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Singer Ray Stevens has shared his first update since being admitted to the hospital on July 4 for surgery.

According to his Instagram, the 86-year-old has been moved out of intensive care and is continuing to recover.

“Ray is out of ICU and beginning to walk the halls as therapy with a nurse’s assistance as he is working towards recovering from this surgery,” the post from Wednesday reads. “Ray is very grateful for all of the cards and get-well messages. Everything is Still Beautiful!!!!”

The last line is a reference to one of Stevens’ best-known songs, the Grammy Award-winning “Everything Is Beautiful.”

In a previous statement provided to People magazine, representatives of Stevens said he was recovering after a “minimally invasive heart surgery” on Monday. On July 4, he went to a Nashville hospital after experiencing chest pain.

Following a heart catheterization, Stevens was informed that he had suffered a minor heart attack. A subsequent surgery was carried out successfully.

Though the two-time Grammy winner’s upcoming performances at his CabaRay Showroom in Nashville have been canceled, fans are just happy to hear he is OK.

“This is the good news I was waiting for,” one Instagram user commented under the update. Another rejoiced, saying it was “great news in a world of such sadness and loss recently.”

Stevens has had a successful music career, cutting his first top 10 pop hit, “Ahab the Arab,” in 1962. The singer has recorded 45 albums, according to his website, won two Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2019.

Following the induction, Stevens was asked whether he would be retiring anytime soon.

“I feel fine; I’ll probably keel over after I hang up the phone,” he joked.

In 2024, he announced he would be hanging up his boots — only to change his mind a year later with the release of a new album, “Say Whut?”

“Although I said earlier that last year was going to be my final year at the CabaRay … I’m kind of going back on that because I want to promote this album,” he told NewsChannel 5 Nashville.

On the stunning “What’s It All For” on her new album, “I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me,” Noah Cyrus sings: “Why have a family/If that ain’t what you want?/Why have a child/You don’t know how to love?

I’ve asked all of these questions/And I got one more/If that’s all there is/Then what’s it all for?/What’s it all for?”

Cyrus, often writing with Australian singer-songwriter PJ Harding, has a way of storytelling that captures the grit and highs and lows of real life the way Kris Kristofferson does on the classic “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” or John Mellencamp and Lucinda Williams do.

Her song, “July,” released when she was 19, was praised by the likes of John Mayer and Leon Bridges and has more than a billion streams. So the potential for something special has always been there. But now that she has put it all together on “I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me” the result transcends special. The 11 songs on the album bridge storytelling with classic country and folk sounds that hark back to the ‘70s, a la songs like the Eagles’ “Wasted Time.”

“I hope that this record, when I hear it, I hear something that’s very classic and reminds me of music that’s been around for a very long time,” she says.

Cyrus has that “classic” music in her blood and bones. Old soul is often a trite, overused expression, but when you grow up in a famous family in the public eye, as Noah Cyrus has, it is an accurate one — her father is country music veteran Billy Ray Cyrus and her sister is pop star Miley Cyrus.

Cyrus said she grew up faster than most people her age. “I’ve been touring since I was 16, I’ve been making music since I was 16,” she tells The Times. “ I grew up in a family that was in the public eye. I think with that there were certain things that we could and couldn’t do, that felt restricted because of the public eye or the way we’d be judged or the way we were judged whenever we made mistakes just as kids.”

She turned 25 in January, which brought a new maturity. Like another all-time great songwriter, Jackson Browne, who famously wrote “These Days” when he was 16, Cyrus has shown a wisdom beyond her years.

“I found out a lot about my senses on a song and learning to trust that as a songwriter,” Cyrus said. “I learned a lot how to lead for myself as a musician.”

(Jason Renaud)

She addresses growing up throughout the album. “I turned 25 this January and I talk about this on the record It’s one of the themes of the album … growing up and new countries about walking on your own two feet and going into unknown land and no matter where you go, there you are. And just learning how to deal with that and cope with that as a young adult,” she says. “That was something that was going on at the time of creating this record. That’s why I just fell into the themes because as a person I was like, ‘How do I not second-guess myself with every single move? How do I learn to trust myself? How do I learn how to become an adult that’s going to be a mother one day? How do I grow up so one day I can take care of another actual person?’”

Having confronted fame and the insecurity that comes with youth, she was ready to take control of her artistic vision with this album.

“I found out a lot about my senses on a song and learning to trust that as a songwriter. I learned a lot how to lead for myself as a musician. This is the first record that I have actual producer credits on and I actually produce some of these songs with Mike [Crossey],” she says. “It was a really beautiful experience and a great learning experience. I really was surprised by those intuitions. And when I listened to the final product, I think it’s the first time in my career where I’m actually really proud of myself.”

Cyrus made sure her personal touch was felt on every aspect of the record, including the eclectic quartet of guests: Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Bill Callahan, Ella Langley and Blake Shelton.

She made sure the invite to Shelton on “New Country” came directly from her. “I really wanted to personally talk to Blake and wrote him a letter and did all the things to really make this a personal connection,” she says. “Blake and I have a mutual friend on the song — Amy Wadge, she’s one of my favorite songwriters and I love her so much. It was like a God thing telling me you have to reach out to Blake. When I heard that song, it was Blake’s from the beginning. And Blake made it happen. It felt like this spiritual thing that was bound to happen and something that was just written up there in the stars was having Blake on this record.”

For all the notable guests, the centerpiece of the album fittingly features Cyrus’ grandfather. The mesmerizing spiritual hymn “Apple Tree,” which is like the love child of a Nick Cave song and Dolly Parton track, is built around her grandfather’s voice.

“I do feel like ‘Apple Tree’ is a song from God because of the prayer that is said at the end and spoken by my grandfather Ron Cyrus,” she says.

It’s fitting that the song features her grandfather because “I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me” is very much Cyrus returning to her Nashville roots and the music she grew up around. Though she says it’s just a happy accident, her embracing the music that is her birthright coincides with the surge in popularity of country music.

“When I was making this album, country was really getting its mainstream momentum again and taking over the world again as it was when I was a baby, when CMA fans used to have Fanfare and stuff. I remember my dad doing Fanfare. For me it’s really awesome because I think country music has so much more of a wider audience and so many people are starting to connect with country,” she says. “I think that was just God’s timing with the album and everything and it all lining up.”

While artists have been increasingly embracing country, for Cyrus this wasn’t about a trend — she was following the natural order of things. Many musicians will say that as they get older, they return to their roots.

So this was Cyrus coming home. “The more freedom I got I just kept putting more and more of myself into the record, which is metaphorically and literally back to my roots. I think I’ve been longing to feel closer to where I come from. I put that into my music and that’s such a beautiful outlet for me. And I think there’s so many people, not just kids, as an adult, as your parent, you feel things, they’re just like you and the child inside you, it’s all still broken, no matter how old you get, you still have that inner child inside of you. I think a lot of that inner child goes into my music and you hear a lot of my inner child.”

Though Cyrus loves the storytelling aspect of classic country records, it is just as much about the sound of those albums and artists as it is the lyrics. She reveled in that raw, organic sound in making this album.

“The more freedom I got I just kept putting more and more of myself into the record, which is metaphorically and literally back to my roots,” Cyrus said.

(Hannah DeVries)

“That was a fun thing for me again to learn is when you take all the bells and whistles away on a vocal and you just have that person’s originality and that person’s personality and let that shine through on a vocal. That’s the best thing you can do, just have the most amazing and natural raw vocals for people to hear and that’s what I love about the genre of country music and especially older records where you’re singing full takes and that’s what the record is. That’s a lot of the time what Mike and I like to do with our songs, is our songs are full takes of everything. We like everything to feel live, and I think that’s an important part of the record.”

The goal was an album that defies categorization and time. She wanted a record that if you had found it in 1975 and put it on right next to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” or you played it in 2025 it would have sounded of that time. In her pursuit of that lofty goal, she transcends the genre tag. This isn’t what most people think of as country today. The closest contemporary artist would be Chris Stapleton, who, when seen live, embodies a Neil Young solo acoustic; it could be country, folk, rock.

That’s what Cyrus set out to do. “When I hear it, I hear a record that will hopefully give the listener a chance to heal as it was a really healing experience for myself,” she says. “And I hope that this record, for me, is something that in 20 years … people are still mentioning and it’s a monumental album in the timeline of my career.”

Noah Cyrus performs Friday at The Ford at 8 p.m.

Last fall, the country singer Parker McCollum played a gig on the south shore of Lake Tahoe — the final date of a lengthy tour behind 2023’s “Never Enough” — then flew directly to New York City to start work on his next album.

“Probably the worst idea,” he says now, looking back at his unrelenting schedule. “I was absolutely cooked when I got there.”

Yet the self-titled LP he ended up making over six days at New York’s storied Power Station studio is almost certainly his best: a set of soulful, slightly scruffy roots-music tunes that hearkens back — after a few years in the polished Nashville hit machine — to McCollum’s days as a Texas-born songwriter aspiring to the creative heights of greats such as Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell and Townes Van Zandt. Produced by Eric Masse and Frank Liddell — the latter known for his work with Miranda Lambert and his wife, Lee Ann Womack — “Parker McCollum” complements moving originals like “Big Sky” (about a lonely guy “born to lose”) and “Sunny Days” (about the irretrievability of the past) with a tender cover of Danny O’Keefe’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues” and a newly recorded rendition of McCollum’s song “Permanent Headphones,” which he wrote when he was all of 15.

“Parker’s a marketing person’s dream,” Liddell says, referring to the 33-year-old’s rodeo-hero looks. “And what happens in those situations is they usually become more of a marketed product. But I think underneath, he felt he had more to say — to basically confess, ‘This is who I am.’” Liddell laughs. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

McCollum, who grew up in privileged circumstances near Houston and who’s now married with a 10-month-old son named Major, discussed the album on a recent swing through Los Angeles. He wore a fresh pair of jeans and a crisp denim shirt and fiddled with a ZYN canister as we spoke.

I was looking online at your —
Nudes?

At your Instagram. The other day you posted a picture of a box of Uncrustables on a private jet.
That photo was not supposed to make the internet. That was an accident — my fault. I don’t ever post about my plane on the internet.

You’re a grown man. Why Uncrustables?
That’s an adult meal that children are very, very fortunate to get to experience.

