album

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s love story will reach new heights this week with a totally low-key two-day wedding bash at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The billionaire pop titan and the NFL star, both 36, kicked off their wedding festivities Thursday afternoon with a rehearsal dinner at the famed sports arena. They have all but confirmed that they will then exchange their vows Friday in a grand MSG celebration with around 1,000 guests (including Swift’s celebrity friends and Kelce’s fellow sports stars) in attendance, at least according to numerous reports. The celebrity wedding will also reportedly feature heightened security around Madison Square Garden, performances by Stevie Nicks and Tim McGraw, and a red carpet outside the arena.

Representatives for Madison Square Garden, Swift and Kelce have not responded to The Times’ requests for comment.

Swift and Kelce’s relationship began nearly three years ago during the singer’s blockbuster Eras tour with a simple request and a friendship bracelet. Read on to revisit the roots of Swift and Kelce’s whirlwind romance turned generational love story, from the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” podcast to a romantic garden engagement.

July 2023: Travis Kelce shoots his shot

Swift and Kelce’s romance can be traced back to summer 2023, when the Kansas City Chiefs tight end attended an Eras tour concert at Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs’ house. Kelce — a self-proclaimed Swiftie — told brother Jason Kelce in an episode of their “New Heights” podcast that he had a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it but didn’t get it to the singer. “I was a little … hurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her,” he said at the time. Eventually, the two got in touch.

September 2023: Taylor Swift shows up for her guy

Taylor Swift watches the Chiefs take on the Chicago Bears at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., on Sept. 24, 2023.

(David Eulitt / Getty Images)

The then-rumored romance quickly became commentary fodder for NFL broadcasts (sometimes to sports fans’ chagrin) but took a turn when Swift seemingly accepted Kelce’s personal invitation to a home game. She was seen cheering for him in a private box alongside his mother, Donna Kelce. Soon enough, Swift became a staple in the Chiefs audience. In the following months, Swift and Kelce further solidified their relationship, making it paparazzi-official during an after-party for “Saturday Night Live” and on her Eras tour in November when the singer changed her “Karma” lyrics to reference her budding romance.

February 2024: Super Bowl LVIII (Taylor’s Version)

Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift smooch after Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas in February 2024.

(John Locher / Associated Press)

Swift and Kelce’s love notably played out at Super Bowl LVIII, where the Chiefs faced the San Francisco 49ers. When the Chiefs won, the Grammy winner joined Kelce on the field, kissing and hugging him. A week before the big game, Swift announced her album, “Tortured Poets Department,” at the Grammy Awards. The album seemingly refers to Kelce in songs “The Alchemy” and “So High School.”

The pair continued going strong throughout 2024. As Swift‘s tour continued, Kelce joined his superstar girlfriend on stage in London. She also returned regularly to Arrowhead Stadium for Chiefs home games during the 2024-25 NFL season. Swift ended her Eras tour in December 2024 and hosted a private wrap party to celebrate her musical marathon. Of course, beau Kelce was in attendance.

August 2025: Baby, just say ‘yes!’

The following year was a relatively quieter one for the couple. Kelce and his Chiefs failed to beat the Philadelphia Eagles at Super Bowl LIX and Swift was in the midst of recovering from her tour and preparing for her newest album. But just when there seemed to be a lull in all things Taylor-Travis, the couple hit some major milestones.

First, Swift finally appeared on the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” podcast. Remember, that’s where all of this started. The couple, of course, spoke about their whirlwind romance, but the main headline was that Swift would release her album “The Life of a Showgirl” later that fall. With songs “Redwood” and “Wish List,” it was pretty clear Kelce inspired Swift during the songwriting process.

Second, and more importantly, “Love Story” singer Swift announced on Instagram that she and Kelce were engaged. She shared photos from their dreamy garden proposal with the caption: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” Kelce popped the question with an elongated old mine cut cushion set within an engraved gold band. Speculation on the details of their nuptials, including date and location, were almost immediately underway.

Since their engagement, Kelce and Swift have appeared together at a handful of high-profile events including the iHeartRadio Music Awards in March, courtside at Rocket Arena in Cleveland during the 2026 NBA playoffs and the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony in June, which honored Swift.

For now, welcome to New York, soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs.

THE word “splat” has been on Ian Gillan’s mind for a few years now.

To him, it is a word to conjure with, one to fuel his wild flights of imagination.

To most of us, it summons visions of insects hitting windscreens or ripe tomatoes falling to the floor.

As you will discover, however, the Deep Purple singer and lyricist — he of the legendary full-throated holler — has given “splat” a much deeper meaning.

What if it represents the end of humanity as we know it?

Then, as he suggests with an “optimistic” spin on the notion, “What if we morph into something else that’s metaphysical?”

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When Gillan first considered Splat! as an album title, he thought it sounded “too terminal”.

He says: “I knew how the interviews would go — ‘So this is your last record, right?’ ”

It soon becomes clear from talking to the hard rock survivor that Deep Purple, the last band standing in a so-called “unholy trinity” alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, are very much alive and kicking.

When it came to writing themed lyrics for Purple’s 24th studio LP, Splat! screamed out from the pages of the notebook Gillan keeps to record his ideas.

Now, in tall, spidery type, it adorns an album cover housing some of the band’s heaviest, most riff-driven, yet most concise music in years.

As Gillan attests, Splat! summons the devil-may-care spirit of iconic early albums Deep Purple In Rock and Machine Head — and songs like Child In Time, Smoke On The Water and Black Night.

“What I’m hearing now is the band as it was in ’69,” he says.

There’s no doubting that the current line-up of Gillan, founder member Ian Paice (drums), another stalwart in Roger Glover (bass), Don Airey (keyboard player since 2001) and recent recruit Simon McBride (guitar) has hit a purple patch.

“You can give all kinds of reasons, but, quite simply, I think it’s human chemistry,” says Gillan, who lives in Portugal and turned 80 last August.

“The songs are coming easy.

The band is cranking live.

When all the elements work well, they feed off each other.”

He salutes Northern Irish guitarist McBride, who replaced Steve Morse in time for previous album =1, for adding a dynamic gut-punch to proceedings.

He agrees with me that the songs on Splat! don’t “outstay their welcome”, crediting legendary Canadian producer Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Kiss) for “keeping the arrangements snappy”.

Gillan recalls how it used to be: “With the band having no leader — we never have really — it was often a case of sitting there and one of us would say, ‘Let’s make this bit longer, let’s put another section in there’.

“We might spend weeks arguing or debating an arrangement.

But Bob just comes in and says, ‘I’m not liking that’, and cuts it out.”

Gillan considers Purple to be “an instrumental band”, with the music always getting written first.

Then it’s time for him to step in with the lyrics and those still mighty vocals, delivered with all the theatricality you might expect from someone who took the part of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album.

It’s fair to say that Splat!, also the name of the album’s emphatic closing track, represents one of Gillan’s most ambitious concepts, so let’s return to his thought process.

“For some time now, I’ve been trying to make an album sound as if all the songs belong,” he says.

“There’s one exception on this record and I’m not happy about it,” he announces by way of a slight digression.

When I suggest that the track in question might be Third Call, which seems more to do with sex than metaphysics, Gillan replies: “Oh, how did you guess?

It should have been called Sore Thumb.

“I’ve done my own little album on my computer, replacing it with a song destined to be a B-side or bonus track called Hoot ’n’ Slither, which does fit.”

So, let’s hear about his mind-boggling concept, so big that it almost hurts the brain.

“I’ll probably find myself in pseud’s corner again,” he mutters with a smile, before launching into his explanation.

“I’ve been fascinated by the word eternity since I was eight.

I couldn’t understand how things could go on forever.

As a child, it didn’t seem possible to me.

“One summer night, I started thinking about the end of the road, the end of the country, beaches, the sea, the sky, the stars.

“I started panicking, so I built a brick wall around my universe, as many kids have, I’m sure.

“That was it, I was safe.

And then, a horrible thought occurred to me: ‘What’s behind the bricks?’ ”

Gillan says that “later in life”, Edwin Abbott’s classic novella Flatland, a satirical study of a two- dimensional world written in 1884, got him thinking about other dimensions, the afterlife and spiritual worlds.

Then he considered that the population of Earth had “virtually tripled” during his lifetime.

He continues: “For some years, this explosion has seemed unsustainable to me and that the only way to escape is not by flying through the solar system in tin cans.

“It has to be metaphysical.

I’m hopeful.

Perhaps we might become some sort of intelligent energy.”

Gillan draws my attention to the song The Only Horse In Town, one of the last recorded for Splat! and driven by Airey’s fulsome keys and McBride’s shimmering riffs.

It was inspired by a real-life encounter with someone close to death near Noble Street Studios in Toronto where Purple were doing a recording session.

“The snow came down and we saw there were these vagrants living under a blue tarp,” he says.

“The place looked like a rubbish dump.

“We offered them some hot food when we went out to get our takeaway for lunch — and they didn’t want it.

They just wanted dollars for crack.

“I thought of this one guy who probably had days to live.

I imagined his final hit.

“Then (in my mind) I stepped into his shoes and started walking across America until I got to the high plains of New Mexico and found this derelict film set.

“Along with a clapped-out old horse, this guy finds solace, a haven.

It fits very nicely with the overall pattern of the album.”

Next, we take a dive into more of the Splat! songs, starting with the three-minute opening blast, Arrogant Boy, about a bloke called Billy.

“The attitude in the music screamed frustration to me,” says Gillan.

“I had this idea of an ordinary guy down the pub who doesn’t give a monkey’s toss about what goes on at the higher levels of society.

He’s sick of the political pendulum.

“Everyone knows that nothing’s happened in the last fifty, sixty years.

We’ve built nothing.

We’ve done nothing.

We’ve gone backwards in almost everything.

The great institutions are useless piles of rubble.

“So Billy is sticking his head up out of a hole and saying, ‘Get on with it!’”

This brings us to the wild Diablo, recorded in Nashville and featuring guitar solos from none other than country rock star Keith Urban, whose studio the band were occupying.

Here, Gillan truly lets his imagination run riot.

“Diablo is a place where young people go for their rite of passage.

It’s dangerous and many don’t come back,” he says.

“This is the story of Dra-ma.

She pickles her knuckles and has 20 fights before beating up Guts McKenzie in the final.

She celebrates with a bucket of wine and falls into the glitter pool.

It’s all a bit surreal.”

You may think Gillan’s gone off on one but this ceaselessly entertaining character is also partial to a bit of humour.

The Rider is not about someone on a horse, but more about the notorious demands of rock stars when they go on tour.

He says: “I’m not going to mention his name, but he’s a very famous musician in a very famous band.

I was sitting having a beer with him and he said, ‘Someone got a fear of flying so we hired a psychologist.

The next week, there were four psychologists on the plane, one for each member of the band.

Then someone got a bad back so we got a physiotherapist.

The next week, there were four of them.’’

So what about his band’s riders?

“Deep Purple have never been extravagant,” he answers.

“When I was with Black Sabbath, it was a slightly different story, more funny than extravagant.

“I remember Geezer [Butler] complaining that the ham was round and the bread was square, that his sandwich was an incongruous mess which didn’t look right.

“My rider has always been very simple.

It’s bread and cheese, some tea bags — it has to be PG Tips — and a kettle.”

Elsewhere on Splat!, Jessica’s Bra has got to be one of the most eye-catching song titles of the year.

It was supposed to be Bar but, as Gillan admits: “I can’t see too well and make loads of typos these days.

“It’s a sort of Irish pub song.

I grew up in pubs with a beer in one hand, a fag in the other, and in fantastic company.

“My pals were drinking pals — I didn’t smoke a joint until I was 38.

We were pub guys who got locked in, behaved outrageously, but it stayed within the walls.

No harm done.”

Guilt Trippin’, with its gorgeous piano intro and outro and screaming vocals, is about “God and Charlie Darwin having a pint”.

Gillan says: “God is saying, ‘We’ve got to get the numbers right next time,’ but Darwin just goes, ‘Humpty, humpty’.

He doesn’t want to interfere!”

The Lunatic, inspired by the plight of George Orwell’s 1984 protagonist Winston Smith, summons a bout of indignation from Gillan.

“I can’t believe the prescient nature of that book, which was published in 1949,” he says.

“More recently, the NHS proscribed the word lunatic.

I take great offence at that.

Most of my friends are lunatics and always have been — and I happily follow the moon around.”

Through the song Scriblin’ Gib’rish, Gillan vents his spleen at those online matrixes where you have to identify motorbikes or traffic lights, “proving that I am a human being to a f***ing robot”.

Of note here is that he’s heading to UK theatres next spring for his Talking Gib’rish spoken-word tour, a departure from the arena-sized norm.

It’s an opportunity for him to regale audiences with stories from more than six decades in the business.

On a personal level, it’s clear that Gillan is pressing on despite the rigours of live performance and, as he reports, “failing eyesight”.

“Over the past few days, I’ve been taking a deep breath and looking at the future,” he says.

“A few years ago I was doing a talk and the theme was positive ageing.

I realised that when people retire, they stop making long-term plans — even if it’s small things to do with the house or garden.

“But I keep thinking some years ahead with projects, and don’t worry whether I complete them.

“That’s a self-creating energy, like nuclear energy.

It’s incredible.

So, I’m making long-term plans and to hell with it!”

If that’s the template for his mind, what about his body?

Alluding to his younger self — that skinny figure in tight flared jeans with a shaggy mane — he says: “Obviously, I used to be quite athletic when I was young, but I can’t pole vault anymore!

“Well into my sixties, I used to run upstairs two at a time, and now I run down ten at a time.

“So, you’ve got to have a laugh.

Otherwise, you’d sit down and cry.”

One thing is for certain, Ian Gillan and Deep Purple are NOT about to go Splat!

DEEP PURPLE

Splat!

★★★★☆

In an era hallmarked by what experts call a “sex recession,” Six Sex is a symbol of liberation.

The Argentine baddie fashions herself as a baby-voiced, bikini-clad fembot, beamed in from the clubs of Buenos Aires — and has become known for cheeky, instructive celebrations of desire. Her songs are designed to galvanize like-minded club rats into Dionysian revelry, or, in the case of the song “How to Make Your Ass Bigger,” squats.

To a certain subset of the Latine underground, she represents a pure-hearted hypersexuality. Yet, for the artist behind the persona, Francisca Agustina Cuello, this wasn’t always the intention.

“I don’t know if it was because I still had to keep my innocence or what, but I didn’t envision the project that way,” she said, calling from a hotel room in Barcelona. “That response sort of came about from the people, towards me. So, I said OK, I’m making it my own.”

In doing so, Cuello has churned out six thumping EPs as Six Sex, a campy character that she describes as a “fable” — a mix of “fantasía y hedonismo.”

That dynamic is taken to extremes on her debut album, “Ultra”, released June 6. It’s a dark and propulsive journey through decades of electronic dance music, best described by its own opening words portending “ultra terrorific fantasy.” (The phrase conjures up images of grandeur, but really, it evokes that “Blades of Glory” quote: “no one knows what it means, but it’s provocative.”)

“I feel like nothing I say is all that serious,” she said about her lyrics. “It’s a thing about my personality to be silly and goof around.”

“Ultra” centers Cuello’s winking, suggestive sense of humor. “Not Your Mom” features a conversation with a garbled, omnipotent voice akin to the parents in Charlie Brown; “FUchi!” features schoolyard taunts about “low dickie energy;” the album ends with “No More Porn,” a playful yet powerful subversion of sexual expectations.

“At the same time, for me, that acts as a filter,” she added with a laugh. “Weeding out the people who get scandalized by it, and identifying the people who get it and say: ‘Yas, yo también quiero tener cuatro novios.’”

Earlier this year, Cuello took the stage at Don Quixote, performing in front of a sold-out crowd for her Los Angeles debut. The smell of sweat permeated the air as she ripped through several of her hits — including collaborations with Reysha Rami and German producer MCR-T. Every single one of her signature ponytail flips sent the room into hysterics. The audience screamed every word at the top of their lungs; it was the loudest, most raucous show I’d been to in years.

Cuello took a breather in the middle of her world tour to chat with De Los over Zoom about all things Six Sex: her new record, her writing style and how it feels to connect with fans spun into febrile intensity.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and was translated from Spanish to English.

“[I’m] weeding out the people who get scandalized,” says Six Sex of her provocative music.

(Catalina Jacobo)

I was really taken by the “Ultra” album cover. You’re wearing a white bikini and in this “come to Jesus” pose. What was the goal?
[laughs] It was hard, because I wanted the cover to represent what the entire journey of the album meant to me. I was looking for something strong and heavy in visual terms, because with “Ultra”, this is the first time I’ve finished a long, heavy project and I see the start of something. It’s like something new was unlocked. I found a new way to convey feelings, and a new way to create as well. It’s not like I just finished, and it is what it is. Rather, it is the beginning of something bigger.

Is there an element of separation at all between the artistry and you as a person?
I think they’re pretty close. It’s as if Six Sex was sort of a fable, or like a hentai or comic [version of] my life. It’s also happened that things I wrote as a joke later became reality. But generally, I draw inspiration from things that actually happened to me.

Is it weird to put those intimate experiences on an album?
No, not for me. Because I’m not speaking so seriously, I don’t feel exposed. Even though my persona and my character are very close to one another, I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I’m not trying to make you believe in something. The songs stop being about me as soon as someone else listens to them. There are certain things we can all see ourselves represented in, and I think my music aims for that, too.

