfaced in April when Karol G performed at the 2026 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival as its first Latina headliner. There, she debuted “Después de Ti,” a shoegaze ballad joined by Greg Gonzalez, frontman of the indie-pop band Cigarettes After Sex; the song expressed profound grief after Karol experienced a loved one’s death.

“I cry a lot. I’m super sentimental and I’ve hated myself a lot for that,” Karol G revealed to Elle in her July cover story. “But at the same time, I’d rather suffer because I lived too much — because I loved too much, because I had too much fun — than to not have had those experiences, you know? I’m inviting everyone to be a little more dramatic, a little more extra.”

Although her classic bichota essence — a term Karol G frequently uses to describe herself, as a female counterpart to the Puerto Rican bichote, or “big shot” — is still heavily present in the new LP. Earlier this summer, Karol teased the song “Matadora” during the opening night of her international stadium tour in Chicago; produced by reggaeton pioneer Tainy, the sultry track is hallmarked by a muffled jazz trumpet and suggestive verses for an unknown paramour.

Her longtime collaborator, Colombian record producer Ovy On The Drums, also returns to incorporate elements of Karol’s the Grammy-winning 2023 album, “Mañana Será Bonito,” which followed her public breakup with ex-fiancé Anuel AA and grew into a massive commercial hit. With Ovy, Karol revived the shadowy timbre of her joint Shakira track “TQG” into the new “Bebiendo Lágrimas,” a reggaeton song that adamantly rejects the notion of love.

Mexican American producer Edgar Barrera — who previously worked with Karol on her merengue smash “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido,” as well as “Mi Ex Tenía Razón” and “Gucci los Paños” — reprises his role as a música mexicana connoisseur, aiding in Karol’s synth-doused Tejana-style cumbia, “Alguien Que Te Amaba.” (The track was also written with legendary songwriter Pete Astudillo, who co-wrote many of Selena Quintanilla‘s greatest hits.)

In the anguished “Con Quien Andara,” the singer pays tribute to the Spanish singer-songwriter Jeanette and her hazy, sentimental pop ballad from 1976 titled “Porque Te Vas?” And if that’s not enough of a nostalgia bomb, there’s the dream-pop reggaeton track “Bby Wow,” which features Judeline and Rusowsky and was inspired by the popular 2003 dancehall track, “Coolie Dance Rhythm” by Cordel “Scatta” Burrell. (Millennials may also recall echoes of this sample in popular tracks like Nina Sky and Jabba’s 2004 “Move Ya Body.”)

A word of advice for the Karol G fans — tropicoquetas and bichotas alike — this is an intimate record that’s best heard alone for the first time. So light up that candle, lock the doors and bring the tissues if you have to — just don’t be ashamed to feel all the feels, or shake your booty if the mood strikes.

JUNGLE are bringing Sunshine to summer – and entering their most confident era yet.

Following the unexpected global success of their 2023 album Volcano, the Brit-winning band return with a warmer, more organic fifth album, blending Brazilian rhythms, effortless grooves and nostalgia.

And the trio — Tom McFarland, Josh “J” Lloyd and regular contributor turned full-time member Lydia Kitto — might have called their fifth album Sunshine, but its warmth comes with a distinctly melancholic edge.

“It’s not about the weather or a season,” Lloyd explains. “It’s about relationships and distance and regret, and hope and longing for a better time.”

McFarland adds: “Everyone feels nostalgic about that summer when they were 16. Those emotional memories linger with us.

“Even the idea of memory is quite melancholic, because these great things happened, but they’ll never happen again.

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“You can recall them and remember how you felt, but that moment has gone.”

It’s day one of live rehearsals for Jungle when I join them at their studio in South West London.

Lloyd and Kitto have not long flown in from LA while dad-of-three McFarland is telling stories about his kids.

Despite the jet lag and the busy day ahead, the trio are as warm and easy-going as the title of their new album suggests.

Their new confidence follows the unexpected success of Volcano and its breakout song, Back On 74, in particular.

“That song was a big surprise,” says McFarland with a smile. “It went far bigger than we expected.

“We thought there was a certain level we could reach, but what happened with Back On 74 opened up a whole new dimension for the band.

“It brought so many more people to the music, and that has been a really cool thing to see.

“When we were in the middle of it, we didn’t pay too much attention. We don’t chase our own tails wondering whether we’re popular.

“You give the song away and hand it over to the public.

“The more you listen to the noise, the more you start to be directed by it.

“We were very keen not to think, ‘People like Back On 74, so let’s make a whole album like that’, because that’s where bands lose their way.”