Did you know when you finished this record that you’d done something good?
Yes. But I didn’t know that until the last day we were in the studio and we listened to everything, top to bottom. The six days in the studio that we recorded this record, I was s—ing myself: “What the f— have I done? Why did I come to New York and waste all this time and money? This is terrible.” Then on the last day we listened all the way through, and I was like, Finally.

Finally what?
I just felt like I never was as focused and convicted and bought-in as I was on this record. I felt kind of desperate — like, “Am I just gonna keep doing the same thing, or are we gonna go get uncomfortable?”

Why New York?
One reason is that city makes me feel like a rock star. In my head when I was in high school dreaming about being a songwriter or a country singer, I was picturing huge budgets, making badass albums in New York City or L.A., staying in dope hotels — just this fairy tale that you believe in. The other reason is that when you’re cutting records in Nashville, people are leaving at 5 to go pick up their kids, or the label’s stopping by and all this s—. I just wanted to avoid all of that — I didn’t want to record three songs on a Tuesday in June and then record three songs on a Tuesday in August. I wanted to go make a record.

Lot of history at Power Station: Chic, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie.
John Mayer wrote a song and recorded it in a day there — that song “In Repair,” with him and Charlie Hunter and Steve Jordan. That’s how I found out about the studio years ago. We actually ended up writing a song in the studio: “New York Is On Fire.”

A very John Mayer title.
I wanted to go in the late fall when the trees were changing colors and the air was cool.

Why was Frank Liddell the guy to produce?
I knew if he understood Chris Knight and the songs he had written that he could probably understand me and the songs I had written. I’d made half a record with Jon Randall, who’d produced my last two albums. And I love Jon Randall — he’s one of my closest friends in the world, four No. 1s together, multi-platinum this and multi-platinum that. But I just needed to dig deeper, and Frank was a guy who was down to let the songs do the work.

What do you think would’ve become of the record you were making with Randall?
It would’ve sounded great, and it would’ve had some success. But I don’t know if I would’ve been as emotionally involved as I was with Frank. Frank got a better version of me than Jon did.

What if nobody likes this record?
It’s like the first time I’m totally OK with that.

Country radio moves slowly, which means “What Kinda Man” may end up being a big hit. But it’s not a big hit yet.
It probably won’t be. The only reason that song went to radio is because “Burn It Down” had gone No. 1, and the label wanted another one. I was like, “Fine, go ahead.” I’ve never one time talked with them about what song should go to radio.

On this project.
Ever. I just don’t care. The song that goes to radio is very rarely the best song on the record.

What was the best song on “Never Enough”?
Probably “Too Tight This Time.” It’s slow and sad, which is my specialty.

You recently told Texas Monthly, “I don’t write fun songs. I’ve never really liked them.”
There’s some I like. “Always Be My Baby” by Mariah Carey f—ing slaps. I love feel-good songs. But in country music, feel-good songs are, like, beer-and-truck-and-Friday-night songs, and those have never done anything for me.

“What Kinda Man” is kind of fun.
But I think it’s still well-written. It’s not all the clichés that every song on the radio has in it.

What’s the best song on this album?
“Hope That I’m Enough” or “Solid Country Gold” or “My Worst Enemy” or “My Blue.”

Lot of choices.
I love this record. I don’t think I’ll ever do any better.

Is that a sad thought?
Eh. I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna do it anyways.

Why would you hang it up?
I don’t know that I’m going to. But I don’t think I’m gonna do this till I’m 70. We’ve been doing these stadium shows with George Strait — I think I’m out a lot sooner than him.

You watch Strait’s set?
Every night.

What have you learned from him?
When it comes to George, what I really pay attention to is everything off the stage. No scandals, so unbelievably humble and consistent and under the radar. The way he’s carried himself for 40 years — I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody else do it that well. I’d love to be the next George Strait off the stage.

I’m not sure his under-the-radar-ness is possible today.
I fight with my team all the time. They’re always trying to get my wife and kid in s—, and I’m like, “They’re not for sale.” I understand I have to be a little bit — it’s just the nature of the business. But at home, that’s the real deal — that ain’t for show.

“I can’t explain how deeply emotional songs make me — it controls my entire being,” McCollum says. “The right song in the right moment is everything to me.”

(Matt Seidel / For The Times)

I’d imagine People magazine would love to do a spread with you and your beautiful wife and your beautiful child.
They offered for the wedding. I was like, “Abso-f—ing-lutely not.” I don’t want anybody to know where I live or what I drive or what I do in my spare time. And nowadays that’s currency — people filming their entire lives. Call me the old man, but I’m trying to go the complete opposite direction of that.

One could argue that your resistance isn’t helpful for your career.
I’m fine with that.

Fine because you’re OK money-wise?
I’m sure that plays into it. But, man, my childhood is in a box in my mom’s attic. And nowadays everybody’s childhood is on the internet for the whole world to see. I’m just not down with that. I don’t want to make money off of showing everybody how great my life is. Because it is f—ing great. I feel like I could make $100 million a year if I was a YouTuber — it’s movie s—. The way it started, the way I came up, the woman I married, the child I had — there’s no holes.

Where does the pain in your music come from?
I’ve thought about that for a long time. I don’t think it’s the entire answer, but I think if your parents divorced when you were little, for the rest of your life there’s gonna be something inside you that’s broken. My parents’ divorce was pretty rowdy, and I remember a lot of it. And I don’t think those things ever fully go away.

How do you think about the relationship between masculinity and stoicism?
It never crosses my mind.

Is your dad a guy who talks about his feelings?
F— no.

Was he scary?
I think he could be. My dad’s the s—. He’s the baddest son of a bitch I’ve ever met in my life.

What image of masculinity do you want to project for your son?
When I think about raising Major, I just want him to want to win. Can fully understand you’re not always going to, but you should always want to, no matter what’s going on. I hope he’s a winner.

When’s the last time you cried?
Actually wasn’t very long ago. A good friend of mine died — Ben Vaughn, who was the president of my publishing company in Nashville. I played “L.A. Freeway,” the Guy Clark song, at his memorial service a couple weeks ago. That got me pretty good.

You said you’re OK if fans don’t like this record.
I don’t need anyone else to like it. I hope that they love it — I hope it hits them right in the f—ing gut and that these songs are the ones they go listen to in 10 years when they want to feel like they did 10 years ago. That’s what music does for me. But I know not everybody feels music as intensely as I do.

Was that true for you as a kid?
Even 6, 7, 8 years old, I’d listen to a song on repeat over and over and over again. I can’t explain how deeply emotional songs make me — it controls my entire being. The right song in the right moment is everything to me. Where I live, there’s a road called River Road, in the Hill Country in Texas. It’s the most gorgeous place you’ve ever been in your life, and I’ll go drive it. I know the exact minute that I should be there in the afternoons at this time of year to catch the light through the trees, and I’ll have the songs I’m gonna play while I’m driving that road.

You know what song you want to hear at a certain bend in the road.
Probably a little psychotic.

Are you one of these guys who wants the towels to hang on the rack just so?
I like things very clean and organized.

Is that because you grew up in that kind of environment or because you grew up in the opposite?
My mom was very clean and organized. But I don’t know — I’ve never one time gone to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. My wife cooks dinner all the time when I’m home, and as soon as we’re done, I do all the dishes and load the dishwasher and wipe the counters down.

You could never just chill and let it go.
No, it’s messy. It’s gross.

Parker McCollum performs at the Stagecoach festival in 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Do people ever interpret your intensity as, “This dude’s kind of a d—?”
People would always tell me I was cocky, and I’d be like, I don’t feel cocky at all. I was raised to have great manners: take my hat off when I meet a lady, look somebody in the eye with a firm handshake, “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am,” “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” no matter the age or the gender of the person. Manners were such a crazy thing in my childhood — it’s the only way I know how to speak to people. So I’ve always thought it was so weird, in high school, girls would be like, “Oh, you’re so cocky.”

I mean, I’ve seen the “What Kinda Man” video. You obviously know you look cool.
I don’t think that at all. I think I look kind of dumb.

I’m not sure whether to believe you.
I couldn’t be more serious. This is very weird for me to say, but Frank finally put into words what I’ve always felt with every photographer, anybody I’ve ever worked with in the business since I was 19 years old — he said, “This record sounds like Parker’s heart and mind and not his face.” The fact that I’m not 5-foot-7 with a beard and covered in tattoos — it’s like nobody ever thinks that the songs are gonna have any integrity.

Boo-hoo for the pretty boy.
People always called me “Hollywood,” “pretty boy,” all this stuff. I guess it’s better than calling you a f—ing fat-ass. But I’ve never tried to capitalize on that at any point in time. I’ve always just wanted to be a songwriter.

But you know how to dress.
Kind of?

Come on, man — the gold chains, the Lucchese boots.
That’s all to compensate for the fact that I don’t know what the f— to wear. I know I like gold and diamonds. Loved rappers when I was younger. Waylon Jennings wore gold chains and diamonds, Johnny Cash did — they always looked dope. I was always like, I want to do that too.

If the fans’ approval isn’t crucial, whose approval does mean something to you?
George Strait. John Mayer. Steve Earle. My older brother. My dad.

You know Mayer?
We’ve talked on Instagram.

Why is he such a big one for you?
The commitment to the craft, I think, is what I’ve admired so much about him. It’s funny: When I was younger, I always said I was never gonna get married and have kids because I knew John Mayer was never going to, and I really respected how he was just gonna chase whatever it is that he was chasing forever. Then he got into records like “The Search for Everything” and “Sob Rock,” and he kind of hints at the fact that he missed out on that — he wishes he had a wife, wishes he had kids. That really resonated with me. I was like, all right, I don’t want to be 40 and alone. It completely changed my entire perspective on my future.

You played “Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue” by the late Toby Keith at one of Donald Trump’s inaugural balls in January. What do you like about that song?
I bleed red, white and blue. I’m all about the United States of America — I’m all about what it stands for. A lot of people get turned off by that nowadays. I don’t care — I’m not worried about if you’re patriotic or not. But Toby was a great songwriter, and I love how much he loved his country.

In that Texas Monthly interview, you said you felt it was embarrassing for people to be affected emotionally by an artist’s political affiliation.
Nobody used to talk about it, and now it’s so polarizing. Am I not gonna listen to Neil Young now? I’m gonna listen to Neil Young all the f—ing time.

Why do you think audiences started caring?
Social media and the constant flood of information and political propaganda that people are absorbing around the clock. It’s just so dumb. I’ve got guys in my band and in my crew that are conservative and guys that are liberal. It makes no difference to me.