I want to ask about your performance style. I saw you live in Los Angeles and was really taken by the energy exchange between yourself and the crowd. How do you approach live performance?
Nowadays, I’m in a balance between performance and being a human being that connects with people and can pause to look in the eyes of the audience to register how they feel. I like being in a showgirl role, and at the same time, knowing when to step out of it.

Sometimes I go up there after having a crappy day, thinking that I’m gonna screw it up. And when I get up there and connect with the people, everything flows in a perfect way.

Does the music transform when it’s performed live, versus on a record? A lot of your music seems designed to be played in the club.
I think it’s very personal. For me, I’m a bit autistic; sometimes when I’m at a show, I get different sensations. It really depends on the person. I like seeing people’s reactions live when I start playing these songs for the first time. People were super hyped. They were enjoying them and jumping around a lot. It feels really fresh.

You reference ‘90s club classics all over “Ultra,” including by U.K. band the Prodigy on “Bitch Up.” How did these sounds come into your life?
These sounds evoke a special kind of nostalgia for me. Even though I hadn’t been listening to them lately, they sounded like something I wanted to bring back to the table — songs my uncle used to listen to when I was really young. Like a CD [of] pirated songs that somehow ended up at my house, and at the time I was like, “Wow, what is this music?”

There’s an element of Six Sex that gives “fembot,” like a female, sexy robot. I’m curious if you feel that playing out in your work.
[laughs] I didn’t know about the fembot thing. I don’t use Twitter. I [keep] a bubble… against some things that I don’t know. But I’ve always liked the idea that people have that perception of me, to some extent.

How do you feel about the rise of AI as a musician, especially considering your persona adopts that perception?
I mean… I don’t have a formed opinion on the matter. I do think that, I don’t know, it’s all very relative. For one thing, I obviously feel like it strips away the human value, but at the same time, it’s also a tool for humans. So it’s kind of contradictory. I feel weird about it…. I don’t know.

Zooming out, I’ve noticed Argentina has been having a musical moment over the last few years between yourself, Ca7riel y Paco Amoroso, Juana Rozas… How do you feel Argentina being represented or even challenged in your music?
I feel that culturally, Argentina is a very rich country. However, I do feel like, over generations, a paradigm was broken, and new sounds have been created that don’t necessarily abandon the roots of our music, but were created out of counterculture.

That same kind of counterculture is what makes Argentina be in such turmoil. It’s also the context of our country. Economic, political, social. The key Argentinian figures we refer to nowadays are constantly changing. And that allows you to listen to a variety of genres from Argentina, from people doing different things, and at the same time raising the flag and saying: “Yo soy argentino.” And we love that.

FIRST REVIEW CONFESSIONS II

★★★★★

AS one of the most talked-about, celebrated and frequently derided pop stars of all time, returning with her first album in seven years is a high-stakes move for Madonna.

The Queen of Pop has never left it so long between albums in her 43-year career. And she has taken an even bigger risk by recording a ­follow-up to her much-lauded 2005 dance-pop opus, Confessions On A Dancefloor.

But rather than playing it safe, ­Confessions II sees her doing just that — confessing.

She addresses everything from how she failed her eldest daughter Lourdes to her regrets over her relationship with her late brother, Christopher Ciccone.

And also, surprisingly, how her first husband, Sean Penn, 65, made her feel during their short-lived marriage.

The most venom-tongued track is titled Bizarre, in which she squarely attacks the Hollywood A-lister, who she was married to from 1985 to 1989.

She references the 1968 Shelby GT500 convertible she gave him as a wedding gift and his conviction for reckless driving in 1987.

And she also lays into how Penn was “threatened” by her and claims he resented her while they were together.

Madge sings: “Love is the strangest thing. Just when you think you’ve finally let go, it comes back to you.

“Movie star, deep blue eyes. In Hollywood, we’re a perfect prize.

“He drove way too fast, Shelby Cobra wasn’t meant to last.”

Earlier the lyrics had turned to anger, as she sings: “Roll out the carpet for us, but you don’t share it.

“All ’cause you’re threatened by me, you won’t admit it.

“The little things that you do don’t make me want you. Who knew love could be so bizarre?”

And in a later verse, she adds: “I know I left you behind and you resent me.

“A thousand reasons why you could never have me.

“The thought of being with you is so indecent. I guess you’ll never know my dirty little secret.”

Penn isn’t the only subject of her scorn, with Betrayal appearing to be about her stepmum Joan, who died in 2024 while the album was being made. Madonna did not attend her funeral.

The singer was five years old when she lost her mum — who she was named after — to breast cancer. Three years later, in 1966, her dad Silvio married Joan, who worked briefly for the family as a housekeeper.

In the opening verse of Betrayal, Mad­onna sings: “This is a story of betrayal. You couldn’t see your fall from grace.

“So take the hammer, hit the nail. You’ll never take my mother’s place.”

And later in the track, she adds: “You betrayed me, you enslaved me.”

But Madonna, 67, shows her softer side on The Test, which sees her and Lourdes, 29 — the eldest of her six kids — open up about their at-times difficult relationship.

On how her daughter was thrust into the limelight because of her own fame, Madonna sings: “Little star, I tried to put you on a pedestal, you didn’t ask for all the flashing lights.

“I didn’t think of how we could disturb, or how it hurt. I wish I knew the pain I caused.”

She continues: “Sometimes I think you wish I’d go away, but the shadow stays, and it’s OK to be yourself.”

Madge also appears to touch on her 2023 brush with death, when she was found unresponsive at her New York apartment and placed into a coma after suffering from an infection that led to sepsis.

Lourdes, 29, who Madonna had with fitness trainer Carlos Leon, was among those that rallied around her in hospital.

Madonna sings: “You made me whole when I was broken, too. I hope and pray I can do the same for you.”

Paying tribute to her mum, Lourdes sings: “You are my reason to be, what I want or look like, what I wear, all the clothes on my back, and what I attract.

“I trace the line of what you have sewn. Keep my own design. Make it a landscape. Make it alive.”

Elsewhere on the album Madonna makes peace with Christopher, who she was accused of “dropping” as her creative director in the early-2000s, and who later wrote a book titled Life With My Sister Madonna.

The once-close pair never fully repaired their relationship and he died of cancer at the age of 63, in October 2024 although she says he now visits her in her dreams.

On the song Fragile, she sings: “We shared a name, a home. We shared a fragile bond, now you’re gone.

“We laughed, we cried, we held each other’s hands. We had each other’s eyes and they belonged

“This is the time I hate the most, the words inside my heart

“I know you’re fragile ’cause you’ve been hurt, been let down.”

At the end of the track, she adds: “Late last night I was fast asleep, you came to me in a dream.

“You said don’t forget about me, don’t forget to be happy.

“So I hope you found a higher ground.”

The 16-track album clocks in at almost 64 minutes, and is a metaphor for a night out, starting with the heavy, pulsating beats of a club.

Then the final five songs represent the evening winding down, with Madonna spilling out her deepest feelings with the bravery and vulnerability that comes from a night of loud, messy partying.

When she reaches the last track L.E.S. Girl — about her life pre-fame on the Lower East Side of New York — you can hear traffic beeping, signalling she is finally on her way home as the morning rush hour starts.

It’s a neat arc for the ambitious album, which she once again made with English producer and songwriter Stuart Price, who she teamed up with on the first Confessions album.

But this record is much darker, heavier and grown-up.

And as well as being symbolic of a single night out, Madonna uses it to represent key parts of her life and the moments that have made her.

The most brilliantly bombastic highlight comes in Danceteria — named after the New York nightclub where she found her friends in the industry and where DJs played her music for the first time.

It’s a feel-good number with a Vogue-style rap and namechecks for everyone from her pal Debi Mazar to artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and even The B-52s.

Another highlight comes with Love Sensation, which appears to be a tribute to her boyfriend, Akeem Morris, 30.

She started dating the former football player in 2024, two years after ending a three-year romance with dancer Ahlamalik Williams, 31, and they now live together in London.

Madonna sings: “When I feel alone I always want to bring you near ’cause you bring a smile right here. You chase away my darkest hours.”

And in the chorus she continues: “Baby, come and get with me, there’s something that I gotta do.

“Baby, when you’re here with me, there’s nothing that we cannot do.”

So far in her career Madonna has sold 450million albums, and counting.

And with this project, she proves there is still plenty of passion, ambition and talent.

Undoubtedly it is her most cohesive and accomplished album since the original Confessions, 21 years ago.

And long may the Queen of Pop ­continue to reign.

LOVE, BETRAYAL AND ECSTASY ON SWEET 16

I Feel So Free: The opening track, released in April, is a throbbing song with breathy vocals and a sample of the 1989 Lil Louis acid house track French Kiss, complete with orgasm. It’s a statement of what’s to come as she says: “On the dancefloor, I feel so free.”

Good For The Soul: Heavy-sounding verses make way for a buoyant and optimistic pop chorus, all about how important letting your hair down is. It was written on her first session for the record.

One Step Away: Madonna dives headfirst into house music on this pulsating track about the release she feels in a nightclub. Over the beat, she utters: “The dance floor is not just a place, it’s a threshold. A ritualistic space where movement replaces language.”

Bring Your Love: The credibly cool lead single features Sabrina Carpenter, uniting two generations of pop stars who are resolute in their determination not to be swayed by naysayers. In the chorus they say: “Bring your love ’cause you cannot shake me. Bring your love ’cause you’ll never break me.”

Danceteria: “Everyone here is a work of art,” Madonna sings on this wonderfully poppy single, inspired by the New York nightclub she went to as a youngster.

Read My Lips: Spanish guitar and a guest appearance from Colombian singer Feid give this a different feel, though there’s a Latin trap beat to keep the party going. It’s clear Madge isn’t happy on it, though, singing: “You cut me with your lies, ’cause you hurt me with your kiss.”

Everything: It opens with strings reminiscent of her 1992 track Deeper And Deeper, but evolves to have regular house music breakdowns fit for a packed Ibiza dancefloor. And she’s worked up, spitting: “It’s not OK, I don’t f*** with it.”

Love Sensation: Pop makes a return on this heart-warming crowd-pleaser. “There’s nothing that we cannot do,” she repeats as the track builds to euphoric choruses. This is destined to be a future single.

Love Without Words: An ode to partying, starts with the sound of smoke being pumped on to a dance floor. “Call it trance, call it house, call it love without words,” she sings.

Bizarre: Madonna teamed up with super-producer Martin Garrix for this revenge track about her ex Sean Penn. The melody, complemented by strings and hints of EDM production, is enough to have people throwing their hands in the air.

School: “I can make moves on the dance floor, I can make love on a man’s floor,” she breathlessly coos on this track, on which her vocals are heavily distorted. It’s one of the weaker songs.

Fragile: There’s a major change of pace with break beats and strings, as she sweetly sings about her late brother Christopher. Her voice truly takes centre stage here.

My Sins Are My Savior: She is joined by Belgian rapper Stromae on this dark and moody track, which wouldn’t sound out of place on 1992’s Erotica album. Reflecting on the criticism in her career, she sings: “I was not lost, I was just broken. They tried to take me down, they tried to take my crown.”

Betrayal: She teams up with producer Mirwais, who she first worked with in 2000, on this 90s-inspired track, featuring brass and piano over bleak and mournful vocals.

The Test: Madonna has said Lourdes approached her about working together to heal their rift, and it certainly sounds cathartic. Her daughter’s voice here is far smoother, but they blend exquisitely.

L.E.S GIRL: It’s the end of the night, Madonna is on her way home and she’s reflecting on when she was a “Lower East Side girl, lost in a fragile world.” It’s a tear- jerker, and triumphant look back at how far she has come. The perfect ending.

Sitting in the control room of their home studio known as the Centre of Mental Arts (COMA for short), Long Beach husband-and-wife duo Scott Montoya and Julia Kugel smile as they discuss new music they recorded for their band Soft Palms. Their new album, titled “In Echo,” has been in the works for over five years. The 10-song album, out Friday on Everloving Records, was inspired by their frustration about how they feel the world has devolved since 2020.

“The first record I was like, ‘I want to give the world a hug,’” Kugel says. “And then this one I was like, f— this world.”

For Kugel and Montoya, the album serves as the latest chapter of their creative and personal journey. The pair met in 2012 at a music festival in Dallas (“The most romantic city,” Kugel quips), while playing in the Atlanta-based band the Coathangers and Orange County’s the Growlers, respectively. They bonded over a shared disgust at gladiator shoes, and soon thereafter, were in a relationship.

By 2017, they were married and settled in Long Beach. Despite Kugel’s role in the Coathangers at the time (Montoya left the Growlers in 2016), the couple wanted to form a band. Previously, they recorded a pair of songs that constituted Kugel’s second solo seven-inch single. That experience made them comfortable knowing they could balance their professional and personal lives.

“He’s super easy to work with,” Kugel says of Montoya, who sits beside her, trying to hide a smile. She looks at him and continues, “he’s very talented and very patient.”

“When we were in our other bands, we used to meet up on tour,” Montoya, who also produces and engineers for other artists, says. ”You see the absolute worst of people on tour … so this is nothing.”

To kickstart Soft Palms, Kugel drew from a batch of songs she had previously written that had no home. Being able to record in their own studio allowed the pair to craft songs without feeling any pressure to meet a deadline.

By late 2019, the pair put the finishing touches on their self-titled debut. When the record was released in July 2020, the pandemic was still in full force. The pair were disappointed and upset by the state of the world, and after a few years of stewing, Kugel and Montoya got started on a second album.

Don’t be fooled by its breezy ’60s-analog vintage pop sound. Soft Palms are angry, and that informs the spirit of “In Echo.”

The pair points to “Radio” as the album’s bellwether. First released in 2025, the song rails against how, over the past handful of years, people have fought for the sake of fighting, with no end in sight.

More strikingly, on the biting “Nervous as Hell,” Montoya points to Fox News as “infecting everyone’s parents.”

“I did some digging because I couldn’t believe something that hateful existed,” he says of the network, specifically its landmark $787-million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. “It turned it from this horrible thing into this s— business that has taken advantage of the elderly and destroyed families.”

That anger continues on the angsty rocker “The Wedding Song.” Kugel points to attending a wedding where a family member married a “total raging maniac,” and how they dealt with the buildup of delicately balancing being cordial yet firm.

“He [the family member] goes, ‘I just want you to show up and shut up!” she says. “I was like, ‘Well, firstly, f— you. Then secondly, this is a song — you just handed me gold.”

Since settling in Long Beach, for the last 10 years Kugel and Montoya took it upon themselves to help foster a positive, artistic community. It’s that mindset that pushed them to found and operate their 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Studios for Schools with the goal of providing recording equipment to underprivileged schools.

Their DIY work ethic in entertainment was also the driving force behind Happy Sundays, a free Long Beach-based music festival. Running for 10 years, the fest created a block party in the city’s Zaferia neighborhood that eventually expanded into a full weekend of shows across stages set up at local businesses to host a diverse lineup of veteran and up-and-coming area bands. Though the event was paused this year so they can focus on the new album and book, the couple plan to bring it back in 2027.

“It was like a statement in that way of like f— these giant prices, VIP experiences and all of that stuff,” Kugel says. “It’s the anti-music festival and a celebration of community.”

Keeping with that spirit, and drawing from the experiences of their two-decade careers, last month the pair released a book titled “How to Be Self-Reliant in the Music Business.” The genesis of this self-published guidebook occurred when the pair realized they were not receiving a portion of a royalty stream they were owed. They knew that if they were in the dark on the issues they thought they knew, others likely were as well.

“We decided to turn it into a book because we realized there’s so much stuff that few artists know about on their own,” Montoya says. “I want people to understand the scope of what they’re actually getting into, and the reality of their situations.”

“It’s a very thorough overview,” Kugel adds.

The book includes information beyond what one would find in Donald S. Passman’s longstanding industry bible “All You Need to Know About the Music Business.” With assistance from a lawyer friend and a CPA family member, the pair addresses topics ranging from backstage etiquette to managing social media to dealing with record labels and publishing companies. They hope that it will provide a blueprint for bands old and new to better navigate music’s notoriously choppy waters. Their accessible, snack-size chapters move fluidly as they explain the realities artists face in 2026.

Battling through the disappointment of the first part of the decade allowed Kugel and Montoya to find their creative way. Armed with this infusion of activity across various disciplines, the couple is inspired to continue to shake their way out of the past. Though focused on their impending U.S. and European tour, the duo promise that the next Soft Palms album won’t take as long and are mulling over their next music-industry book project. For now.

“It’s a lot to keep up with all of these projects,” Montoya says. “We work all day, every day. And it’s been cool to see signs that it’s paying off.”

Spanish painter Nieves González arrives in Los Angeles for her first U.S. solo exhibition having already experienced a taste of fame.

The 29-year-old caught the attention of the art and fashion worlds last year after being discovered on Instagram and commissioned to paint the cover of Lily Allen’s album “West End Girl.” Depicting the singer as a Baroque aristocrat clad in contemporary designer fashion, the portrait helped propel González onto an international stage.

Collectors have taken notice. The 13 paintings in “A Friendship Story,” opening Saturday at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, have already sold out, according to the gallery, with prices ranging from $4,000 to $20,000.

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Elle magazine dubbed González “Fashion’s Favorite New Artist,” while exhibitions in Rome, Paris, Belfast and Bilbao, Spain, expanded her reputation across Europe.