Dance and striking visuals have always been central to Jungle’s story, with their cinematic, intricately choreographed videos becoming as distinctive as the music itself.

Their dazzling performance of Back On 74, which brought the celebrated video to life with a full dance troupe, was one of the highlights of the 2024 Brit Awards.

Their Group Of The Year win that night came as a genuine surprise, and Kitto says: “We didn’t have a clue.

“Loads of people were acting a bit fishy, so we were thinking, ‘Have we won? Haven’t we?’

“We thought we should probably write a speech just in case, but then decided there was no way we were going to win.

“So we sat down, had a bit of a drink and suddenly we’d won.”

McFarland adds: “We had a great night — we met Green Day, we got quite drunk and had a party.

“When you’re touring, you miss out on so many things, so being able to get family and friends in the same room and just have a dance was special.”

Lloyd adds: “Winning was a surprise as we don’t really pay that much attention to it.”

Jungle’s visual influence has proved equally powerful.

“What’s been really nice is seeing people make the choreography their own and connect with the visual side of the band,” says Lloyd.

“We’re obviously not a TikTok-generation band, but watching it blow up online was really cool.

“Seeing young kids dancing to our music in their living rooms was such a lovely thing.”

Lloyd co-directs the band’s distinctive, intricately choreographed videos with long-term visual collaborator Charlie Di Placido.

He adds: “You can see people, especially in advertising, starting to copy the band’s aesthetic.

“We’ve seen plenty of imitations of our videos and visual style, but I suppose we take it as a form of flattery. It shows that people have been inspired by what we do.”

Carry On was chosen by the band’s manager as the first single from Sunshine.

Lloyd says: “Once you’ve finished an album, you lose all perspective. You have so many different favourites, so you need an outside opinion to guide you through that final stage.

“Carry On has an old-school Motown, almost Sixties sound.

“It’s almost Jungle’s folk song, but it has a sadder emotional heart.

“Back On 74 is nostalgic, while Carry On is about overcoming heartbreak, rebuilding trust and finding the self-belief to push through difficult times.”

McFarland says affectionately: “My daughter loves this song — she walks around the kitchen singing it.”

Central to Jungle’s recent evolution has been Kitto, whose gorgeous, soulful vocals have become increasingly prominent across their music.

Having contributed to the band since their 2021 album Loving In Stereo and taken a leading role on Volcano, she is now an official member of the trio and steps further into the spotlight on Sunshine.

“Joining the band fully made sense,” she says. “I already felt so involved that I was sort of in Jungle anyway, so it was a natural progression.

“It’s like getting into a relationship with somebody — you hang out for a while and then think, ‘Oh yeah, this works’.” Lloyd — Kitto’s partner and her bandmate in music side project Loaded Honey — adds: “I don’t think people realise how long Lydia has been working with us.

“We’d been doing sessions and writing with her since before the third album, and then she joined the live band.

“Jungle had been built around group vocals for so long, but we were yearning for an emotional lead vocalist who could take these verses and connect with people.

“Lydia has that ability. She’s got a generational voice — an amazing soul vocal that takes our music to the next level.”

McFarland says: “We’ve always tried to create a universal message through the stories we tell.

“We were never going to be a band that told extremely personal stories.

“For us, it’s about giving people something they can hold on to and make their own. We want the music to have a global sound

that anybody can connect with. From day one, when we were making the first Jungle music, it was all about visiting imagined places we’d never been to.

“We’ve been lucky enough to visit many of them since, but at the start we’d ask, ‘What would it sound like if a band were playing on Cola Beach in South Goa?’

“We’ve always had that vision of putting ourselves — and therefore the listener — into a physical space.

“The Wave is a perfect example of that. You’re instantly on a beach.”

Lloyd adds: “We tend to see certain songs as brothers and sisters.

“The Wave harks back to Loving In Stereo and has something of Beat 54 from the second album in it.

“It has that sampled feel, although we created the sample ourselves. Originally it was much faster, before we slowed it down.

“It was actually the last song made for the album and was almost squeezed in at the end. There was something spiritual about it.

“The Wave represents the idea that you only get one life, so you have to be careful what you do with it.”

Romeo II is another one of those sibling songs, following Romeo from Loving In Stereo and again featuring Dreamville rapper Bas.

Lloyd says: “Romeo II was Bas’s idea. The track originally had a much longer title, but we wanted something more interesting.

“He suggested Romeo II, which felt great because it creates a sense of nostalgia for people who know the original.