Of course you knew how your involvement with Trump would be taken.
Think about being 16, wanting to be a country singer, then getting to go play the presidential inauguration. What a crazy honor. There’s not a single president in history who was perfect — not a single one that didn’t do something wrong, not a single one that only did wrong. I just don’t care what people think about that stuff. Everybody feels different about things, and nowadays it’s like two sides of the fence — you either agree with this or you agree with that. I’m not that way.

What do you think happens next for you?
This is the only record I’ve ever made that I didn’t think about that as soon as I walked out of the studio. I have no idea what the next record is gonna be. Not a clue.

If we meet again in two years and you’ve made a record full of trap beats, what would that mean?
Probably that I was on drugs again.

NEW YORK — “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is good advice for the Britpop band Oasis, who launch their surprising reunion tour today in Cardiff, Wales.

Led by brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, the reunion marks the end of the siblings’ long-held feud, one that led to Oasis disbanding in 2009. For many fans, this news is almost too good to be true. They’re anxiously awaiting whether the Gallaghers will indeed make it through the entire run of international dates and even perhaps extend the reunion.

Whether they’re in it for the long haul or will call it quits at some point sooner (hopefully not before they reach the Rose Bowl Sept. 6 and 7), here’s a look at a few other very famous — but very brief — band reunions.

The Beach Boys

DISBANDED: Technically, they never broke up. Read on.

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A few months in 2012.

WHAT HAPPENED: There is no linear history when it comes to the Beach Boys, but here’s the abridged: Band members came and went, and the band’s visionary, the late Brian Wilson, retired from touring in 1964 following a breakdown caused by stress and exhaustion. His place was soon filled by Bruce Johnston, who remained with the group for decades. Wilson also infamously feuded with his cousin and bandmate Mike Love over songwriting credits for years.

The question here is: Can a band that never broke up reunite? In this case, yes: The band — with both Wilson and Love — got together for a new album, “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” and world tour in 2012, celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary. It wasn’t the whole original lineup, however: Drummer Dennis Wilson died in 1983, and guitarist Carl Wilson died in 1998.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: The force behind the band, Brian Wilson, died last month at age 82, but Love continues to tour under the Beach Boys name.

Led Zeppelin

DISBANDED: 1980

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: Good question. The band played a few one-off events in the mid-1980s throughout the ’00s, never embarking on a reunion tour. So, a few days? A few hours?

WHAT HAPPENED: Led Zeppelin disbanded immediately following the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, reuniting only for a select few events in the decades that followed. Most notably, their first show back was a complicated set at Live Aid in 1985 in Philadelphia. Lead singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones’ last performance together was in 2007 at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert held in London’s O2 Arena. There, Bonham’s son Jason Bonham played the drums. Page and Plant had a separate band together that released a couple of albums in the ‘90s.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: Highly unlikely. The band has successfully evaded reunion requests in the past, including one from President Bill Clinton. In 2013, Clinton asked the British rock greats to get back together for the 2012 Superstorm Sandy benefit concert in New York City. He asked; they said no.

Nirvana

DISBANDED: 1994

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A series of one-off performances in the 2010s and 2020s.

WHAT HAPPENED: Nirvana disbanded following the death of frontman and principal songwriter Kurt Cobain. Its members pursued other projects — most notably, drummer Dave Grohl founded the Foo Fighters. But two decades after Cobain’s death, in 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so bassist Krist Novoselic, touring guitarist Pat Smear (of the Germs) and Grohl got together for a short set — joined by Lorde, St. Vincent, Joan Jett and Kim Gordon on vocals for a reunion dubbed “Hervana.”

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: Maybe there could be a few more gigs here and there? Novoselic and Grohl reunited for a few one-off performances in the years that followed, most recently coming together for the Fire Aid benefit concert in Los Angeles and the 50th anniversary celebrations for “Saturday Night Live,” both this year. At the latter, Post Malone took over vocal duties.

Oasis

DISBANDED: 2009

HOW LONG THE REUNION IS SUPPOSED TO LAST: If the band makes it through their full run of reunion shows, July through November. So, five months.

WHAT HAPPENED: Good question. The band — and in particular, the Gallagher brothers — have not released a public statement giving specific reasons for the reunion. But the initial tour announcement did seem to allude to past tensions. “The guns have fallen silent,” Oasis said. “The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”

In 2019, Liam Gallagher told the Associated Press he was ready to reconcile.

“The most important thing is about me and him being brothers,” he said of Noel. “He thinks I’m desperate to get the band back together for money. But I didn’t join the band to make money. I joined the band to have fun and to see the world.”

Fans had long theorized a reunion might be on the horizon, too: In the wake of the 2017 bombing that killed 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in Oasis’ hometown of Manchester, Liam Gallagher performed at a benefit concert. He criticized his brother’s absence, but a spokesperson said Noel Gallagher couldn’t attend because of a long-standing family trip. Benefit organizers said Noel Gallagher approved the use of Oasis’ music and donated royalties from “Don’t Look Back in Anger” to the British Red Cross’ One Love Manchester fund.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: It’s happening. A better question is: What are the chances of a new album? That’s impossible to know.

Outkast

DISBANDED: They never officially disbanded, so call it a hiatus. They never released another album after 2006’s “Idlewild,” and 2007 is frequently cited as the year they officially took a break.

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A few months in 2014? They announced reunion dates in January 2014, played their first in April, and ended that October.

WHAT HAPPENED: At the top of 2014, Outkast — the innovative Atlanta-based hip-hop duo consisting of Big Boi and André 3000 — announced they would tour festivals around the world to mark 20 years of their band, following a near-decade-long hiatus. The dates began at Coachella, where the duo headlined both Friday night shows. Then they made their way to their home state of Georgia for the CounterPoint Music & Arts Festival, which the AP described as “an energetic show that kept the crowd jamming in the late hours.”

Once the reunion shows were done, so was Outkast. Big Boi continued to release solo records, and André 3000 would follow suit … almost 10 years later, when he released his debut solo full-length album, the flute-forward “New Blue Sun,” in 2023.

“New Blue Sun” has “no bars,” he joked to AP shortly after it was released. It’s a divergence from rap because “there was nothing I was liking enough to rap about, or I didn’t feel it sounded fresh.”

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: When asked about new Outkast music, André 3000 told AP, “I never say never. … But I can say that the older I get, I feel like that time has happened.”

The Velvet Underground

DISBANDED: 1973, more or less.

HOW LONG THE REUNION LASTED: A few months in 1993.

WHAT HAPPENED: Here’s another opaque one for you, as band reunions so often tend to be: John Cale was ousted in 1968, Lou Reed left in 1970 and the Velvet Underground slowly dissolved from there, releasing their final album, “Squeeze,” in 1973. In 1990, Cale and Reed joined forces to release an album in homage to Andy Warhol, “Songs for Drella,” opening the door for a future reunion. There were a few one-off performances, and then the band toured Europe in 1993, including a performance at Glastonbury.

CHANCES OF GETTING BACK TOGETHER: It is pretty much impossible. Reed died in 2013. Guitarist Sterling Morrison died in 1995. And Nico died in 1988.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

At Primavera Sound Barcelona, Rhian Teasdale, 32, emerges from smoke, stained the color orange by stage lights, gallantly flexing her arms in the air. She hovers over the mic, revealing bleached eyebrows and hair that fades from brown roots to pink. Her outfit is highlighted by a trimmed white shirt and neon fishnet leggings — a clear departure from the bohemian style that proved prevalent amid the release of “Wet Leg” in 2022.

Anyone who has seen the five-piece rock ensemble in 2025 will know that this is a visually different band than that of three years ago.

“It was five years ago that we made the ‘Chaise Longue’ video,” Teasdale says. “People have seen your image as a certain way, and then you grow, you change.

“It’s funny how much people expect you to stay the same, and it’s somehow this big statement to grow and change.”

Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers of the rock quintet.

(Alice Backham)

She also notes that “subconsciously,” she had chosen her former attire out of discomfort. Now, feeling more at home in her own skin, she can take a more authentic approach to herself.

“I did not want to be sexualized by men,” she reflects. “The thought of showing any skin and anyone maybe thinking that it was for the male gaze made me want to cover up and not be noticed.

“It wasn’t a conscious gear shift kind of thing, but there are a few things that I can look back on and pinpoint why I’m able to have so much more self-expression.”

Still, their self-titled debut — as kitschy and cottagecore as it was in appearance and sound — certainly warranted the reception that it received, featuring tantalizing tracks such as “Chaise Longue” and “Wet Dream.” In the latter’s music video, Teasdale and Chambers unforgettably prance around in long, blue dresses while sporting lobster claw gloves. But it would be “Chaise Longue” that snatched up a Grammy award in the alternative music performance category; the band also won for alternative music album.

For being stuck within the confines of an island populated by just 140,000 people, Wet Leg’s rise was meteoric. Teasdale mentions that the lives of the Isle of Wight natives were “completely changed”; she was a stylist assistant for commercials in London, bassist Ellis Durand was putting up scaffolding, drummer Henry Holmes was a surf instructor, guitarist Joshua Mobaraki worked in a café and Chambers had taken up a position making jewelry in the family business.

Indeed, the “very sleepy and small-minded” island off the coast of England, known for its beautiful coasts, isaltogether a grain of sand in the Channel, hidden underneath the mainland’s shadow.

“You have to take a boat over there,” Teasdale says of the island. “There’s no bridge, there’s no tunnel.”

Though she’s since moved to London, leaving it in the rearview at 18, she notes that Chambers, Mobaraki and Durand still call it home. Holmes also made the mad dash to the city.

“We’re all just living our little lives and all of a sudden you’re touring the world,” Teasdale says. “It’s crazy going to the Grammys and looking at all the famous people off the telly and just feeling very odd.”

Though, it now seems that the group are well adjusted to fame, as they return for their sophomore album, “Moisturizer.” It’s a far more sonically expressive, authentic and raw record than that of its predecessor. Though no one can deny the hypnotic nature of hits like “Chaise Longue” and “Wet Dream,” the group has undeniably evolved and it shows across the entire 12-track project.

Wet Leg has experienced a change of appearance since their debut three years ago.

