Festivals and Music Tours

OUR Spotlight On column takes an in-depth look at the best things to see and do in popular holiday destinations, as well as shining a light on the lesser-known spots.

This week we’re heading to Vilnius in Lithuania, and Travel Reporter Alice Penwill recently visited.

Travel Reporter Alice Penwill recently visited and was stunned by how cheap it was.

She said: “Eating and drinking out is such a bargain, so it makes for an insanely affordable European weekend break.

“I found bars serving beer for around £2.60, and coffee for just a few quid.

“Even cocktails like Aperol Spritzes were under a fiver – and make sure to soak it up with some ‘kepta douna’ (a local garlic fried bread that’s a popular bar snack).”

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MUST SEE / DO

Yes, Vilnius has one of Europe’s oldest and best-preserved medieval Old Towns but it’s quickly gaining a reputation as a capital of cool.

With a thriving arts scene and a vibrant coffee shop culture, it’s a great value option for a weekend break with beers from £3.50 and a traditional lunch for under £9.

It’s also just 15 minutes from the airport to the city centre.

While there’s history and amazing architecture aplenty in the Old Town, cross Vilnele River to enter the self-declared ‘Republic’ of Uzupis.

This bohemian neighbourhood has its own constitution, president, currency and anthem celebrating free spirit, art and community with lots of cafes, galleries and bars.

Don’t miss Literatų Gatvė (Literature Street), a winding alleyway decorated with more than 200 small pieces of art dedicated to famous writers.

HIDDEN GEM

Lukiškės Prison 2.0 has seen a high security prison that doubled as a filming location for the Netflix smash Stranger Things transformed into a museum and arts venue.

There are more than 250 creators working in the repurposed former cells. Take a tour to find out about its grim history then stay for a gig or a drink in the courtyard in the evening.

BEST VIEW

Take in the Old Town’s unique red-tiled roofs, church spires and narrow streets from 14th Century Gediminas Tower.

Set at the top of Gediminas Hill, it houses an interactive exhibition. Also great for panoramic views is the Hill of Three Crosses.

RATED RESTAURANT

You can’t go to Vilnius and not try its legendary Pink Soup – a cold beetroot soup.

The traditional dish is so popular there’s even an Pink Soup Festival with themed food, music and festivities to kick off summer.

This year it runs from May 29 to 31.

And you can try the soup at any time of year at Lokys in the Old Town where a bowl costs £7.50 and comes with baby potatoes.

BEST BAR

For sheer quirkiness, check out Peronas Bar, literally next to the tracks at the main train station and great for live music – don’t miss the giant statue of Tony Soprano by the al-fresco tables!

For pint professionals, head to Alaus Biblioteka – an actual Beer Library where there are 60 styles of beer with 17 beer taps and almost 500 bottled beers from around the world.

HOTEL PICK

The 4* Neringa Hotel has a great combination of historic vibes and modern touches.

Freshly revamped, there’s a restaurant and rooftop bar to admire the views and you’re within walking distance of all the main sights.

Rooms are very Scandi-chic and prices are keen.

Three nights’ room-only is from £240pp including flights from Stansted in June. See onthebeach.co.uk.

JASON ISBELL is a song writer’s song writer. You can tell by the company he keeps.

He’ll never forget the moment some years ago when he heard a certain person singing one of his choruses back to him in unmistakeable tones.

“I’ve grown tired of travelling alone. Won’t you ride with me? Won’t you ride? Won’t you ride? ”

Isbell recalls: “At first, I thought it was somebody doing a Bruce Springsteen impersonation of singing my song. And then I realised, ‘No, that’s actually him!’

“It was a huge deal for me to meet Bruce, and for him to know who I was.”

Turned out that one of Springsteen’s sons had brought to his dad’s attention Isbell’s breakthrough 2013 solo album Southeastern, complete with the track Traveling Alone.

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To the 47-year-old born in northern Alabama, two miles from the Tennessee state line, it was validation — just like his six Grammys and the fact that Southeastern appears in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of greatest albums of all time.