“I think he was also referencing the tradition in hip-hop of songs having sequels.

“It gives the track an instant familiarity — people think, ‘I remember that Bas song from the third album, so I want to hear this one’.

“In some ways, Romeo II is actually even more Romeo in its subject matter than the original.”

And he jokes: “Bas has been on the last three albums — he’s going to join the band at some point.”

Lloyd continues: “We have always been inspired by Gorillaz and the way their collaborators became part of the family.

“You look at Del the Funky Homosapien on that first Gorillaz record and he appears across a couple of tracks. We’ve never viewed features as a way of gaming the system or chasing streams.

“For us, it’s always been about asking who’s good, who’s our friend and who feels like they genuinely belong within the collective.”

Talk turns to bands who put out greatest-hits albums.

Kitto says: “We could just do the same thing again and again and call it a greatest hits, like The 1975 do. They put out all their old songs and call it The 1975 At Their Very Best. There are no new songs at all.”

Jungle’s recent single Someday, Somewhere might just be the best song they have released, with its sun-soaked vocals, irresistible disco-funk groove and bittersweet blend of optimism and longing.

“I love that song,” says Kitto. “I can put it on at any point, and it changes your mood.”

For McFarland, Reflection is a favourite. “I love that song,” he says. “What I connect with is the way a song can transport you. When I’m driving in the sunshine, I’ll listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash radio and classic Laurel Canyon songs.

“Reflection does that for me. It takes me very vividly into a particular physical and emotional space.”

Lloyd says: “It depends on the day. We become very emotionally attached to the songs while we’re making and delivering them, but once they’re out, I tend to detach myself.

“Where Are You Now? was one of my favourites. I like the bouncier side of Jungle, but I also tend to choose the song that other people aren’t picking.

“If everyone likes one track, I’ll go for the other one.”

Soon it’s back to rehearsals for the trio’s world tour, beginning in the States next month, then heading to Europe and South America next year.

What matters most in a Jungle live show?

“The arc of the show is really important to us,” answers McFarland. “We want to build the audience up, pull things back again and create intimate moments alongside the more euphoric ones.

“I don’t think I’d ever get bored of playing Busy Earnin’ because it’s so much fun watching people have a great time.

“You see grandparents, their children and then their grandchildren, sometimes as young as six, all there together. It’s fun watching loads of people having a great time.”

Lloyd adds: “We want to be in control and make things according to our own vision.

“We’ve done well within the industry by not having to play by other people’s rules.

“Other artists have looked at what we’ve done and built careers from it.

“But we’ve only ever written our own narrative, and I think that’s really important as an artist to have the ability to fully be in control of your own story.”

• The album Sunshine is out on August 14. The band’s UK tour begins in Leeds in November.

JUNGLE

Sunshine

★★★★☆

Ariana Grande delivered a four-minute speech to more than 20,000 of her fans in Chicago on Monday night amid reports that she’s stepping away from the public eye due to online scrutiny.

During the first of three sold-out shows at Chicago’s United Center, the “Break Free” singer stopped the concert to address the widespread speculation surrounding her weekend announcement that she’d be stepping away from the public eye when her Eternal Sunshine tour concludes on Sept. 1.

Grande read the prepared statement from her phone, telling the audience that she didn’t want to get nervous and forget.

“Sometimes when a story comes out that’s not directly from me, things can get a little blown out of proportion,” she said. “So I just wanted to speak to my fans directly tonight because I love you so much.

“So basically, the announcement that was made yesterday was not a reactive or impulsive thing. It is something that I had decided. It’s a plan that I had quietly made a long time ago, and it’s a decision that was made from a thoughtful and empowered place, and I want you to know that many, many things can be true at the same time. I want to share this because I heard that my fans were worried that negativity was ruining things for me, but I just have to say, that could not be more the f— opposite.

“This is not what that is and I just want to make that very, very clear. Nothing can be ruined. Multiple things can be true at the same time. Boundaries can need to be set. Human beings can need a break sometimes. And also, this can be and will continue to be the greatest experience of my professional and creative life.

“I have one more thing to say,” she continued. “No matter what noises exist out there, nothing will ever be able to distort my reality or be more real to me, or louder to to me, than this love that we share, or than how it feels to make art with the people that I love and respect. Absolutely nothing will change that or distort that for me. And I want you to know that. I love you, and this is what I will always take with me and carry with me because the rest of that s— is not mine to carry, so I don’t carry it. I needed to get up here and differentiate that from my truth for you all, because I love you, and this tour has been the most healing, beautiful, corrective, magnificent, special experience and so has putting out [the album] “Petal.” It’s been extraordinary.