(Iris Luiz)

It opens up with the oh-so-smooth “CPR,” the second single released off the album, which Teasdale describes as “walking up to a great height [and] jumping into the abyss that is love.” This proves to be a consistent theme across “Moisturizer,” which often feels like Teasdale’s ode to an aching heart. “CPR” is just the “launchpad” for the “rest of the tunes to spawn from.”

This pours into “liquidize,” which teems with a sense of yearning, questioning in heartache , “So many creatures in the f— world / How could I be your one?” On the rougher “jennifer’s body,” Teasdale’s soft delivery shines through to say “Every day starts and ends with you / Hold me down I get high on you” before taking a backseat and letting Chambers’ guitar wail away.

“I think before falling in love this time around with my current partner, I just had no interest in writing love songs,” Teasdale confesses. “I’d only dated men up until my partner… I feel like the world is so saturated with love songs from a very heteronormative perspective and I felt no interest in it at all.”

As for the change of heart: “I think love just hit me really heavy this time… I’m just so very, very, very, in love.”

Hilariously, she also compares the album rollout process this time around to a fairly obscure occupation she was thrown into prior to the band’s rise. Teasdale, who once worked as a baker, says their debut was like “when you start a new job and you’ve been told you have to make doughnuts.”

“You don’t know where any of the stuff is, so someone has to teach you… where the cookie cutters are, and where the box of sugar is,” she says, laughing. “You know, just like rolling out an album, rolling out the doughnut, rolling out that dough.”

A highlight of the album comes in their third single, “davina mccall,” a mellow and dreamy song that references the famed British “national treasure” known for her work as a TV presenter on “Big Brother.” Teasdale says she watched the show as a kid in the 2000s and was always fascinated when McCall would turn to the camera and say, “This is Davina, I’m coming to get you” when a contestant was eliminated.

“It was a very dramatic moment when Davina McCall was coming to get you,” she says. “It’s kind of a little joke that I’ll come and pick you up wherever you are.”

Teasdale says McCall even recently came to a Wet Leg show after the band had told her they’d written a song using her name. Thankfully, she was “so cool” and gave “the best hugs ever.”

But fans will also be pleased to notice that the group has still maintained their signature, bold tongue-in-cheek style of lyrics. On “mangetout,” Teasdale sings “You wanna f— me? / I know, most people do” over a smooth riff and declares on “pillow talk” that “Every night I f— my pillow / I wish I was f— you.”

“The more muscular sound that is on this album is just the result of five people that have been touring together for something shy of three years,” she says. “I think my sense of humor will always be the same… it’s kind of impossible to leave that behind.”

In the last few tracks, the album noticeably slows down. “11:21” is a beautiful song that finds strength in its simplicity. The title is a call back to the day Teasdale met her partner: “Time goes by / But I feel the same about you since the day we first met,” she sings.

(Top to Bottom) Hester Chambers, Joshua Mobaraki, Ellis Durand, Henry Holmes and Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg.

(Alice Backham)

It’s sandwiched between “don’t speak,” which falls short of capturing the same essence that the rest of “Moisturizer” is peppered with, and “u and me at home.” The latter is the album’s closer and features some of Chambers’ best performances on the album; it’s a befitting farewell to an excellent project.

“I think when you’re really close with someone, it just means that you don’t have to use words,” Teasdale says of working with Chambers. “It’s just easy and joyful and the most natural thing.”

“Moisturizer” hits streaming services and music store shelves on July 11, with all the potential of outperforming their debut, even with it being as successful as it was. Together, the band sounds more refined than three years ago and — if their recent performances are anything to go off of — looks to light up the stage on their North American tour, which starts in September and makes a stop in Los Angeles on Oct. 17.

“I’m just excited for people to hear the rest of the album, because it’s just a fun album,” Teasdale says. “We made it to be played live, so I’m excited for when it’s not a secret thing anymore.”

Cardi B, entering the newest phase of her rap career, has just one question in mind: “Am I the Drama?”

That’s the title for the Grammy winner’s long-anticipated sophomore album, which she unveiled Monday on social media. The “Bodak Yellow” artist, 32, announced “Am I the Drama?” will drop Sept. 19, seven years after she made her splashy debut with 2018’s “Invasion of Privacy.”

The aptly dramatic “Am I the Drama?” cover art features Cardi B in an abstract red body suit and matching fishnet tights grabbing the heel of one of her sky-high platform pumps. The image also features a raven resting on her shoe and even more of them swarming around her.

Cardi B hinted at her album and its raven motif Sunday in a theatrical teaser as she reflected on “seven years of love, life and loss” and trading in grace for hell.

“I learned power’s not given. It’s taken,” the Bronx native says. “I’m shedding feathers and no more tears. I’m not back. I’m beyond.”

Cardi B broke out with “Bodak Yellow” almost a year before she released “Invasion of Privacy” in April 2018. Times critic Mikael Wood in his review commended the rapper for her relatability — “through her words and delivery … the songs make you feel like she’s speaking directly to you.”

At the 2019 Grammy Awards, Cardi B won a top honor and made history while doing so: She became the first woman to win the rap album category as a solo artist.

Cardi B continued to gain popularity over the following years for hits including “I Like It” with J Balvin and Bad Bunny, and “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion. The latter, and Cardi B’s recent singles “Up” and “Outside,” will be among the 23 songs on the new album, according to the tracklist preview on Spotify.

“Am I the Drama?” will arrive as Cardi B also marks new milestones in her personal life.

Earlier this year, the “Hustlers” actor made her romance with NFL star Stefon Diggs official after parting ways with Migos rapper Offset. She also became a mother for a third time in September when she welcomed her daughter Blossom Belles, with Offset. They also share 6-year-old daughter Kulture and 3-year-old son Wave.

Sabrina Claudio is not the same person she was a year ago — much less eight years ago, when she first introduced herself with a shimmering neo-soul EP, titled “Confidently Lost.”

Now, having amassed millions of fans with sultry, golden-hour slow jams and trips down melancholy lane, she’s presenting her most earnest songwriting yet in her newest album, “Fall In Love With Her,” released June 9 on San Francisco indie label Empire.

“I think in the past couple years, people in my life that I love have helped me get out of my shell and shown me how important vulnerability is,” she says. “Now I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna tell y’all everything, how about that?”

For her fifth studio LP, Claudio steered her R&B sound into a less-traveled, alternative direction that showcases her deft pen and ethereal vocals in a novel guise. Her longtime producer, Ajay “Stint” Bhattacharyya, cited shoegaze bands like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive as influences that came up during recording sessions. For Claudio, wading into those uncharted waters became part of a larger shift in her career.

Until recently, the Cuban and Puerto Rican singer-songwriter — who in 2023, earned a Grammy for traditional R&B performance as a songwriter on Beyoncé’s slick “Renaissance” cut, “Plastic Off the Sofa” — preferred to toil in privacy, channeling her expression into songwriting more than social media. But this year, she’s inviting the outside world to experience her personality with a new interview series on YouTube titled “Fall In Love With…”

To hear her tell it, she’s eager for the effort to help fans and listeners see the person she is behind the music. “I hope that people can listen to [the album] knowing that, yes, [I’m singing about what] I experienced, but I just pray that they are able to interpret it and relate it to their own life however they possibly can,” she says.

Sabrina Claudio presents her most earnest songwriting yet in her newest album, released June 9.

(Baylee Kiesselbach)

Come July, she’ll embark on a U.S. tour with rappers Russ and Big Sean; soon after, she’ll make her acting debut in a short film directed by filmmaker and best friend Jazmin Garcia-Larracuente, who was inspired by early drafts of songs off “Fall In Love With Her” to write a script. “I’m very proud of myself,” Claudio says. “I think I killed it, and I’m excited for everybody to see it.”

In her latest interview with The Times, she spoke of the intimacy required in songwriting with others, the possibility of an all-Spanish EP and her approach to storytelling.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

After releasing your last album, 2022’s “Based on a Feeling,” you focused on writing for other artists. Is that usually how it goes between albums for you?
Typically [after] I finish an album, I always go through the phase [when] I need to take a break because creatively I’m worn out. I wouldn’t do anything, which actually only emphasized the lack of motivation to continue and make more music. But this time around, I wanted to remain creative, and the best way to do that was to get in rooms with other creatives to help them get into their world, rather than always having to focus on mine.

I thought it was going to be difficult for me, because I’m not a natural collaborator. Before I was very anti-having songwriters in my room. It was a whole ego thing for me … but I loved it so much that I ended up doing it for much longer than I was anticipating. I find so much inspiration being in rooms with artists for other projects.

On this album you worked on some of the tracks with a songwriter, Nasri Atweh. I’m curious if there was hesitation to share your own process with someone else?
There was a time in my life when I [felt] obligated to have writers in my room. My guard was up. It’s not because I don’t think that these songwriters were amazing, because they were. Some of my favorite songs I wrote with another person, like “Problem With You” off [my album] “Truth Is.” But for some reason, my brain would say if I didn’t do it 100%, then it’s not mine. And that’s so not the reality of making art.

With Nasri, he’s my manager’s brother. I met Nasri 10 years ago. I’m glad that it happened when it did. Being the songwriter in the room for other people put things into perspective, because I realized how important collaboration was. Nasri was able to eject things from me that I didn’t even know existed. I’m on a different wavelength now.

Working with a songwriter is like an intimate therapy session.
I’m an extremely private person. I think the past couple years, people in my life have helped me to get out of my shell and have shown me how important vulnerability is. I didn’t even want to expose myself, which is why I tend to write from experiences that I technically didn’t experience, or from conversations with others, or movies. It was a protective layer. But now I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna tell y’all everything, how about that? [laughs] And it’s worked out!

You’ve said that when it comes to songwriting, you usually let yourself be led by the music, then the lyrics. Can you tell me more about “One Word” and how that track came to be? It’s one of the most powerful songs on the album.
I wrote that during a heartbreak. I wanted to talk about an experience I had with a person I felt very deeply for, [who] essentially didn’t fight for me to stay. But it was the biggest act of love that he could have done for me.

I worked with my producer Stint, [who] I work with all the time, and Heavy Mellow. He was heavy on this project, no pun intended. I was venting,; I was really heartbroken. I was finding comfort in these men that I’ve known and trying to get their perspective on things.