“I’m a punk but I’m not that big of a punk to pretend something’s not an honour,” the one-time member of Drive-By Truckers decides in his Southern drawl.

“I met Randy Newman and it was the same kind of thing,” he continues, casting his mind back to the 2021 Newport Folk Festival when both artists were on the same bill.

“I was so nervous to talk to Randy but I said to him, ‘Man, your songs are very important to me as a musician, as a human being’ — and he leaned in and said, ‘I like your songs, too’.

“I knew Randy was probably not the sort of person to bulls**t you.”

I’m speaking to Isbell as he prepares to hit these shores with his ace band, The 400 Unit, for a tour of the UK and Ireland which culminates with a night at London’s hallowed Royal Albert Hall on June 11.

But on this day, the hard- working singer is in Dallas for a solo acoustic show, showcasing last year’s captivating, intimate Foxes In The Snow album, when we’re connected via video call.

“My flight was cancelled last night because of bad weather so I drove here — took me nine and a half hours,” he reports from his hotel.

It’s 10am US Central Time and 4pm UK time and, despite the previous day’s exertions, Isbell seems fresh and focused for a deep dive into his life in music — and the songs that define him.

It’s clear from talking to this thoughtful soul that his career can be divided into two distinct categories — before and after he got sober — which he describes in depth later.

But first, we go back to his early life as the son of teenage parents, the subject of his song Children Of Children, and his early introduction to music.

Mom Angela was 17 and dad Mike was 19 when he was born so “I got to spend a lot of time with my grandad, who preached in a Pentecostal church in Alabama, and played guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo.

“And my uncle, my dad’s little brother, played guitar in a rock band.

“When I was around four, my parents would take me to band practice in his friend’s garage, and I would fall asleep, usually when they did Neil Young’s Like A ­Hurricane.

“Though my dad and mom didn’t play music, pretty much everybody else in my family did, at least as a hobby. It was seen as a birthright thing.

“I know this sounds like down-home Southern horses**t, but my grandad would make me play gospel music with him for a ­couple of hours a day.

“Then if I could get through it without getting lazy, I could play rhythm guitar. The guitar was huge, and I was small, and it would take a lot of work.”

Isbell became “obsessed” with blues after hearing Robert Johnson’s recordings and “this little white kid from a hillbilly town” would bombard his music teacher with questions about the Mississippi Delta pioneers.

“My teacher was a big rock and roll guy who had a different Rolling Stones T-shirt for every day of the week,” he says.

“He would call me out of class on the loudspeaker in a really gruff voice, so it sounded like I was in trouble. But I knew that he had made me a mixtape.

“There were a lot of people who took an interest in me early on. I got very lucky that way.”

As a teenager in the Eighties, “radio was huge” for Isbell, who singles out Crowded House and Elvis Costello in particular.

“As my parents were not much older than me, we listened to a lot of the same music,” he says.

“In those days, it was big arena bands like Journey and Foreigner, My dad liked country music, too, so he had Merle Haggard and Hank Williams records.”

At this time, Isbell started playing bars in the Southern music mecca of Florence and Muscle Shoals, which, “because of the liquor laws”, also had to sell food.

He says: “They would check the receipts to make sure you sold more food than alcohol, which was terrible for any kind of music scene — but really good for a 15-year-old kid because they couldn’t kick me out!”

In these places, he got to see legendary session men like Spooner Oldham, Donnie Fritts and, crucially, bass player and trombonist David Hood, father of Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood.

In 2001, Isbell joined the Truckers and hit the ground running by contributing two outstanding songs to their 2003 album Decoration Day, the title track and Outfit.

He says: “I liked playing guitar and singing background vocals, but I had a lot to prove.”

He describes how his dark, Southern gothic magnum opus about a multi-generational family feud came into being: “I wrote Decoration Day on the road, in Carbondale, Illinois, I think.

“We were staying at a friend’s and everybody else was asleep in the house.

“One person always had to sleep in the van to stop people stealing our gear. That night, it was me.

“I woke up early — around eight o’clock in the morning. So I had a couple of hours before everybody else started moving and I came up with Decoration Day.”