“I wish that words were enough to articulate just how much I love you all.”

A representative for Grande on Sunday announced her upcoming hiatus in a statement shared with multiple outlets.

The announcement coincided with news that the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated star would be dropping out of Stephen Sondheim’s West End revival of “Sunday in the Park With George,” in which she was set to star next summer opposite Jonathan Bailey.

Grande “looks forward to finishing [her current] tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily,” the statement said.

Grande will then take “a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny.”

The announcement followed the Friday release of Grande’s eighth studio album, “Petal,” and the accompanying music video for the title track in which the pop star takes out a panel of her critics with a chainsaw. In response to the video, fans and foes alike flooded the comments section with remarks about Grande’s appearance and apparent weight loss.

The Times’ pop music critic Mikael Wood wrote of the album, “[T]he pop superstar opens the spigot on what she’s described as an ‘unfiltered rage’ to blast any number of feckless exes, a prying public obsessed with her body and her personal life — and not least herself for allowing anyone the power to hurt her in the first place.”

KATIE Price is ignoring all the Lee Andrews prison drama to announce that she’s recording a whole new album – just like son Junior.

Despite her recent husband woes, after Lee, 43, was recently released from jail for the SECOND time, Katie, 48, is determined to be a pop star.

The former glamour girl revealed her big music news on her podcast, The Katie Price Show, during a chat with her sister Sophie.

In the conversation, Katie chatted about how she had met R&B star Ginuwine, through her producer friend Shay.

The star then let slip that this was the person who was helping to relaunch her pop career.

Katie said: “So, basically Shay, who’s doing my album at the minute.”

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It comes as the star’s son Junior, 21, recently revealed he was also working on new music.

Katie previously teased her pop comeback back in May, when she again said on her podcast: “I’m in the studio tomorrow, recording a new original track, not a cover. So I’m excited!”

To date, the wannabe pop star has only released one studio album, which was A Whole New World, which she recorded in 2006 with her ex-husband Peter Andre.

In the 20 years since, she has only released a handful of singles, including Free To Love Again, Hurricane and last year’s Best Of Me.

Meanwhile, Katie’s much-discussed fourth marriage took a turn when it was revealed Lee was had been hauled back to jail AGAIN in Dubai.

The self-proclaimed businessman was being held at Al-Awir prison, for the second time in as many months.

The Sun revealed how despite being released a few weeks ago, Lee still faces mounting fines and financial demands exceeding £100,000 to £120,000 from his detentions at the notorious jail.

Katie made it clear in an interview with The Sun that she would not cover the cost.

“There’s nothing I can do. I’m not here to pay anything for anyone,” she told us in an exclusive chat earlier last month.

“I’ve got my own life. Even though he’s part of my life.”

Katie tied the knot with conman Lee in January, just 10 days after meeting him.

Ever since, stories of Lee’s lies, scams and imprisonments have filled the pages of newspapers and magazines.

RITA ORA’s fourth studio album is almost complete – but no one is quite sure what to expect from it.

Aside from her husband, Hollywood director Taika Waititi, that is.

Speaking to Bizarre’s Jack at a London screening to mark the 10th anniversary of his hit film, Hunt For The Wilderpeople, Taika said Rita’s long-awaited album was “amazing”.

He added: “This new record is incredible. I’ve heard a lot of it.

“It was such a departure from stuff that she’s probably known mostly for. It’s a different sound.”

Taika directed the sultry video for Rita’s latest ­single, All Natural, and also directed and starred in the video for 2023’s Don’t Think Twice.

HEART RIGHT NOW

Rita Ora wows in red gown as she reunites with Taika Waititi on red carpet

RAGING RITA

Rita Ora fuming as gig is cancelled at last minute due to thunderstorm

Getting Oscar-winner Taika to work on your project can’t come cheap, but Taika assured us with a wink that he and Rita had come to an arrangement.

He chuckled: “There is a very mates’ rates deal going on. I think it’s been free each time. It’s just fun to get to work together.

“It’s great because we’re kind of in similar ­industries, but they’re very different disciplines – and when you’re with someone, you want to be able to do some work together.

“I’m really amazed and surprised at what she does, but also super- confused all the time.”

Taika masterminded two of Marvel’s biggest hits – Thor: Ragnarok in 2017 and Thor: Love And Thunder in 2022.

He also plays the alien Korg in the films.

Taika admits that he’d love Marvel book bosses to sign up Rita for a role alongside him one day.

