The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited 529 artists and executives to join its membership Wednesday, including actors Jenna Ortega, Teyana Taylor, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth and Josh O’Connor and filmmakers Benny and Josh Safdie, as the organization continues to reshape the body that votes on the Oscars.
If all invitees accept, the academy’s voting membership will grow to 10,338 members, up from roughly 6,000 a decade ago, as the organization continues to expand its ranks and broaden its international reach. Overall membership, including emeritus members who no longer vote, will rise to 11,319.
The latest class includes 95 Oscar nominees, 21 Oscar winners and three recipients of Scientific and Technical Awards.
“We are delighted to invite this remarkable group of film artists and professionals from around the world to join the Academy,” academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a joint statement. “Through their commitment to filmmaking, this year’s exceptionally talented class has made significant contributions to our global movie industry.”
The academy said 42% of this year’s invitees are women, 56% are from underrepresented communities and 53% are from 60 countries and territories outside the United States. Last year’s class was 41% women, 45% from underrepresented ethnic or racial communities and 55% international.
Across the academy’s overall membership, 36% are women, 25% come from underrepresented communities and 22% are international, according to the organization.
Other notable invitees include actors Jon Bernthal, Julia Garner, Bill Skarsgård, Anthony Ramos, Jemaine Clement, Jenny Slate and Simu Liu; singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles; documentary filmmaker Andrew Jarecki (“Capturing the Friedmans”); and director Zach Cregger (“Weapons”).
Nine individuals, including filmmakers Benny Safdie (“The Smashing Machine”) and Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”), received invitations from multiple branches and must choose one upon accepting membership.
Membership in the academy is by sponsorship rather than application. Oscar nominees are automatically considered for membership in the year they are nominated, while branch executive committees review additional candidates before recommendations are approved by the academy’s Board of Governors.
The latest class is five names fewer than last year’s group of 534 invitees. The academy’s largest-ever class came in 2018, when it invited 928 new members as part of a broader effort to diversify its ranks.
The 99th Oscars will take place March 14, 2027, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.
A coalition of advocacy groups for artists, songwriters and managers is warning musicians about the growing risks of artificial intelligence music.
Recently, many major record labels have inked deals with AI music startups such as Suno, Udio and Klay. But the coalition, which includes organizations such as the Music Artists Coalition and the Songwriters of North America, argues in a new letter that “artists and songwriters whose works, voices, performances, likenesses and creative identities make those deals valuable are not being meaningfully consulted.”
The letter, released Monday, stated that many artists and songwriters in existing recording and publishing agreements are currently receiving letters from their labels and publishers claiming that they “will be opted in to AI-related uses by default, with little actual choice offered.” Even new artists are receiving agreements that include “AI rights clauses as a standard condition of signing.”
“We support innovation and recognise that AI can create new opportunities for music,” the coalition wrote in the letter. “However artists are not simply catalogue assets, and innovation cannot be used to override artists’ rights.”
The National Independent Talent Organization, a live entertainment advocacy group that signed the letter, said many of its members are coming to the organization with label contracts that include “non-negotiable AI usage clauses.”
“We can’t allow for contract language signed decades before this technology existed to be the standard bearer. These rights belong to the creators and they get the final say on usage,” said Nathaniel Marro, NITO’s executive director, in a statement to The Times.
“Music companies are leading the fight to protect artists’ and songwriters’ rights in the age of AI,” said a spokesperson for IFPI, the recording industry’s global trade body.
“While our members have taken different approaches, they share the same fundamental objectives: combating the unauthorized use of music and establishing licensing models that return revenue to artists and songwriters,” the IFPI spokesperson added.
The coalition is asking the industry to move forward on AI deals only under four conditions: that musicians directly consent to any agreement; that artists receive fair compensation; that there be transparency between the companies and the talent; and that companies make a public commitment to end contracts built on default AI opt-ins and forced AI clauses.
“Artists need a real seat in these conversations, clear terms on revenue share, and the ability to say no without losing their deal,” said Ron Gubitz, the Music Artists Coalition’s executive director, in a statement.
A little over two weeks ago, the American Federation of Musicians sued Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. The complaint claims the major labels “received significant compensation” from the AI companies for past copyright violations and licensed “substantial” portions of their music catalogs to them, but haven’t shared that with the musicians.
Despite the confrontational tone of the letter, some signatories struck a more conciliatory note. Overall, the industry seems to be receptive to these AI changes, said Willie “Prophet” Stiggers of the Black Music Action Coalition, another signatory advocacy group. At this point in AI’s development, he added, everyone in the industry — from artists and labels to AI start-ups and policymakers — has a responsibility to establish effective guardrails.
“The companies building these technologies understand that trust is essential to long-term success, and trust begins with respecting creators’ rights,” Stiggers said in a statement to The Times. “There’s still important work ahead, but we’re encouraged that the conversation has shifted from whether protections are needed to how we build them together.”
“The structures being created now will shape the music ecosystem for years to come,” the coalition’s letter said. “The future of music must be built with artists, songwriters and their representatives, not imposed on them.”
Times staff writer Wendy Lee contributed to this report.
Walk into the Grammy Museum in downtown L.A., and you’ll see Clive Davis’ legacy everywhere.
The museum’s intimate performance space is named for the late record executive, and his visage greets guests at the front door. (Davis was the first million-dollar donor to the nascent Recording Academy archive and exhibition space.) His sprawling roster of acts — Bruce Springsteen, Miles Davis, Whitney Houston,Alicia Keys, Earth, Wind & Fire — defined an entire art form and business model as preserved in the Grammy Museum. Davis’ pre-Grammy gala was the most coveted invitation in music every awards season.
Davis’ death at 94 is “devastating,” said Michael Sticka, chief executive and president of the Grammy Museum. “Clive was always a north star of music and talent and artistry. We’re all lucky to have his legacy to look up to.”
Davis’ death marks the end of perhaps the most important and enduring career in the record industry. Sticka spoke to The Times about Davis’ remarkable longevity, creative vision and how a career like his will likely never be possible again.
Clive was a giant of the record business. How did his career shape the modern record industry?
His career was iconic. He really had a unique ability to not just bring an artist to their fullest potential artistically, but commercially. From attending Monterey Pop and first seeing Janis Joplin to Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys, I don’t think anybody had that ear in them the way that he did.
With Clive, what you got was not just hearing commercial viability, but an understanding of what was going on in the zeitgeist. That’s what propelled his career and legacy beyond most record executives.
His name’s on the building at Grammy Museum’s theater. What did he mean to the institution — not just for fundraising but as a living connection to music history?
He didn’t just donate to the museum. He donated his time, his historical knowledge of music, his firsthand perspective. He always kept tabs on what was happening in music. I always say the Clive Davis Theater is the toughest ticket in town for its intimacy and the level of programming we do. But he did an annual program at the museum where people could come hear stories directly from him. Once he decided he was in, he was all in.
His gala was the place to be every Grammy season too.
I don’t think anybody could gather a roomful of luminaries like that from entertainment, tech and politics in the way that Clive did. We were lucky to be a part of that. Even with the stature he had, he was still a physical presence there, he was approachable. He was always looked at as this living legend, but his legacy was continuously being built.
That’s true over the arc of his career, which saw him lead Columbia, Arista, J Records and more. He had a lot of resurrections as well as successes.
He had this ability to resurrect. Look at Santana and “Supernatural,” he was a producer on that album that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame just last year. So many of us would just give up, but he just had this resolve to continue, and thank God he did.
The record industry is so different now than when he began his career. Artists find audiences on social media rather than being discovered by label executives. Is a career like his — a famous executive driven by their own taste and individual savvy — even possible today?
That’s true, artists break on social media before they’re even on record executives’ radars now. I don’t know if we’ll see that kind of career arc again. Clive had a rare combination of gravitas and being recognized so publicly. The man and his legacy are not going to be replicated.
Beyond the name on the theater, how do you hope the Grammy Museum will honor him with its programming in time to come?
I don’t know yet. We weren’t really prepared for this. We’re gonna have to sit down and think how to pay tribute to such a legacy. I think that the impact the Clive Davis Theater has, bringing in 120 artists a year — I couldn’t think of a more apropos name on the door.
BTS member Jungkook, seen here performing in New York’s Central Park in September 2023, topped 3 billion Spotify streams with his single “Seven,” his agency BigHit Music said Tuesday. File Photo by John Nacion/UPI | License Photo
“Seven,” a hit solo track by BTS member Jungkook, has surpassed 3 billion streams on Spotify, making him the first Korean artist to hit the threshold with a single song, his agency BigHit Music said Tuesday.
“Seven” is also the only song released in 2023 globally to reach the milestone, according to the agency.
A passionate serenade about wanting to spend every day with a loved one, “Seven” blends a catchy melody with a warm acoustic guitar sound and rhythms from UK garage, a genre of electronic music that emerged in Britain in the early 1990s.
The song’s music video surpassed 600 million views on YouTube in April.
Since its release, “Seven” has enjoyed worldwide success, debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and reaching No. 3 on the British Official Singles Chart Top 100.