Another memorable Drive-By Truckers effort by Isbell is Danko/Manuel, his tribute to roots rock icons The Band, which appeared on the 2004 album The Dirty South.

He says: “At the time, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel were the only two not still alive. Now, none of them are.

“I was reading [drummer] Levon Helm’s book, This Wheel’s On Fire. He talked about having to siphon gas out of cars in parking lots while the rest of them were on stage. They were a bunch of feral kids in the early days.”

In 2007, largely thanks to heavy drinking and unreliable behaviour, Isbell left the Truckers and went solo.

It’s good to report that he’s on friendly terms with his old bandmates these days and joined them on stage last year for Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show.

He says: “We were very close at one point. It’s not easy to make friends in general so I try to keep the ones that I can.

“Even after I got sober, I didn’t quite know why I’d had drinking problems to start with.

“At first, you’re just hanging on for dear life and trying to stay sober. Eventually, if you do it right, you do repair the parts of yourself that you were ignoring.

“Once that happened for me, I was able to reconnect with those guys. We were able to be friends again and they’ve continued to make really valuable music.”

When it came to Isbell making his first solo album, Sirens Of The Ditch in 2007, highlighted by a couple of fan favourites, Dress Blues and The Magician, he had a lot to learn — and fast.

“I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” he sighs. “I know I had to argue a lot, which actually turned out to be a good thing.”

A big moment for him arrived with a yearning composition on his third album, Here We Rest (2011), his second with his band The 400 Unit and the last before he went into rehab for ­alcohol addiction.

To this day, Alabama Pines is one of his most performed live songs.

“When I wrote it, everything else in my life sucked,” he says. “It was a very dark time. I was in physical and psychological pain. Working on it was the most relief I got.”

He adds: “The complication in that song adds a lot of value to it — the fact that you’re yearning for a place that isn’t perfect.

“It’s a dynamic that finds its way into a lot of Drive-By Truckers’ work and a lot of my own. It’s very possible to miss a place that wasn’t necessarily all that good to you.

“That song doesn’t have a chorus, it never gets huge so it’s not an anthem. But it stands out in my solo work and I still like it. It has never let me down.”

Everything changed for Isbell after rehab and first notice of his sober approach is 2013’s breathtaking Southeastern with its enduring keepers, Cover Me Up, Stockholm, Elephant and the aforementioned Traveling Alone.

“I wasn’t in the same type of pain,” he says. “Recovering from addiction heavily involved dealing with myself — my life, my emotions, my situation — not postponing it.

“When I was drinking, I would write until the sun went down and then I’d think, ‘I need a drink’.

“With Southeastern, I would stay working for hours and hours at a time because I didn’t have anything else to do. It’s not like I was going to the bar.”

The record proved a big commercial success even if a song like Cover Me Up, recently covered by Morgan Wallen, is about recovering from addiction and the healing power of love, while Elephant is an unflinching study of mortality and the impact of cancer.

Today, Isbell performs such tracks from a slightly different perspective.

“With a room full of people cheering for these songs, we get to celebrate the fact that these horribly sad songs exist,” he smiles.

Next, we rattle through a few more Isbell staples like 24 Frames from 2015’s Something More Than Free with its sparkling electric ­guitar passages.

“I may have doubled up two exact same slide-guitar parts on that. It’s the old George Harrison trick from My Sweet Lord and it works every f***ing time.”

He sees guitar playing as his “hobby”. “My girlfriend paints very seriously and that’s her work,” he says by way of example.

“Lately she started working with miniatures and building doll houses, and that’s her hobby. It’s very close to painting but it’s not a commercialised part of her life.

“That’s how I look at guitar playing. Singing, songwriting, touring — that’s my job. If left alone for a couple of hours, I just sit and play guitar — that’s my hobby.”

There’s a profound Isbell song on 2017’s The Nashville Sound, If We Were Vampires, a big favourite of his friend, the late, great singer John Prine, who he describes as “thoughtful, witty, highly intelligent and emotionally open”.

“There’s some magic in that song,” he says. “Everything else on the album was written when I thought, ‘There’s so many f***ing love songs, why would I bother to do another one?’