Another song is “Worse Than Me,” which sounds completely different from the rest of the tracks. It’s a little more assertive and seductive, with trip-hop-inspired drums. How did that come to be?
Before I discovered the new sound [of] the album, I still was gravitating towards my typical R&B, neo-soul-type vibes. I was just trying to get back in the groove of Sabrina Claudio, quote-unquote, because I was just coming out of writing for everybody else. I was trying to tap back into my own world.

And I think I needed one sassy song. [laughs] That’s kind of what I’m known for: the sass, the crying, or the sexy. And I just felt like if I didn’t have the sexy, I at least needed to have the sassy.

This is the first time you’ve really worked with a more alternative sound — did you find yourself accessing parts of yourself that the traditional R&B sound didn’t?
Oh, absolutely! I love working with Stint and all of my producers because they have such a wide palette when it comes to music. Genres I never grew up listening to — all these sounds are new. It pulls different things out of me that I wouldn’t be able to get if it was my traditional R&B sound. And naturally, I’m always going to do that because that’s just how I am, but it was interesting to hear where my R&B and soul brain goes over these more alternative rock/indie vibes.

“My fans are able to see who I am as a person and how deeply I love, how loyal I am,” Claudio said of her interview series, “Fall in Love With…”

(Baylee Kiesselbach)

For example, “Detoxing” — I wrote that song with Nasri, but we didn’t have the outro. So I took it to Stint, and he pulled up all these references of bands [like Radiohead], and he was teaching me so much. And then he [said], “You know what, at the end I want to do something really big and really rock. I want to break it down. But then I want people to be shocked. I want you to belt, and I want you to say something, and I want you to purge, and I want you to take the concept of the song and really just yell it like you’re just trying to get rid of something.” I listened back, and I’m even shocked at some of the things that I was able to tap into. I don’t belt! [laughs] I didn’t even know I could do that!

You have the song “Mi Luz” on the album, which is the first time you’ve included a Spanish song in an LP. What made you feel this was the right time to finally do that?
First of all, I don’t understand why I’ve never added a Spanish record to any of my albums. I listen to a lot of Spanish music in my daily life, a lot of reggaetón. You’d be surprised, my music is so calm and emotional … and then I’m twerking in my car listening to reggaetón. [laughs] So I felt in the sense of wanting to evolve, I feel now’s the time. And the process is really interesting, because my brain doesn’t actually think in Spanish, especially when it comes to songwriting.

Any Spanish record [of mine] you’ve heard, I’ve done with Alejandra Alberti, who is also Cuban. She’s from Miami, she’s a Virgo, so we connected on all those things. I tell her what I want to say, and she just computes it in her brain and she translates it in a way that has taught me. “Mi Luz” [was] the first time I contributed lyrically in Spanish. And it was always something that I was afraid of doing, because I’m always afraid of sounding dumb. I don’t know why, but I have that fear. But I felt very comfortable, very safe with Ale.

Would you release an EP of Spanish tracks?
I think I would! If I have Ale, I think we could probably knock out an EP very quickly. I’d be down.

You said in your recent Genius video that you really want reciprocal love because there’s only so much self-love you can give yourself. Is there any difference in your work depending on how your personal life is going, or do you manage to block out the noise?
I get very consumed by whatever I’m most passionate about in the moment. When I’m talking to somebody or I’m dating somebody, I do have the tendency to revolve my world around whatever we’re building. So when I’m dealing with that, I do find that I put my career second. Because I crave love very badly — which is toxic for me — I’m willing to nurture.

I’m pretty confident in my career. It’s the one thing I have control over. Everything’s amazing, and I get to make music whenever I want. But I don’t necessarily have control over the relationship that I’m trying to build, so I get very consumed and I put that first. But I’m hoping that if I get into something else that’s much healthier and not destroying our mental health, then I can do both at the same time! I just have to find that person first.

You’ve acknowledged that you’re a private artist, but I really like what I’ve seen so far from your new interview series, “Fall In Love With…” Can you tell me how the idea of doing that came about?
I have to say I was anti-miniseries, but my manager, Alyce, told me in the beginning stages of [making] this album, “The music, as vulnerable as it is — nobody’s going to relate to it or feel the depth of it if they don’t know who you are as a human.” She said, “Nobody knows that you’re funny; nobody knows that you’re outgoing. You’re not this mysterious person that you think you are, and you need to show people that.”

So at first, it annoyed me, because I was like, ugh, not me having to do things online. [laughs] I think doing this type of content was uncomfortable for me. I said, “If you guys want me to do this, I don’t want to be doing 20 episodes. I want four episodes, and I want it to be with people I know and I love and I will be comfortable with.”

And it turned into “Fall In Love With…” and I just thought it was special. I love to give credit to the people who have loved me through every stage of my life. And in the midst of it, my fans are able to see who I am as a person and how deeply I love, how loyal I am. And that opened the door to just so many other things. I just became so much more open-minded.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Kerr said in 1849. Nearly 200 years later, that is sadly true of the greatest protest songs. In 2025, songs like Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” and Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” are as needed for their messages as they were when they were written more than 60 years ago.

So when Grammy-winning jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington set out this year to pay homage to one of her stick-wielding idols, the legendary Max Roach, by revisiting his seminal 1961 album, “We Insist!,” it turned out to be more than a musical tribute. In the process of recording the album “We Insist 2025!,” Carrington took time to reflect on how issues of inequality, racism and more that Roach fought against in 1961 are unfortunately just as prevalent today.

“Wow, I can’t believe that this stuff is still relevant,” Carrington says. “When we look at these examples of how things have shifted in some ways, but not in other ways, it can be very depressing, especially right now. When we started this record, the election hadn’t happened yet. I thought I knew what was going to happen during this election, and it was still relevant. But now it’s even more relevant.”

Now 59, Carrington, who also serves as Zildjian Chair in Performance at Berklee College of Music in Boston, is ready to pass along some of the fight for social justice to the younger generation.

“I do feel like it’s a youthful game. I had an uncle that I would talk to when I was in my 20s, who has since passed. He would say that this is your fight now, and I would be mad at him, feeling like he wasn’t doing more,” she recalls. “And he would say, ‘No, this is your fight now. I‘ve done it, I‘ve been there, I‘m tired.’ I get that sentiment too. I‘m going to do whatever I do, but I‘m relying on the younger generation and how pissed off I feel like they are and what that will do.”

Terri Lyne Carrington playing a drum kit.

(John Watson)

Among her many ventures to champion the jazz music she loves so much is A&R for iconic jazz label Candid Records, founded by the great jazz writer Nat Hentoff in 1960. So, she called on the younger generation to help share her vision of “We Insist 2025!”

“I thought of calling the people that had been signed or were being signed to Candid Records because I do A&R for Candid. So I thought this would be a great opportunity to also shine a light on a lot of these artists, young people and progressive artists that are being signed right now to Candid. It‘s kind of like a family gathering; we all came together to pay tribute to this great artist and this great project,” she says.

At the center of the next generation of jazz artists on the album is vocalist Christie Dashiell, with whom Carrington collaborates on the album.

“Somebody like Christie Dashiell was really important to the project, because I felt like the voice is so out front. It‘s what people relate to; the average ear relates to the voice the most,” Carrington says. “I just feel like she perfectly embodies all these different areas of Black music traditions. That was really important, so I started there. What is the voice that’s going to work with this idea?”

Having toured with Herbie Hancock and played with giants as Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz, Carrington has a strong sense of jazz history and rightly sees herself as a bridge between the history and future of jazz. She made sure that bridge was strong on “We Insist 2025!” by including trombonist Julian Priester on the record, who, at 89, is the last living musician who appeared on Roach’s 1961 work.

“Jazz has always been about these kinds of bridges between generations. It‘s been such an important part of jazz. Mentorship, apprenticeships — it‘s an apprenticeship art form,” she says. “So we did contemporary things with this music, but it wasn‘t so contemporary that there was no place for a Julian Priester. I think that the ability to be a bridge is important — pointing to past legacies, to the foundation of what we stand on, while trying to also point to the future or reflect the present is important.”

As much as the album‘s original political message weighs in this turbulent current climate, and as much as Carrington wanted to make the record a vehicle for younger artists, the impetus for “We Insist 2025!” was to pay tribute to Roach for the centennial anniversary of his birth. For Carrington, the heart of her interpretation was to honor the music and spirit Roach created on “We Insist!”

Jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington poses for a portrait.

(David Butow / For The Times)

“I had a history with reimagining projects in other people‘s work, and helping that legacy continue, but doing it in a way that also has my own identity involved in a way that really feels new, in a sense,” she says. “The music is not new, but so many elements around those things are new. So I feel like it‘s reshaping these things a little, even though we didn‘t change the lyric content. By changing the music around the lyrics, it gives the lyric a different slant.”

As one of the country‘s primary ambassadors of jazz music today, Carrington hopes the record will introduce new fans to Roach’s considerable legacy while helping to revive the soul of protest music. To that end, she has discussed bigger plans with his family.

“I‘ve talked to Max‘s son, Raul Roach, quite a bit about trying to collaborate by doing shows that would be expansive. Doing some of this music, maybe doing some other Max music, like some of the double quartet music,” she says. “So we‘ve talked about finding ways to continue this celebration of Max Roach and his artistry. There‘s a lot there as a foundation that can be expanded upon.”

Fans of Talking Heads and David Byrne can rejoice, as the 73-year-old singer announced his first new album in seven years and tour.

The album “Who Is the Sky?” will hit streaming services and shelves on Sept. 5. Soon after, Byrne will kick off the North American leg of his tour, which features two shows in November at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. In 2026, he’ll touch down in New Zealand before moving on to Australia and Europe.

The 12-song album is led by the single “Everybody Laughs,” released Tuesday alongside a music video directed by multimedia artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo.

“Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word “everybody” a lot.’ I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,” Byrne said in a press release.

“Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling. Everybody’s wearing everybody else’s shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done. I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together,” he added. “Music can do that — hold opposites simultaneously.”

New York-based ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra arranged the album. It also includes collaborations with the aforementioned St. Vincent, Hayley Williams, and the Smile drummer Tom Skinner. Byrne’s last album was 2018’s “American Utopia,” which eventually took the Broadway stage and in 2020 became a concert film directed by Spike Lee.

But it wasn’t a Byrne tour that fans were expecting.

Talking Heads, for which Byrne served as lead singer between 1975 and 1991, released a teaser on June 2, including their song “Psycho Killer.” Some even noticed that the date included in the short clip, June 5, is an important one in the band’s history.