González developed her classic yet defiantly modern approach while studying at the University of Seville, where Spanish masters such as Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán painted in the naturalist Baroque tradition. Drawing liberally from fashion, art history and everyday life, she often dresses the subjects of her portraits in puffer jackets — garments she wears herself during the cold winters of Granada, Spain, where she lives. The material, she said, recalls the sculptural rendering of fabric in paintings by Zurbarán and Velázquez: the folds, the volumes, the high shine.

Nieves González often dresses her subjects in puffer jackets.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It works beautifully from a visual standpoint,” she said, speaking Spanish during an interview at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station a few days before the exhibition opened. Wearing blue jeans and a pink button-down blouse, she echoed the pastel blues and pinks that appear throughout many of the works surrounding her.

“Fashion inspires me,” she said. “Just as 17th century artists drew inspiration from the fashion of their day — often creating paintings that served as catalogs of current styles — I do the same,” she said. “The goal is to not merely convey a specific message or ideology but to create a testament to a generation and the era in which we live.”

This fall, González’s painting “La Sfida” (2025) will appear in the Städel Museum’s exhibition “Mary Magdalene. Sin. Pray. Love” in Frankfurt, Germany, alongside works by Lady Gaga, Marlene Dumas and Auguste Rodin. The painting depicts Mary Magdalene with long, flowing hair, draped in a regal red garment and clutching a skull — a contemporary interpretation of one of Christianity’s most enduring figures.

“Nieves González is the youngest of these artists and, at the same time, probably the one who most closely follows in the tradition of the Old Masters,” curators Bastian Eclercy and Stefan Roller wrote in an email.

The Santa Monica exhibition marks an evolution from the paintings that established González’s reputation. Earlier works often centered on solitary women posed with the self-possession of royal portraits or religious icons. “A Friendship Story” focuses on relationships between pairs of women, exploring friendship, intimacy, support and shared experience.

For González, friendship is one of the most profound aspects of women’s lives and a subject she felt deserved greater attention in painting.

Victoria Rios, a curator who works with González, said the artist’s paintings “rewrite the narratives of the past, rewrite the history of martyrdom and place women at the center.”

“Nothing in her painting is arbitrary,” Rios said in an email. “Every formal decision is also an ethical one.”

“The horse elevates the art; symbolically, it carries connotations of elegance and nobility,” Nieves González said. “It seemed like a way to elevate the concept of friendship.”

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

González frequently turns art historical conventions on their head. In “Salir a robar caballos: Go out to steal horses,” she replaces the archetypal portrait of a gallant man on horseback with two young women dressed in puffer and vinyl jackets, posed like contemporary Amazons atop rearing horses.

“The horse elevates the art; symbolically, it carries connotations of elegance and nobility,” González said. “It seemed like a way to elevate the concept of friendship. It also has an element of play, adventure and fun, since having fun is part of the bond too.”

The artist also sees her work through a feminist lens.

“We live in a patriarchal society, and so, unfortunately, I belong to the oppressed segment of that society, and my work relates to that,” she said. “It stems from a struggle, an understanding and a process of redefining concepts that we have historically established as normal, natural and habitual.”

“I am interested in portraying us as brave and powerful, sometimes even with an air of haughtiness,” she said.

Another painting, “Something’s crossed over me and I can’t go back” (2026), captures González’s fusion of historical and contemporary references. Two women dressed in green and pink fur cradle each other’s heads, reimagining medieval depictions of cephalophores — Christian martyrs who carry their severed heads while continuing to preach or pray.

The title comes from a pivotal line in the 1991 film “Thelma & Louise,” marking the turning point for Geena Davis’ character Thelma, fully committing to her ultimately fatal adventure with Susan Sarandon’s Louise.

Nieves González, “Holding You,” 2026 (oil on canvas).

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

González builds each painting from what she calls a “Frankenstein” — a digital composite assembled from archival photographs, found images and reference material. The painting process then takes over. A mid-project visit to the Prado Museum in Madrid, for instance, might send her back to the digital sketch to pull in a compositional element from Velázquez before returning to the canvas. “The final result often ends up being completely different from what I initially envisioned,” she said.

Heller began representing González, whom he calls an “original voice,” last year after being introduced to her work by another painter.

Staging her first U.S. solo exhibition in Los Angeles rather than New York reflects what he sees as a more relaxed environment for an emerging artist, without the glare and expectations of the New York art world.

“L.A. feels a little less constrained,” Heller said. “It feels a little more free.”

González’s portrait of Allen is currently on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery, hanging in the same room as a self-portrait by David Hockney. She said while it “has been very significant in terms of media exposure,” exhibitions and professional opportunities were already in motion before the album cover brought wider attention.

“I’ve always said that what I want to do in life is make a living from painting,” she said.

Mission accomplished.

MYLES Smith reveals he was physically abused by his father in his heartbreaking debut album My Mess, My Heart, My Life. 

The Luton-born star, who was raised by his mother Deborah, recalls his difficult childhood in emotional tracks My Mess and Grandma’s House. 

Not since Lewis Capaldi’s astonishing 2019 album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent have I heard a more impressive and honest debut record, with Myles pouring his truth into the 15-track album. 

Created over the past three years, as Myles’ career went stellar thanks to his 2024 runaway hit Stargazing, the star takes his fans back to his beginnings. 

Lead track My Mess reduced me to tears as Myles regaled his relationship with his father against a backdrop of an upbeat, acoustic guitar. 

He sings, “I was born into a fractured family, where a word can start a war. 

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“Lost my tongue, when I spoke my peace, yeah he grabbed my shirt and he bruised my cheek. 

“Sad a man had to go toe to toe with a boy thirteen.” 

Emotion-packed Grandma’s House, where Myles, 28, recalls finding his safe space as his mum Deborah worked to make ends meet, is packed with emotion and reflection. 

On the track he sings: “Take me back to my Grandma’s place. 

“I was 7 years old when I learnt how to cook, and 10 when I started to sing. 

“Oh she’d bring me to church, and she’d cover my ears, when my Dad would scream horrible things.” 

Myles’ signature acoustic guitar underpins every track, with Hate You untangling the realities of navigating love and Sertraline seeing Myles exploring mental health and complexities surrounding it. 

This is an album for the brokenhearted and the hopeful, with the beautifully worded Lifetime and the dreamy vocals on Heaven – which is my favourite song on the record – seemingly bringing Myles’ the happy ending he’s been searching for. 

Over the past two years, Myles has grown in prominence – winning the Brit Awards Rising Star gong as well as earning an Ivor Novello Award for Stargazing. 

To date Myles has amassed over 4.7billion streams worldwide and is one of our country’s most exciting new stars. 

Opening up about the record, Myles said the album was born out of “therapy notes, old memories, relationships, insecurities, heartbreaks, mistakes and all the moments that shaped me.” 

The latter half of the album moves towards a positive note, with Nice To Meet You and Gold showing Myles coming out on the other side. 

Myles said: “It was important to end the album, and particularly this project on a high. 

“I feel like I always try to mirror my music with my live shows and my live shows are always about taking people on an emotional journey and then sending you home happy. 

“It is that sense of hope which lingers on as Gold closes the album. 

“Even though I may appear miserable for a lot of this album, I genuinely always walk with hope and I walk with joy at the end of the day.” 

Heaven, mark my words, will become a live show staple for Myles, who with My Mess, My Heart, My Life has more than proven he can hold up against the greats when it comes to writing songs about love and loss. 

★★★★★

Lotts of stars at V&A

It was all-white on the night for Maya Jama and Pixie Lott as they stood out in these dresses at the V&A Museum’s summer party.

They were joined at the bash by model Leomie Anderson, in an open white suit with gold jewellery, Ellie Goulding sporting a blazer dress, and Sir Mick Jagger with his fiancee Melanie Hamrick.

Once inside the museum, in London’s South Kensington, guests got the chance to schmooze around the exhibits, while Jessie Ware sang live in a sequin gown.

With tickets flying for her autumn tour, they were lucky to see her.

But access to the fundraiser, for those who did pay, cost £3,999. That is one expensive night out.

KAISER CHIEFS frontman Ricky Wilson will play Teen Angel in Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical.   

The show is being put on by Secret Cinema from July to September at Evolution London in Battersea Park. 

Ricky, left, said: “At school I was in Grease. I was not yet the pop sensation I am today and I only really wanted to do it because I fancied the girl who played Frenchie,  

“I was Doody, so this is my chance to show everyone I should’ve got a bigger part.  

“I don’t believe anyone from that production is now a professional singer – so in short, I win.” 

Sian’s up for toy techover

You will hear some surprisingly familiar voices in Toy Story 5 if you head to the cinema this weekend – as Capital Breakfast’s Jordan North and Sian Welby have landed roles.

They voice a garden gnome and inflatable flamingo in the long-awaited Pixar sequel, and mum-of-one Sian has high hopes for its impact.

Speaking about the film, which is about tech replacing toys, Sian, right, said: “I do think it’s going to start a massive conversation about screen time.

“It made me want to smash every bit of tech in my house and just get out in the grass and play all the games that I did growing up.

“I think a lot of us are going to watch it and feel guilt. It’s sad we have to grow up so fast because there’s so much magic when you’re younger.”

Best-selling novel One Day is coming to the West End as a musical.

The David Nicholls love story – which has previously been adapted for both the big and small screen – will premiere at London’s Garrick Theatre on November 17, following shows in Edinburgh earlier this year.

Tissues and jazz hands at the ready.

MNEK is back in reverse

MNEK is returning with his first album in eight years.

The singer has today released the single Reverse!!, which samples Lethal Bizzle’s Pow! (Forward) and will be on his Bulldozer record this autumn.

Also out now is Jax Jones’ Pulling Me Back, Tiny Habits’ Anything He Was featuring Matty Healy from The 1975 and Grow Down by Luca George.

Ahead of his opening night in Jesus Christ Super-star in London, Sam Ryder has released What’s The Buzz.

And to support England’s World Cup efforts, Kerry Katona has re-recorded Atomic Kitten’s Whole Again as Home Again to raise cash for kids in care.

She said: “Even if you think it’s s***, please download it so we can give back.”

It’s Friday afternoon in North Hollywood and Ziggy Marley is perched on a stool inside his newly built Rebel Lion Studio, tucked in one of the neighborhood’s creative enclaves.

The nine-time Grammy winner is surrounded by a collection of lion figurines, guitars, traditional hand drums and a piano. Along the walls hang two replicas of backdrops his legendary father, Bob Marley, used on tour in the 1970s. The murals, depicting Rastafari icons and Haile Selassie I and Marcus Garvey, were featured in the 2024 biopic “Bob Marley: One Love.”

“These are what we used as the backdrop for the concert scenes. Them spiritual to me,” Marley says in patois as the smell of palo santo dances around the rehearsal space.

Music has been both an inheritance and lifelong pursuit for Marley. From sitting in studio sessions with his father as a child to building a five-decade career of his own, he has remained a curious student of the craft, one willing to challenge convention in search of a deeper meaning. That spirit is evident on “Brightside,” his ninth solo album, which was released on vinyl on April 18 (Record Store Day) and May 1 on streaming.

Rather than recording the eight-track project in 440 Hz, the standard tuning frequency for most modern music, he opted for 432 Hz, a tuning some musicians and theorists believe creates a warmer, more meditative listening experience. He also slowed down his songwriting process, giving each lyric room to carry its message of hope through turbulent times. The album, which may be his most personal yet, also features “Many Mourn for Bob,” the first song he has written directly about his late father.

“I think it shows the next stage that I probably am in,” says Marley, adding that he felt connected to his father on a spiritual level. “We took another step in the relationship, to another place that it’s never been before.”

Ziggy Marley is bringing his “Brightside” tour to the Hollywood Bowl on June 21 alongside reggae star Burning Spear.

(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)

He adds, “When I was doing the song, it kind of came to me like this song could’ve been my father’s song. It could’ve been a song that he wrote.”

The reflective nature of “Brightside” arrives at another pivotal time in Marley’s career. This year marks the 20th anniversary of “Love Is My Religion,” the Grammy-winning album that launched his solo career and crystallized a personal philosophy he still carries today. He is also set to release his sixth children’s book, “True to Myself,” in September.

As we wrap up our conversation, Marley has only a few minutes before Rebel Lion Studio shifts back into work mode. Within minutes, bandmates, background singers and production crew members begin funneling into the space, hauling in stacks of equipment as promotion and preparations continue the “Brightside” tour, which stops at the Hollywood Bowl on June 21.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You recorded your latest album, “Brightside,” here at Rebel Lion Studio, which you designed and built from the ground up. Can you take me back to the beginning of that process and why you wanted to do it?

I grew up around my father and my mother as growing musicians trying to succeed and there was one thing I kept hearing over and over throughout my life: independence. Their whole mission was to be independent. I saw them work and I saw my father build a studio. I saw him have a space where he can do more music and control his own time. That was a dream of mine for a long time, ever since I started doing music because usually we use other people’s studios. I couldn’t have this in my house. It’s too much. It’s a dream come true.

We’re surrounded by two beautiful murals. Is there a particular item that is personal to you?

The murals are replicas of my father’s backdrops that they used. The original artwork is by Neville Garrick, but he helped us re-create them for the Bob Marley movie. These are the murals we used as the backdrop for the concert scenes. They are spiritual to me cause that’s Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey, two very important beings for us. Inspirational.

On “Brightside,” Ziggy Marley dedicated a song to his father, Bob Marley, for the first time in his career.

(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)

“Brightside” is your ninth solo album. What mindset were you in emotionally and spiritually when you started working on it?

I never thought about making an album, I was just writing songs. You just tap into things in your subconscious that are waiting to become music, I feel like. Then when the time comes for writing songs, the time comes. It’s like a season. Like you have blueberry or orange season. So there’s a season for me when I write songs. Then you say, “All right, let’s make an album then.” But you don’t think about an album before. It’s just an expression or a feeling just to make music, not for any reason but to make it. It happened over a period of years. Ideas and experiences that eventually come out. But closer to the time I [made] the album, I remember writing some of the later songs like “Why Let the World.” It was a song that I wrote because I was feeling down and everything that was happening in the world and the country. Just so much negativity and I just felt like I needed to take a break from it. To recharge yourself. We cannot fight every day. We need to take a break and then get back to it. I needed to teach myself to take some time. It was more of a mental thing than an emotional thing. Stuff I deal with my father, personal life and stuff with my spirituality and my faith. So there’s a lot of me in this record.

“Many Mourn for Bob” is the first song you’ve explicitly written about your father. Your brother, Stephen, is also on the vocals. What surprised you emotionally once that song was finished?

I’m not sure I thought about it like that. The experience of expressing that emotion, it’s a spiritual experience. I think it shows the next stage that I probably am in and even my relationship with my father on that spiritual level. It’s a different place. We took another step in the relationship, to another place that it’s never been before. When I was doing the song, it kind of came to me like this song could’ve been my father’s song. It could’ve been a song that he wrote. That’s how I felt about it. This is partly his song. It’s me and him making this song. This song is his song too.

How has your relationship with grief changed over the years?

It’s more of a comrade, understanding, empathy and having the maturity and the experience to understand what he went through as a man, as a human being. I think that’s what it is, really. A better understanding of what he went through, not the glory. The pain, the mental and emotional state. You’re more than just an idol. You’re more than just a legend. You’re more than just a father. To go deeper than that, so that’s the next level.

Yeah, the skit you used of him saying “I’m just a man from the ghetto” on the song really summarizes that.

That’s the real him. That’s him right there. Even in the tone of his voice, you can hear the real Robert coming out.

Another standout song from the album is “Racism Is a Killa.” One thing that you do well is having a heavy topic, but finding a way to still make it feel hopeful and joyful. Why was it important for you to approach the track this way rather than from a place of anger, heaviness or sounding preachy?

I think it started out preachy and angry, but over time, it kind of evolved and I kind of evolved too ‘cause my own evolution is represented in the music. And you know something, doing that song helped me evolve because I had to think about it differently without the anger. The song made me do that. Like how else can I approach this? It’s inspiration that causes these things. It’s not an intellectual thing. I didn’t do that intellectually. Like over time, something just started coming out of me. I never really thought about it before, but I can see it now.

In the video, which features your daughter, Zuri, you referred to the condition as “Racismosis” in the video and sang about how it can be cured.

It’s kind of like a sickness, a disease. It’s a virus. We can minimize the virus and stop the disease. It’s true. Racism is a killa. This virus can kill ya. Literally kill ya. Spirtually kill ya. Emotionally kill ya. Mentally kill ya. It kill ya in different ways. It kills the victim and it kills the person perpetrating it. It’s killing everyone, but we can cure it though. It starts with the children. I have a friend of mine who said, “Yo, my little son loves this song. He doesn’t want to stop. He says ‘Put on “Racism is a Killa.”’ So that’s where the antidote is starting. The minds of the children. The music with a conscious message gives them the right consciousness that they grow up with. That is how we take our time and lower the spread of the virus.

You recently released an alternate version for “Racism Is a Killa” with Big Boi. How did that collaboration come together and what excited you about working with him?

I’ve loved Big Boi and Outkast from a long time ago. He’s a legend and a strong voice. There’s different layers to it and I feel like Big Boi took it to that other layer. So yeah, we just love Big Boi and I’m going to jump on something he does. [Laughs]

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask your approach for your album and how you swapped the typical 440 Hz for 432 Hz. Do you remember the first time you heard the music played back that way?