He said: “Younger me would like to see a Bond Girl Rita, but I think I’d find it more fun to see her doing a Marvel film.

“It would be great to see her as a villain.” Watch this space . . . 

RAYE’S GLOWING WITH PRIDE

CHRISTMAS came early for Raye fans as she took to the stage in a sparkly red dress.

The Where Is My Husband! singer wouldn’t have looked out of place at a festive party as she headlined Brighton Pride on Saturday.

Her bill-topping set followed epic performances from Jessie J and Leigh-Anne ­Pinnock.

The Little Mix singer kept cool in a yellow bikini top and combat trousers – putting her growing baby bump on display.

She is expecting her third child with footballer husband Andre Gray. They had twin girls in 2021.

Brighton hosts the UK’s biggest Pride festival, but it is dwarfed by WorldPride, which took place in Amsterdam over the weekend.

Going all out to impress, organisers in the Netherlands somehow managed to land Madonna to perform.

She owned the Dutch stage in a bright purple corset and matching boots.

Taking camp to the next level, Madge was joined for her epic set by Kylie Minogue, who sang with Nick Cave at his Brighton gig on Friday.

Rumours are rife that the duo have a song together on a remix edition of Madonna’s latest album, Confessions II.

We should be so lucky . . . 

ARIANA’S IN FULL BLOOM

ARIANA GRANDE is dominating this week’s Official Chart First Look.

The One Last Time singer is on track to land three songs from her new album, Petal, inside the UK Top 20.

The album’s title track and second single, Petal, is currently at No3, while Kiss Me is at No6 and Stay sits at No11.

The album was streamed 62million times on its first day of release on Spotify, making it the platform’s 16th biggest first-day album debut by a female artist.

Ariana’s 2019 album, Thank U, Next, remains her biggest first-day debut, with 70million streams in its first 24 hours.

MUSIC guru Chris Herbert is the man who discovered the Spice Girls more than 30 years ago, and now he’s backing another feisty young act, Allegra.

She is gearing up to drop a new project called Unreleased EP on August 21 and has her sights set on collabs with top stars.

Allegra, right, said: “I’d love to work with someone like Rita Ora. We’d have so much fun. She’s got such cool style and I think we’d just have fun.”

Opening up about how she ­performs best, she added: “I like it when I’m feeling a bit sexy.

“I think I’m a bit angry at, like, a situationship or an ex- boyfriend, I’m looking hot in the music video and I’m like, ‘OK, I’ve got this’.”

1D GOING IN RIGHT DIRECTION

DURING their heyday, One Direction were a money-making machine.

And even though the That’s What Makes You Beautiful singers split up back in 2016, the cash keeps rolling in.

New accounts for the band, made up of Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and the late Liam Payne, have revealed they each made £2,636 a week last year.

And to top it off, they had to do absolutely no work for it.

Their two firms, 1D Media Ltd and PPM Music Ltd, are now worth a combined £3,814,044 – up more than £687,000 from the previous year.

It’s not a bad life, eh?

Who pissed off Ariana Grande? Well, who didn’t?

On her new album, “Petal,” the pop superstar opens the spigot on what she’s described as an “unfiltered rage” to blast any number of feckless exes, a prying public obsessed with her body and her personal life — and not least herself for allowing anyone the power to hurt her in the first place.

“Tell me who’s to blame — is it the people or myself?” she wonders against the icy synth stabs of the title track.

Her answer, delivered as a sneering little aside: “Yeah.”

“Petal” marks a dramatic shift from Grande’s previous LP, 2024’s “Eternal Sunshine,” a tender and melancholy electro-pop collection that laid out a kind of emotional philosophy of heartbreak. She recorded the new album with the same team — the hit-making writer-producers Ilya Salmanzadeh and Max Martin — but here they go for a murkier, more percussive sound to match Grande’s dark mood.

Tolling electric guitar accompanies her in “Freak” as she muses on “all of the life I’ve been denied,” while “Oh Well” puts a jittery U.K. garage beat under her sneering farewell to an unnamed antagonist: “Good luck on your way to hell.” In “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 when Grande released it as “Petal’s” lead single, she sings, “I’ve held your projections when you’ve felt so insecure,” over a trudging groove that moves like a funeral march.

These downcast observations arrive at what would seem to be a professional high point for Grande, who recently wrapped her extended stay in the “Wicked”-verse and who’s in the middle of a tour that’s drawn adoring fans to arenas across the country.

But perhaps that’s the point: Almost every song on “Petal” can be interpreted two ways — as a story about a broken relationship between two people or as a tale about the toxic connection between an idol and her audience. (More than once did this record make me think about Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department.”)