“By the time I got to the chorus of If We Were Vampires, something hit me — the reason you love somebody, go through all that effort and pain, is because you’re going to die.

“Without death, we wouldn’t be motivated to live. It was one of those moments where I was like, ‘Wow! Thank God I weaved my way to that path’.”

A telling Isbell insight is revealed by It Gets Easier with its line, “it gets easier, but it never gets easy”, from the 2020 album Reunions.

It addresses his sobriety and brings this reflection: “I don’t think about drinking as much as I used to, but I do sometimes, not necessarily when things are bad.

“When it is going badly, the first thing you do is you make a plan – talk to friends, talk to a therapist, go to a meeting.

“For quite a few years, the hardest times have been to not think about drinking when things are going really well.”

Isbell’s consistently fine recorded output includes 2023’s Weathervanes, with standouts like reflective acoustic ballad Cast Iron Skillet and gritty rocker King Of Oklahoma, about the downward spiral of a blue-collar worker who turns to prescription meds.

Mention of them is cue for him to offer a warning to those attending his upcoming shows.

“When I’m writing a record, I think, ‘How am I going to make these people hold their pee for four more minutes?’

“Because when the new material comes out, that’s usually when everybody heads to the bar!”

• Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit play Belfast June 2, Dublin June 3, Bristol June 5, Gateshead June 6, Glasgow June 7, Manchester June 8, Birmingham June 10 and London’s Royal Albert Hall June 11

HER last tour in 2020 was cut short thanks to the Covid pandemic but now Louise is gearing up to go back on the road.

The Borderline singer will play five live shows as part of her Naked/Confessions tour next April, taking in cities including London, Birmingham and Manchester, with tickets on sale today.

And in an exclusive interview to celebrate the announcement, ex-Eternal star Louise says she’s never felt so inspired after her last album Confessions became her fourth top ten record.

“I’m so proud of that album,” Louise tells me.

“That’s really what spurred me on to carry on writing.

“It taught me that it’s OK not to please everybody.

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“I’m enjoying the creative process of not worrying about if people might hate on it.

“Knowing that you just can’t please everyone.

“It’s all about the mindset and the confidence.

“I do think that comes with age as well.”

After saying yes to going back on the road, Louise reveals she’s learned the power of saying no — and was inspired by pop royalty Madonna.

“I am a big fan, I loved the show she did with Sabrina Carpenter. As a woman, for me, it’s about celebrating people and their achievements,” Louise says.

“I hated reading anything negative about that because for me, she is a genius. I’m at that stage where I’m trying to embrace everything and go with it, but I am also saying no.

“I just wrote a song about saying no and I love it.

“The basis of the song is when you finally learn to say, ‘That’s not for me.’

“We all live in a world where we don’t want to say no to anything for a multitude of reasons.”

The tour, which kids off in Sunderland on April 8 next year, will see Louise picking her favourite tracks from her debut album Naked — which turns 30 in 2027 — and from Confessions for the set list.

And Louise — who will play The Mighty Hoopla festival in London next weekend — has promised to throw in some brand new tunes too.

Louise, who has scored nine Top Ten solo singles including 2 Faced and Pandora’s Kiss, adds: “I get that people will want the hits. It’s about celebrating Naked and Confessions — but I definitely will do new stuff on the tour.

“I don’t want to play it particularly safe.

“The one thing I have learned in this industry is that you have to keep changing.

“You have to keep finding new ways to motivate yourself. Whether that be music, what you’re wearing, the lyrics you’re writing.

“Now I know the lane that I’m in and I know what I want to do.”

Girls single minded

THEY have been together for over a decade, represented the UK at Eurovision and performed at Wembley Stadium.

Now, British girl group Remember Monday have given Bizarre’s Howell the exclusive that they’ve just completed work on their debut album in Prague – and have today dropped the first single, Delusional.

The trio, made up of Lauren Byrne, Charlotte Steele and Holly-Anne Hull first started work on the track two years ago, but only finished it last summer with the help of McFly’s Danny Jones and Dougie Poynter, after being introduced to them at the Capital Summertime Ball.