It’s a long journey because for most of my life in music, I’ve tried to be a student. I’ve tried to keep an open mind and learn more and more. With this album, there’s an inspirational side of music and that’s where I lean into most of the time, but as I grew up, I started to understand there’s also a science too. It’s also mathematics. The universe, it’s all mathematics and science, and I shouldn’t shun the science of music just because I think the inspiration is all it should be. I think a part of that was learning that for myself and opening up and saying, “Yo, let me put some science into this.” Frequency. What does frequency do to people? Frequency affects people. Frequency is a weapon. It’s a tool. I’m sure the army has some kind of frequency thing. So frequency is powerful. I wanted to try something different anyway. I want to be different. I want my frequency to be different from the majority of frequencies that’s being played out there, because it’s fun for me to be different.

When I was working on the demos, I was like “Let me try this 432 Hz thing” and I like how it feels for me personally, how I sing on the frequencies. It resonates differently and makes me feel different. We did it and it felt good, and we did it live, and from my point of view, I felt a different energy with the audience too. So all of those experiments led me to the final conclusion to say, “Yeah, let me do the record in 432.” It’s really nice vibes, which the world needs a different frequency. We can use it.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of “Love Is My Religion,” your first solo Grammy-winning album. When you think back to that era of your life, who was Ziggy back then?

A lot was changing because I moved to L.A. during that time.

You got married around that time too, right?

Yeah. I don’t really fight change. I just try to navigate them and figure them out cause sometimes change is hard. There was a lot of change living here, moving around, trying to find a place, music, but then it’s like we are continuously updating ourselves. I’m continually updating. You know how you update your OS. I’m updating my OS. My operating system is being updated throughout my experience in life. There’s always something else out there for me to evolve to. So during that period of my life, “Love Is My Religion” came to me when someone asked me, “What religion are you?” And I just said “Love is my religion.” I never thought about it before, never contemplated it, never even thought of those words together before in my life, and they just came out to me that day. So the album represents a time in my life when I realized there’s a spiritual awakening that I had. “Love Is My Religion” is a spiritual awakening. That’s my thing. That’s who I am. That’s why it’s a milestone.

“If you think you’re going to change this world with music and you’re trying to send a message out there, you have to speak to children,” Ziggy Marley says.

(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)

You’re kicking off the “Brightside” tour this month, which includes a stop at the Hollywood Bowl. What are you most excited about when it comes to bringing this album to people for the first time live?

I’m excited about playing the music. I think it’s about the music. These new songs, they vibrate very highly for me and I’m excited about experiencing and expressing that. And also kind of not doing it for the audience. I don’t want to do it for the audience. I want the audience to experience what I’m experiencing, what I’m expressing. I want them to feel me. I don’t want them to be like “Hey look at me.” [Laughs] There’s still connectivity going on, but I want them to feel the songs the real way. That’s what I’m excited about for people to feel it the way that I feel it.

You even posted the lyrics and told fans to get to practicing, so they can really understand the message.

Yeah. Just reading them for me, I really like the writing I did on this. I also took some time with this too. I was saying to someone that I developed a deeper relationship with the lyrics and the words than I did before. My relationship with the words here are very mature. I feel good about it. That’s why I want people to know the words because words are very important. Words are very important. If you know the words you get a deeper understanding of what I’m talking about and what I’m feeling.

After nearly 50 years of making music, Ziggy Marley built his own studio in North Hollywood called Rebel Lion Studio. He plans to turn it into a multipurpose creative space.

(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)

Look on the bright side is a phrase that people say often, but what do those words mean to you right now?

Sometimes we can get in a place [where] we can’t see the other side of things because we’re so caught up in that one place. Like the cliché, there’s two sides to a story, ya know? The universe is always yin and yang, but there’s always another side of things. But I feel like the way we are being programmed in a way through media and everything, it’s like there’s only one side. Everything is like this, there’s nothing else going on over there that we need to see, we only need to see this. This is all that’s going on in the world. There’s nothing good, there’s nothing nice, there’s no good people, there’s no love. So it’s a realization too. A realization that there’s the other side. Never get to that place where we think it’s just that side alone because we get so much of it. It’s a reminder, I think, for us like “Come on guys.” The thing about it too, sometimes you can feel like — even for me — some people say, “Hey look on the bright side,” some people find that like “Why are you happy? Why you so chirpy?” [Laughs]

That’s true.

I’m proud that I’m on the bright side. I’m living on the bright side, I don’t care. You don’t like me because I’m living on the bright side? You want me to be like you, you want me just live on the dark side with you, right? So it’s like a proudness of being positive and having that outlook in life, and not feeling like you have to [fall to] peer pressure. More positivity in life, not just the negativity. I’m confident in that too. So it’s kind of like that too, you know, like being proud, lifting up that side of me. Yeah, I’m happy to be living on the bright side.

The Recording Academy announced significant changes for the 2027 Grammys, introducing several new genre categories and updating eligibility rules for two of its top awards.

The rule changes will most prominently affect the new artist and album categories.

A change to allow for four submissions for new artist instead of three “establishes more specific language surrounding prominence,” the academy said in a statement. The change updates the famously confusing criteria for new artist, in which acts familiar to some fans for years can suddenly break through and earn new consideration for the category.

It’s likely to benefit an artist such as Ella Langley, who had previously submitted several times for new artist but finally had a commercial and critical breakthrough with her single “Choosin’ Texas” and LP “Dandelion.”

“We’ve heard from the music community that the way artists are being developed is changing, and the time it’s taking to find success or recognition can take longer than it once did. Artists are often releasing more music before they actually break through the consciousness of consumers or of our voters, and that evolution directly impacts this Category,” Recording Academy Chief Executive Harvey Mason Jr. said in a statement announcing the changes. The changes “reflect the reality that artist development looks different than it did even a few years ago.”

In the album category, new rules state that “the threshold of new recordings required on an eligible album is lowered from 75% to 66% to reduce the exclusion of entries that are widely recognized throughout the music industry as new albums.” Given the fast streaming-centric release cycle of new singles, remixes and live cuts, the rule changes reflect that a new album may have a significant amount material released earlier.

Additionally, the academy announced five new genre categories, most significantly a dedicated award for Asian pop — a late but welcome acknowledgment of the commercial reach, artistic accomplishments and deep fan culture of K-pop and other scenes in Japan, the Philippines and China.

Other new categories include Latin song, a songwriting-specific award for Latin music in an era when Bad Bunny and Karol G make some of pop’s most salient political and creative statements; distinct awards for R&B collaboration or duo/group performance and R&B solo performance; a new traditional pop vocal performance award; and the replacement of folk album with categories for contemporary folk album and traditional folk album.

Additionally, a new “ballot plus” option will allow for voting members working across genres to vote in more categories, and songwriting contributors to winning albums in most genre categories will receive Grammy statuettes and achievement certificates, as producers and engineers currently receive.

“These changes and expansions give even more people a place for their music to be respected, heard and evaluated. With more Categories, we can represent more music creators, artists, writers, and producers, and it gives us a great opportunity to be more inclusive,” Mason said in his statement. “Now more than ever, we have to keep pace because things are changing and evolving so quickly. These changes are a reflection of that fast-paced evolution.”

Olivia Rodrigo has officially begun her new era, and this time she invited her fans to experience it alongside her.

To celebrate the release of her latest album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” Rodrigo collaborated with American Express to re-create the set of her music video for “The Cure.” The pop-up event, which opened last Thursday and ran until Sunday at Mica Studios, featured props from the video, storyboards, exclusive merchandise and several photo ops for fans.

With a beating felt heart and lab beakers to pose with, the pop-up transformed an industrial studio space in the Arts District into a pastel-painted cardboard hospital. Ahead of the public opening, Rodrigo surprised a small group of AMEX cardholders and select fans.

“I have an album that’s coming out today in about one hour, which is crazy,” Rodrigo said, wearing a blue “Nurses Do It Better” baby tee. “I figured since we’re all here, maybe we should just listen to a few of them together? Would that be cool?”

A little over an hour before the album’s release, Rodrigo played four songs from the album as the room brewed with excitement. She began with “Maggots for Brains,” a song about being so infatuated you can’t focus when your partner is away. Although it was their first listen, the song’s catchy chorus already had fans dancing along.

Banner for Rodridgo’s pop-up event hands above Mica Studios

(American Express)

Rodrigo explained that her next song, “Purple,” paid homage to the aesthetics of her previous albums, “Guts” and “Sour.”

“Obviously, this is my first non-purple album, but I just had to shout out purple somehow,” Rodrigo joked. “This song started out as a love song and sort of devolved from there, so I’ll let you guys be the judge.”

Playing off the somber vibes of “Purple,” Rodrigo played “Less” next. The piano ballad follows the dissolution of a relationship as the couple grows apart.

“I’ve been going back and forth on what the saddest song on the record is, but I think this one might be it,” Rodrigo said.

In a room full of fans, the song struck an emotional chord with many of the listeners. To bring the mood back up, Rodrigo finished the night by playing her new single, “Stupid Song.”

“This next one is a happy one, and it actually has a music video that comes out tonight,” Rodrigo said. “I love this song so much. It’s basically about having such an intense crush on someone that it drives you totally f— insane. I feel like we’ve all been there at some point in our lives.”

Rodrigo was all smiles at her event celebrating her latest album steeped in heartbreak and romance.

(American Express)

After Rodrigo previewed her music, “The Cure” music video exhibition was opened up to the fans. The showcase ranged from interactive photo ops to gallery walls featuring behind-the-scenes photos from the video shoot and Rodrigo’s nurse costume on display. The video’s props, which were primarily designed using cardboard and felt, were displayed in glass cases for visitors to admire.

Dressed in fun fashion including light pink and polka-dot outfits, fans posed throughout the set, re-creating scenes from the music video as “The Cure” played overhead. Many had thrown on a piece of the Los Angeles-exclusive merchandise on sale at the pop-up, with shirts and hats reading “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl in Los Angeles.”

So while some fans teared up at her lyrics and others beamed with excitement, everyone was hyped to experience Rodrigo’s new album.

“I really hope you enjoy this little exhibition. It is so gorgeous, and I am so proud of it,” Rodrigo said. “Thank you guys for being here, and I really hope you love ‘You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love’ as much as I do.”

There was a time in the beginning of Sublime’s recent revival when Jakob Nowell, the son of the band’s late singer Bradley Nowell, saw himself simply as a good son trying to help his adoptive uncles — drummer Bud Gaugh and bassist Eric Wilson — restart his dad’s iconic Long Beach trio. The goal wasn’t to take the place of his frontman father who died of an overdose in 1996. “I’ll never look at it as my band. Sublime is my dad’s band, and I’m helping out, that’s all,” he told The Times in 2024. Luckily, he was wrong.

The journey of finding his own voice through his father’s sly, shambolic poetry and reggae rock anthems, along with his determination on the road with Gaugh and Wilson through a barrage of festivals and tour dates helped him eventually step into his own as a songwriter and Gen Z rock star. It’s all been done with the mission to preserving his dad’s legacy and having fun while doing it. Now it feels as natural as the trio sitting together on the waterfront in LBC’s shoreline marina within earshot of the bellowing horn of the Queen Mary earlier this year as they were finishing the recording of “Until the Sun Explodes,” the first album under the Sublime moniker in 30 years.

Just like the band’s original recipe of shoving punk, dub reggae, hip-hop and ska into a blender, the new songs dutifully stick to the formula along with Jakob’s soulful caterwauls that sound scarily similar to his dad. But what emerges from the 21-song tracklist is the evolution of a trademark sound that gives a nod to the past while standing strong on its own, just like Jakob, despite coming to the interview on crutches while healing from a performance-related knee injury. The band members chatted with The Times about recapturing the effortless essence of their immortal beach-ready sound and looking forward to a second chance to chase an endless summer.

This interview was edited for length and clarity

It’s kind of a rare thing for all three of you guys to be in one place at the same time. What was it like working in the studio together to finish the new album?

Bud Gaugh: Magical. Things are just coming together. We showed up, Jake had an idea for another song, and he sent us a little demo and said “Hey, this is what I’ve been thinking about.” And then we get down to the studio [in San Pedro], and he’s like, “Oh yeah, so I had another idea,” and kind of changed it. We jumped in there [and by the end of our sessions, we had written] brand new songs to the list of songs that we already had.

The band’s revival has been a long time in the making. I remember when you guys had your first show together, a surprise gig a couple years ago as part of a benefit show for the Bad Brains frontman H.R. Do you feel you’ve come a long way since then?

Eric Wilson: I never thought the chemistry would be like it was with Bradley.

Jakob Nowell: Especially now that we’ve been playing together this long, the chemistry is very much there. We’re just comfortable and having fun. Jamming together is the best. We get in there to do a take for a song, and I’m always like “Let’s just do like three more!” It’s just that much fun, and that’s how it feels playing live too.

When did the idea for creating a new album come about?

Gaugh: It was pretty much just while we were playing shows, At first, the idea was that we were getting together to do this benefit for H.R. [at Teragram Ballroom in December 2023]. We went from “How’s this going to work?” and then [after the show] it was like, “Wow, this is something special. We should definitely go out and play some more shows, and get this music out there and get the opportunity to bring the music to the people in the purest form that we possibly could.” As we’re doing that, it’s like we’re seeing the reaction in the fans, and we were feeling it emotionally. We realized this is going to be bigger than we ever thought. That’s when we really decided where it was going to go.

Jakob Nowell, right, once thought Sublime was only his late father’s band; now, fronting the Long Beach trio, he’s leading a new chapter that still honors Bradley Nowell’s legacy.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Were any of the songs on the new album mined from previously unreleased material or did you start fresh?

Nowell: There was that song we did with Stick Figure [“Feel Like That”], so I think that kind of inspired us. [We realized] “Oh s—, there really is some meat on the bone.” And then I had found some old recordings of stuff that were just like jams without even like vocals or whatever. Then it became just this thing during sound check or maybe in the middle of sets, we’d just start jamming these random progressions and stuff, and it kind of just evolved from there naturally.

The new songs that I’ve heard fit right in the vein of what people love about Sublime. What was it like putting some of those new songs in the setlist as you were building them?

Nowell: It was like magic. We were joking yesterday that sometimes we’ll play a new song for the first time just randomly and I’d see people try mouthing the lyrics and stuff and I’ll say “you’ve never even heard this before! I know you haven’t. We don’t even really know what the hell we’re saying.”

Gaugh: You frontin’! [Laughs]

Nowell: But [the new material] sounded like it was supposed to be there, so it was kind of a rad little test in a lot of ways. We almost don’t even have to think about it. That’s always going to be the guiding goal of any band trying to make fun music that’s relatable.

Wilson: What if you’re Slayer? That’s not true if you’re Slayer.

Jakob, it seems like you’ve gotten a lot more comfortable in the frontman role since joining the band. What’s it like just taking the lead, not just for the sake of your dad, but for the fans?

Nowell: Oh, dude, it’s the best. I don’t even have to think about it. We really feel like this is — we’re a band, you know?

Gaugh: It’s [Jakob’s] band too. Now it’s our band. It’s us.

Nowell: It feels like that whenever we’re hanging out, just doing stuff, or at the studio or at these shows. So, this upcoming year feels like a really rad adventure. We got all these different eras [of fans] — people who were in their 50s when [Sublime’s] first stuff dropped, who are still alive, and then their kids and their grandkids and great grandkids. Everybody finds a piece of the discography they can relate to. That’s what is most exciting. It’s not just one or two songs, people sing along to everything.

I was at Warped Tour in Long Beach last year when you guys played and —

Nowell: That was my favorite set!

To me that felt like it encapsulated what you were talking about with the multigenerational groups of fans that have enjoyed you guys and associate you with Long Beach.

Gaugh: It was like a homecoming for me. I remembered playing the Chili Cook off, you know, right over there in the same area [as Warped Tour], and it was just bringing me back 30 years. It’s so meaningful to be in our backyard playing our music again, right there. This is where it all started. It’s come full circle.

Nowell: It was like playing at a local bar in a cool way. I had this huge group of people up front, they were just talking and shouting and saying stuff, like f–ing with us and joking around. I was like “Damn this is great!”

How about you, Eric? How’d you feel playing Warped?

Wilson: [Mumbles] It was f–ing awesome.

Now that you’ve played all these festival shows, from Coachella to No Values, you’ve got your own festival going on. Can you talk a little bit about Sublime Fest and your Sublime Reef Madness Cruise and how you came up with it?

Nowell: We could put on a bunch of the bands we love, and some of our boys, like Vandals, and make it our own vibe.

Gaugh: You walk around Coachella and there’s so many different elements there. Wouldn’t it be neat if we could make like all this like a Long Beach element, a Sublime element. Looking at this thing, it’s like “Oh wow. So we can actually get some of our friends and set up like a tattoo booth, and have our idea of art and everything out there, and mix it all together — food, art, music — bringing all these different elements, and friends of ours that play music. We get to decide who’s going to share the stage with us, so it’s really neat. It’s like planning a high school party or something like that.

Nowell: The biggest backyard party ever seen.

You guys always had your own sound going on, what’s it like to see that the fans still want it?

Wilson: It took a lotta years to catch on, but it did.

Nowell: Yeah, the kids really want that, like ‘90s, Y2K kind of vibe. That was the last era of like cool authenticity and stuff. You can see it when young people make stuff to look retro … when things get so high fidelity, we’re almost losing a little element, so I think these festivals kind of seek to bring some of that back in a way that everybody can get into.

With “Until the Sun Explodes,” Sublime’s first album in three decades, Jakob Nowell, Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson rediscover their studio chemistry, jamming new songs that feel instantly familiar onstage.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

You guys also have the timeless iconography of the Sublime sun logo. The title of the album is “Until the Sun Explodes.” Does that title have any particular meaning to you?