K-pop supergroup BTS, to which Jungkook belongs, is currently on its largest-ever scale world tour, “Arirang.”
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Instead of the usual phalanx of cars and buses, Saturday evening traffic on Wilshire Boulevard was replaced by massive balloons, mobile sculptures, gaggles of gallerists and an endless array of elaborate costumes.
The first-ever Los Angeles Art Parade, a collaboration between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and famed gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, transformed the stretch of Wilshire known as Museum Row into a human-powered exhibition of the city’s dynamic art scene.
About 146 groups, made up of more than 1,400 participants, marched in the parade, with projects ranging from larger-than-life marionette dolls to squads of children in do-it-yourself costumes to mobile re-creations of LACMA’s most iconic art pieces.
The parade followed an all-day block party thrown by LACMA as part of its Grand Opening Weekend, celebrating the new David Geffen Galleries and the completion of the 20-year-long, $724-million campus construction project. Together, the block party and art parade attracted an estimated 60,000 attendees, who swarmed the galleries, danced to explosive DJ sets, and lined the streets to watch the eclectic procession of artists.
People dance during Flying Lotus’ DJ set at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles.
(Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)
According to LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan, the event was a long time coming and “just the beginning” of how his team plans to use the campus space, which he previously called the city’s “living room.”
“We’re not gonna close Wilshire every weekend, but it’s an example of what we can do,” Govan said. “It’s really exciting to see the building work.”
Following a crowd-drawing DJ set from electronic low-fi hip-hop artist Flying Lotus, Govan introduced L.A. County District 2 Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell. She said the event made her “proud to represent LACMA” and to be a Metro board member, referencing the recently-opened Metro D-line extension, which dropped attendees off a quick stroll from LACMA’s entrance.
“Just seeing you all at this amazing public facility does my heart good,” she said. “This is your local government at work.”
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1.Silhouettes of people watching the parade.2.A man and woman wearing tulle over them walk in the parade. 3.The crowd at the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art (LACMA) Block Party.(Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)
As the party raged on LACMA’s campus, hundreds of parade participants hurriedly prepared for their debuts in the corners of nearby streets and parking lots. One group inflated a giant disco ball, while another smeared themselves with body paint next to a line of rehearsing dancers. Elsewhere, a megaphone-wielding leader herded dozens of black cats in the style of artist Gary Baseman into some semblance of order.
Deitch originally staged the first Art Parades in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood between 2005 and 2008. While those took a more art-world-exclusive approach, Deitch said the Los Angeles version was designed with inclusion in mind. The call for parade proposals was open to “emerging and established artists and creatives of all ages and backgrounds,” according to guidelines, as long as the work was appropriate for all ages and didn’t require a motorized element.
“The New York one was much more oriented toward people in the art community. We didn’t put out this kind of open call,” Deitch explained. “This is very different in its openness and its diversity. There are some famous artists and famous choreographers, L.A. legends. But there are also mothers from the San Fernando Valley with their children. I really love that.”
Artist Jordan Rountree’s rolling woodcut-sculpture called the Devil Jack in a Box with Crocodile appeared in Saturday’s Block Party and Art Parade hosted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA).
(Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)
“It’s just a very open platform, so you don’t have to have an M.F.A. to express yourself as an artist,” he added.
The procession was dizzying in its variety and scale. While many projects leaned into beauty and whimsy, others took a more overtly political approach, displaying anti-ICE messages on T-shirts and signs, sporting trans pride flags, or, in the case of performance artist Amy Kaps, wearing an unraveling U.S. constitution.
Some even referenced local causes, such as the “Boo Boo Bandage Brigade for Safe Streets,” which advocated for fixing sidewalks and increasing accessibility downtown. One particularly moving display by the Pali-Altadena Collective featured participants carrying miniature models of buildings and landmarks lost in the 2025 fires.
Chicana artist Nao Bustamante and Track 16 Gallery brought “Brown Disco” to the streets, which featured a giant gold disco ball and figures from decades of L.A. queer nightlife.
The crowd at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Art Parade.
(Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)
“As a brown, queer person, I think that this really brought a light into our community, and now its presence [creates] an intergenerational conversation,” said Track 16 Assistant Director Steve Galindo. “The nightlife scene is how we come out as queer people, so it’s really special to be in the parade.”
“Puppetry has been part of the arts for so many years,” added Daisy Hernandez, the theater’s production manager. “It’s a way that people express themselves, just like every other art form. So that’s what we’re here to do: express ourselves through puppetry.”
Spanish painter Nieves González arrives in Los Angeles for her first U.S. solo exhibition having already experienced a taste of fame.
The 29-year-old caught the attention of the art and fashion worlds last year after being discovered on Instagram and commissioned to paint the cover of Lily Allen’s album “West End Girl.” Depicting the singer as a Baroque aristocrat clad in contemporary designer fashion, the portrait helped propel González onto an international stage.
Collectors have taken notice. The 13 paintings in “A Friendship Story,” opening Saturday at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, have already sold out, according to the gallery, with prices ranging from $4,000 to $20,000.
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Elle magazine dubbed González “Fashion’s Favorite New Artist,” while exhibitions in Rome, Paris, Belfast and Bilbao, Spain, expanded her reputation across Europe.
González developed her classic yet defiantly modern approach while studying at the University of Seville, where Spanish masters such as Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán painted in the naturalist Baroque tradition. Drawing liberally from fashion, art history and everyday life, she often dresses the subjects of her portraits in puffer jackets — garments she wears herself during the cold winters of Granada, Spain, where she lives. The material, she said, recalls the sculptural rendering of fabric in paintings by Zurbarán and Velázquez: the folds, the volumes, the high shine.
Nieves González often dresses her subjects in puffer jackets.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“It works beautifully from a visual standpoint,” she said, speaking Spanish during an interview at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station a few days before the exhibition opened. Wearing blue jeans and a pink button-down blouse, she echoed the pastel blues and pinks that appear throughout many of the works surrounding her.
“Fashion inspires me,” she said. “Just as 17th century artists drew inspiration from the fashion of their day — often creating paintings that served as catalogs of current styles — I do the same,” she said. “The goal is to not merely convey a specific message or ideology but to create a testament to a generation and the era in which we live.”
This fall, González’s painting “La Sfida” (2025) will appear in the Städel Museum’s exhibition “Mary Magdalene. Sin. Pray. Love” in Frankfurt, Germany, alongside works by Lady Gaga, Marlene Dumas and Auguste Rodin. The painting depicts Mary Magdalene with long, flowing hair, draped in a regal red garment and clutching a skull — a contemporary interpretation of one of Christianity’s most enduring figures.
“Nieves González is the youngest of these artists and, at the same time, probably the one who most closely follows in the tradition of the Old Masters,” curators Bastian Eclercy and Stefan Roller wrote in an email.
The Santa Monica exhibition marks an evolution from the paintings that established González’s reputation. Earlier works often centered on solitary women posed with the self-possession of royal portraits or religious icons. “A Friendship Story” focuses on relationships between pairs of women, exploring friendship, intimacy, support and shared experience.
For González, friendship is one of the most profound aspects of women’s lives and a subject she felt deserved greater attention in painting.
Victoria Rios, a curator who works with González, said the artist’s paintings “rewrite the narratives of the past, rewrite the history of martyrdom and place women at the center.”
“Nothing in her painting is arbitrary,” Rios said in an email. “Every formal decision is also an ethical one.”
“The horse elevates the art; symbolically, it carries connotations of elegance and nobility,” Nieves González said. “It seemed like a way to elevate the concept of friendship.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
González frequently turns art historical conventions on their head. In “Salir a robar caballos: Go out to steal horses,” she replaces the archetypal portrait of a gallant man on horseback with two young women dressed in puffer and vinyl jackets, posed like contemporary Amazons atop rearing horses.
“The horse elevates the art; symbolically, it carries connotations of elegance and nobility,” González said. “It seemed like a way to elevate the concept of friendship. It also has an element of play, adventure and fun, since having fun is part of the bond too.”
The artist also sees her work through a feminist lens.
“We live in a patriarchal society, and so, unfortunately, I belong to the oppressed segment of that society, and my work relates to that,” she said. “It stems from a struggle, an understanding and a process of redefining concepts that we have historically established as normal, natural and habitual.”
“I am interested in portraying us as brave and powerful, sometimes even with an air of haughtiness,” she said.
Another painting, “Something’s crossed over me and I can’t go back” (2026), captures González’s fusion of historical and contemporary references. Two women dressed in green and pink fur cradle each other’s heads, reimagining medieval depictions of cephalophores — Christian martyrs who carry their severed heads while continuing to preach or pray.
The title comes from a pivotal line in the 1991 film “Thelma & Louise,” marking the turning point for Geena Davis’ character Thelma, fully committing to her ultimately fatal adventure with Susan Sarandon’s Louise.
Nieves González, “Holding You,” 2026 (oil on canvas).