“The band played their first gig as Talking Heads — opening for the Ramones at the CBGB club — on June 5, 1975,” one fan commented.

Instead of a tour announcement, fans received a music video for the song, highlighted by the appearance of Irish actor Saoirse Ronan.

“They waited until Saoirse Ronan was born to make the video,” another fan joked. “Very professional.”

Brendan Yates says he’s learned innumerable things fronting his band Turnstile over the last decade and a half, not the least of which is that an ambitious musician needn’t move to Los Angeles or New York to make it.

“There’s nothing we haven’t been able to figure out living in Baltimore,” Yates says, and Turnstile’s success suggests he’s right: In 2021, the band — which spent the 2010s steadily rising through the East Coast hardcore scene — scored three Grammy nominations with its breakout album, “Glow On,” a set of fervent yet luscious punk jams laced with bits of funk, dream-pop and electronic dance music. The next year, Turnstile toured arenas as an opening act for My Chemical Romance then did the same for Blink-182. At April’s Coachella festival, Charli XCX ended her main-stage performance with a video message predicting a “Turnstile Summer.”

Even so, the proud Charm City quintet — Yates on vocals along with guitarists Pat McCrory and Meg Mills, bassist Franz Lyons and drummer Daniel Fang — did come to L.A. to record its new follow-up LP, “Never Enough,” setting up a studio in a rented mansion in Laurel Canyon where the band camped out for more than a month.

“We were looking for the experience where you kind of isolate a little bit, and Laurel Canyon has this tucked-away thing,” says Yates, who led the sessions as the album’s producer. “It was such a vibe.” The result extends “Glow On’s” adventurous spirit with sensual R&B grooves, guest appearances by Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, even a flute solo by the British jazz star Shabaka Hutchings; “Never Enough” comes accompanied by a short film that just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and will screen in selected theaters this weekend.

Yates, 35, discussed the album over coffee last month in Silver Lake, a few days after Turnstile played a rowdy gig at L.A.’s Ukrainian Culture Center that featured an endless succession of stage-diving fans.

Who did the cooking while you were recording in the house?

We had a couple friends come in and cook meals. And we kept the fridge stocked. “What are we gonna eat?” — you can lose hours out of every day to that.

What’s the advantage of making a record the way you did?

You can kind of break away from normal life for a little bit and just exist in the music. You’re not going to the studio but thinking, “I’ve got to go to the grocery store later.” You wake up, have your little peaceful time in the morning before you get started, then just go right into the living room. We didn’t really need to leave the house for weeks at a time.

In a recent New York Times profile, the writer referred to you as Turnstile’s “workaholic frontman.” A fair characterization?

I wouldn’t describe myself that way, but I understand the sentiment. I’m in a band with people I grew up with — my closest friends — and we’re really passionate about what we’re doing. I give myself to it, but it never feels like work. When I was younger, I always separated music and real life. I thought of music as the thing that I love and real life as going to school and hating it. Even when I went to university, I was like, I’m not gonna do music.

You wanted to protect music from the strictures of school.

I guess so. I was doing these majors that I had no interest in. I started with kinesiology until I realized I suck at science and math. I switched to criminal justice, then I was like, “Wait, what am I doing?” Honestly, I think I was just looking for whatever major I could mentally check out on the most to make more space for music.

Did you graduate?

I left early because I wasn’t interested and I wasn’t doing well, and I got the opportunity to tour with this band that I played drums in. Eventually, years later, I went back and got a communications degree online.

Why?

I ask myself the same question all the time. One thing is, I’d started and I wanted to finish it. I probably wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t for remote schooling. I never went back into the classroom — I was in the back of the van writing essays.

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Did you get tickets to the Turnstile show in L.A. last night?

Does 35 feel old in hardcore years?

It would have seemed ancient to me as a 16-year-old. Never in my wildest dreams would I think at 35 that I’d be doing the same things I was hyped on doing when I was in high school. But I feel like age is a bit of an illusion. When you’re 12, you’re like, “I’m definitely gonna be married by 18 and have my first kid at 19.”

Certain aspects of aging are less illusory, right? Physical sturdiness, for example. How does that compare to 10 years ago?

I remember playing shows 10 years ago, and I had two knee braces on. At that time, I was just like, “This is what it is — here on out, this is what my knees are doing.”

You’re saying in fact you’re sturdier now.

What I figured out — look, I’m not a singer. Earlier on in playing shows, I’d throw the mic down and just jump into the crowd, mostly because of nerves and adrenaline.

Feels important to say that you’re definitely a singer.

I sing, but I wouldn’t call myself a singer. I’ve never done vocal lessons. Even forming the band, at that time everyone was like, “OK, we’ve got this band, but we should start one where you’re on the drums.” This band was literally: “Let’s do one on the side where I’m singing and you should get on guitar. Franz, you’ve never played bass, but you should play bass in this one.” Then you wake up 10 years later and — oh, shoot — this is the one we’ve put a lot into.

Turnstile, from left: Daniel Fang, Franz Lyons, Brendan Yates, Meg Mills and Pat McCrory.

(Atiba Jefferson)

For every fan of Turnstile, you’ve got someone accusing you of ruining hardcore. Ever hear a critique that actually stung?

I have no interest in having any dialogue about anyone’s opinion about anything that I’m doing.

I appreciate the definitiveness of that.

It just doesn’t matter.

Whose praise has been especially meaningful? There’s a great viral TikTok of James Hetfield and Rob Halford digging your set at some festival.

We’ve had so many cool moments like that — just like, “How is this real?” Obviously, getting to meet your childhood heroes is huge. But then there’s also the people you build relationships with and end up in the studio together — Dev or our friend Mary Jane Dunphe. You realize: These are actually my favorite people making music right now.

Notwithstanding your view on the opinions of others, what’s a moment on this album that feels creatively risky?

In the first single [“Never Enough”], after the band drops out, there’s like two minutes of just this synth chord. There was very much a conversation: “Is this too long? Should we shorten it?” And I’m sure there’s plenty of people where it might just be white noise to them — like, “Skip — I don’t need this.” But I feel like with this album there’s this intention to force yourself to sit with the chaotic moments and then sit with the very still moments and kind of have that relationship going back and forth. I think those moments of stillness are very connected to the film — you’ll kind of see how it all works together and why those moments are necessary. Our dream scenario would be that people’s first time hearing the album, they’re watching it with the film.

Someone says to you, “I didn’t really get the album until I saw the film” — that’s OK by you?

I would love that.

Who opened the door to the idea that you could make a movie?

The last album, we did a four-song EP [“Turnstile Love Connection”] that came with a video. I’d called my friend Ian [Hurdle], who’s the DP, and I was like, “Hey, I have an idea: We do this video, and it does all this and it’s about 10 or 11 minutes with these four songs.” I told him the whole idea, and then I asked him, “So who should we get to direct it?” He goes, “It sounds like you’re directing it.” I was like, “I guess you’re right.” I mean, I’m not a director.

You’ve now called yourself not a singer and not a director.

On paper, I don’t have any experience. The only thing I have experience in is really being excited about trying to make something work. But that video was a huge learning experience — the idea of, like, OK, this is possible.

There’s a rainbow color pattern that recurs throughout the new album’s videos. You’re using it as a live backdrop too. What’s it mean?

There’s a lot in the album that maybe ties into those colors. The record cover itself is a double rainbow. We were in Paris playing shows like a year and a half ago. We were walking around and it started raining while the sun was out. We’re like, “Yo, look” — there was this double rainbow. My friend snapped a photo, and that’s the album cover. Maybe there’s interpretations of that on a spiritual level — new beginnings or a transformation or openings to a different dimension.

Daniel Fang, Pat McCrory, Franz Lyons and Brendan Yates of Turnstile attend the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The album cover is very subtle. You could easily look at it and just see blue.

That was brought to me — how intangible the cover is. But that’s the point: I don’t want vibrant rainbows. I want it to almost feel like nothingness. A small speck in a vast universe is kind of the feeling that was going into the music. The blue too — in the film, there’s lots of ties to water and the vastness of the ocean.

Very Malibu of you.

I mean, side note: I drowned like 10 years ago in the ocean. I was saved by some locals — this was on a big surfer beach in Hawaii. This is not necessarily what the album is about, but more just like a thought process. What’s always fascinated me about the ocean is its power and how small I felt in that moment as I was passing out. And I truly did pass out — saw the white light and everything. Just how fast that could happen and how small I could feel put things into perspective in a different way.

OK, few more for you: One thing you guys have sort of crept up to but not quite done yet is a full-on ballad.

The final song on the new record [“Magic Man”] is literally just me and a Juno [synthesizer] in my room. In some ways it’s uncomfortable, but simultaneously it felt like it needed to happen. I needed to sing that.

You don’t drink. Does that have to do with your upbringing? Is it connected to a hardcore or straight-edge ideology?

Maybe experience seeing things when you’re younger that can lead you in a different way? But, I mean, getting into hardcore, finding out about straight-edge and stuff — I felt a little more comfortable in my own skin, not needing to drink. I like to make sure it’s never from a place of being stubborn, where I’m just like, “I don’t drink because I made up this idea in my head that I’m not going to drink.” I don’t think that’s a good way to be about anything in life.

Turnstile at the Ukrainian Culture Center.

(Eric Thayer / For The Times)

If you were starting the band now, would you still put your website at turnstilehardcore.com?

Probably. At the time, turnstile.com was taken. I feel like that was such a cool time, where every band’s MySpace or Twitter, it was the band’s name plus “HC.” That was such a time stamp. But yeah — hardcore music is what we all grew up in. It was like the funnel for us to find ourselves through a music scene and a culture and a community.

What feels outside the window of possibility for Turnstile? “We’ll never write a country song,” or “We’ll never play a cruise.”

We’ve done so many things that were outside our comfort zone. We did some arena shows, and that was such a cool learning experience — how to connect to someone who’s 100 yards away, sitting down in a chair, versus a kid that’s onstage with you. That show in L.A. the other night was like the ideal for us, where the stage is low and it’s this intimate room. But then I had so many close friends who couldn’t get in.

You could see the show as Turnstile keeping it real or as Turnstile indulging itself.

In a way, it made us inaccessible.

I look forward to the Turnstile Cruise in 2028.

It’s been offered. It’s never made sense. My first question is: What does the show feel like? Is it more about people going on a boat just to day-drink and throw up while we’re playing? Or can you figure out a way to make it an actual thing? I don’t know — it’s not off the table. But I’ve never been on a cruise in my life.