Nowell: It’s almost just another way of saying “forever,” like “Oh baby I’m gonna love you till the sun blows up.” That’s gonna happen in billions of years, if at all. The fact that [Sublime’s] lasted this long and has this many fans is evidence to me that we wanna be here forever. I think that’s what everybody wants for themselves.

Jake, you’ve taken steps to advance your own aspirations and music with your label, Sunburnt Records, how does that fit into where Sublime is right now?

I was inspired by the whole Skunk Records thing [Sublime’s first label], Evan Zinger with [his lifestyle brand] SRH, and just all the local brands I grew up with when I was a kid. So just trying to do a cool, chill local thing that has that vibe of putting on small shows and kind of getting to use this new notoriety to be like, man, I have so many friends in these small bands like Strange Case and Eight Ball, and other bands up and down Southern California. Let’s put on shows and sneak them on a Sunburnt Stage at [Sublime Fest] and if people really like that Sublime sound here’s a bunch of kids who are carrying the torch like Slightly Stoopid did when they started out. Mike Watt always said “start your own band!” So the more we can inspire people to do that and be some small part of that, it’s a dream come true.

Do you feel like this version of Sublime is something Brad would be proud of?

Gaugh: We all kind of brought our own element to the music orignally. So we just kind of followed that recipe. Jake’s his own person, he’s got his own influences, and we just kind of stick with that idea. Jake brings in his feelings, and Eric brings in his and we sat there and recorded this song, and then as we were recording it, we’re coming up with ideas. It’s like, “Oh wait, we should do this here, slow that down there, stop here,” it’s all a conglomeration of ideas, everyone does their part, brings in their own spices and we mix it in a pot like gumbo.

What to do after writing some of this century’s most devastating songs about the torment of breaking up? Write some of this century’s most devastating songs about the ecstasy of getting together.

With her first two albums — 2021’s Grammy-winning “Sour” and 2023’s triple-platinum “Guts” — Olivia Rodrigo proved herself to be perhaps the most gifted of the many chroniclers of Gen Z romance to emerge in Taylor Swift’s wake. She could convey the hot sting of betrayal, as in her smash debut single, “Drivers License”; she could channel the injustice of watching an ex somehow carry on, as in “Good 4 U”; she could deliver a sick burn like somebody handing out Halloween candy, as in “Get Him Back!” (Because it deserves remembering: “He had an ego and a temper and a wandering eye / He said he’s six-foot-two, and I’m like, ‘Dude, nice try.’”)

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Yet on her thrilling third LP, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” Rodrigo, 23, turns to the pleasure that comes before the pain — and, in a feat very few in pop music are ever able to pull off, ends up with a number of first-flush-of-love songs as potent as any breakup tune.

She opens the album with “Drop Dead,” in which she compares a guy in line for the bathroom at a bar to an “angel on the walls of Versailles” — an early sign of how high the emotional ceiling is here. In “Stupid Song” she cycles through a series of metaphors to describe her lovesickness — she’s a car without a brake, she’s a heart made of melting wax — before finding a simpler but infinitely more vivid way of getting her point across: “You should feel how I feel when somebody says your name.” (Chills.)

“Maggots for Brains” is a song about how useless she becomes “when my baby goes away,” and let’s just take a second to savor the fact that Rodrigo is putting that title into the world less than four years after she was still a working Disney kid. The album’s next tune, “U + Me = <3,” is its high point: a euphoric promise of devotion that sounds like Sixpence None the Richer reborn as a Midwestern emo band. It’s got two young lovers carving their names into car seat leather, and it’s got a girl trying to impress her boyfriend’s older sister with her cynical humor and her taste in yacht rock.

More important, it’s got these lines of pure poetry: “They say modern love’s a cruel endeavor / And to that I say, F— it, whatever.” Kurt Cobain would be proud.

Working with her longtime producer, Dan Nigro, Rodrigo has expanded her stylistic palette to accommodate these new emotions; “You Seem Pretty Sad” pulls in chiming folk-rock and synthed-up new wave and even has a gorgeous wine-bar piano ballad, “Less,” that might put the scare in Rodrigo’s pal Laufey.

The cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s new album.

(Geffen Records)

The album is structured to trace the arc of a relationship, which means that the second half dips into the heartbreak we’re used to getting from Rodrigo. But she’s writing about familiar scenarios with new wisdom, drawing sophisticated conclusions about why people in love do the things they do (and don’t do the things they don’t).

In “The Cure,” which rides a strummed acoustic-guitar pattern that strongly recalls Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm,” she realizes a boyfriend can’t fix what’s broken inside her; “Begged” examines the limits of one partner’s willingness to look past the failings of the other. After hearing these songs, the happier ones at the beginning of the album reveal bits of shadow that Rodrigo has built into them to presage what’s to come — to presage what always comes.

It’s fitting, then, that Robert Smith of the Cure — perhaps pop’s most jubilant gloommeister — hovers over this LP like a patron saint: nodded to in “The Cure,” of course, but also “Drop Dead,” where Rodrigo name-checks the Cure’s classic “Just Like Heaven.” Smith himself turns up in “What’s Wrong With Me” for a duet with Rodrigo in which the two learn to accept that love, in the end, might be what kills them.

“My head is spinning and my stomach is sick,” they sing, and neither sounds like they’d have it any other way.

“I’M still the same person as the 15-year-old me,” decides Blur guitarist Graham Coxon.

“Still a romantic idiot, still reasonably innocent — and I think that’s a healthy way to be,” he continues.

“I don’t want to be a cynical old bastard, so I’m lucky I still have a magical outlook on life.”

I’m talking to Coxon, 57, about his “lost” solo album, Castle Park, which is finally set to come blinking into the sunlight.

The product of sessions which took place in the winter of 2011, it is named after his teenage stomping ground in the centre of Colchester — an affirmation of that younger “same person” self.

In a wider sense, it serves as a nod to his Essex hometown — a city since 2022 — where he attended Stanway School, met Damon Albarn and where, in 1988, they formed Blur with Dave Rowntree and Alex James.

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It was there, too, that his band leader and clarinet-playing dad introduced him to music, namely, “the Bs — Beethoven and The Beatles”.

The album cover resembles a classic picture postcard, divided into quarters and depicting scenes from the park with its vast Norman castle and an ornate Victorian bandstand.

Coxon says: “There were a few occasions when me and a group of friends would stay in the park rather too long, get locked in and have to climb over the fence.

“I remember being slightly inebriated and dancing around the bandstand — and then, of course, there was the statue.”

He’s referring to the imposing bronze Angel Of Victory which stands atop the Colchester War Memorial at the southern entrance to Castle Park.

“I had some dangerous moments when I climbed up and gave that statue a kiss,” he admits. “I used to do it regularly — she was very beautiful.”

If that fearless act of youthful exuberance was an example of Coxon’s romantic nature, it’s clear that he carried it forward to the album that was shelved until now.

“It comes through,” he agrees, “even though there are songs about getting dumped.

“There’s a lot of processing my own romanticism on that album, but not in a heavy way.

“It’s reasonably light-hearted for the first half at least, even if it takes a tumble down to the most depressing song I’ve ever written [album closer All The Rage]. But that’s life, isn’t it?”

Looking back at ten tracks of “romance, break-ups, heartache and alienation”, he says: “When I was writing them, I was in a very problematic situation emotionally. Somehow, songs have a way of describing your situation more succinctly than whatever is going through your mind.”

In 2026, I’m happy to report that Coxon is in a much better place. It’s 10am when I’m connected via video call to the home he shares with partner and bandmate in The Waeve, Rose Elinor Dougall, and their daughter.

“You’ve got me before my brains kick in,” he warns me, but he soon warms to the task of talking about his music outside of Blur.

Aside from the imminent release of Castle Park, this year sees reissues of Coxon’s back catalogue, beginning with his debut album The Sky Is Too High (1998) and its follow-up, The Golden D (2000).

He’s also working on the third Waeve album with Rose, which he describes as “a lot less hard-edged” than 2024’s City Lights.

“It’s more floaty and summery,” he reveals, before reaffirming his romantic credentials.

“Lyrically, there’s a lot more affection. Rose and I go through life together and, sometimes, saying things in lyrics is the nicest way to show affection away from our normal hectic lives.”

But it is his “lost” Castle Park, with lyricism and songcraft as assured as anything in his solo repertoire, that we are focusing on. So, how come the album joined a legendary list that includes The Who’s Lifehouse and The Beach Boys’ Smile by lying dormant for years?

Coxon casts his mind back to 2011 when he headed to The Pool studios in Bermondsey with Ben Hillier, co-producer of Blur’s 2003 album Think Tank (made without Graham except for one track) and engineer on The Golden D.

He says: “It was really odd because I recorded 20 songs and ten of them became A&E [released in 2012], which was based around improvised bass lines.

“The other ten were weirdly different — more trad indie, jingle-jangly, with a bit of Sixties influence.”

Those songs, you may have guessed, were earmarked for Castle Park.

Speaking of parks, Coxon had form thanks to Parklife, Blur’s immortal hit with lyrics by Damon Albarn and music by the whole band, not to mention a vocal masterclass from Phil Daniels.

Despite a widely held belief, the song wasn’t inspired by Castle Park but, as Albarn once explained, by London’s Hyde Park where he used “to watch people and pigeons”.

It seems as if the Britpop icons’ 2012 reunion, which included a momentous Hyde Park show to mark the end of the Olympics, is the chief reason why Coxon’s next album didn’t appear.

That rapturously received performance led to Blur’s run of festival shows in 2013 and a new album in 2015, The Magic Whip.

Then Coxon moved on to mastermind soundtracks for Channel Four comedy drama The End Of The F***ing World as well as embarking on a sci-fi music/graphic novel project in 2021 called Superstate.

He founded The Waeve with partner Rose and, of course, reunited with Blur for their 2023 album The Ballad Of Darren and a tour including two barnstorming nights at Wembley Stadium.

In other words, while Castle Park gathered dust, Coxon kept himself busy.

He says: “I’m really not sure what happened. Maybe it was lack of confidence. Maybe I thought these songs weren’t fashionable and who would give a s**t?”

Over the years, however, his theory didn’t stand up as fans would repeatedly ask him to release Castle Park. “They even knew the name of the album.”

The clamour heightened when Coxon broke out some of the songs during live shows.

These include opening track Billy Says, a spiky three-minute slice of mod-pop, which finds him channelling his heroes, The Kinks and The Jam.

He says: “Ray Davies is the best songwriter we ever had, followed closely by Paul McCartney, and The Jam was a huge band for me. I thought that being a Jam fan elevated me as a person.”

Other tracks to receive a live airing were Alright, with its pithy putdowns of a love rival, a playful duet with Lucy Parnell called There’s A Little House, and gorgeous acoustic guitar-led Easy.

Of all the Castle Park songs, there’s one which Coxon is most proud of, the poised, richly atmospheric Isn’t It Funny.

“It came to me in the dream,” he says. “I had the chords and half of the chorus, I heard some words — and then I woke up. I thought, ‘My gosh, I need to make a quick note of this.’”

Isn’t It Funny contains the lines: “The sun made black her hair and the river her eyes. She needs no man, no sea, nor heather. She’ll change your mind and slip away.”

By way of explanation, Coxon says: “I realise that there’s always been this elusive feminine spirit or a goddess of nature in my work.

“I don’t write songs about this entity for my own excitement. They just come out.”

Then there’s the sublime Mélodie Pour Christine, a lyric-free classical piece for harp and strings with Lucy Parnell’s vocals serving as another instrument.

“That piece was important to me,” he says. “I devoted it to a French friend of mine — a wonderful person who I loved very much and is no longer with us.”

Another song that hits the mark is bleak All The Rage, which, he says, “communicates one’s despondency around the creative life — and that has got even worse 15 years later!”

If most of Castle Park is filled with distinctly English sensibilities, American influences arrive with a cover of When You Find Out by short-lived Seventies punk-pop trio The Nerves.

“It’s a great song, even Blondie would go, ‘Hey, this is a good one’. I just made it slightly less than perfect,” laughs Coxon.

Then there’s “an attempt at soul” with Forget Today which finds him employing his considerable saxophone skills and Ben Hillier providing Hammond organ. (Worth noting that Coxon played sax on Parklife.)

Dripping Soul ventures into territory occupied by Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks, “so it’s not exclusively weird south-east of England s**t”.

“I love westerns, particularly Sergio Leone films. A Fistful Of Dollars and all that,” says Coxon.

In the song, he is peering “beyond the veil” at the “souls of those cowboys who came from a place where life is cheap and death is taken for granted”.

With its galloping guitars, Coxon realised he couldn’t turn Dripping Soul into “a hanging out in Camden sort of thing”.

But he does believe that the house he shares with Rose in London is populated by the souls of dead people.

“I don’t even believe in ghosts, but I’ve seen them,” he reports. “So that’s a bit of a quandary.”

Coxon says he still likes to talk to dear departed loved ones: His mum, Christine, drummer Graham Fox, the Irish journalist who first wrote about Blur, Leo Finlay, and the head of Food Records, Andy Ross.

“I don’t really see them as gone,” he says. “I can still talk to them — they may have disappeared but they’re still fully alive in my mind.”

With that said, we return to 1998 when all those people were still with us — to the making of Coxon’s debut solo album The Sky Is Too High.

It was an unvarnished, largely acoustic affair featuring his own artwork and, as he explains: “It was recorded through really good gear but approach was quite raw.”

Sandwiched between Blur’s self-titled fifth album and its follow-up, 13, “It was done in a bit of a hurry — I wasn’t f***ing about.”

The project had begun when a neighbour asked Coxon to write a couple of songs for a film about Victorian bare-knuckle fighter Tom Sayers — setting wheels in motion that are still spinning.

He says: “That request turned into an addiction to writing songs and releasing them.”

So, how did his solo endeavours affect his relationship with his Blur bandmates. “They didn’t talk about it,” replies Coxon, “Though I did once catch Damon singing R U Lonely? He said, ‘That’s quite a catchy little tune’.

“Attempting to develop as a songwriter when Damon Albarn is your best mate is hard work. I mean, he’d already written some bloody good songs by then.”

Released in 2000, Coxon’s second effort, The Golden D, is very different — heavier, more abrasive and driven by searing electric guitars.

The mood changes with the funky Oochy Woochy, which tapped into Coxon’s fascination with Nineties’ fusion of hip-hop and jazz — a style developed by American rapper Guru called Jazzmatazz.

He says: “I’ve always liked that skinny beat stuff with James Brown loops or similar. Stuff like Public Enemy and 3rd Bass. Oochy Woochy is not a mickey take but a go at that.”

With physical releases of Coxon’s other albums still to come this year, there’s plenty more scope to revisit his solo journey.

Then, in November, he’s hitting the road for a UK tour, bringing the songs back to life still further.

Looking back on his output, Coxon says: “I think it has had a lot to do with my development as a person.

“You know, that anxiety-ridden creative weirdo who puts all this stuff out there.

“I guess that’s why I like Castle Park coming out — because now there are no secrets. You’ve got it all.”

GRAHAM COXON

Castle Park

4.5 STARS

• Also released: The Sky Is Too High and The Golden D

In the debut episode of “The De Los Podcast,” hosts Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito spoke with the Latin Grammy-nominated singer and actor Leslie Grace about her long-awaited new music — plus some of the highlights and pain points throughout her film career.

Released in May, Grace’s bilingual record “Amor, ¿Quién Eres?” is the first album she’s released in over a decade. Suffused with what Exposito described as “tropical eleganza,” the album is a far cry from the Christian music Grace recorded in her teen years — and a marked shift from the Latin Grammy-nominated self-titled project she released in 2013. She touched on some of the personal developments required to reach the more sensual sonic landscape she explored in her latest release.

“The biggest learning has been how to protect my creative space, while I grow it and discover at the same time,” she told De Los.

The 31-year-old also discussed her work in the 2021 movie musical “In the Heights” — and the online backlash the film received due to the lack of other Afro-Latinos in the cast.

“The lack of representation within film [and] diversity within the Latin community is a conversation we haven’t touched on as much,” she said. “Only so many films [are] given a shot. There [are] certain ways that Latinos are portrayed that are very narrowed down in film. I think it’s a worthwhile conversation at any time. I’m glad that people started to talk about that, so [we] can get more stories.”

Reflecting further on her filmography, Grace talked about the canceled release of “Batgirl,” in which she played the titular role. The film, which was originally for a late 2022 debut on the HBO Max streaming service, was axed by its studio Warner Bros. for financial reasons.

“It was disappointing because we knew the film that we were making,” Grace said of the movie, which was in postproduction when it was scrapped. “I knew that it wasn’t a reflection of our work, because this is something that happens. But I think because of the context of the conversation around representation, and the way that films can be discarded, after a lot of work and time and money has gone into something … the creative community really felt for me.”

During that period, Grace said the support from other creatives helped her move forward. She has since starred in more independent films in recent years — including “In the Summers,” which won a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024 — and the 2026 features “Stages” and “Campeón Gabacho,” which premiered at this year’s edition of South By Southwest.

“I really am grateful for every person that reached out to me and was like: ‘Hey, I’ve got you, whatever you need,’ or ‘This is wrong,’” Grace said. “When something happens to me, I focus on my experience and what I gained from it, that no one could really take away.”

Another Brat summer is upon us.

Charli XCX announced Monday that her new album, “Music, Fashion, Film,” drops July 24, and it already looks iconic.

That’s because the cover art, which Charli shared on Instagram, features three icons within their fields. The Velvet Underground’s John Cale represents music, Marc Jacobs stands for fashion and beloved director Martin Scorsese symbolizes film.