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
González builds each painting from what she calls a “Frankenstein” — a digital composite assembled from archival photographs, found images and reference material. The painting process then takes over. A mid-project visit to the Prado Museum in Madrid, for instance, might send her back to the digital sketch to pull in a compositional element from Velázquez before returning to the canvas. “The final result often ends up being completely different from what I initially envisioned,” she said.
Heller began representing González, whom he calls an “original voice,” last year after being introduced to her work by another painter.
Staging her first U.S. solo exhibition in Los Angeles rather than New York reflects what he sees as a more relaxed environment for an emerging artist, without the glare and expectations of the New York art world.
“L.A. feels a little less constrained,” Heller said. “It feels a little more free.”
González’s portrait of Allen is currently on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery, hanging in the same room as a self-portrait by David Hockney. She said while it “has been very significant in terms of media exposure,” exhibitions and professional opportunities were already in motion before the album cover brought wider attention.
“I’ve always said that what I want to do in life is make a living from painting,” she said.
Mission accomplished.
‘Nieves González: A Friendship Story’
Where: Richard Heller Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave. #B-5A, Santa Monica
Russian artist Robert Kuzakov, known as Semyon Skrepetsky, was shot dead in Poland just three days after a performance protest in Berlin near the Russian embassy. He was known for his caricatures of politicians including Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny.
The Recording Academy announced significant changes for the 2027 Grammys, introducing several new genre categories and updating eligibility rules for two of its top awards.
The rule changes will most prominently affect the new artist and album categories.
A change to allow for four submissions for new artist instead of three “establishes more specific language surrounding prominence,” the academy said in a statement. The change updates the famously confusing criteria for new artist, in which acts familiar to some fans for years can suddenly break through and earn new consideration for the category.
It’s likely to benefit an artist such as Ella Langley, who had previously submitted several times for new artist but finally had a commercial and critical breakthrough with her single “Choosin’ Texas” and LP “Dandelion.”
“We’ve heard from the music community that the way artists are being developed is changing, and the time it’s taking to find success or recognition can take longer than it once did. Artists are often releasing more music before they actually break through the consciousness of consumers or of our voters, and that evolution directly impacts this Category,” Recording Academy Chief Executive Harvey Mason Jr. said in a statement announcing the changes. The changes “reflect the reality that artist development looks different than it did even a few years ago.”
In the album category, new rules state that “the threshold of new recordings required on an eligible album is lowered from 75% to 66% to reduce the exclusion of entries that are widely recognized throughout the music industry as new albums.” Given the fast streaming-centric release cycle of new singles, remixes and live cuts, the rule changes reflect that a new album may have a significant amount material released earlier.
Additionally, the academy announced five new genre categories, most significantly a dedicated award for Asian pop — a late but welcome acknowledgment of the commercial reach, artistic accomplishments and deep fan culture of K-pop and other scenes in Japan, the Philippines and China.
Other new categories include Latin song, a songwriting-specific award for Latin music in an era when Bad Bunny and Karol G make some of pop’s most salient political and creative statements; distinct awards for R&B collaboration or duo/group performance and R&B solo performance; a new traditional pop vocal performance award; and the replacement of folk album with categories for contemporary folk album and traditional folk album.
Additionally, a new “ballot plus” option will allow for voting members working across genres to vote in more categories, and songwriting contributors to winning albums in most genre categories will receive Grammy statuettes and achievement certificates, as producers and engineers currently receive.
“These changes and expansions give even more people a place for their music to be respected, heard and evaluated. With more Categories, we can represent more music creators, artists, writers, and producers, and it gives us a great opportunity to be more inclusive,” Mason said in his statement. “Now more than ever, we have to keep pace because things are changing and evolving so quickly. These changes are a reflection of that fast-paced evolution.”
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What does it mean to lack ambition in a country that worships wealth? It means you are a capitalist wallflower, a laggard with a serious character flaw. No field of endeavor is immune from this attitude, the art world least of all. But artists with a desire for riches and fame must not declare their intentions so brazenly. At a time when the plastic arts are about as marginalized as they ever have been, and media buzz is generated by dead painters whose works sell for enormous sums at auction, creation in and of itself has little value unless it is lashed to something marketable.
With his new novel “Contrapposto,” Dave Eggers has written a big-hearted, deeply moving story about the choices artists make, or don’t make, to square up their own notions of success and happiness. The book is dual bildungsroman, following two friends across the long span of their lives from adolescence to their 70s, as they fall in and out of each other’s lives, make their way in the world, and fumble around for meaning and purpose in their art.
The protagonist in “Contrapposto” is Rob “Cricket” Dibb, an underclass Midwestern kid, raised by a single mother in a North Indiana suburb that’s about as nowheresville as it gets for budding artists with dreams of glory. Cricket doesn’t dream big. He’s just trying to endure without bodily harm, seeking refuge from his mother’s abusive boyfriend in the basement with his grandfather Silas, who teaches him about jazz and the beauty of a glorious sunset. He draws so he doesn’t have to think. Immersion in art is his escape hatch from the dreariness of his pinched world: “The drawing meant nothing, would never mean anything to anyone, but it was true to how he saw it. His hand had recorded what he saw and felt about this thing. He was an ugly, common creature who could occasionally freeze time. That was enough.”
Cricket’s apprenticeship is decidedly informal. No full scholarship rides to Bard or Pratt for him; instead he saves up to enroll himself in a life drawing class in Chicago, where he discovers the beauty of applying rigor and rules to his work, how to break down pictures into the geometry of circles and squares, planes and angles. “He measured proportions and improved,” writes Eggers. “He grew more confident with each pass on his drawing, and realized … that much of the rightness of the drawing, of any drawing, came through time and diligence and discernment.”
He meets his slightly older schoolmate Olympia, one of Eggers’ most beguiling creations, when she implores him to scrawl scatological bathroom graffiti on a playground structure in Old-English typography. Unlike Cricket, Olympia is earnest and sincere about her art in the way that only a young person untainted by cynicism can be. She claims to inhabit the soul of Albert Camus, and flings around aphorisms about art that fly over Cricket’s head. She is an aesthete, someone who likes to go to the race track just to revel in the colors on display there. She wants to create an art scene in their little world. “You know all the great art movements have friends at their core, right?,” she tells Cricket. “A lot of time they’re jammed together by some critics and the artists reject the name and the association. But think about Patti Smith and Sam Shepard. Did you know they dated for a while?”
Cricket is beguiled by her, and Olympia in turn is taken in by Cricket’s talent. When the local library pulls a few of Cricket’s semi-nude life drawing portraits down for fear of offending their patrons, Olympia becomes his advocate and champion. In contrast to Cricket, who skates along with no end plan, Olympia is a committed careerist, an artist who insists on a captive audience to justify her work. She wants to earn money as an artist; Cricket just wants to be left alone. This push and pull between the two frame Eggers’ novel across the six decades of his narrative.
One of many joys of “Contrapposto” is observing Cricket’s artistic awakening via the mentors who guide him into his artistic consciousness. Marcus Carpenter, a wizened sage in battered work boots (one imagines him as the art world analogue to the late novelist Jim Harrison), is the moral conscience of the novel, fighting the good fight for personal expression and railing against the “new, paradoxical tyranny wherein those without technical skill terrorize those who possess it.” Carpenter plucks Cricket from arts college and its meaningless pontificating to his “atelier in the corn,” a ramshackle Victorian where Cricket learns how to transmute what he sees with color and light. “The talented have talent,” Carpenter tells Cricket during one of his endearing rants. “The untalented have theories.”
From there, Cicket’s life is a crooked line. He doesn’t abandon art, but he can’t summon the urge to sell himself or his work, to graft his joy in making things onto the caprices of the marketplace. As Eggers jumps through time, we find Cricket working as an intern in an art gallery, an arid, lifeless space where nothing inspiring can possibly exist. As a young man he works as a ship-breaker in Turkey; in middle-age, we find him in a coastal town in Cambodia, making replicas of great paintings for tourists. Olympia, his elusive love and sporadic muse, flits in and out of his life as she works her way up the tiers of the art world’s ziggurat. She gently berates him for his timidity: “This is how artists have power. We sell work. You’re implying there’s nobility in powerlessness. That’s been an idiotic trope for too long — that participating in the business side of it taints you. Do you know how dumb that is? That artists have to be these fragile little wood nymphs that are too precious to touch the money?”
As “Contrapposto” arrives at its beautiful, life-affirming conclusion, we are left pondering the significance of artistic endeavor in a world that commodifies everything, including our bodies and brains. At a time when even the greatest achievements are debased in a culture that gives equal weight to meretricious novelty, is it even worth the trouble? Eggers’ brilliant novel has the answer: Follow your bliss. In the final analysis, it is all that matters.
David Hockney, the innovative and prolific British artist who arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, soon celebrating its sun-drenched life and landscapes in colorful, wildly popular paintings, has died.
He was 88.
Calling himself “an English Los Angeleno,” Hockney immortalized the city’s sparkling swimming pools, palm trees and beautiful young men, then went on to experiment with intricate photo collages, portrait suites, painted and filmed images of Yorkshire landscapes, iPad drawings and more.