You’ve accurately sussed the vibe.

I’ve seen the pictures.

There is no containing a star of Belinda’s caliber.

In the making of her fifth studio album “Indómita,” the Mexican singer and actor began to understand that what made her hard to contain — in life, in love and in her career — was worth writing an album about.

“I was reading a book and all of a sudden the word ‘indómita’ appeared,” says Belinda in an audio call from her home in Mexico City. “For two days, I kept dreaming of that word. ‘Indómita, Indómita,’” says Belinda during a recent audio call from her home in Mexico City.

Out on June 5, “Indómita” is an assortment of corridos tumbados, reggaeton, rock and pop ballads with exciting collaborations — ranging from the American rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars to Latin stars like Tokischa and Tito Double P.

“This album is very special, not just for women but for everyone who feels untameable, who feels strong, who feels like a warrior,” she explains.

The title directly translates to indomitable, or untameable, a term that seems to perfectly suit the 35-year-old artist, whose long and prosperous career made her an international household name.

Born in Madrid, Spain, as Belinda Peregrín Schüll, but known widely by her mononym, Belinda began her legacy in Mexican television, taking on lead roles in early 2000’s childhood telenovelas like “Amigos x siempre,” “Aventuras en el tiempo,” and “Cómplices Al Rescate,” where she played a set of twins who has been separated at birth. She also broke through the Disney sphere, appearing in the popular 2006 sequel of “The Cheetah Girls 2” as Marisol, a Spanish pop star and competitor of the titular girl band.

Belinda’s music career has been equally as fruitful, including a stint as a singing coach on the TV competition “La Voz” and dozens of hit singles, such as the popular “Amor a Primera Vista,” a 2020 collaboration with Los Ángeles Azules and Lalo Ebratt. Her previous studio albums, 2003’s “Belinda,” 2006’s “Utopía,” 2010’s “Carpe Diem” and 2013’s “Catarsis” have all graced Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart.

Her new LP marks a personal artistic triumph for the artist, given its unique regional Mexican edge. “300 Noches,” her 2024 corrido track with Natanael Cano, made No. 4 on the Mexican Billboard pop chart and appeared on the Billboard Global 200, making it Belinda’s first appearance on the chart. Other corridos tumbados, like the rugged “La Cuadrada” featuring Tito Double P and the blistering “Mírame Feliz” with Xavi, unleash a new alter ego of the famed singer known as “Beli bélica,” the latter of which means “warrior” in Spanish.

“With this album, I’d like to open up the door to more women to sing corridos tumbados of heartache,” says Belinda.

The record is already scorching hot, with songs like “Cactus” making a subtle, prickly nod to her past relationship with Mexican crooner Christian Nodal, who famously tattooed her eyes on his chest. There’s also the reggaeton-corrido fusion called “La Mala,” which coyly addresses the rumors that Belinda is a cold, calculated lover — which heightened in the wake of her high-profile relationship.

Still, her notoriety as a heartbreaker has simultaneously granted her sainthood status from fans, who created fake prayer cards of the enchanting star to bolster their own love life.

“This album was made up of things that we live every day,” says Belinda. “Someone breaks our heart, we feel better, we fall in love, they break our heart again and so forth. Life is like that.”

But “Indómita” is much more than Belinda’s foray into regional Mexican music; there’s also “Jackpot,” a dazzling club alongside Kenia Os, a tribute to lightning-fast cars in “Rayo McQueen” — and even her love of anime in “Death Note.”

“I’m a versatile artist and this record reflects that,” says Belinda.

This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

What motivated you to release this album over a decade after your last one, “Catarsis”?
I know it might seem like it’s been a long time, but I never left. I’ve always been involved in music. I’ve done collaborations with Los Ángeles Azules, “Amor a Primera Vista,” that was super popular, with Ana Mena in “Las 12,” Lola Indigo and Tiny in “La Niña de la Escuela,” with Juan Magán and Lapiz Conciente in “Si No Te Quisiera.”

I’ve made a lot of music, but obviously this record means so much to me. It’s not the same to work on collaborations and music for other artists as it is to do it for myself. The album is full of collaborations with Thirty Seconds to Mars, who are one of my favorite bands of all time. It also has Kenia Os, Tito Double P, Neton Vega, who’s a hard-hitting act in the world of reggaeton and corridos tumbados, and Natanael Cano, who I can’t forget either. It’s a complete album, with lots of different styles.

Many of the songs on this album are corridos tumbados. Why did you dive into that style of music?
It’s a really stigmatized genre, and a genre that is specifically for men and for certain kinds of lyrics. I wanted to break that [idea] and say that instruments used — like the trombone, the alto horn, tololoche — aren’t just for men or for specific lyrics or a specific market. There can be more romantic lyrics, a mixing of sounds like pop with urban music. The challenge was also getting my collaborators to believe in this too, since they are used to other topics, but everyone trusted me and believed in the song[s] since the beginning and it was organic.

Tell me more about your collaborations. What did you learn from them and what did you teach them?
They’re so talented and play instruments very well, especially Natanael Cano — you can tell him to play any instrument. He’s very talented. We were in the studio and he started to play a Metallica song and I was like, “Wow!” Although we might pigeonhole them into this genre, they’re very versatile and talented. I admire them.

One of the singles of this album, “Cactus,” talks about your feelings toward an ex. How did it feel to release your emotions? And would you say that it helped you heal, as the song suggests?
I love healing through music. The first phrase of the song goes: “Therapy helps, but music heals more bad-ass.” Perhaps I couldn’t express with words what I can through music. As a composer we express our emotions through our lyrics. But it’s also important that people remember that not everything is based on experiences. It’s music so that people can identify themselves in love or heartache. I never mention anyone by name, but people can make their own conclusions or deductions. At the end of the day, I make music for people who can relate to the lyrics.

You’ve been in the spotlight for so many years. Do you believe there are two Belindas that exist? As in, one that is for the public and one that’s just for close family members?
Of course, I can guarantee it. There’s also a song where I express that idea that many times people have categorized me as a bad character, “La Mala.” At the end of the day, I know who I am and the people around me know the heart that I have — my feelings and intentions, my day-to-day. That’s what counts for me. If I paid attention to every comment [people made of me], my God, I’d be locked up in a room without an exit, which sometimes does happen to me.

How do you tune out those outside critics?
I try not to see these things. Sometimes it’s inevitable but I’m also not going deep into the web to find what people are saying. I do other more productive things that nourish me.

Obviously it hurts, because even if certain comments are not true, they still hurt because they carry negative energy. I don’t want to give into these comments as truth, but that energy of negativity or insult or humiliation or anything that comes from a negative side, obviously has a consequence. So one has to be careful about how they express themselves, because there’s so much negativity that exists, so it would be nice if we could just throw a bit more of love.

I heard you’re a big anime fan, and you show that in your song “Death Note.” Why was it important to include that?
I’m [an] otaku, even if people don’t believe it. I really like anime. I’m a fan of “One Piece,” “Death Note,” everything, “Attack on Titan,” but “Death Note” is my favorite. It’s pretty dark, but Ryuk is one of my favorite characters in life. I’ve always been a fan of terror, because within the darkness, there’s always some light.

You were born in Spain but were raised in Mexico. How have you navigated both identities?
I can’t pick one or the other, but I’ve always considered myself Mexican, because I was raised in Mexico and my accent is Mexican. I’m very, very much Latina.

What advice would you give your younger self?
Don’t take everything so personally and enjoy life. When I was little, I would think too much about what the world thought. I was always like, “do you like it? Oh you don’t, why?” and I would suffer. And now if I like it, OK, and if no one else likes it, then too bad, I like it!

MABEL scrapped an entire album before making her new self-titled mixtape – after being “crippled” by the expectations.

The singer, whose previous album About Last Night came out in 2022, said she felt pressure to live up to her debut, High Expectations.

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It won her a Brit Award for British Female Solo Artist.

Mabel said on TikTok: “I did scrap an album.

“I kept waiting for this moment like, ‘Now’s the time to put out an album’, but inevitably you change, you grow, and the music you made last year or the year before, you’ve kind of outgrown it.”

She added: “People expect you to do certain things and get certain accolades again like it’s easy.

“But that has been crippling, mentally and creatively, for me for years.”

Cardi’s love boat

CARDI B put the boot into her ex-husband Offset by going Instagram official with American football player Stefon Diggs.

The WAP rapper has been rowing with the Migos musician for weeks, with him seeking spousal support from her in their divorce, which she is arguing against.

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But Cardi made it clear he’s the last thing on her mind as she confirmed her romance with Stefon in sexy snaps on a yacht.

Good for her.

SAM IN THE KIT PARADE

SAM FENDER is out on the Toon as the star of an ad to launch Newcastle United’s new third kit.

I revealed last week how the Geordie singer had signed a massive deal with Adidas, as part of a tie-in with his beloved Magpies.

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My exclusive pictures show Sam on set at the Tyneside Irish Centre, just over the road from St James’ Park, as he filmed the new ad with more than 100 extras.

My source said: “As well as the Adidas ad tying in to Sam’s massive People Watching tour which kicks off in London on Friday, it will be used to launch Newcastle’s new third kit.

“He arrived at 3pm and filmed for five hours with loads of extras. Sam was decked out head to toe in Adidas and played his guitar. He was on top form and everyone who met him said he was absolutely lovely.

“It was a long shoot but everyone who took part got to take home a pair of brand new trainers as a treat.

“Sam is really pleased with how the ad looks and so are the big cheeses at Newcastle United.”

Since his debut album Hypersonic Missiles, which went straight to No1 in 2019, Sam has been on the most incredible rise.

I’ve no doubt the journey is going to get even more exciting for Sam in the years to come.

And now he’s got some lovely new clobber to wear while he’s doing it.

MILEY CYRUS is battling it out with Garbage to score her third No1 album on Friday.

Her album Something Beautiful is in the lead to top the charts.

But just behind her is Garbage’s new record Let All That We Imagine Be The Light.

They may face opposition from Taylor Swift, whose album Reputation is at No8 in midweek figures.

NADINE TO TELL ALL IN MEMOIR

NADINE COYLE has risked falling out with her Girls Aloud mates again with a memoir that promises to “tell all” on their career, including notorious “bust-ups”.

She reunited with Cheryl Tweedy, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh last summer for a successful UK tour after patching up their differences.