“My new album Music, Fashion, Film is out july 24th,” Charli wrote on Instagram. “11 songs, 30 minutes, 5 seconds. available to pre order now, love you xx.”

She released the first two singles, “Rock Music” and “SS26,” in May. The latter, a shorthand for the fashion industry’s current “Spring, Summer ‘26” season, has an accompanying video that features the artist strutting down an X-shaped runway, singing, “We’re walking on a runway that goes straight to hell / Nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film.”

“Rock Music,” the album’s first single, was met with mixed reactions from critics and fans. The song telegraphs Charli’s genre switch from electronic pop to the titular rock music, announcing, “I think the dance floor is dead” over heavily distorted guitar.

“If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” Charli told British Vogue in April. “What’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on [rock music] could be.” She later clarified on Instagram, “I never said i was making a rock album.”

“Music, Fashion, Film” is not the artist’s first album in 2026. She released “Wuthering Heights,” the soundtrack to Emerald Fennel’s movie of the same name, in February. Cale is featured on “House,” the soundtrack album’s lead single.

Charli has added acting and producing to her repertoire in recent years. She produced and played a somewhat fictionalized version of herself in Aidan Zamiri’s mockumentary “The Moment,” based on the “Brat” album cycle, which Times film critic Amy Nicholson called “ ‘Spinal Tap’ for the era of stan culture.”

She also co-starred in Daniel Goldhaber’s “Faces of Death” remake, released in April, and is set to appear in Gregg Araki’s upcoming erotic comedy “I Want Your Sex” and Cathy Yan’s art-world thriller “The Gallerist” by year’s end.

“I’ve always been really inspired by cinema when making my music, more so than listening to music, to be honest,” Charli told The Times at the Sundance Film Festival in January. “It’s an honor to be able to be acting, working on projects and writing and producing films. It’s kind of my dream.”

The title of Violet Grohl’s debut album, “Be Sweet to Me,” started as an inside joke.

“‘Be Sweet to Me’ is a phrase that my best friend and I say to each other when we’re play-fighting,” says the rising singer. “It’s what we do to put an end to it. Like, ‘Oh, be sweet to me!’”

The phrase might also carry a double meaning, one Grohl is still parsing. At some point in the naming process, someone in her circle asked Grohl if she was making a plea. Remembering that moment, Grohl pauses to consider.

“I guess it can be seen as a pretext for the album. Just … be sweet,” she says. “But at the same time, it’s literally just what my best friend and I say to each other when we’re calling each other idiots.”

Intentional or not, no one could blame the 20-year-old for inserting an earnest request for audiences to proceed with kindness as she readies her debut album, which finally landed Friday.

The reasons are pretty self-explanatory: Grohl is the eldest child of modern rock icon Dave Grohl, the highly decorated founder and centerpiece of Foo Fighters and onetime drummer of Nirvana, and his wife, former model and TV producer Jordyn Blum. In an age of “nepo” accusations and internet dogpiles, it would be completely understandable for Grohl to feel anxious about her album’s reception.

But if she is, it doesn’t show. On a warm day in mid-May, Grohl appears relaxed and self-assured — but not arrogant — as she idles on a sofa in a cozy Studio City ADU owned by her publicist. Encased in a long, black sleeveless dress, she’s giving a mixture of off-duty rock star and summer goth. Her arms host an array of intricate tattoos; I spot a raven, a skull and a vintage lace fan. Next to her is a bulging Balenciaga mini bag, and a pair of oversized sunglasses on her head are perched atop a mop of jet black curls. The high contrast of her pale, makeup-less skin and swept back hair makes her round, gray-blue eyes appear even more pronounced.

“Everyone wants you to be an idealized version of … not even yourself, but of what they want you to be,” she says. “Sorry, that’s just not gonna happen with me.”

(Bella Newman)

Any time spent with her reveals that Grohl is the sort of person who is ultra-sensitive to the energy of places, people and even the long-deceased. In her free time, Grohl is an avid lover of anything paranormal. “The same time I got into horror movies, I started watching ‘Ghost Adventures’ on Travel Channel,” she says. “It totally sent me down this rabbit hole of the supernatural.”

When I ask if she’d ever made contact with any ghosts, Grohl nods emphatically before describing a trip to a hunting estate near the Scottish Highlands. “It is the most haunted place I’ve ever been in my whole life,” she says. “I walked into the house, and it was like a blast of cold air, chills everywhere. It’s this instinctual feeling of, I’m not alone here … I heard footsteps and disembodied voices, I saw shadows, I had crazy f–ing dreams. It’s so eye-opening, but it’s not evil or negative.”

Chilling films and Lynchian surrealism pervade the tracklist of “Be Sweet to Me,” which relies on symbolic lyricism to illustrate coming-of-age stories. From a sonic perspective, listeners will be thrilled to know that her debut does not just make for an entertaining listen — it’s a dedicated towpath to the very squealing heart of alternative rock, built by an artist who understands her music history on a granular level. Across a tight 11 tracks, “Be Sweet to Me” careens across late-’80s and ‘90s experimental genres, from ripping alt-rock on “Bug in the Cake” to hazy dream pop on “Mobile Star” to aggro Clinton-era alt metal on “Often Others,” and even a bit of chugging hardcore on “Cool Buzz.”

As many references as she brought to the recording process, led by producer Justin Raisen (a known collaborator of Charli XCX and Kim Gordon, who made the introduction), Grohl is not attempting to cosplay the grunge era. Instead of simply mirroring influences, she deftly puts her own spin on each arrangement with inventive, grabby arrangements, razor-sharp production and her versatile vocals, which can bellow like Courtney Love, murmur like PJ Harvey or turn ethereal like Elizabeth Fraser.

“Justin has a crew of musicians that he works with, and they’re all close friends of his,” Grohl explains of the album’s backing band, which Raisen assembled to mimic the Wrecking Crew, a loose collective of session players who appeared on some of the most beloved albums of the 1960s and ‘70s. “They’re the coolest, most talented, genuine music lovers, and seriously talented musicians … I’d never been in that kind of recording environment before. Everyone would throw out ideas or I would share a reference, and whatever it was about the song, [we’d ask] how we can build and make it a completely new, different thing.”

Growing up in Tarzana/Woodland Hills, Grohl says she’s been singing ever since she could speak. In a baby book, her mother wrote how Grohl, at 8 or 9 months, was “babbling and singing.” She took piano lessons with a teacher who taught her any Beatles song she wanted to learn. She later picked up the ukulele, and then a guitar. Now, it’s any piece of gear, from bass to drums to a lap dulcimer. “I just love messing around with different instruments and seeing all the different sounds I can make,” she says.

Grohl also had an ideal music-taste mentor in her father, who told his eldest all about Björk and acquiesced to playing Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” on repeat. “I think I was 4 or 5, and I remember sitting in front of his computer, and he was talking about how she was from Iceland,” Grohl says of those days. “And I was like, ‘Oh, she’s the princess of Iceland. That was my idea of Björk from a young age. Björk’s ‘Hunter’ music video was a turning point for me.”

By adolescence, while on the road with the Foo Fighters, Grohl would make herself useful by assisting the band’s tour manager. She remembers: “I had a walkie-talkie, I would hand per diems out to people, I would run the envelopes around, and bring my dad a towel after the show, stuff like that.” The live-music atmosphere may have also sparked Grohl’s curiosity in songwriting, which she says began as a way of journaling. “I have cassette demos that I made with a tiny one-track recorder,” she remembers. “Then I started learning how to use Logic right before I turned 13, and that opened up this whole new world.”

One night in May 2018, on a break from the East Coast leg of the Foos’ Concrete and Gold tour, the elder Grohl headlined a benefit concert for the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, where he encouraged his daughter, then only 12, to join him onstage to sing Adele’s “When We Were Young.” A few weeks later, back on tour, Grohl jumped onstage to help sing backup on a few tracks. “It wasn’t my first time singing on a stage, but it was my first time singing on a stage with that many people in [the audience],” she says of the second experience. “I was really scared, but once it was happening, and once it was over, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do. This is my purpose.’”

Chilling films and Lynchian surrealism pervade the tracklist of “Be Sweet to Me,” which relies on symbolic lyricism to illustrate coming-of-age stories.

(Bella Newman)

From there, Grohl became something of a live fixture — a beloved Foos adjunct performer. But clearly one with her own trajectory. In pre-pandemic 2020, Grohl joined the surviving members of Nirvana at the Art of Elysium Gala, where she sang “Heart-Shaped Box.” The next year, father and daughter recorded a duet of “Nausea” by L.A. classic punk favorites X. In 2022, Grohl opened the second tribute to late Foos drummer, Taylor Hawkins, with an aching rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

It should definitely be said that Grohl is hardly pulling a Jakob Dylan as it relates to her parentage — a detail that actually makes her appear that much more self-actualized and approachable, simply because she isn’t trying to circumvent reality or engage in a furious round of name-dropping. She freely discusses the long evening car rides around Los Angeles she’d take with her dad and two younger sisters during the pandemic, the car becoming a music-recommendation feedback loop, with older and younger generations trading off DJ duties. “My sister and I introduced him to Jockstrap,” Grohl chuckles when I ask what bands she introduced her dad to during those rides. “I’d play him old jazz standards, hip-hop. It was a constant thing.”

During those evening rides, Grohl also drank up the city’s otherworldly, vaguely haunted visage. “There’s something special about L.A. that I can’t fully describe,” she says. “There’s inspiration everywhere, so many beautiful people and historic buildings. I love art about L.A. — when people reference L.A. in their music, movies, or books. I grew up here, and I’ve lived here my whole life. I just feel that deep connection to it all.”

Like any great artist, Grohl is a product of her surroundings, and that can’t help but include a very specific, unlikely upbringing. In her own matter-of-fact way, Grohl shrugs as she acknowledges the inescapable pressure of her last name. “Everyone wants you to be an idealized version of … not even yourself, but of what they want you to be,” she says. “Sorry, that’s just not gonna happen with me. You’re not gonna convince me to change. I’m doing this because I love music, and that’s all I’ve ever known. Everyone’s gonna want me to be something, and I’m not the person that will give in to that.”

WHO can blame Paul McCartney for glancing in the rear-view mirror on his latest record? 

At 83, the likely lad from Liverpool, who became a Beatle and Britain’s best-loved songwriter, is due a moment of reflection.  

He looks at it this way: “As a writer, you often write about things in the past, even if it’s just yesterday.” 

Or even, as Macca can’t resist saying, if that past “always seems so far away”.  

“That’s another nice idea. I think I might have done that one,” he adds in acknowledgment of his immortal Beatles ballad Yesterday. 

His 20th solo studio album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, finds him casting his mind back to innocent times before The Beatles changed his life for ever. 

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Five of the 14 tracks visit the simple pleasures of youth — As You Lie There, Days We Left Behind, Down South, Home To Us (a first ever duet with Ringo) and Salesman Saint — and, as you’ll discover, each comes with a captivating back story. 

Here, the master storyteller, whose previous character studies include Eleanor Rigby, The Fool On The Hill and She’s Leaving Home, turns the spotlight on himself for what might just be his most personal song cycle yet. 

On The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, Sir Paul makes you believe in HIS yesterdays. 

Asked why much of his latest work deals with memories, he replies: “I think writers, including me, ask themselves that. 

“When you think about, say, Charles Dickens, what’s he going to write about except stuff he knows and stuff he remembers? Then he can gussy them up.” 

And do recent Beatles and Wings reissue projects have an impact on the way he fashions a song these days? 

“No,” answers McCartney emphatically. “The thing that pulls it all together is me — it’s my brain making music.  

“I don’t think, ‘Wow, oh yeah, let’s do this. This is a Beatles idea, or this is a Wings idea’. I don’t think like that. It’s all current. It’s me. This is what I do.” 

Listen to The Boys Of Dungeon Lane and you’ll understand what he’s getting at.  

Despite first picking up a guitar nearly 70 years ago, he’s still making eclectic, freewheeling music, brimful of ideas, even if many lyrics are bathed in nostalgia. 

The album was recorded over the past five years, when time permitted between touring and other commitments, in the company of in-demand American producer Andrew Watt, known for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, Post Malone, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and, ironically, The Beatles’ chief Sixties chart rivals, the Rolling Stones. 

“We just enjoyed it,” says Macca of his sessions with Watt. “We were like a couple of Boys Of Dungeon Lane — little boys in a sandpit — and we were having fun.” 

So, with the help of telling observations from the man himself, given to me by his team, let’s take a deep dive into the key tracks. 

As You Lie There begins proceedings in memorable style with an intimate spoken word passage delivered over minor key acoustic strums. 

McCartney intones: “I used to walk past your house. Every night I’d look up at your window. The light was on. I saw your silhouette on the blind. Do you think of me? Do I ever cross your mind?” 

The song, with its squalling rock refrain, recalls a teenage crush from the time Macca lived at 20 Forthlin Road in the Allerton area of south Liverpool, in the house where he and John Lennon first discovered their spark of creative chemistry. 

“Up in one of the ­windows, there was a girl I ­fancied called Jasmine,” he says of his tale of unrequited love. “But I didn’t know how to approach her. I never spoke to her. 

“The joke was, she did show up later that year and knocked on the door. I was indisposed — I was on the toilet — so I missed Jasmine.” 

Aside from the sweet story behind the lyrics, As You Lie There is important because it is the song that kickstarted the whole process, just as the world was emerging from the Covid pandemic. 

McCartney says: “The album really started when my manager said, ‘Would you like to meet Andrew Watt?’ 

“I knew he was an active young producer, and I liked some of his stuff. I said, ‘Yeah, great’. He said, ‘Well, it’s just a cup of tea. Go down to his studio’.” 

The pair hit it off and what began as that cuppa at Watt’s basement studio — located in his Beverly Hills residence once owned by Charlie Chaplin — soon turned into something much more significant. 

Macca described his songwriting process, how he would try “to find  

a really weird chord”, to give him “a little inspiration”. 

To his delight, he realised that Watt, a big guitar collector, “had figured that if I was coming down, it would be handy to have a left-handed guitar. 

“I struck this mad chord,” he continues. “I still have no idea what it is, then I changed one note, then another. Suddenly we  had a three-chord sequence and Andrew said, ‘We should record this’.” 

As the song took shape, they considered bringing in Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers on drums but Watt suggested that McCartney, a more than proficient drummer, should play them himself.  

He says: “I really enjoyed drumming to it, so I put down the drum track, then obviously the bass.  

“Then Andrew put the guitar lick down, because he’s a good guitar player. And over a few days, we made As You Lie There. That started the journey.” 

The “journey” included recordings in various LA studios as well as Macca’s own Hog Hill Mill in Sussex and his old Beatles stomping ground, Abbey Road. 

Of all the ensuing songs, first single Days We Left We Behind sets the tone — and is also significant for yielding the album title. 

“This is very much a memory song for me,” says McCartney. “I was just thinking about those days I left behind.” 

Whenever he goes to Liverpool these days, to visit the city’s Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) for instance, he notes that “the back entrance to the airport is in Dungeon Lane”. 

He remembers trips down that lane “as a little kid, because I used to wander off, just on my own, with my little bird book”. 

It was the keen ornithologist’s gateway to stunning Mersey Shore, an area teeming with wading birds just a short distance from suburban Speke where he lived between the ages of five and 13. 

“Speke is quite working class,” says McCartney. “We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice it. 

“It’s my wife Nancy’s favourite track on the album. When we play it to people, we say, ‘You don’t need to cry’, and then you look up and see that they are.” 

When asked how he settled on the album title, Macca says you could ask the same question about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

“It’s just some words I like. We were thinking Along The Mersey Shore could be good. But then I liked The Boys Of Dungeon Lane — it’s a bit more, ‘What’s that about?’ ” 

McCartney says Days We Left Behind “involves a bit in the middle about John and Forthlin Road”. (The McCartney family moved there in 1955). 

It suggests that he and his much-missed songwriting partner in The Beatles “wrote a secret code, to never be spoken”. 

This leads us to the folkie Down South which, says Macca, is “another one about reminiscing”.  

“I often think about John and George,” he continues. “We used to hitchhike in the days before The Beatles. It was in the days when you could — now I warn my grandkids, ‘Don’t do it’, because there are too many nutters out there.” 

He remembers: “I got a tip from someone who said, ‘You start off in Chester — because that’s where all the lorries are and they’re all going straight down south. That’s a good place to get your first lift’.” 

With Harrison, seven months his junior, coming along for the ride to places like Harlech in Wales, it was a perfect chance to do some “bonding” with his future bandmate. 

And speaking of bandmates, what about the rousing Home To Us, which, for good reason, is the only track McCartney doesn’t play the drums on. 

During one of his breaks from sessions with Watt, he “talked to Ringo about Andrew”. 

“Then Ringo went round to Andrew’s studio and drummed a bit. Next time I saw Ringo, he said, ‘Well, he didn’t do anything with it.’  

“I asked what he’d expected and he said, ‘Well, you know, a track’.” 

When Macca finally heard his old mucker’s efforts, he suggested to Watt: “We SHOULD make a track and send it to Ringo. So, we did.” 

On writing the Home To Us lyrics, he reveals: “This song is done totally with Ringo in mind. I’m talking about where we came from.  

“In common with a lot of people, you come from nothing and you build yourself up. Ringo was the one who came from the most ‘nothing’ in The Beatles. 

“He was from the Dingle and that was well hard. He used to get mugged coming home from work. 