Since his Pop Art paintings in the early ‘60s at London’s Royal College of Art, Hockney was rarely out of the limelight and, more important, rarely out of fresh ideas for how to draw, paint, film, print, photograph or otherwise express his creativity. The David Hockney Foundation owns more than 8,000 of his works, including about 200 sketchbooks, more than 230 self-portraits, opera designs and portraits of family and friends.
Hockney loved Hollywood — the people and the place — and liked to say he was brought up in England and Hollywood because of the time he spent at the movies. His peroxide blonde hair reportedly was inspired when he was a student and saw Clairol TV ads claiming “blondes have more fun.” But it was his interest in everything from Elvis Presley to the Hubble Space Telescope and his sense of humor that set him apart. Time Magazine art critic Robert Hughes once called him “the Cole Porter of modern art.”
He was open about being gay, even when homosexuality was outlawed in Britain. His early love affair with artist Peter Schlesinger, a younger man he met when teaching a summer drawing class at UCLA in 1966, inspired Hockney’s monumental 1972 painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),” a centerpiece of Jack Hazan’s 1974 film “A Bigger Splash.” The painting’s 2018 auction at Christie’s drew a record $90 million for a living artist.
He was a dedicated reader and student of art, paying homage in his work to Picasso and Cubism as well as to Monet, Matisse, Van Gogh and Cezanne. A lover of opera, he often had it playing loudly in the studio and enjoyed taking visitors on curated car trips through the Hollywood Hills or Malibu while listening to Wagner. He designed sets for major companies in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, London and elsewhere over the years, and some of his set models were later shown in museums.
David Hockney’s work “Gregory in the Pool (Paper Pool 4)” is part of his solo exhibition “David Hockney: Perspective Should Be Reversed” at the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs. (Courtesy of the Palm Springs Art Museum)
(Courtesy of the Palm Springs Art Museum)
His solo shows drew enormous crowds to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as early as 1988. In 2017 a major retrospective of his work, keyed to his 80th birthday, was presented at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paris’ Centre Pompidou and London’s Tate Modern. Chronicling Hockney’s arrival as an important artist in the “ravishing” Met retrospective, the New Yorker writer Andrea K. Scott called it “a revelation.” It was, she wrote, “a retort to all the eye-rollers,” including herself, who dismissed his work “as, at best, a guilty pleasure.”
In 2012 he received the coveted Order of Merit, which Queen Elizabeth II presented to him at Buckingham Palace.
David Hockney was born the fourth of five children to a working-class family in Bradford, Yorkshire, on July 9, 1937. He has said he started “making marks on paper” at 8 and received private painting lessons before moving on to Bradford School of Art in 1953. The first painting he sold was a portrait of his father in 1955. He attended the Royal College of Art in London from 1959 until his graduation in 1962 and received the school’s Gold Medal.
After college he did not slack off, noted his biographer Christopher Simon Sykes. In his 2014 book, “Hockney: The Biography,” Sykes pointed out that the artist’s first flat had a chest of drawers near the bed on which he had painted, in large capital letters, the words “get up and work immediately.”
David Hockney in 2017.
(Catherine Opie, Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul.)
Hockney lived by that command for the rest of his life, turning out canvas after canvas, photo after photo. In the ‘80s came his extraordinary multi-image photographic collages of friends including writer Christopher Isherwood and artist Don Bachardy and such landmarks as the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Canyon and Pearblossom Highway.
“The Polaroids started oddly enough when I’d just finished a long period of work in the theater, which is of course playing with perspective and illusion,” he once told The Times. “People say, ‘You are a painter, and photography is a sideline.’ But nothing is a sideline for me.”
That included his continuing fascination with technology. The artist’s long career swept in artworks made not only on cameras and canvases, but on such things as fax machines and photocopiers. Hockney liked to experiment, whether it was with state-of-the-art printing devices or centuries old painting techniques. He went several times to a show of portraits by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres at London’s National Gallery in 1999 and was greatly taken with the photographic’ quality of Ingres’ 19th century drawings. Certain that Ingres had used something optical to achieve that quality, Hockney bought himself a camera lucida, a small device that works like a prism. He then applied Ingres’ methods–as Hockney imagined them–to his own portraits of friends and family, and in 2001, he published “Secret Knowledge,” exploring his theories on early artistic uses of optical devices.
His death was confirmed by the Associated Press and New York Times.
Ariana Grande was crystal clear in the White House’s comments section on TikTok.
The “We Can’t Be Friends” hitmaker didn’t mince words on Thursday when she commented on a White House TikTok: “Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense. F— ice,” she wrote in her comment.
The TikTok in question, posted by the White House on Tuesday, promoted the administration’s crackdown on immigration and featured Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers handcuffing various people to the tune of the Grammy-winner’s song “Bye.”
“Bye-bye 👋 President Trump has delivered the most secure border in history,” the caption on the video read. Grande’s comment has since been deleted or hidden from the video’s replies, and the sound on the TikTok has been disabled.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded to Grande’s comment in an emailed statement to The Times, writing, “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens.”
Grande joins a slew of prominent musicians and artists who have told the Trump administration to cease using their tunes to promote his agenda.
On the 2024 presidential campaign trail, Beyoncé endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris, who used Queen Bey’s song “Freedom” as a rally anthem. When a spokesman for Trump used the same song in a social media post, the mega star’s team responded swiftly with a cease-and-desist.
During a 2024 Montana rally, Trump’s team played a video clip using “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme song from the 1997 film “Titanic.” Celine Dion’s management team and record label responded with a statement shooting down the song’s use: “In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use. … And really, THAT song?”
And then, of course, when Trump used Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” on the 2016 campaign trail without the artist’s permission, the American rocker responded by endorsing Hillary Clinton and calling Trump a “moron.”
Add to the list Nancy Sinatra, who posted that Trump’s nod to Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way” was “sacrilege”; the Smiths’ former guitarist Johnny Marr, who said, “Consider this s— shut right down right now,” when the band’s song was used at a 2023 Trump rally; Sabrina Carpenter, who slammed the use of her song in a video, calling it “evil”; and many, many, many more.
In a statement, AMC said due to the “robust lineup of upcoming films and strong advance ticket sales in the weeks ahead,” it needed to make some programming adjustments. Some of the major upcoming releases for June include Disney’s “Toy Story 5” and Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.”
Acts like Bebe Rexha, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras and Marren Morris were lined up to test out the new format next week, as a part of the Girls Night Live concert series.
The chain is partnering with live entertainment company Arena One to bring new technology to theaters. This tech would allow artists on a remote stage to see, hear and respond to the theater audience, in effect turning your local cinema into a stadium, the companies said. Fans who already purchased tickets have received refunds.
The series was initially marketed as a new draw to get customers to the theaters, but given the strong box office numbers so far this year, it’s clear the demand for theaters is already growing
Focus Features’ “Obsession” is now nearing $230 million in global box office revenue, according to Box Office Mojo, and is the studio’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office.
Most recently, “Scary Movie” topped the box office last weekend with a $105.5-million worldwide debut, ranking among the top five biggest R-rated comedy openings of all time.
AMC said it would announce new dates and additional artists for the interactive concert series in the coming months.
Martin Mull was best known to audiences for playing comedic characters like Col. Mustard in “Clue” and Gene Parmesan in “Arrested Development,” but a new exhibit opening next year at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art seeks to elevate the role Mull was most proud to inhabit: a respected painter.
“Martin Mull: The Joys of Indoor/Outdoor Living,” co-curated by comedian Steve Martin and Hammer Museum Director Emerita Ann Philbin, comes to SBMA next June and runs through October. It will be the first major museum exhibition of Mull’s artwork in 20 years.
The paintings featured include scenes of unassuming houses visited by otherworldly guests, dead-eyed office workers, gravity-defying displays and lambs being led to the slaughter. They play with perspective, color, space and time to illuminate postwar American tensions, be they racial, political or existential.
“Martin Mull’s work as an artist will certainly be his primary legacy,” Martin said in a statement. “After a full-time career in painting, in the last 20 years of his life with his technical gifts fully developed, Martin’s art coalesced into tight, narrative paintings of a peculiar nature. Combining surreal elements with family idioms, he formed his own worried portrayal of American life.”
Martin Mull’s “Band on the Run,” 2014. Oil on panel.
(Estate of Martin Mull)
The exhibit, which will take over the museum’s 6,000 square feet of main galleries, will feature more than 50 paintings and drawings by Mull, most of which come from the artist’s estate and the private collections of Mull’s entertainment industry colleagues, including Steve Martin, Jennifer Tilly, and Ted and Nicole Sarandos .
“Steve talked about how Mull’s painting practice was his deepest passion, despite the fact that his fame was as an actor and comedian. It prompted me to do a little research, and I became very intrigued by his body of work. I wrote to Steve, ‘Martin Mull. There’s something there.’ That’s how the project began,” she said.
Along with Martin and Philbin, the upcoming exhibition is led by SBMA Chief Curator James Glisson and Amada Cruz, the museum’s director and CEO. In a news release, a museum spokesperson said Mull’s work “upsets any storybook picture of perfection” and resists nostalgia while acknowledging its allure.