“My pain is music — do you hear me everywhere?” Grande asks in “Warning Signs (Interlude),” which climaxes with a pithy diagnosis of pop stardom in the parasocial age: “You don’t deserve me / You know you don’t, you never have / But I want you to feel me / I wish someone could hear me.”

Complaints about celebrity can be pretty tedious, of course; sometimes it feels as though famous pop singers have forgotten how to write about anything other than life in the social-media fishbowl.

Yet “Petal” gets some creative traction from how Grande chooses to use her voice; instead of belting, she rarely rises above a whisper, which gives a spooky, slightly creepy quality to her thoughts on being endlessly scrutinized. The airiness of her singing provides some comedy too in a hard-edged song such as “Like I Do,” where after noting that “all that s— talk keeps me well-fed,” she tells whoever needs to hear it, “No one f— you like I do.”

Having gotten all this off her chest, Grande finishes the album by allowing in some light: Over a zippy new wave arrangement, “Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)” ponders the renewing energy of a fresh romance — or maybe a rekindled old one — while the glistening “Nowhere, Nobody” has her taking deep breaths with a lover she’s convinced might finally give her what she needs.

“Convinced” is probably the wrong word.

“Hard to believe in a perfect ending,” she admits, “But that’s all right.”

BLACK Sabbath’s Tony Iommi last released a solo album more than two decades ago.

And now, as he finally announces a new record, From The Dark, he reckons it might take just as long to get presented with his MBE.

The legendary axeman was in the Actress & Bishop boozer in his native Birmingham to celebrate the album’s release when asked when he’d be going to Buckingham Palace.

Tony was made an MBE in the King’s birthday honours last month, for his services to music and charity. But he joked: “I’d forgotten about that. They have probably changed their minds now.”

From The Dark, out on October 23, is Tony’s first album since 2005’s Fused, when he teamed with former Deep Purple, Sabbath and Trapeze singer and bassist Glenn Hughes.

Queen’s Brian May plays a guest solo on Death Wake, and the blistering lead single, the upbeat but punchy World Alone, confirms why he earned the nickname The Master Of The Riffs.

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Jared Leto forced me to touch him after luring me to motel when I was 17

SHEER DELIGHT

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That moniker’s all the more impressive when Tony reminds us that he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his fret hand as a teen, while working in a sheet metal factory in the city.

He recalled: “I went to different doctors and they said, ‘You might as well give up and find another profession’.”

So he made replacement fingertips. He said: “I got a Fairy Liquid bottle, melted it down into a ball and then got a soldering iron and made a hole in it, so it fit on my finger.

“I tried to play and it slipped off. I had to find a material that would grip the strings like skin, so I cut one of my old rocker leather jackets up, and it worked.”

Iommi fans are in for a treat with From The Dark — which has eight tracks, with two additional songs, Scent Of Dark and Deified on the deluxe version.

It was two years in the making, with Tony enlisting Jorn Lande on vocals, bassist Becky Baldwin and Robbie Williams’ longtime drummer Karl Brazil.

The process was slowed by the loss of Tony’s Black Sabbath bandmate Ozzy Osbourne last July, with Tony stepping back from recording for a while.

The pair exchanged text messages the night before Ozzy died. He said: “I didn’t expect him to go overnight. It was a hell of a shock.”

On returning to work on the record, Tony added: “We’ve done it casually really, because there was no pressure.

The album is steeped in his home city’s history. He said: “The whole record is designed around Birmingham. The T-shirts have been made in Birmingham, the merchandise has been made in Birmingham.”

In front of a small group of guests, with Frank Skinner taking on the interviewing duties, Tony unveiled the dystopian video for World Alone, which was filmed in Cornwall.

“I hate doing videos, I’ve never liked them,” he said.

“This one is more like a film and I am in it but not wanting to be.”

Despite his reticence at getting in front of the cameras, it sounds likely Tony will return to the stage.

Asked whether fans will hear him play the record live, he smiled and said: “You may do.

“Anything’s a possibility.”

Tate shapes up for comeback

TATE McRAE gets fighting fit for her comeback as she prepares to release new music.

The Canadian pulled on her skintight workout clobber and pumped iron for an Adidas Originals Sport campaign.

It comes ahead of a return to the stage this weekend, almost nine months after her last concert.

Tate will headline the Osheaga Festival in Montreal on Saturday, and Lollapalooza in Chicago the following night, as teasers on social media suggest she might debut new songs.