“Even though it was crazy, it was ‘home to us’ and I made the song around that idea.” At first, Ringo only sang a few lines of chorus, but Macca rang him and said he’d “love to hear him sing the whole thing”. 

“Next, we took my first line, Ringo’s second line and we had a duet — something we’d never done before.  

“We also wanted backing vocals, and I had the idea it would be nice to hear girls. Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri are mates — and they did it.” 

The last of McCartney’s memory songs is the most poignant, Salesman Saint, which pays tribute to his midwife mother Mary who died when he was only 14 (the “mother Mary” of Let It Be) and his salesman/amateur musician father Jim. 

He says: “This song is me remembering my mum and dad. I was born in World War II and I often think, ‘Bloody hell, it’s tough enough having a baby now but imagine if we were all conscious that bombs could be falling any minute’ — and Liverpool was getting heavily bombed.  

“I was thinking about them bringing up this kid in those circumstances. My dad happened to be a cotton salesman, and my mum was a nurse. They did it. They managed it and they brought up me and my brother [Mike]. 

“Got us to doctors, got us to school and did all these things under those circumstances. At the end of the song, there’s music I’m trying to make from their era.” 

So now you’ve heard about all the songs inspired by McCartney’s youth but there are NINE more tracks to digest. So here, in Macca’s own words, are his thoughts on those: 

Lost Horizon: “This one came about when our dearly beloved and now sadly deceased studio manager, Eddie Klein, was logging some old cassettes of mine.  

“He asked me if I remembered Lost Horizon and I said, ‘No’. He said, ‘It’s good, you should listen to it’. So, we remade it faithfully to the cassette version — just with a more modern sound.” 

Ripples On A Pond: “It’s a love song. Like a few of the songs, we started this in my studio in Sussex. I said to Andrew, ‘You’re supposed to be a pop producer and we’re making all these records that don’t sound like that to me so, come on, let’s pop this one up!’ ”  

Mountain Top: “My wife is a real live music fan and if there’s anything on she’s like, ‘Can we go?’ So, we go to Glastonbury every year and I started fantasising about some young girl tripping — she’s magic mushroomed out. The things you write songs about!” (Nancy delivers the closing spoken words.)  

We Two: “A lot of Beatles records were made on a four-track Studer machine, including A Day In The Life. It’s such a classic now. I’ve got one in the studio and we use it sometimes. Andrew loves all these recording legends of the past. I showed him the Studer and he said, ‘Can we use it now?’ Luckily, it’s in full working order so we did We Two on it. It’s a little love song.” 

Come Inside: “Going to side two now. We start it off with a rocker love song. It’s straightforward — but with verve.” 

Never Know: “When I was in LA, I always liked the idea of Laurel Canyon and that scene. The days of Joni Mitchell, the Eagles — all that hanging out, getting stoned and playing guitars. So that was the vibe that started off Never Know.” 

Life Can Be Hard: “I had a little instrumental chord sequence during Covid — and there was a little baby in the house, my wife’s niece’s new baby and it was a thrill. For a lot of people, Covid was terrible if you weren’t with family.  

“Anyway, this baby used to like these chords, and it became a song. Life can be hard, but that’s when we put it together again. It’s a positive message.”  

First Star Of The Night: “I was on tour and had a day off, which was precious. We were in Costa Rica and it rained hard — all day heavy, tropical rain. I was thinking about being out by the pool, but you really couldn’t go out.  

“I thought, ‘I know, I’ll write a song’. I had my guitar with me. So, this starts out, ‘Even when it’s raining’, but then I switched it to, ‘Even when it’s raining inside’, just to give myself somewhere to go with the song.” 

Momma Gets By: “The last track on the album and it’s totally imaginary. I was thinking of Porgy and Bess’s world. It’s basically about a woman who you can see is the strength in the family.” 

Finally, Macca is asked how he hopes listeners will respond to his new album. 

He replies: “Well, I hope they fall in love with the songs and the performances. I hope it takes them to a place of joy.” 

Whether it’s Penny Lane, Dungeon Lane or Memory Lane, Paul McCartney will transport you there. 

Roll up! Roll up! He is your magical not-so-mysterious tour guide. 

PAUL McCARTNEY

The Boys Of Dungeon Lane

★★★★★

ELLIE GOULDING has confirmed she’s about to drop her sixth album, five months after I told you she was gearing up to release it.

The pop powerhouse teased that the follow-up to 2023 No1 Higher Than Heaven will be out “soon”.

In an exclusive chat after her headline set at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland, Ellie added: “I’ve spent the past few years working really closely with a brilliantly talented producer and multi-instrumentalist called Jack Rochon.

“I actually found him on TikTok when he was still relatively undiscovered, living in Canada.

“He’s since moved to LA and worked with Beyonce.

“I immediately connected with what he was doing creatively.

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“I have always loved discovering emerging talent and championing new voices, just like I did when I first started out and discovered Starsmith.

“We’ve recorded hundreds of songs together, and I loved the freedom of exploring different sounds, feelings, thoughts and experiences.

“It felt really organic and honest, like journaling through music.”

During her incredible set, where she was watched live for the first time by young son Arthur, Ellie debuted upcoming single Black Prada Dress.

Ellie said of the song: “There’s not one definitive experience that inspired it.

“It’s directed at that negative, critical voice bringing you down. And that voice could be your own, internal voice — that self-critical, destructive one.

“I feel like we all have one of those, just like we have different versions of ourselves.

“I love the honesty of it, the rawness, and I hope people can connect to it in their own way.”

Ellie lit up the crowd in Sunderland, kicking off with I Need You Love before hits including Still Falling For You, Love Me Like You Do and Lights.

The singer added with a grin: “It felt so, so good to be back performing at Radio 1 Big Weekend.

“The crowd was amazing, the sun was shining. Great vibes all round.

“I remember my first-ever Radio 1 Big Weekend performance back in 2010.

“My debut album had just gone to No1 and I was on cloud nine.

“It’s been four albums since then.

“So to come back to debut Black Prada Dress in the mix with some of my old favourites feels like a real full-circle moment.”

It was made all the more special for Ellie, who gave birth to her second child, Iris, in March.

She said: “It’s such a joy, my son is here today.

“I love playing music to them, especially classical music.”

With a potential record of classical music in the works, too, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ellie had already given the kids a taster.

Ra-ra Larsson

ZARA LARSSON delivered what could easily go down as her best Big Weekend performance.

The Swedish singer, wearing a light blue ra-ra skirt, pulled out all the stops during her fourth appearance at the festival on Saturday.

She opened with Midnight Sun before blasting through tracks including Can’t Tame Her, Ain’t My Fault, Lush Life and finishing with a cover of Clean Bandit’s Symphony, the No1 song she featured on in 2017.

But the standout moment came when Zara invited one lucky fan, Kayleigh, up to join her.

“This is my favourite part of the show but it’s also the hardest,” Zara said.

“Because I see so many of you are giving me the best energy ever.”

Welcoming Kayleigh on to the stage, Zara immediately recognised her from a previous show in America.

Zara then spray-painted a personalised T-shirt for Kayleigh in front of the crowds after she revealed she was flying over to LA in the coming weeks to watch her perform again.

Now that’s dedication.

EMMA’S GOT NOTHING BUT PRAISE FOR THIEVES

WEDNESDAY actress Emma Myers showed she is a Radio 1 superfan and was spotted hanging out backstage.

Presenter Greg James bought her out on stage to introduce Nothing But Thieves.

My mole told me: “Emma is a massive fan of the band and a close personal friend, so they asked her to come out on stage and introduce them. She is so down to earth and lovely. Everyone was obsessed with her.”

Emma said on stage: “I’m having so much fun, I’m seeing so many incredible artists, it’s so lovely to be here.”

Of Nothing But Thieves, she added: “They were my soundtrack when I was shooting season one of The Good Girl’s Guide To Murder, so I have them on repeat.”

NIALL LOVES A TEE PARTY

NIALL HORAN has revealed he only tours so he can play golf courses around the world.

And he ends up spending more time on makeshift greens than in the studio when writing albums.

The former One Direction singer was on stage at the Big Weekend yesterday in Herrington Country Park, right next to Wearside Golf Club.

Niall, who has a handicap of eight, said: “It’s Niall’s golf tour with music, especially in the States.

“Florida is great – there’s so much good golf in Florida, and we’ll hit random places in Ohio. If we do 30-something shows, I’ll try and get in ten rounds.”

And it doesn’t stop there.

Talking about a place he rented out with songwriter pals to work on his upcoming fourth solo album, Niall said: “When we stayed in this house in the countryside in the UK, we made up our own golf course.

“We put flowerpots in places and made our own courses and chipped balls around.

“We did this all over the world. We make up our own little golf courses in the backyard of wherever we’re playing and we do more of that than we do songwriting.

“On that trip, we wrote Dinner Party – but after a round of golf, of course.”

Now Niall’s eyeing up something entirely different.

When asked on the And The Writer Is podcast if he would pen a musical, he said: “I’d love to. I’ve often thought about that.

“That would be such a cool thing, to put some time aside to actually dig in for six months to try and write something. But I haven’t had the offer yet.”

VICKY: A FAT LOT OF GOOD

DJ VICKY HAWKESWORTH managed to catch some performances between her own sets at Big Weekend.

She said backstage: “Nothing But Thieves were amazing and Fatboy Slim was so good . . .  way better than I thought.

“Not that I thought he wouldn’t be good, but you know what I mean.

“Also, those visuals. If I was off my nut, I’d be, like, ‘I’m not well’.”

Luckily for Vicky, she was as sober as a judge.

MY one to watch from the festival is rising talent Alessi Rose.

The Skin singer smashed her set on the New Music stage and will play a run of shows at festivals this summer, as well as supporting Lewis Capaldi and Lorde at their concerts in July and August.

A STELLAR SMITH GOES EXTRA MYLES ON STAGE

★★★★★

MYLES SMITH had Sunderland belting out every word as he smashed his 30-minute set – complete with support from his Drive Safe collaborator Niall Horan.

Sprinting up and down the stage, the soulful singer powered through nine tracks yesterday, including a cover of iloveitiloveitiloveit by his friend Bella Kay.

Speaking about the US singer-songwriter, Myles told the crowd: “This is someone that I’ve been following for a little while now.

“They can’t be here this Big Weekend, but I’m sure they’re gonna be here for many more, so hopefully you can enjoy this song with me.”

His energy was off the charts as he worked his way through hits including Behind, Hold Me In The Dark and Nice To Meet You.

Myles jumped off the stage and into the pit to hug fans before singing Gold.

Out of puff as he climbed back up, he said with a laugh: “I need to go back to the gym.”

Myles finished off his belting show with the stellar Stargazing.

Fans are now counting down the days until he releases his new album My Mess, My Heart, My Life on June 19.

FREYA FRASER

FAMOUS FACES HAVE A DAY TO REMEMBER

THERE are celebrations popping off all over the place.

Not only is it looking like being a scorcher of a Bank Holiday, but famous names from television, music and sport are also coming together to take part in a national “Big Toast” tonight.

At 7pm, people across the country will raise a glass for Celebration Day in memory of people who shaped their lives.

Stephen Fry, Spencer Matthews, Prue Leith and Jake Humphrey are all taking part.

Five-time Paralympic swimming gold medallist Ellie Simmonds is also on board.

She said: “On this Celebration Day, I’m raising a cup of tea to my auntie Shirley and my grandma.

“I’ve got so many memories of them.

“When I was at my biggest events, they were always up there in the crowd, cheering me on, decked in their Team GB flags.”

HIS love life has been almost as varied as his incredible songwriting catalogue.

Sir Paul McCartney endured the tragedy of losing first wife Linda to cancer and a catastrophic £24million divorce from Heather Mills before finally finding happiness again with American businesswoman Nancy Shevell.

But today The Sun can reveal the identity of the secret childhood crush who became Sir Paul’s “one that got away” — a pretty neighbour whose striking good looks inspired the opening track to his new album, which tells the story of his childhood in Liverpool.

The record was unveiled at a preview event in London this month, where the legendary Beatles songwriter recalled memories of a pretty neighbour called Jasmine, who lived close to his home.

Today, it has emerged she is retired mum-of-three Jasmine Howe, who left the area and resettled in Hertfordshire before retiring to the New Forest in Hampshire.

And the now 83-year-old’s ­family were stunned to learn of the £800million rock legend’s youthful infatuation — revealing she had “absolutely no idea” about his fondness for her.

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They explained: “It’s a cute story, she lived nearby and knew who he was, but she never got close to him — meanwhile, he obviously felt very differently!

“It’s an amazing story — a very long time ago now, but we’ve chatted as a family in the past about how Jasmine grew up close to Paul McCartney.
Goosebumps

“She just knew him as one of the boys in the local area. It’s enough to give you goosebumps!”

The Boys Of Dungeon Lane is Sir Paul’s first solo album in five years, and critics say it is his “most personal to date”.

The title is taken from Days We Left Behind, a wistful acoustic track that references Dungeon Lane, near the River Mersey, where McCartney played as a boy, as well as a “secret code” and mysterious promise made to John Lennon at the time, which he insists “will never be broken”.

At a special event, held at the iconic Abbey Road studios in London where the Fab Four ­produced their biggest hits, Sir Paul played tracks from the new record and explained their ­origins — beginning with opening song As You Lie There.

The lyrics recall: “Do I ever cross your mind as you lie there? As you lie across your bed, am I there inside your head?”

Revealing the inspiration to a small invited audience, Sir Paul explained: “Up in one of the ­windows, there was a girl I ­fancied called Jasmine.

“But I didn’t know how to approach her — I never spoke to her.

“The joke was, she did show up later that year and knocked on the door. I was indisposed — I was on the toilet — so I missed Jasmine!”

Turning to his wife Nancy, who he married in 2011, he grinned and quipped: “Sorry, Nancy.”

Prior to meeting his third wife, Macca famously had quite a ­colourful love life.

His first serious romance was with Dorothy ‘Dot’ Rhone, who he met at the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool in 1959.

The pair dated for more than two years and even got engaged, but split just before Beatlemania exploded.

In 1963, Paul met actress and model Jane Asher backstage at one of the band’s concerts.

The relationship would last five years and Paul even moved into the family home on London’s Wimpole Street.

Jane was his muse and introduced him to the avant-garde arts and classical music scene, which would inspire some of his most famous songs.

Despite being charmed by Jane’s cultured family and domestic life, Paul had secret flings with model Maggie McGivern and US writer Francie Schwartz — betrayals that ultimately shattered one of the Sixties’ most iconic romances.

He met his second wife, model and amputee activist Heather Mills, at a charity event in 1999, marrying her three years later.

Their daughter Beatrice was born the following year. However, the pair split acrimoniously three years later with a very publicly played-out divorce — one that cost the star £24million.

However, the singer enjoyed real happiness with his first wife, American photographer Linda.

They married in 1969, raised four children together, and were ­inseparable until her death from breast cancer in 1998.

Growing up, Sir Paul lived with his parents at 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, Liverpool, while Jasmine lived with her family on the corner of neighbouring Hurstlyn Road, just 20 yards away.

Both properties still stand in the south Liverpool suburb, nestled in a series of brick-built terraces — though Sir Paul’s is now owned and maintained by The National Trust as a museum.

The Trust operates tours around Sir Paul’s home and also John Lennon’s childhood home nearby.

Inside, the three-bed property has been meticulously preserved as a snapshot of 1960s Liverpool, including some of the family’s original decor — and a blue plaque outside commemorates “The Birthplace of The Beatles” as Paul and pal John would meet there to compose their earliest songs.

Jasmine later married her boyfriend Charles, known to the family by his middle name, ­Christopher, and they had three sons — Philip, Matthew and, amusingly, Paul.

A photograph of Jasmine posted online by a family member shows her looking elegant in a navy blazer at a relative’s wedding, with carefully cropped blonde hair beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

The relative explained: “She is 83 now and lives quietly. She wouldn’t want it to become any more of a story than it is — she had no idea that Sir Paul liked her, but she’s happy to leave it as that.

“It’s a good story for our family.”

The album, released on May 29, returns the world’s greatest living songwriter to many of his early memories and experiences, with Sir Paul going on to explain more about his 18th solo collection.

He said: “This was a lot of memories of Liverpool for me, but also any days we’ve left behind.

“Everyone’s got them, school, old mates  . . . It has memories of John in the middle — that’s lovely to go back to. Someone asked: ‘What’s the secret code?’ I’m not telling.

“You make up a lot of stuff when you write songs.”

And that admission may chime with Jasmine’s family, who later jokingly insisted: “She never ­actually knocked on his door.”

On another track, Salesman Saint, Sir Paul turns to his parents. “I was born in 1942, in the war. I was too young to appreciate that, but my parents weren’t.

“My dad was a fireman, putting out fires from the bombs. My mum was a nurse and midwife. But they carried on, because they had to.

“Like people in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere now.”

Meanwhile, Down South, one of the album’s most nostalgic tracks, recalls a story of hitchhiking with Lennon and fellow pal and later Beatles bandmate George Harrison.

The lyrics explain: “It was a good way to get to know you before we learned Twist & Shout.”

And reminiscing about the trip, Sir Paul reveals how he and George climbed on to a milk float.

He says: “There was the driver’s seat, a battery and a passenger seat. George got the battery. His jeans had a zip on the back and it connected with the battery. Later, he showed me the big zip burn.”

The new record was unveiled in Liverpool with a series of cryptic posters around the city.

Artwork for the project was designed by Sir Paul’s nephew, Josh.