Lauren, who posed with her bandmates for the single artwork, said: “It feels like it was the first song that started the whole new era.

“After that session, it was like, this is the kind of music that we want to be working on now.”

Holly continued: “We just wanted to kind of hone in on our sound, really solidify what we want to say moving forward.

“I don’t know if we can say, but . . . well, we’re releasing an album.

“The sound that we’re going down is quite nostalgic. Like, we really love the Nineties rom-com energy of music.”

The group will support McFly on tour this summer.

They admit their path is not always easy given that they are independent artists without the financial backing of a major record label.

Referencing the title of their single, Charlotte said: “Our whole band is run and fuelled by delusion.”

Lauren added: “It’s weird to be around. But we do just talk about things as if they are happening regardless of whether we have the funds or contacts. We just speak it into existence.

“And it actually has worked. I don’t even know how we’ve got to this stage.”

It’s working so far ladies.

Good for you.

Too pretty for this ditty

SONGWRITER Linda Perry has revealed she almost turned down Christina Aguilera’s request for her song Beautiful after admitting she thought she was too pretty to sing it.

Linda wrote the track which ended up being one of Christina’s most enduring songs from her 2002 album Stripped.

Appearing on the Zach Sang Show, Linda said she played American star Christina, pictured at the Abbey’s 35th anniversary party in Hollywood, the track and explained: “She was like, ‘ I want that.’

“And I’m thinking, ‘No, you’re like, a hot chick. I’m not giving you this song. No way. Are you kidding me?”

It was only after Christina sang the track for Linda that she changed her mind, adding: “It broke the ice between the both of us when I saw that.

“That’s when I discovered beautiful people are actually insecure and just as damaged as I am.”

Sphere come all the Girls?

THE SPICE GIRLS might fancy zig-a-zig-ah-ing their way into a Las Vegas residency, but I’m told bosses at the Sphere aren’t interested in a quick nostalgia cash-in.

Insiders have confirmed bosses will only give the green light if Victoria Beckham, Melanie C, Melanie B, Geri Horner and Emma Bunton are all on board.

My Sphere insider said: “The Spice Girls would be a massive draw, but this couldn’t be done as a one-off or a short residency.

“The costs involved in creating a Sphere show are enormous. There’s special cameras, bespoke visuals and millions of dollars in production costs before a ticket is sold.

“They’d need all five on board and would want 40 to 60 shows.”

Last month Posh Spice teased that she was keen for the shows to go ahead, saying: “How good would the Spice Girls be at the Sphere? I love the idea of it.”

The venue, which has mind-blowing wraparound screens, has already hosted U2, The Eagles and No Doubt.

TREVOR NELSON was handed a top gong at last night’s Audio Academy Arias.

Rylan Clark hosted the bash at The Roundhouse in North London, which saw Radio 2 legend Trevor honoured with a Special Recognition Award.

He was handed the gong by my pal Craig David, who spoke about Trevor’s impact on the British music scene.

It was a great night for Radio 1 DJ Greg James too, with his Breakfast show landing the top prize in its category, while BBC Radio 6 Music’s Beth Ditto was handed Best New Presenter.

LOUIS TOMLINSON reckons there’s one man who could tempt him into a collaboration – fellow Doncaster star Yungblud.

Ex-One Direction singer Louis admitted he’s not keen on teaming up with artists for the sake of it, but working with the rock wild man would feel different.

Louis explained: “I really like his music and he’s from Doncaster, my hometown, I think that would make it even more interesting.”

But he joked that their might be a slight age gap issue.

Louis laughed: “I’d be the senior one in that conversation.”

Doncaster might be running the UK music scene soon . . . 

MY fellow Spurs fan AJ Tracey has joined talkSPORT as a World Cup pundit.

The Thiago Silva rapper will join footballer-turned-Strictly star Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Burnley ace Kyle Walker on the station’s line-up for the big event this summer.