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But I imagine they might be more than a little worried about what Nadine has written in the book, called Loud: Diary Of A Derry Girl.

It is due to be released in time for Christmas, with details about it leaking online after Amazon put up a pre-order link early, seemingly by accident.

A description said it will be “an intimate tell-all account” of her life.
It added: “This is her story, a story full of friendships, a lot of laughs,

some bust-ups and just a whole lot of pop.”

It’s also likely to touch on her close friendship with bandmate Sarah Harding, who died from cancer in 2021, so I’m sure it will be an emotional read.

RADIO 2 In The Park is heading to Chelmsford, Essex, for three days from September 5-7.

The annual music festival will take place in Hylands Park, with tickets going on sale at 8.30am tomorrow.

That will follow the line-up announcement during Scott Mills’ breakfast show this morning.

JOJO: HEAD OVER HEELS FOR CHRIS

JOJO SIWA has finally confirmed her romance with reality no-mark Chris Hughes, two months after meeting in the Celebrity Big Brother house.

Jojo split with her partner hours after leaving the ITV show in April.

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She said in a new interview: “It’s not platonic any more.

“It’s been a beautiful development, a beautiful connection, and I’m absolutely head over heels for him and he’s the same way.”

Hitting back at critics, she added: “Anyone who suggests the relationship is a PR stunt is only telling on themselves.

“Clearly, you’ve never been around us.

“I won’t ever speak for him, but for me personally, the happiness in my life just radiates off of me right now.”

Alexandra vamps it up

ALEXANDRA BURKE looks incredible as she prepares to take on the role of Morticia in The Addams Family musical comedy.

She got into character ahead of the UK tour which starts in Birmingham on July 10.

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The production will tour other spots including Leicester, Salford, Canterbury and Blackpool.

But while Alexandra has made a name for herself as a stage actress, she will return to music.

On taking a break to have her two children, Alexandra said: “Babies happened. One planned. Another baby happened . . .  wasn’t planned.

“But the plan is music. I’m hopefully coming back, I promise.”

Alexandra, whose last album The Truth Is came out in 2018, added: “Life just happened and I’m so grateful for my gorgeous children. It’s slowed me down, it’s made me realise the most important things in life.”

Mexican corrido singer Gabito Ballesteros has always been a hopeless romantic. His newest album, “Ya No Se Llevan Serenatas,” or “They No Longer Perform Serenades,” tugs at those delicate heartstrings.

Released Thursday, the album pays tribute to romance in the digital era of smartphones and social media. Invoking modern-day references, like sending Instagram DMs and going to Disneyland, he puts his own spin on the traditional serenade, a ballad one typically sings below the windowsill of their lover. It’s the kind of profound romance that regional Mexican acts such as Joan Sebastian, Vicente Fernandez and Juan Gabriel honed for decades.

“I like to sing to women, bring them roses, be romantic, and I want to convey this to my audience,” said Ballesteros in a statement to The Times.

Sprinkled across the 21 tracks is a roster of star-studded Mexican homegrown talents, including longtime collaborator Natanael Cano, Tito Doble P, Christian Nodal, Neton Vega, Carín León, Oscar Maydon and Luis R Conriquez.

Colombian reggaeton superstar J Balvin is also featured in the Latin-EDM fusion track, “La Troka.”

Ahead of its release, the rising star teased his sophomore album on Instagram with a clip of him driving a classic Ford Mustang filled with dozens of red roses. Once parked, Ballesteros pulls out his guitar from the trunk as his joint song with Carín León, “Regalo de Dios,” begins to unfold in the background — a sign that Ballesteros is ready to pour his heart out to whoever that fortunate soul might be.

The song is one of the few pre-released tracks of the album, alongside poetic singles like “Cleopatra,” which compares a woman’s beauty to that of the famed Egyptian queen, and the agonizing track “Perdido,” which looks to fill the void of true love lost with vice.

The already popular, anxiety-riddled “7 Diás,” featuring Tito Double P, is also included in the track list; Ballesteros also performs an acoustic rendition of this heartbreak song on YouTube.

“This is a very important album because it tells a very different story than what [I] have been doing],” said Ballesteros. “The audience will get to learn more about my love and heartbreak.”

Ballesteros, who is originally from Sonora, Mexico, first gained recognition in 2020 with his breakthrough conjunto song “El Rompecabezas.” After obtaining his degree in industrial engineering in 2023, he joined his longtime friend Natanael Cano and Peso Pluma on the chart-topping hit “AMG,” which debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 92, marking the trio’s first appearance on the chart. Ballesteros later appeared on the chart that same year with the megahit “Lady Gaga” with Peso Pluma and Junior H,” which remained on the Billboard Hot 100 for 20 weeks, peaking at No. 35.

The release of “Ya No Se Llevan Serenatas” comes a year after Ballesteros launched his critically-acclaimed debut album, “The GB,” which landed at No. 65 on the Billboard 200. The 25-year-old singer— who is under Natanael Cano’s record label Los CT and Peso Pluma’s Double P Management— has quickly become a force in the new wave of corridos tumbados, amassing more than 50 million monthly Spotify listeners.

“If you’re in love, I would like for you to dedicate a song to your lover [from this album]. If you’re going through a breakup, listen to it and heal with the music,” Ballesteros said. “Everything is guided by love.”

King Mala wants to put it all out there. And she is — at a breakneck pace.

The 26-year-old alt-pop singer released her (positively) nightmare-inducing debut album, “And You Who Drowned in the Grief of a Golden Thing,” on May 2. Since then she’s been on the road, touring along the West Coast from Vancouver to Los Angeles in support of Canadian singer Lights. After her recent appearance with Lights at the Roxy, King Mala will return to L.A. for her own headlining show at the Troubadour on June 26.

When joining a Zoom call with The Times, King Mala, whose real name is Areli Castro, admitted to running on fumes. Having just driven from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in the wee hours of the morning, Castro was contending with a central theme of her album in real time: the chasm between her dreams and the limits of her corporeal form.

“There’s this struggle between the things you want and the things you are,” said Castro. “I just love the idea of playing with grandeur and gods while still maintaining a very like human and gross and visceral vibe.”

Despite it all, she’s maintained a sunny disposition — a stark departure from the moody and dramatic feel of singles like “Ode to a Black Hole.” The macabre visuals from her current musical era evoke the same mystical energy as “True Detective” and 2024’s surprise horror hit, “Longlegs.”

Born in the border town of El Paso to a Mexican father and Puerto Rican mother, the musician grew up attending Catholic church and listening to a lot of soul music, a genre she now describes as her “bread and butter.” While she doesn’t feel stereotypically Texan, Castro still feels spiritually yoked to El Paso.

“El Paso is very, very non-Texas,” Castro said. “When I go to the rest of Texas, I’m like, ‘This isn’t my Texas.’ I grew up on [the] border — Southwestern vibes — and it’s so different than Austin or Dallas. I feel like a desert witch.”

That desert witchiness emanates from the mesmerizing sonic loops and negative space deployed in her songs, which she pairs with “found” footage inspired by ghost hunting shows, ornate Catholic crosses and sandy landscapes captured in her music videos.

Castro also spoke with The Times about how she mapped out her debut album and the life experiences that helped shape her gothic sensibilities.

This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

When it comes to the aesthetics of the album, it employs a lot of religious aspects. What was the intention with that?
I love religious metaphor. I find it so grand and ancient and fun to use as a vehicle to tell a story. I’m very obsessed with the collective unconscious and how we keep telling the same stories over and over and over. So using stories that I really admire as the vehicle for this was really fun. There’s just a power struggle in this album that I wanted to capture. And it felt like using the metaphor of God and humanity and of, “How do you exist as a powerful person, while also still maintaining your humanity?” That was the whole point of the album.

Does that attraction to religion and these grand ideas come from your own habit or was it a thing from when you were growing up that influenced you?
I grew up very Catholic, like cradle Catholic. My grandma always wanted us to go to Mass, so we adhered to that. But I was home schooled and the home school community is very Christian. And so I was sort of indoctrinated into that for a good amount of my formative years — middle school [and] early high school. It was very harmful and strange.

It was very interesting to see how predatory the religion is. It’s looking for kids who are lonely and scared and promising solace, which is nice, but then there’s always a backhand that’s like, “Oh, but you have to do this and you have to adhere to this and you have to follow our rules.”

Yeah, I’ve got a little bit of religious trauma to say the least. … Once I was out of that cycle and community, I realized it’s really all very similar to a cult. At what point does a cult transition into just a full religion? Is it just enough people believe it? I don’t know. So that was a bunch of the stuff that I was thinking about as we made this.

What are some media that you draw inspiration from?
I’m a big, big, big horror girlie. So that was a big inspiration. I love that being a human is so gross and I feel like we don’t realize that half the time because we’re so used to it. I love body horror. I love [movies like] “The Substance” and “The Witch.” I’m very obsessed with Robert Eggers and the way he makes beautiful, beautiful horror.

Going into [the album] I wanted to do it the way we did humanity. I wanted it to be very gross and visceral and real and if we were going to do sexy, I wanted it to be very raw. And if we were going to do body horror, I wanted it to be very intentional and intense.

Do you feel like the grossness of being human is kind of beautiful?
I love it. We’re so weird, especially our relationships to each other. It’s so sweet and strange and we love to hold hands and touch our mouths together. It’s so cute and gross and funny. I love thinking of us like we’re aliens. Like if some other creature saw us, they’d be like, “What the f— are they doing?” It’s really funny.

Are there musical acts that you drew inspiration from for this album?
For this record, we drew a lot of inspiration from “22, a Million” by Bon Iver, from Radiohead, from old school hip hop and rap. Kendrick Lamar and old Kanye West … We had a big playlist. Phantogram was on there, The xx is on there, Portishead, Little Simz — she was a big inspo — Doechii, Rico Nasty.

I was drawing from a bunch of different directions. [The production team] knew we had to create this sonic landscape before we started making the record. We wanted to do analog drums and hip-hop beats with reverbed-out, textural guitar, à la Mk.gee. We just wanted it to feel alive and analog.

What do you want people to get out of your live show?
I want people to ascend and join the character. I want it to feel like a movie. I want these songs to live and breathe and sort of experience themselves through everyone in the audience. I think live shows create like such an energy between people. I want it to feel like we’re going to church, like we’re going on a journey together. That’s the goal.