Martin Mull’s “Envy,” 2008, from the series “Seven Deadly Sins.” Oil on linen.
(Estate of Martin Mull)
“It’s so deeply strange — dark and funny, hopeful and menacing all at once,” Philbin said. “The paintings are about the smoldering tensions that underlie the American dream, so I think it’s a particularly apt moment to bring them back into the public eye.”
Mull, who died in 2024, received his master of fine arts degree in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967. Though he went on to craft a career in the public eye as a musician, comedian and actor, painting remained his “true vocation.”
Martin, a longtime friend of the multidisciplinary artist, echoed this sentiment in an email to The Times.
“If a comedian says he is also a painter, run. Except this once.”
Musicians have been left out of settlements between major record labels and AI companies, a new lawsuit alleges.
The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM), which has 70,000 members, said Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group “received significant compensation” from the AI companies for past copyright violations and licensed “substantial” portions of their music catalogs to them, but haven’t shared that with the musicians.
UMG and WMG sued AI companies Udio and Suno in 2024, accusing them of copyright infringement. Both companies settled with Udio last year. In November, WMG announced a partnership with Suno, but Universal Music Group’s lawsuit against Suno is pending.
“While the Defendants protected their own interests and created a significant source of new revenue with the retrospective settlements and prospective licenses, they have refused to compensate the musicians whose work — created with their own instruments and through their talent, creativity, and hard work — is fed into AI machines for profit,” AFM said in its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York on Friday.
AFM said it believes the AI settlements fall under the “new use” provision of its collective bargaining agreements, which requires music companies to notify the union of new licenses for purposes not covered by the contract and to compensate musicians, whose work was used to train AI models.
UMG and WMG said in statements that they are in negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement with AFM.
“Warner Music Group is growing the value of music by establishing guardrails and architecting a healthy AI ecosystem on behalf of artists everywhere,” the company said in a statement.
Universal Music Group said it will continue to work to resolve issues during the negotiations.
“Universal Music Group has been at the forefront of protecting the rights and advancing the interests of artists and songwriters in the age of AI — striking responsible AI licensing agreements to ensure they are compensated, leading the charge for legislation to further protect them and taking legal action against bad actors,” the company said in a statement. “We expect to continue our strong working relationship with the AFM built on mutual respect for the talented musicians in our industry.”
AI has become more popular among consumers, dramatically changing the landscape in the entertainment industry. Many startups have popped up allowing users to type text prompts into AI systems to generate original songs, video clips and stories.
Some creatives say the AI tools help them brainstorm or illustrate bold ideas on a budget. But critics have raised concerns about whether AI systems are trained on copyrighted works without permission or payment to artists. Others are worried AI could eliminate their livelihoods.
Udio said it would create a new platform that would train on licensed and authorized music with artists having the ability to opt-in. Suno agreed to change its platform, launching new licensed models, and place download restrictions.
Bradford Auerbach, a partner at law firm OGC, said he expects to see more of these types of lawsuits filed by unions.
“You’ve got the unions always protecting the status quo, so you’ve got this invariable conflict of new technology coming in, and moving the cheese for a lot of people that were accustomed to having their business set up the way it was,” Auerbach said.
Attorneys for musician Chuck Redd say a D.C. Superior Court judge dismissed a breach of contract lawsuit filed against the artist after he canceled a Christmas Eve performance at the Kennedy Center in protest of President Trump’s influence over the venue.
The dismissal was granted Friday under Washington’s Anti-SLAPP laws, which are designed to prevent meritless lawsuits intended to silence opposing points of view on matters of public interest.
Redd, a drummer and vibraphone player who has toured with Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown and others, had presided over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006. He called off last year’s performance shortly after Trump’s handpicked board for the Kennedy Center voted to add the president’s name to the venue, which Congress named for President Kennedy after his assassination.
“The Center sued Mr. Redd because he publicly and rightly objected to adding Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy,” Lisa J. Banks, one of Redd’s lawyers, said in a statement. “The lawsuit against Mr. Redd was political retribution, pure and simple, by the Trump Kennedy Center, and the Court correctly saw it as such in dismissing the case with prejudice.”
Redd told the Associated Press in an email Saturday that he is “very pleased with the judge’s ruling.”
The motion to dismiss, filed in March, argued that Redd wasn’t contractually obligated to perform. It included the contract provided by the Kennedy Center, which the artist never signed.
Representatives for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit’s dismissal.
PARIS — Acclaimed Iranian-French cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, a prominent advocate for women’s rights, has died at 56, the French presidency said Thursday.
“Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure of French culture and an artist devoted to freedom, whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim,” the French presidency said in a statement.
President Emmanuel Macron and his wife “pay tribute to a remarkable artist who transformed an Iranian childhood into a universal fable,” the statement said.
News broadcaster BFM TV and other French media reported Satrapi has “died of sadness” a little over a year after the death of her husband, Swedish film producer and actor Mattias Ripa, according to a statement from people close to the artist.
The French Academy of Fine Arts, of which she was a member, expressed its deep sadness in a social media statement, paying tribute to “a passionate advocate for cinema and film education” who earlier this year created a foundation to help international students come to Paris to study film.
Satrapi is best-known for her monochrome autobiographical comic book and film “Persepolis,” a coming-of-age tale set against the Islamic Revolution in her native Iran.
“Persepolis” won the Film Critics Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival in 2007 and the César Award for adapted screenplay in 2008, in addition to being nominated for animated feature at the 2008 Oscars.
The film, which details her life in Tehran as the willful daughter of intellectual Marxists, is a reminder that Iranians are just like everyone else, Satrapi told The Associated Press in a 2007 interview in Cannes.
“What we wanted to say is, if these people scare you, look closer: They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories,” she said.
Iranian authorities at the time protested the movie’s inclusion at Cannes, sending a letter to the French Embassy in Tehran.
Satrapi was born on Nov. 22, 1969, in Rasht, Iran, but her parents sent her to Vienna, Austria, in 1983 to finish her studies because of the extremism in their country following the 1979 Revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power.
But Satrapi, who found Austria hostile and who desperately missed her parents, returned to Iran in 1989 to attend Tehran University, where she earned a degree in visual communications.
By the time she graduated, Satrapi decided she finally was ready to leave Iran and accept the opportunities her parents had been so desperate to give her a decade before. In 1994 she moved to France. She studied in Strasbourg and later moved to Paris.
Her graphic novels also include “Broderies” (“Embroideries”) and “Poulet aux prunes” (“Chicken with plums”), which also was adapted into a film. As a filmmaker, she has directed several works including “La Bande des Jotas” (“The Gang of Jotas”) and “Radioactive” (“Madame Curie”), a biography about the Polish physicist Marie Curie.
Satrapi in 2023 coordinated the book “Femme, vie, liberté” (“Woman, Life, Freedom”) together with a group of artists and academics to illustrate the revolts that occurred in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 at the hands of the so-called “morality police.” The work denounces the repression and lack of human rights that Iranian society, especially women, suffers at the hands of the Iranian regime, the foundation said.
Satrapi was elected member of the French Academy of Fine Arts in 2024. She also was offered France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, that same year but declined it, arguing France was not doing enough to support Iranian people fighting for democracy.
“Supporting the women’s revolution in Iran cannot be reduced to photos or speeches,” she wrote in a January 2025 letter to French authorities. “When people are fighting for democracy, we should support them.”
In 2024, Satrapi won the Princess of Asturias Foundation award in Spain for communication and humanities. The organization said she was “an essential voice in the defense of human rights and freedom.” The judges described her as “a symbol of civic engagement led by women.”
Satrapi’s husband, Ripa, died in April 2025 at 53. On her Instagram page, only one message was left in a series of posts: “Because I have lost the love of my life.”
The artist who painted a giant mural on a building in downtown Dallas of life-sized swimming whales has filed a $25 million lawsuit against soccer’s international governing body and others, saying they illegally painted over his work to promote the city’s upcoming World Cup matches.
The artist Wyland says he hand-painted the sprawling mural that covered roughly 17,000 square feet across two of the building’s walls.
The mural stood for nearly three decades before workers began painting over it last month, causing an uproar among residents who admired the mural’s grand scale and message of ocean conservation.
The area’s World Cup organizing committee said in a statement that, in place of Wyland’s mural, new artwork is planned “that captures this current historical moment and reflects the energy, unity, and global spirit surrounding the World Cup 2026.” It said a portion of Wyland’s mural would be preserved.
Wyland filed suit Monday in U.S District Court in Dallas saying that World Cup organizers, along with the building’s owner and management company, painted over his mural without his consent or even notifying him. He says their actions violated a 1990 federal law passed to protect visual artists from destruction of publicly displayed works.
Wyland is seeking at least $25 million in damages. His lawsuit says world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, and other defendants “hastily and irrevocably destroyed a civic landmark” to promote the World Cup.
“Though FIFA claims they were working to develop art for the host city, in truth, they defaced an historic fixture of the host city,” the artist’s lawsuit says.