CRUZ BECKHAM And The Breakers lead the new music releases today with their catchy new single, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

DJ Sonny Fodera also drops his new tune, Let Me Be In Your Arms, ahead of his performance at Radio 1’s Big Weekend tonight.

LEGENDARY recording studio Abbey Road has announced its fifth annual Music Photography Awards.

This year’s judging panel is packed with music industry royalty, including Raye and Nile Rodgers.

Photographer to the stars, Rankin, is also on the panel ahead of the VIP ceremony on September 24.

Rankin said: “With another stellar judging panel joining us, I can’t wait to get stuck in and review the 2026 submissions. What are you waiting for?”
Submissions are open now.

ALL aboard for a summer of family fun at Drayton Manor Resort, where Sun readers can grab up to four tickets to the UK’s best-value theme park and zoo.

There are 10,000 FREE tickets up for grabs, plus another 90,000 tickets for just £20 — that is the lowest price you will anywhere, and that’s guaranteed!

With over 50 thrilling rides and attractions, plus a 15-acre zoo all in one destination. It is the perfect place for unforgettable family adventures and shared experiences. 

Join Sun Club for just £1.99 a month — don’t miss out.

From adrenaline-filled rollercoasters to family rides designed for all ages, there’s excitement around every corner, including guests under 90cm tall.

Younger guests can explore the magical world of Thomas Land™, Europe’s only Thomas & Friends™ themed area, featuring 25 rides and attractions inspired by the beloved characters from the Island of Sodor.

Families can also explore Drayton Manor’s zoo, home to animals from around the world, where they can swap rollercoasters for unforgettable animal experiences without ever leaving the park, making it both fun and educational.

Whether you are planning a big family day out, celebrating a special occasion or simply looking for a memorable adventure, Drayton Manor Theme Park & Zoo offers epic family fun.

How to get four tickets to Drayton Manor Resort

To secure your seats, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Download the Sun Savers app or sign up at sunsavers.co.uk

Step 2: Go to the Offers section on the app or website and click Start Collecting on the Drayton Manor Resort page.

Step 3: Once you have FOUR out of 12 Sun Savers codes. We will print one daily from Saturday, May 23 to Wednesday, June 3.

Step 4: Once you have collected FOUR Sun Savers codes, enter them on Sun Savers to unclock booking from 11am Tuesday, May 26. Click the Redeem code button and get your unique code, then book tickets on the Drayton Manor website by midnight Tuesday, June 23.

Or join Sun Club at thesun.co.uk/club for just £1.99 a month. Head to the Drayton Manor Resort page on Sun Club hub. Click the Redeem code button and get your unique code, then book tickets on the Drayton Manor Resort website by midnight Tuesday, July 21.

Tickets are available from the start of June until the end of September, excluding August.

18+ UK only (exc. IoM & CI). Sun Savers multiple code collect 23/05/26-03/06/26 or subscription to Sun Club or Digital Newspaper required. Booking closes 23/06/26 (Sun Savers/Digital Newspaper) and 21/07/26 (Sun Club). Tickets available from 01/06/23 – 30/09/26 excluding August, 2026. Non-transferable & non-refundable. Subject to availability, daily allocation limits apply. Limit of 4 tickets per person (maximum 2 free tickets). New customer offer: £1.99 per month or £12 per year unless you cancel at least seven days before your next billing date. Full T&Cs apply, see sunsavers.co.uk or club.thesun.co.uk/sun-club.

Join Sun Club for just £1.99 a month — don’t miss out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s a good story for our family.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN the weeks before we lost The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson on June 11 last year, he had two special visitors. 

They were the group’s surviving founder members, his first cousin Mike Love, and his best friend from college, Al Jardine. 

It was their chance to say goodbye to the man who, above anyone, brought “good vibrations” to the world and created their 1966 magnum opus Pet Sounds. 

First to venture up the drive at Brian’s Beverly Hills mansion for one last time was Jardine.  

“I last saw him at the very end,” he says. “I came up to the house and he just pointed at me. 

“He said, ‘You started the band’, and I went, ‘Wait, come on, Brian, I’m sure you had a little something to do with it!’ 

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“He was very direct at times — he could be very unfiltered — but I think our friendship meant a lot to him. 