It features cameos from Ringo Starr, The Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde and Texas frontwoman Sharlene Spiteri.

And its release coincides with a series of major Beatles retrospectives — including Peter Jackson’s seminal Get Back documentary put together from restored archive footage that details the creation of their final album, Let It Be, and the band’s break-up.

But still to come is a major new dramatisation of the band’s rise to fame directed by Sam Mendes and with Paul Mescal as Macca.

The blockbuster will be released simultaneously as a quadrilogy in 2028, with each movie focused on one of the Fab Four’s formative years, charting their coming together as the world’s greatest musical group.

Filming with Mescal as Paul, Harris Dickinson as John, Barry Keoghan as Ringo and Joseph Quinn as George has already begun.

The 69th Grammy Awards will take place Feb. 7 at Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles, organizers said Tuesday during Disney’s annual upfront presentation to advertisers. The show will be the first to air on Disney’s ABC network (and stream on its Hulu and Disney+ platforms) since the Recording Academy ended its half-century-long partnership with Paramount’s CBS.

Nominations for the 2027 ceremony — which will recognize recordings released between Aug. 31, 2025 and Aug. 28, 2026 — are set to be announced Nov. 16. Final Grammys voting will open Dec. 10 and close Jan. 7.

A host for the show hasn’t been announced. Trevor Noah, who began hosting the Grammys in 2021, said his gig at February’s 68th ceremony would be his last.

Big winners at the 2026 Grammys included Bad Bunny, whose “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” was named album of the year; Kendrick Lamar and SZA, who won record of the year with “Luther”; Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, whose “Wildflower” took song of the year; and Olivia Dean, who was named best new artist.

Among the albums and songs already thought to be in contention for high-level nods next year are Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl,” Noah Kahan’s “The Great Divide,” Bruno Mars’ “The Romantic,” Rosalía’s “Lux,” Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” and Sienna Spiro’s “Die on This Hill.”

Clave Especial is finally taking a break.

In the last two months, the corrido tumbado band from Salinas, Calif., performed at the South by Southwest music festival in Texas—and made headlines by singing a narcocorrido; spoke to Latino students at Cornell University in upstate New York; and even embarked on a impromptu 10-hour road trip to show their support for Juan, a contestant from Mexico on one of MrBeast’s latest challenges who has become a viral sensation.

In fact, the trio— lead singer Alejandro Ahumada, guitarist Leonardo Lomeli and tololoche player Rogelio Gonzalez — felt so compelled to make the pilgrimage to the North Carolina grocery store where Juan has been sequestered for months, that they ditched all press events for their latest EP “Afterafter,” released on April 30, in order to meet and serenade him. The band even awarded a $5,000 scholarship to his son, Angel.

“Why? Because it felt so right,” said Ahumada. “His story connected with us, because we also come from hardworking parents that really gave it all for us.”

As the rush of East Coast travel wore off, Clave Especial returned to Salinas to throw a huge homecoming bash. “It’s like a full-circle moment,” said Ahumada of their May 4 performance at the Salinas Sports Complex.

They joined a video call from their childhood bedrooms to discuss “Afterafter,” a five-track project set to a fiery tempo — 140 BPM to be exact — that is nostalgic for summer days and the never-ending after-parties they bring. The songs were selected from their vault, they said, which includes a long list of tracks that didn’t make the cut for “Mija No Te Asustes,” the band’s 2025 critically acclaimed debut that featured co-signs by Fuerza Regida, Edgardo Nuñez and Luis R Conquirez.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was it like to perform back home in Salinas?

Alex: That’s actually the second time that we come back as Clave Especial. The first show was at the Fox Theater, which was a sold-out show. People were asking us, “Hey when are you guys coming back?” We decided to do it now at the Salinas Sports Complex.

Jumping to the EP, how did “Afterafter” come to be?

Alex: It was more like a fun concept that we kind of had in mind. We were actually working towards an album at a writers camp in Ensenada. It was at the beach. Then we jumped around to Miami, Puerto Vallarta. We caught ourselves jumping around beaches, a lot of parties. We want to give people like a summer EP, something they can slap during the summer when they’re partying.

If “Mija No Te Asustes” is an album about this confident boss man calling the shots, how would you characterize “Afterafter”?

Alex: I think it’s that same guy from the first album, he’s still living it up. In “Mija No Te Asustes” there’s some songs like “Como Capo” that introduce that vibe to this EP, so we just continued that wave. It was our biggest song yet. We knew that people liked us apart from the corridos like “Rápido Soy,” “No Son Doritos,” but I think with “Como Capo” we discovered that people like other sounds and lyrics. That’s what we tried to continue in “Afterafter.”

Musically, how would you describe the sound of this EP?

Leo: One thing about us, when we get in the studio, we play a lot in the tempo 6/8s, this upbeat speed. We always hit the BPM at 140 BPM — that’s the Clave Especial essence.

One of the songs that caught my interest was “Scary Movie,” because it reminded me of a corrido-inspired “Thriller” (by Michael Jackson). It also connects the past album because there’s a phrase where you say “Mija, no te asustes.” Tell me the backstory of that spooky song.

Alex: That’s funny, because I’m going to watch the Michael Jackson movie today. That song was actually composed by someone from Street Mob from Ensenada. I think that song was already in the vault.

Leo: That song was tailored for [the past] album. The [ad lib] was an Easter egg.

I saw that you were all recently in North Carolina at the grocery store where Mr. Beast is doing a challenge. There’s one Mexican dad named Juan competing for the million-dollar prize. You guys went to see him and also gave his son a scholarship. Why was it important for you guys to show up?

Alex: Basically we were in [New York] having dinner. We had some press the next day but we had to cancel on them. We commented on Mr. Beast’s video, and the comment got a lot of likes, we’re like “oh shoot, this is dope, this has a real impact on the Mexican community.” His son had swiped up on us, thanking us for supporting his dad.

We saw that Juan told his son to leave the competition ‘cause he wanted to keep going to school. I think we’re one of the few bands in the industry that went to school. I have my bachelor’s degree from Fresno State. It was something that really resonated with us. We had also just come off a panel there at Cornell University so everything just set the tone. We saw the map. It was 10 hours away, obviously a drive, but this opportunity’s never gonna come. We’re from Cali and this is on the other side of the country and we’re here now. Let’s show that the Mexican community is very powerful, united. Let’s go show some support to Juan and his kid. Hopefully he wins!

The last time we chatted was at the Rolling Stone showcase at SXSW. I didn’t get a chance to talk to y’all afterwards, during the end of your set, you sang a cover of Los Alegres del Barranco’s “El Del Palenque” which venerates the narco leader El Mencho, who was killed by Mexican forces just weeks prior. Why was it important for Clave to sing that song specifically?

Alex:  We just like the song. At the end of the day it’s just music. It’s storytelling. It’s corridos. That’s what corridos is all about, and that’s why I got into the music scene. We just like the song. We’re from Jalisco, from Michoacán. It always turns up the crowd, so we did it for the people. People want to hear corridos. We’ve been seeing the censorship going on, but at the end of the day I don’t think that’s the problem. It’s a lot deeper than that, and music is just music, we’re just storytelling, singing music, having fun on stage.  I don’t know if we had it in our set list or not, but I think we had just played a song prior to that that had the same tones. I was like, keep it going, let’s play this one next. Nothing deep.

So it wasn’t planned?

Alex: No, it wasn’t. Afterwards I was like, “Damn, I sang that.” But, eh, who cares?

Do you guys ever get worried when you sing corridos? Or is that something that you’re able to manage being from the U.S., which provides a layer of protection?

Alex: There’s a famous dicho: El que nada debe, nada teme. Like at the end of the day we don’t owe anybody anything. We do music, we’re here by our own sacrifice. People that know our story know that.

Maya Hawke sits at a picnic table in Griffith Park with an iced tea and a small notebook and happily reports that she still likes her new record.

“Every other album cycle I’ve done, by the time I got to the point where the album came out, I hated it,” says the 27-year-old singer and actor. “I was just exhausted by the internet and by being public, and I wouldn’t want to post about it. So I kind of tried to build this rollout where it could be enjoyable. And it seems to be working.”

On this recent morning, she’s about a week and a half from releasing “Maitreya Corso,” a set of deep-thinking folk-pop songs about love and art and how the two intersect; to help drum up interest in the LP, Hawke’s fourth, she’s on tour playing intimate live gigs like the one she did last night at the Troubadour, where she was accompanied by Christian Lee Hutson, with whom she made the record.

Hutson, who’s known for his work with Phoebe Bridgers, is also Hawke’s husband: After collaborating on her 2022 album “Moss” and 2024’s “Chaos Angel,” the two were married this past Valentine’s Day in Hawke’s hometown of New York. (You may have seen the pictures in People magazine of the couple on the street with Hawke’s parents, Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, and her castmates from “Stranger Things.”)

As we talk, Hawke wears the same vintage Beastie Boys T-shirt she had on at the Troubadour; when we’re finished, she’s got a flight to catch to Denver for her and Hutson’s next show.

I was struck last night by the intense eye contact between you and your husband.
I’ve never played guitar before onstage, and so I think a lot of that is me being nervous and wanting to keep rhythm. I’m looking at his eyes but also at his hands. His chordal shapes are different than mine but I’m following the rhythm to make sure I’m staying in the pocket.

Why didn’t you play guitar before?
I’ve been playing since I was 11, but I reached a point where I was getting better a lot slower than my brother was or than other people in my life. You pick up the guitar to play and then a bunch of guys sit down next to you and they’re like, “Oh, can we jam?” And you’re like, “I don’t know if I can jam. I was trying to write a song and now you’re noodling all over me. You know what? I’ll just put it down.” Later, when I started making music professionally, I met all these extraordinary musicians, and I thought: Why would I play guitar when I’m not as good as you are? Then I really hated doing shows.

Because of that?
I’m not a dancer — I don’t want to be a pop star and do dance moves. I don’t have a big Adele voice. And standing up there and just singing — I was like, I should be at a poetry reading. So I made myself a promise that if I made another record I would have to play guitar and write songs that I can play.

It’s funny: You were both super locked-in during the songs, but then between them your banter was extremely loose.
I wanted to build a show that was a concert I would want to go see. I’m weird — I don’t love concerts, but I do I like it when people talk. I can hear the record at home — what I don’t get at home is a sense of the person.

Who would you say are some of music’s great between-song talkers?
Hmm.

I think Adele might be the best I’ve seen.
She’s really good. I saw her once when I was younger — I had a year where my dad took me to see all the biggest women of that year. I remember thinking: When I leave the theater, I’m filled only with joy and no jealousy because I could never do what she’s doing. That’s a gift from God, and I’m not in competition with that gift.

But after she hits you with that, she’ll just freestyle for three or four minutes.
That’s what I want too — I want to see some humanity, especially these days when everybody is being force-fed so much perfection and so much unattainable grace.

There are a tremendous number of words on this record.
It’s very verbose.

Why?
I love words — lyrics are my favorite part of songs. One of the first songs that got written for this record was “Devil You Know,” which was like an experiment where I wrote this poem in free verse. I’ve been in a fight with my husband about free verse versus poetic form. He’s pro-free-verse, I’m anti-free-verse.

What’s your beef?
My beef is: Free verse is great — I wish you could have spent a little more time making it rhythmically sound.

To you it feels like —
Like a first draft. The confines of a structure make your brain work in a different way: How do I get this idea across in a sonnet or a villanelle? But I tried writing this free verse thing, and I really liked it and wanted to write more things like that. Normally, I love the arrow of a Willie Nelson lyric, which is: What’s the simplest way I can say the most complicated thing? And I have some of that on this record, like in “Bring Home My Man.” But I also was like, What’s the most complicated way I can say the simplest thing?

OK, speaking of that: I read the essay you had this philosopher Justin Smith-Ruiu write about the album. I understood probably 11% of it.
I’m obsessed with him. I read his Substack religiously — it’s called the Hinternet. He’s just a brilliant genius, and I was like, I don’t know what he’s gonna say, and I don’t know if it’ll make sense to anyone, but it’ll make sense to me.

Honestly, some of the songs might also have gone over my head. How important is it to you that the listener grasps everything that’s going on in your music?
Zero percent important. I want people to take from it what they take from it. One of the coolest things in my life has been putting out songs and having people form crazy personal attachments — sometimes communal attachments, where all the people think it’s about the same thing and they’re all wrong. That’s so much more interesting to me than if they just thought it was exactly what I thought it was.

How do you listen to the songs you love? Are you trying to figure out where they came from?
Yes, but I don’t care if I’m right. I’ve had many a debate about what [Elliott Smith’s] “Say Yes” is about — gone through the lyrics with friends and been like, “Wouldn’t you say that this supports my theory?” But it doesn’t matter to me what it is. It’s just fun to try to connect all the dots.

Maya Hawke and Christian Lee Hutson in New York in March.

(Ilya S. Savenok / Getty Images for Tibet House US)

Break down the chronology of your and Christian’s relationship. You made this record not as married people but —
As engaged people.

How did that compare to the previous album?
When we made “Chaos Angel” we were maybe in a slightly uncanny valley of being friends who were in love but not together at all. But our working dynamic has always been pretty amazing, even from when we met doing “Moss.” Christian was really the person who made me want to play guitar and write music. He was like, “What do you mean your music isn’t good enough? Why, because you didn’t go to jazz school? I didn’t go to jazz school.” That kind of belief really shaped my journey from “Moss” until this record.

Are you the type of person who needs a facilitator?
I really enjoy support and encouragement, and I often need permission.

I wonder why.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone, and I was like, I want to spend less time with this person, but I want them to want to spend less time with me. I don’t want to be the one to draw the boundary — I need their permission to draw a boundary between us. My therapist was like, “We can work on that.”

Is this classic child-actor people-pleasing stuff?
I wasn’t a child actor.

When did you start?
I did my first audition at 15 but I didn’t get the part. Then I didn’t end up working until I was 18.

I’d argue that at 18 the world still sees you —
As a young person, yeah.

But I take your point.
I don’t know what it has to do with. It’s not exactly people-pleasing. There’s definitely an oldest-sibling thing I have a bit. I’m very interested in sibling-order theory. I think it’s extremely influential to who people are — better than astrology, for sure.

You’re older?
I’m oldest of five. Generally, when I meet eldest siblings, there’s a kind of interesting energy of someone who both needs to be in charge and needs a lot of permission.

Has anything changed about the way you and Christian collaborate since you got married?
We’re really happy, and we’ve been really happy. It’s awesome that we were friends for a long time first. When I got into relationships in the past, I would kind of pick the person that liked me the least. I didn’t like myself very much, and I thought that someone who didn’t like me must be a genius and that I could overcome my inherent ineptitude by getting them to like me. And in order to get them to like me, I would transform myself into becoming a person that they would like. Then we’d have a very happy couple of months until I got bored of not being myself. What being friends with someone first did was that it made it very hard to trick them.

Some of these new songs seem very clearly to be about the two of you.
Totally. A lot of this record is about how much I learned about what love really is — what it could be and how to be good to another person. My ideas about those things really transformed in the last couple of years.

As a child of divorce, were you ambivalent about marriage?
I think if anything it was the reverse. I wanted to get married twice in my life. Once was when I was 18 years old, and it was definitely mental illness: I want the nuclear family that I didn’t have, and I want it now. Then I was kind of neutral on whether or not I would get married. Then I met Christian, and I was like, “I don’t know if I’m ready to be in this kind of relationship, but you’re my person.” And we stayed in each other’s lives until it ended up being the right time.

Plenty of people find their person without wanting to have a wedding.
Are you a romantic?

I’m not sure I know.
When I was younger, I imagined myself in a sort of French marriage where we both cheated on each other but didn’t talk about it and had a lot of mutual respect. But I didn’t find a French marriage — I found my best friend. You know what a piece of s— I am and you still love me? I wake up every morning still happy to see you? That’s a miracle — we gotta have a party.

Last thing: Did finishing “Stranger Things,” which had defined the structure of your life for so long — did that change the way you think about making music?
It’s changed the way I think about everything. Basically, from about four months before the show wrapped until a year after that, I was pretty freaked out.

Because you knew a big change was coming?
Because I didn’t know how I would be reborn out of it. Even when I was resentful of being like, “I’m booked, and I can’t do this other thing that I want to do,” the show was so grounding. I was really lost without it. I’m not freaked out about it anymore, but I’m in a renegotiation of the structure of what I want my life to look like.

Do you feel some kinship with your former castmates on that?
Everyone freaked out in different amounts and at different times and to different degrees of wanting to talk about it. But we all collectively had a very, very intense time moving through the last season.

You’ve got upcoming acting projects —
I didn’t actually die like I thought I was going to.

But did the end of that job create space for music to play a bigger role in your life?
In some ways, it could become smaller. I had an ensemble part in a show that takes a year to film, which creates a tremendous amount of waiting-around time. I think that’s why so many “Stranger Things” actors have musical projects: You can’t film anything else but you can sit in your house with your keyboard. What I’ve really been feeling since the show ended was an invigorated desire to double down on acting. I’ll never not make music, but the music industry is difficult for me. I don’t know if it’s just that I was raised in the acting industry and I understand the things that are f— up about it better.

The music biz feels more opaque to you?
I struggle with some of the things that one should do in that industry to grow their project. When you’re promoting a movie, you’re on a team promoting an external item. When you promote a record, you’re doing self-promotion: “Buy my stuff. Do my thing. Put me on your chest.” It feels a little too “Look at me,” which isn’t my comfort zone.

Better start making those TikToks.
Yeah, I can’t. I really can’t.