A FIFA spokesperson said Tuesday the federation “has no involvement in this whatsoever” and referred a reporter to the tournament’s local organizing committee.
A spokesperson for the North Texas FWC Organizing Committee declined to comment. The committee isn’t named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
A spokesperson for Slate Asset Management, which manages the building where the mural was painted over, said in a statement that local World Cup organizers asked Slate in March to donate the mural space for “a new public art installation.”
“Slate is not being compensated in any way for the use of the wall space and was told by the local groups that Mr. Wyland had been notified,” the management company’s spokesperson said in an email.
Dallas is hosting more World Cup matches than any of the other sites in the event co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, with nine matches set to be played at AT&T Stadium in suburban Arlington, home of the Dallas Cowboys.
Wyland’s Dallas mural, titled “Whaling Wall 82,” was finished in 1999 and is among more than 100 similar murals known as Whaling Walls the artist painted around the world to promote the conservation of ocean life.
An online petition protesting the mural’s destruction and calling for protecting of public artwork in Dallas has received more than 2,600 signatures.
Wyland’s lawsuit alleges violations of the Visual Artists Rights Act, a 1990 federal law that protects artwork of “recognized stature” even if someone else owns the physical artwork.
A judge cited that law in 2018 when he ordered a property owner to pay a group of New York graffiti artists $6.7 million for whitewashing dozens of their spray-painted murals on buildings that once housed a factory in Queens. The ruling was upheld on appeal.
Bynum writes for the Associated Press. Bynum reported from Savannah, Ga.
WASHINGTON — An upcoming celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, “The Great American State Fair,” recently had several musical guests back out, partly over the event’s ties to President Trump. Now, Trump himself is slated to headline the festivities.
“I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance,” Trump posted on his social media platform Saturday. With a boastful and derisive flourish, he adding that he was thinking of bringing “the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists.’”
The group organizing the June fair on Washington’s National Mall, Freedom 250, confirmed the billing in a statement Saturday, writing, “We are excited to announce that President Trump will personally kick off this historic celebration on Wednesday, June 24.”
Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for Freedom 250, said the fair that is officially scheduled from June 25 through July 10 will feature exhibits, family friendly attractions, flyovers and musical performances — by those still remaining on the program.
Trump was dismissive of the acts that backed out, insulting them and suggesting in a follow-up post that the solution is to “Cancel it.”
“We should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain,” he wrote.
Freedom 250 is billed as nonpartisan, but it was launched last year by Trump and is led by a former State Department appointee from the president’s first term. Several artists, including Bret Michaels, the Commodores and Martina McBride dropped out last week.
Michaels and other artists have said that they were misled about the theme of the shows or were otherwise wary of being caught up in a political fight. McBride, in a statement on Instagram, said she had been “presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading.”
Other artists plan to attend, including Flo Rida, Fab Morvan of Milli Vanilli and Vanilla Ice. The latter’s representative previously said that the “Ice Ice Baby” rapper was “proud to help celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary!”
Bedayn and Binkley write for the Associated Press. AP writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
It was announced Wednesday that Young MC, the Commodores and Martina McBride were among the music artists slated to play the upcoming Great American State Fair. They swiftly dropped out after discovering the event is part of a larger Trump White House initiative. On Wednesday, Bruce Springsteen also announced an upcoming music event, the Power to the People festival, featuring the Foo Fighters and more. To date, no one has dropped off its roster.
It was a busy week in music.
The announcement Wednesday of a concert series honoring the country’s 250th anniversary prompted a swift reaction, and it wasn’t from zealous fans. Within hours of the lineup reveal, multiple music acts slated to play the Great American State Fair declared they were dropping out of the 16-day event after discovering it was part of an initiative out of the Trump White House.
Young MC, Morris Day and Martina McBride were among those who said they would not perform at the concert series scheduled for June and July on the National Mall.
“I have informed my agents that I will not be performing at the Freedom 250 event,” “Bust a Move” rapper Young MC, a.k.a. Marvin Young, posted Wednesday. “The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event.”
Day, frontman of the Prince-affiliated funk/soul group Time, also bowed out. He simply wrote, “It’s a No for Me.”
And country singer McBride described the opportunity as “misleading” in a post on Thursday.
Acts who announced they would not take part in the event were still listed as part of the lineup on Freedom 250’s website as of Friday morning. Described on the website as a “World Fair-style celebration of America’’s [sic] 250th birthday…,” the organization positions itself as “non-partisan” but “working together with the White House Task Force 250.”
The organization also says that it acts as “the official public-private partnership that connects, aligns, and amplifies national and local efforts to deliver the defining presidential moments of this anniversary year.”
I’ll give you a minute to parse that jumble of words …
Meanwhile, another major music concert with more transparent political leanings was announced on Wednesday. Trump critics Bruce Springsteen and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello revealed they’re launching a Power to the People festival set for Oct. 3 at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md. And as of Friday, no one had dropped off its roster.
Springsteen and Morello are slated to headline, as are the Foo Fighters, Brittany Howard, Joan Baez and Dave Matthews.
Morello, who is currently on tour with Springsteen, announced the festival on-stage at Nationals Park on Wednesday night. “The Power to the People festival is about freedom, justice, equality and rock and roll,” he said. “It’s about the power everyday human beings have when they come together through music, art, community and action. We’re honored to bring this incredible lineup to the D.C. area for a day that celebrates the spirit of activism, creativity and hope.”
Springsteen was more direct in his indictment of the White House and the fight to preserve democracy. “This American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people: you. There is no one coming to save us. We’ve got to do it ourselves,” said Springsteen on Wednesday during the sold-out tour stop in Washington, D.C. “So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love. Do you hear me, Washington?”
Power to the People is scheduled a month before the November midterms, and includes Dropkick Murphys, Jack Black, Serj Tankian, Cypress Hill, Killer Mike, Taylor Momsen and the Linda Lindas. A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the organizations VoteRiders, whose mission is to eliminate ID barriers to the ballot box so eligible voters can cast a ballot, and HeadCount, who help register voters at concerts, festivals, sports and community events.
Artists who had committed to playing the Freedom 250, Great American State Fair — or just pick a name already — and who swiftly dropped out when they saw it was touched by Trump, were busy this week distancing themselves from the event.
“Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party,” the Commodores said in a statement on social media.
Poison frontman Bret Michaels and ‘80s sensation Milli Vanilli were also among the acts who announced they would not be playing the event. (New incarnation of) Milli Vanilli singer Jodie Rocco said the group had not been asked to perform, despite being announced in the lineup.
Artists who still appear to be part of the lineup for the curiously titled national state fair are rapper Flo-Rida and 1980s MTV staples C+C Music Factory and Vanilla Ice. The last appeared at Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago.
Freedom 250 was reminded this week that artists have freedom too. To do or not.
Spotify Technology SA announced several new initiatives — from concert ticket perks to a major AI-generated music licensing deal — that the Swedish audio streaming company said will help fuel growth over the next four years.
At the first investor day led by new co-chief executives Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström, Spotify outlined a vision revolving around features that will allow people to personalize their listening experience, whether with music, podcasts, audiobooks or working out. Investors liked what they heard, pushing Spotify shares up as much as 18% over the course of the presentation.
Spotify addressed one of Wall Street’s biggest concerns about artificial intelligence by announcing a major new licensing deal with Universal Music Group NV. The agreement will let Spotify launch a tool to let fans create covers and remixes of their favorite songs from artists and songwriters who opt in. Powered by generative AI, the tool will be available as a paid add-on for Spotify Premium users. It will open up additional revenue streams for Spotify and create a new source of income for artists and songwriters on top of what they already earn on the platform, according to the companies.
Spotify has been working with the music industry on ways to harness the power and consumer interest in AI without violating artists’ rights. Last October, the company announced an agreement with the biggest record labels to use AI in a “responsible way,” but didn’t specify at the time what those tools would look like.
“This era of generation doesn’t need to threaten the future of music,” said Charlie Hellman, Spotify’s head of music. “Because we built the system legal, trusted and aligned, we can make sure that the value flows back to the people who created it.”
In another big announcement, the company laid out plans to work with Live Nation Entertainment Inc. to offer Spotify subscribers the option to purchase two tickets to their favorite star’s concert before they go on sale to the general public. The move could help resolve some of the issues fans have had in beating ticket resellers to face-value tickets, while encouraging customers to stay on as subscribers even as Spotify raises monthly fees.
Fans have long complained about the ticketing process for live performances, which often pit people against bots and scalpers, leading to high prices and sold-out shows.
“It’s frustrating for fans,” said Rene Volker, head of live events. “It’s frustrating for artists too, who look out at a crowd and wonder, are the fans who built my career actually here?” The new “Reserved” perk is designed to relieve some of that tension. “No racing bots, no chasing around online for presale codes. Just two tickets held for you,” she said.