“He was always my best friend, right from when we started out.” 

Despite Brian’s well-documented struggles with mental health, Jardine insists that his old buddy never lost his passion for music. 

“His reputation remains solid,” he adds, before supplying an answer to his own question: “What’s the term? Legend.  

“His work will be appreciated for centuries to come. He had his own style. Just listen to his arrangements and his chord changes — they’re just so unusual.  

“His brother Dennis actually said it first, ‘Brian is The Beach Boys’. He created our sound and, as Mike Love would say, he heard things we couldn’t hear.” 

Of his last visit to Brian, Love says: “A couple of weeks before he passed away, I was able to go and see him. 

“We had a great time. We sang together, actually, which was a lot of fun.” 

Love leads the latest incarnation of The Beach Boys, keeping their songs alive in concert, including Pet Sounds classics God Only Knows, Wouldn’t It Be Nice and Sloop John B.  

“Brian’s still with us every night in that music,” he affirms 

If Brian, younger brothers Carl and Dennis, Mike and Al started out by singing about surfing, girls and open-top cars in the California sun, it was the elder Wilson sibling who took things to the next level with Pet Sounds. 

A themed song cycle employing pioneering production techniques, sublime harmonies, divine melodies and darker, soul-searching lyrics, it is regarded as Brian’s masterpiece.

He had been impressed with The Beatles’ sonic adventures on Rubber Soul — now he was pushing The Beach Boys to raise the bar higher, in turn inspiring their chart rivals to make Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

Paul McCartney maintains that God Only Knows is his favourite song and that Pet Sounds is among his top three albums.  

He once enthused: “The musical invention on that is, like, ‘Wow!’  

“I just thought, ‘Oh dear me, this is THE album of all time, what the hell are we gonna do?’” 

To mark its 60th anniversary, The Pet Sounds Sessions — including demos, alternate takes and outtakes — are receiving digital, CD and vinyl editions. They feature a host of a cappella tracks shining the spotlight on the breathtaking harmonies.  

Which is why I’m speaking to Brian’s bandmates via video calls that seem entirely appropriate for singers who epitomise California’s sunny beach vibes.  

As we’re connected, Love, 85, reports that he’s “driving down the Pacific Coast Highway outside of Malibu”. 

In a separate call, Jardine, 83, is sitting in his solarium under clear blue skies in Monterey, gateway to the rugged Big Sur coastal region. 

First, Love gives me insights into his Beach Boys journey, leading up to the groundbreaking Pet Sounds.  

His mother Glee was the sister of Murry Wilson, father of Brian, Carl and Dennis, “so every holiday — Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Fourth of July — and birthday was celebrated with music. 

“When Brian and I were teens, we’d get together and sing or listen to the radio, hearing groups like The Everly Brothers.” 

When they formed The Beach Boys, the clean-cut image involving surfing, sun and girls was, he says, “environmental because we lived a few miles from the sea”. 

Love continues: “We would often go to the beach for family outings. There, you’d find people who dressed a certain way, talked a certain way and had a certain attitude.  

“They were the surfers who inspired our first song, Surfin’ [released in 1961].” 

As to whether The Beach Boys joined the craze, he adds: “Dennis, Al and I had surfboards but we weren’t the greatest athletes. We appreciated it though, and we gave it a shot. 

“I’m not sure Brian ever tried it. He could only hear out of one ear and didn’t have much balance. You need all the balance you can get when you’re surfing.” 

Love recalls how he would “sit down at the piano with Brian while he figured out chord progressions, tempos and melodies.  

“I felt it was up to me to come up with lyrics and sing lead on songs we were working on together such as Surfin’ USA, I Get Around and Fun Fun Fun.” 

Jardine, who currently fronts The Pet Sounds Band of ace Brian Wilson associates, also casts his mind back to the early days but is interrupted by “actual pet sounds”. 

“Hang on a second, we have a little dog outside and he’s barking — I gotta shut him up,” he reports.  

When calm returns, I ask Jardine how he came to form a band with three brothers and their cousin in 1961.  