Previous album So Close To What became her most successful yet when it peaked at No2 in the charts last year.

But with her star power continuing to rise, I’m sure she’s got her sights set on turning the next record into a chart-topper.

It’s Olivia RodLego

OLIVIA RODRIGO has recreated her latest album cover in Lego form – and will hide versions of the record around the world.

She posed in this plaid mini-dress at a pop-up event in Los Angeles, where it was revealed 333 toy-brick vinyl versions of You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love will be available.

The album is in the UK Top Three for a sixth week.

Olivia and Lego will drop clues on social media, hinting at record shops where fans might be able to get the special versions.

I expect to see them popping up on eBay for astronomical sums any day now.

Ruben’s hol alone

RUBEN Dias has made sure everyone knows he’s one of football’s most eligible bachelors, following his split from Maya Jama.

The Manchester City defender broke up with the Love Island host at the end of April.

Three months on, and following his appearance at this summer’s World Cup with Portugal, he has jetted off on a lads’ holiday to Ibiza.

Judging by the photos of his rippling six-pack he shared on Instagram, Ruben got his mates to take thirst trap pictures for him while they were there.

But hinting that he’s still not totally over the split with Maya, he captioned the post: “Feelings on silent.”

With pictures like this, there will be plenty of people offering him a shoulder to cry on.

lMILEY CYRUS’ rocker fiancé Maxx Morando popped the question on holiday in Japan last autumn.

He told Wonderland mag it happened in “this little outer garden”.

Maxx added: “She was taking videos, and was turned away. I got on one knee and tapped her on the shoulder.”

POP superstar George Michael’s estate is suing his former best pal over footage from the recording of a lost album.

Andros Georgiou, 63, faces court for charging fans to watch scenes which he recorded of the ex-Wham! star.

George’s former best friend said he would be “turning in his grave” after the pop singer’s estate sued him over video footage of a secret unreleased album.

The Wham! star’s lawyers are taking Andros to court after he released almost 90 minutes of unseen footage shot in 1992 and 1993.

Andros launched a website last month charging fans to watch the film Trojan Souls — The Greatest Album That Was Never Made.

The record was to feature Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Janet Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Bryan Ferry, Seal and Sade.

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But the legal team from George’s estate has now lodged a case against him at London’s Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court, claiming its rights have been breached.

Furious Andros, 63, said the legal claim was “a case of sheer greed”.

On George, he said: “Yes, we fell out, but we loved and cared for each other deeply, and I find the baseless claims and the constant attempts to erase me from history both disrespectful and, frankly, a bit desperate.

“The film belongs to me.

“Trojan Souls belongs to me.

“They’ve opened Pandora’s Box.

“They won’t want me on the stand.

“I know way too much.

“Bring it on.”

Andros’s film shows the making of tracks for Trojan Souls: The Voice of Reason, a collaboration album with global superstars.

Pop fans are being asked to pay £4.99 for 48 hours of access to the 90-minute video online.

Tribe Media is also selling £19.99 VIP tiers, promising access to never-before-heard recordings of George’s unreleased songs from the record.

Andros shot the video using a camcorder given to him by Sony while they were in Japan on George’s Faith tour.

Andros said: “First and foremost — my brother in arms, my best friend, George Michael to you, Yog to me — would turn in his grave knowing what Russells (the estate’s lawyers) are attempting — and spending his money to do it.”

He went on: “It is well known Yog and I were working on Trojan Souls through my record label, Hardback Records.

“The film I have released was shot by me, with Yog’s full approval.

“This was a home video leaked over 30 years ago.

“It kept resurfacing on YouTube.

“So I decided, if you can’t beat them, put the film out myself, since others were already profiting from my home video.”

The legal case lists Andros and Tribe Media, the production house distributing the film.

The claimants are Robobuild Limited and Big Geoff Overseas Limited, the holding companies George used to manage royalties and world tours.

Andros and George were estranged before the star’s death on Christmas Day, 2016, but had been planning to reconcile.

They fell out after George’s arrest in an LA public toilet in 1998.

But Andros had spoken to his pal on the phone in the final weeks of his life.

The pair had a close friendship for decades after their fathers moved to the UK from Cyprus together in 1953.

Most of the one-hour 24-minute film shows George playing the piano, performing vocals with backing singers, grabbing a bass and talking to producers about his track list in an LA studio.

George lost interest in the album when his then-partner Anselmo Feleppa’s health declined.

Anselmo, who suffered from Aids, died in March 1993.

George never completed the album.

It can take up to two years for a case at the court to reach trial.