The presentations Thursday were designed to comfort investors and prove that Spotify can still innovate. Wall Street has been skeptical that the company can rein in costs while staying ahead of competitors, particularly as it relates to AI. Those concerns have weighed on shares this year, sending them down 25% through Wednesday’s close. While the company makes most of its money through subscriptions, the executives sought to reinforce the idea that they have other levers to pull in order to generate sales beyond monthly fees and that people are willing to spend more for certain features.
The company outlined its growth targets through 2030, including a compound annual growth rate in the mid teens, a gross margin of 35% to 40% and an operating margin above 20%. Spotify remains committed to its long-term goal of 1 billion subscribers, $100 billion in revenue and over 40% in gross margin, the executives said.
Spotify sees its podcast and audiobook features as complementary to music and said the combination of the multiple verticals has helped broaden its community and convert users from free listeners to paid subscribers. Today, more than 500 million people have streamed a video podcast on Spotify, up nearly 50% from a year ago. And in just a few years, Spotify has captured about 20% of the audiobooks market in the US, executives said. People who use all three verticals — music, podcasts and audiobooks — are engaging with Spotify almost every day of the month, according to the company.
Giving people the tools to personalize their listening experience helps keep them in Spotify’s universe — creating what executives described as the “all day user.”
Personal Podcasts, for example, lets people write a prompt in the Spotify app and AI will create a unique podcast in response.
“We see this much more as a daily brief and a recommendation engine than something that would replace you listening to one of your favorite podcasts,” Söderström said in an interview. He noted that 60% of users in mature markets for Spotify don’t yet listen to podcasts, so features like Personal Podcasts could get them to dive into the medium.
The company said its podcast business has been profitable for two years.
Spotify’s Audiobook+ tier gives listeners more than their allotted 15 hours of audiobook listening per month for an additional fee. It has 1 million subscribers and is on track to generate $100 million in annualized revenue, the company said. To capitalize on the demand, Spotify will start selling even more audiobook hours to super users. Additionally, it will allow podcasters to offer memberships, so subscribers can access special episodes and other content. Spotify will take an undisclosed slice of revenue from the memberships.
Thirty-five years after his death, jazz giant Miles Davis, who would have turned 100 years old Tuesday, remains a truly larger-than-life figure in music and well beyond.
Still possessor of the biggest-selling jazz record in history, “Kind of Blue,” Davis casts a huge influence over the whole music world for his uncompromising artistic vision, constant evolution, style and more. Though he came from jazz, he may be the biggest rock star there ever was. Talk to any musician, regardless of genre, and they will tell you Davis defined swagger and cool. He had a vibe unlike that of anyone else.
In honor of Davis’ centennial, The Times spoke to an array of notable artists from all walks of music, some who knew and played with him, some fans of the man, but all agreed, Miles Davis was and is a singular force in music, an artist like no other in his vision, passion and feeling for the music. In short, there was only one Miles Davis.
‘A complete innovator’
Chuck D, rapper: I like Miles Davis and all the exterior aesthetics. I like the Blue Note album covers, Prestige album covers, his style, his way of life.
Cindy Blackman Santana and her husband Carlos Santana in 2019.
(Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
Cindy Blackman Santana, drummer: Stylistically, Miles was a complete innovator. I remember hearing him say that he didn’t play right if he wasn’t dressed right. That is completely something that inspires me as well, because it becomes not only what you’re putting out on your horn or your drums or your guitar or your piano, but it’s your whole being that is expressing this innovative approach to music and to life.
Bilal, singer: If you play the music you’ve got to look the part, and it was almost like he got into a movie role or something like that. But he was always into the clothes … It was almost like every era had a different outfit. But, yeah, I definitely take his style. The clothes make you feel a certain way to play that way. So that’s the vibe. You’ve got to have that character, that attitude.
Emmet Cohen, left, performs with Terence Blanchard at Lincoln Center in 2025.
(Slaven Vlasic / Getty Images for Find Your Light)
Emmet Cohen, pianist and composer: I think when you listen to Miles’ records you can really appreciate them all the way through and there’s something in there for all sides of humanity. Whether it was the Prestige records that he pumped out in a couple of days, or there was “Birth of the Cool,” he just knew how to assemble musicians and let them tell their stories. And the storytelling is really where I think the deepest connections are made. He was a rock star, but he had a story to tell. And that always comes first.
‘Always evolving’
Guitarist Lenny Kaye performs onstage at Carnegie Hall in 2023.
(Noam Galai / Getty Images for Tibet House US)
Lenny Kaye, guitarist: He started in the bebop era, with the immortals of that moment in time. But I always got the sense that he was looking for something else. He didn’t want to participate in the faster-than-light speed changes and virtuosity. So, I really respect the fact that when he moved into “Birth of the Cool,” he pulled it back so he could inject more of his human self into it. And over the years, he kept on doing that, “Sketches of Spain,” “Kind of Blue,” one of the most jazz friendly records of all time.
Flea, bassist: Every time Miles changed it up, he destroyed everything that came before. He is the ultimate artist, always evolving, always coming organically from the depths. His music is the warmest and the wildest.
Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers released a solo jazz album in March.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Bilal: I really like his electric era, but I would say I keep discovering and rediscovering stuff from Miles that I’m just like, “Damn, man. It’s like it’s another artist because he went through so many different changes.” … The other day I found his “Sketches of Spain” record. I put it on. I was like, “This is crazy. I forgot he was into this too.”
Wyclef Jean, rapper: When you go through Miles’ whole catalog, you see you can have quiet days. You can have loud days. You can have explosive days. But the key is that consistency. And that discipline.
Kaye: I respect Miles. For me, he’s an artist that transcends the jazz genre. He’s so alert to the shifting moods of the culture, the directions of the music. And what I find fascinating about him is his ability to morph into new styles and to keep challenging himself. One thing about Miles is that he doesn’t repeat who he is.
Musician Ron Carter in 2011.
(Theo Wargo / Getty Images)
Ron Carter, bassist: We always thought that we were honored to have Miles hire us out of other guys who were available to him. The first few gigs, we had a couple of weeks up and down the West Coast, and everybody but Miles was trying to find out what the tunes were, what the changes were. I was just trying to do what I thought was necessary to make this guy think he hired the right guy and make the band sound good. … Whatever his method was, it was successful.
Ibrahim Maalouf, trumpeter:Quincy [Jones] always spoke about Miles not just as a genius, but as someone who knew when to move on. And that’s a lesson I still carry with me every day.
Kaye: In “Bitches Brew” he created the template for what would be jazz fusion and made rock ‘n’ roll an important part of his evolution. Just an artist who never stands still and that is what I personally respect and honor within his work. When he saw what an artist like Jimi Hendrix was doing, he thought, ‘Yeah, I know how to access that and not be Jimi Hendrix. I can be myself.’ He understood the tides of cultural transformation as much or better than most musicians of the 20th century.
Don Was performs onstage at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in 2022.
(Jason Davis / Getty Images for Americana Music)
Don Was, musician and producer:In life, as exemplified by music, if you don’t change, you stagnate. And the thing about Miles that really stands out, I think, is that he was always willing to risk losing his audience in order to keep moving forward. He was courageous in every era, including eras when maybe courage wasn’t held at a premium.
‘More than that’
Maalouf: For me, as a trumpet player, of course, the musical influence; space, phrasing, silence, we can talk about this for hours. But I think that more than that, there’s an attitude.
Ibrahim Maalouf performs at the Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad at L’Olympia on July 24, 2024, in Paris France.
(Julien M. Hekimian / Getty Images)
Trombone Shorty, musician: Miles has inspired me because of that attitude, ‘I’m going to do what I want.’ He was playing what he felt in whatever time period or whatever decade he was inspired by. He really embraced that tremendously. And that’s always the thing that I admire about him as a person and as a musician. Whatever the spirit is, he’s going to go with that. That’s what I always got from Miles.
Nas, rapper: With Miles it wasn’t just about the music he made, it was about how he carried himself as an artist and a pioneer. His impact on me personally is as much on a human level as it is on the artist level.
Trombone Shorty performs at the Anaheim Convention Center in 2015.
(Jesse Grant / Getty Images for NAMM)
Trombone Shorty: The swagger, he may have created the swag.
Vince Wilburn Jr., nephew and drummer, who now co-manages Davis’ estate: He liked to catch things, that’s why the tape kept continuously rolling, because he said it was songs inside of songs.
Carlos Santana, guitarist: “I recommend that people who never heard of Miles Davis, I’ll say start with “Kind of Blue,” then move on to “Bitches Brew.” Because the thing about Miles Davis is that he teaches people who have never meditated how to stop and be coherent about absoluteness. In one note, Miles can play absoluteness. One note for Miles, like Billie Holiday, like Cindy says, that’s enough to understand all the whys and all the reasons why it’s sacred to be alive.
Was: He probably changed the face of music more than anybody did, at least four or five times. Maybe more than that. It’s a combination of mastery and an unstoppable spirit of adventure that I think make him unique. Because he was absolutely a master of harmony, rhythm, of creating a vibe. Yet he loved upsetting the cart and I think went out of his way to create friction musically, within the band, to keep things stirred up constantly and make every day an adventure. It requires tremendous courage. But also, supreme excellence to do it on the level that he did with the level of musicians that he surrounded himself with. That’s another thing, too. He wasn’t just the most innovative man on the horn. His genius was also as a curator of human chemistry.”
‘Larger than life’
Musician Wyclef Jean performs in 2023.
(Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
Jean: The main thing that I learned from Miles at a very young age is just the braveness, you can’t be scared to just go. Going doesn’t just mean learning one part of it. It means learning the entire metrics. … When it comes to Miles, he’s just a complete teacher; even on how he sees art, how he sees shapes, and also there’s a whole part of Miles that’s tough love when it comes to it. So, all of that instills character.
Bilal: As an older musician, you could see all of the building blocks are in those records. If you take some of those records out, I don’t know where jazz would be. You can see the essential building blocks.
Izzy Escobar, singer: Miles Davis made jazz feel cinematic to me. When I listen to songs like “It Never Entered My Mind” or “Flamenco Sketches,” there’s mystery, romance, restraint and tension in every note. Nothing feels overdone, yet somehow it says everything. As a songwriter, that’s deeply inspiring because the best music doesn’t just sound good … it creates an entire world you can step into. I think that’s why his influence has lasted a century. His music still feels fearless, elegant and emotionally alive — all of which never go out of style.
Jorma Kaukonen, guitarist: I had always thought of jazz as somewhat of a haughty art form. Probably because at the time many of the time signatures and chordal progressions that Miles used were over the head of a young guitar player still functioning in the blues and folk idioms. … The growing rock and art movement in the Bay Area in that era taught us to eschew boundaries and labels, and it became possible to see similarities and possibilities with jazz music that would have gone previously unnoticed. Our harmonic tendencies were nowhere near as complex, but they were rapidly becoming more sophisticated thanks to our exposure to such great improvisers as Miles! Miles knew no boundaries.
Jean: One thing that I learned from Miles is someone can have the best technique. They could be moving around. But if you can dig and play from your soul, this instrument just becomes a vessel of sound and orbit, bro, it’s over. There’s a connection with the soul. And I wouldn’t be able to do that, bro, if I didn’t have people like Miles to really teach me how to hear.
Theo Croker plays trumpet the Kennedy Center in 2018.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Thelonious Monk)
Theo Croker, trumpeter: He was definitely a larger-than-life figure. And it encourages me to be a larger-than-life figure. Growing up as a kid, we sit in a room all day and play trumpet for hours. You see somebody like Miles Davis and you’re like, “Wow, I can be a rock star.” Because I couldn’t sing, otherwise, you end up being a pop star, Prince, Michael Jackson and Stevie and all that. But Miles was that for the trumpet, of course. So, it’s so much bigger than music.
Musician Mia Doi Todd performing in 2012.
(Paul Redmond)
Mia Doi Todd, musician and singer: Miles Davis was such an outstanding band leader, bringing together a group of musicians and seeking to break the boundaries. That is what I look to him most for as a celestial mentor, being a band leader and creating those sonic landscapes. The records that I love most of his are from that electronic jazz fusion era, which weren’t his most popular at the time. I love “On the Corner.” I’m a person of mixed race, so the records that he was bringing together, all these different musical elements, those are the ones that I really admire … “I wish I could play in that band.”
Maalouf: There’s this idea that music is not about providing something. It’s about searching. It’s about staying alive artistically. I think that strength goes far beyond music, it’s really a message for all the musicians that we are. Never stay where people expect you to stay. Every time the audience thought they understood him, he changed direction. And I think that’s definitely one of the most inspiring parts of his musical life.
Was: I never met him. But he was a heroic figure to me as a teenager, very much in the same way that simultaneously, like Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones were, or John Lennon was, or Allen Ginsberg was.
Bilal performs in New York City in 2023.
(Roy Rochlin / Getty Images)
Bilal: That [artistic vision] is a major influence that I take from Miles. … I always approach the music in that way where you got to do your own thing. You’ve got to have something to say, and you’ve got to want to evolve and always look for ways to grow and change and with the music. Miles was quintessential at that.
Trombone Shorty: To me, Miles Davis was a real rock star. It just wasn’t the sound. When he walked on stage … he looked the way that the music sounded to him. … And as he grew, he just really embraced everything that was coming to him, and he didn’t run away from it. He wanted to have his influence and also be tremendously influenced by things that were happening. He was just the coolest; when they say cool, Miles Davis has to be next to that word.
‘Playing within the language that he created’
Nas performs in New York City in 2018.
(Bennett Raglin / Getty Images for Jenn-Air)
Nas: I think Miles’ impact on every inch of music after him is the most impressive part. Musicians from every genre speak on his influence. It has no language or cultural barriers.
Jean: I would literally tell everybody to do a deep dive and start with early Miles, start from the bebop and the blues, don’t just go in. I started my daughter with “Birth of the Cool.” Now she’s vibing and slowly working her way up.
Musician Vince Wilburn Jr. in 2011.
(Theo Wargo / Getty Images)
Wilburn Jr.: Style, creativity, forever evolving, ever looking back, unapologetic. Lenny White used to say everybody wanted to live and be like Miles, all the musicians. You have Miles, and then you have everyone else.
Santana: Miles is what I call a sacred rascal, a divine rascal, a genius. When I’ve been in the room with Herbie [Hancock], Wayne [Shorter] and Tony [Williams], and the name Miles comes up, they all stop. It has such an impact on all of them to this day it shows that Miles is Da Vinci, Stravinsky, Picasso. Collect all the geniuses of this planet, and that’s what Miles is in one note. In one note, he reveals more because in one note, he teaches an individual how to hug infinity with emotions.
Kaye: I think of him as a lodestar for someone who wants to continually move music forward into the future because that’s what music is about. When you play music, you’re moving from one note to the next and creating the future of that piece. I just find Miles a fascinating creature of transformation. Miles, for all his artistic innovation, was a pop star.
Maalouf: Miles Davis’ legacy is not only a sound, it’s a mindset. He gave all of us the permission to be many people in one lifetime. It feels to me it’s the secret and he was generous enough to do it himself and show the world and especially the jazz world that is not always easy to please that someone can be many people in one lifetime. It’s not only true for music. It’s true for everything in life.
Cohen: He’s always on the cutting edge of the next thing and the next group of musicians that he finds. The story in that is that there’s constant change, constant evolution, and to find the thread throughout is kind of the meaning of life. And to play his music is the same thing. He created a language. So, when we play his music, we’re playing within the language that he created.
Was: “That’s why he’s that cat. He’s the most rebellious musician of all time, I think. He was the complete package man, no one more innovative or influential.
Ricky Martin had to stop his concert Thursday in Montenegro after someone in the audience “discharged tear gas toward the stage,” causing an “abrupt” interruption to the show as fans retreated and got any needed medical attention, the singer’s publicist said in a statement posted on Instagram.
The show did go on.
“As a precautionary measure, Ricky Martin and his entire team exited the stage while security personnel and local authorities worked to contain the situation and ensure the safety of those in attendance,” the statement said.
“We didn’t understand what was happening,” one shaken Montenegran concertgoer said on Instagram during the outdoor show. “Suddenly, people started pushing each other, and we smelled pepper spray. Many people quickly covered their mouths and left the area. I don’t know if there’s still anyone in the area right now. I didn’t see what the police did. I can hear that the concert has started again, but I left the area. I hope everyone is OK.”
Whether the substance was tear gas — which, incidentally, is a powder, not a gas — or pepper spray is unclear. Both substances have similarly irritating effects, despite different ingredients. Tear gas is typically employed by law enforcement for crowd control while pepper spray is often used by individuals for self-defense, according to hazmat and crime-scene cleanup company Bio Recovery, which operates mainly in the American south. Both substances can disperse widely in the air.
Martin, 54, decided to resume the show once authorities said everything was back under control even though “members of the artist’s team advised against continuing the performance,” the publicist’s statement explained.
The headlining performance, which was part of festivities marking the 20th anniversary of Montenegro’s restored independence following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, came as the “Livin’ la Vida Loca” singer gets ready to embark on a European tour with dates in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Istanbul and more from June into August.
Also Friday, Martin announced he would join the U.K.’s Heritage Live Festivals with a show Aug. 22 at the Royal Sandringham Estate in Norfolk with Sugababes, Olly Alexander and Sophie Castillo. It will be his only U.K. show in 2026. Other artists appearing in Heritage Live shows in July and August include UB40, Lionel Richie and Eric Clapton.
“The rise of Latin music as a global force has been phenomenal, and we’re thrilled to welcome one of the true pioneers who helped bring it to a massive international audience,” Giles Cooper of Heritage Live Festivals told the BBC. “It’s set to be an incredible party.”
Martin, who hails from Puerto Rico, joined Bad Bunny’s all-Spanish halftime show at Super Bowl LX in February with a 30-second cameo in a scene invoking the cover of the latter singer’s album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.” Clad in all white, Martin sat in a white chair and dove into “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii,” a ballad that implores Puerto Ricans, should the opportunity arise, to resist compromises that Hawaiians made when those islands became a U.S. state in 1959.