Lawyers for George Michael’s estate were asked to comment.

Twenty-five years after “Is This It,” the Strokes are as big as they’ve ever been — and not just among old heads eager to relive the wasted glamour of the early-2000s garage rock revival. Go to a Strokes gig these days — they’re playing arenas and headlining festivals like next month’s Just Like Heaven in Pasadena — and you’ll find teens and twentysomethings in the audience; open up Instagram and there’s frontman Julian Casablancas dispensing viral hot takes on the New York City subway. On Spotify, the band’s most-streamed song isn’t the Giuliani-era “Last Nite” but “The Adults Are Talking,” which came out at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — a feat of cultural endurance unmatched by any of the Strokes’ Gen X or millennial peers.

So what better time to drop a new album full of arcane jokes, baffling vocal affects and light conspiracy theorizing?

The group’s first LP since 2020’s Grammy-winning “The New Abnormal,” “Reality Awaits” is easily the nuttiest entry in the Strokes’ catalog, with a spooky opening track, “Psycho S—,” in which Casablancas, his voice slathered in AutoTune, ushers the listener “past the hall of judging dead into the bed of nightly dread.” (Sexy!) “Falling Out of Love” is a lilting robo-country ballad about dancing alone under acid rain; “Liar’s Remorse” is a voice-and-guitar lament about submitting to artificial intelligence that Casablancas croons for some reason in a terrible Caribbean accent.

Then there’s “Lonely in the Future,” in which Casablancas name-drops John Legend and Josh Groban, appears to ding Harry Styles for cribbing the beat from the Strokes’ “Hard to Explain” and informs Anthony Fantano, the popular internet music critic, that he “would not recognize art in any age.”

Philosophically, “Reality Awaits” feels less like a Strokes album than like a Casablancas solo record or an effort by his other band, the Voidz, which he’s used for the last decade or so as a kind of finsta for his harder-edged sociopolitical musings. “Going Shopping,” the LP’s lead single, casts a condescending eye on anyone insufficiently troubled by what the singer views as the creeping tyranny of a super-rich ruling class: “The worse reality gets, the less you want to hear about it / Solidarity can be difficult when you got cool stuff to lose.” That “Going Shopping” is the album’s jauntiest cut — with a music video that restages Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” no less — only sharpens the critique.

Yet every now and then the Strokes, who absolutely ripped at Coachella in April, lock into a groove with the springy precision that’s been the band’s signature since the beginning. “Dine N’ Dash,” “Going to Babble On,” “Lonely in the Future” — it’s pure pleasure to hear the guitars in these songs slashing away over a rhythm section as crisp and nimble as this one. For all they’ve absorbed from their forbears, the Strokes don’t sound like anybody else, even when they seem to be trying to, as in “The Fruits of Conquest,” which suggests early Maroon 5 having a go at the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You.” (Obviously, I mean this as a compliment.)

You can view the indelibility of the Strokes’ style as the reason the band makes so many wacky decisions on “Reality Awaits”; looked at differently, the band is taking advantage of its persistent success to spend a bit of creative capital. Either way, Casablancas doesn’t actually seem worried at all in “Going Shopping” when he voices some anxiety about how long he can continue to matter. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to say,” he sings, “But I’m an old man now — at least that’s what they tell me anyway.”

SINGER Charli XCX shows off her glamorous side as her new album is released.

The Brit hitmaker, 33, shared a photo of her holding a copy of her latest studio album Music, Fashion, Film.

It features cultural icons John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese on the cover, and comes two years on from Brat.

That album sparked the brat summer phenomenon, celebrating messy, party-loving fun.

Charli, also at home on the red carpet, declared it over in September 2024, posting: “Goodbye forever brat summer.”

Recently Charli got in front of the lens for the music video to her new track Camera.

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It is from her upcoming seventh album Music, Fashion, Film.

Dressed in a plunging blue shirt, Charli filmed a dramatic storyline with French actor Vincent Cassel.

The action-packed scenes looked like they were in a desert but were actually filmed in a quarry in Kent.

Vincent’s character had a gunshot wound to his abdomen.

In footage that could rival a Hollywood blockbuster, Charli stood in front of an overturned grey car that had ploughed into a sand dune, and was also seen crawling on all fours.

The singer took over London’s Scala nightclub on Tuesday for an intimate performance of tracks from her forthcoming album, including Camera.

In the lyrics, she sings: “It makes me question what I’m doing.

“Do I wanna make music? Am I being f*****g stupid. If I try to be a girl on the screen when I’m turning thirty-four?”