He answers: “Well, Brian and I were classmates in high school but didn’t really know each other. 

“We were on the football team — he was quarterback and I was full back. He would call the plays, either pitching the ball to me or somebody else. 

“But we didn’t interact until we went to college. I’d heard him in concert and, in our second year, I bumped into him on campus and said, ‘We gotta start a band’.  

“We walked over to the music room and started playing music for each other.  

“I’d already been in a folk group and, when he heard me sing, he realised I had a gift. 

“Then he said, ‘I’ve got my little brothers and my cousin, Mike. I’ll introduce you to them. I rented instruments from a local music store but we didn’t know how to express ourselves at first, so we just sang a cappella. 

“Once we finally got around the piano, we were off and running. 

“I soon realised that Brian was a fine-tuned instrument. He had a great voice, a great knack for composition and already had a duet thing going on with Mike.” 

As for the surfer image, Jardine credits Dennis Wilson, the family rebel who played the drums. He says: “Dennis was a surfer and the rest of us were land lovers. He taught me how to surf but I sank like a stone. 

“But surfing was the craze so we put lyrics to our first song and called it Surfin’.” 

In 1964, Brian dropped the bombshell that he was stepping back from touring to concentrate on studio work.  

Love provides this insight into his cousin’s state of mind: “Brian wasn’t comfortable on the road — he got nervous and unhappy. He missed home and he missed the studio. 

“It was a drag to see him leave the live group but it was in his best interests.” 

Afforded fewer distractions, Brian applied himself to Pet Sounds and, in tandem with it, the sophisticated sonic miracle Good Vibrations — a standalone hit deemed not a good fit for the album. 

This period coincided with his experiments with LSD and marijuana.  

He once stated that drugs helped him achieve a deeper level of creativity but later expressed regrets over the damage to his mental health. 

Because of the complexity, Brian needed longer than usual to finish Pet Sounds so The Beach Boys released a stopgap party album, yielding one of their biggest hits, Barbara Ann. 

Then, after a tour of Japan in January 1966, with Bruce Johnston taking Brian’s place, Carl, Dennis, Mike, Al and Bruce returned for the momentous sessions.  

In their absence, Brian had employed lyricist Tony Asher and crack session musicians the Wrecking Crew, including, among many, Glen Campbell on guitar and banjo. 

Love says: “The tracks Brian had done were completely amazing. Our main job was to finish them vocally and we worked very hard.” 

One of the songs was God Only Knows, which he says was “sung so beautifully by my cousin Carl”. 

“We lost him many years ago to lung cancer. For concerts these days, my son Christian sings lead.” 

So what was Carl like? “He was our musical director on stage and the most proficient musician in the group,” replies Love. 

Jardine adds: “Carl could knock it out of the park. He was right in the centre of our harmonies with Mike’s baritone below and me higher, with Brian higher still.” 

And what about Dennis, who had a wild reputation and later befriended cult leader and killer Charles Manson? 

Love says: “He lived a dangerous life because of the alcohol and drugs he got involved with. He died [from drowning] in 1983.” 

Jardine adds: “Dennis was our Keith Moon. Oh boy, all he had to do was just stand up on stage and the crowd would go nuts.” 

It was self-confessed folkie Jardine who brought Bahamian sea shanty Sloop John B to Brian. He says: “I was a Kingston Trio fan. They were big Capitol Records guys, same label as us, and they wore striped shirts.  

“Learning all their songs was my musical training. When the time came to start The Beach Boys, I went out and bought striped shirts for us. 

“Sloop John B was my idea. I said, ‘Brian, if we add one major and one minor chord, it’ll sound like us instead of The Kingston Trio’. 

“He put it to good use. It became Pet Sounds’ lead single. Capitol always wanted a hit to sell an album.” 

Recalling the sessions, Jardine says that Brian’s abilities had been “growing exponentially” while they’d been away. 

“In spite of our jet lag, we were in the studio the day after we got home from Japan. We were extremely impressed with Brian’s arrangements. 

“People forget that he was a masterful producer. He knew the language. He could go into a studio and the studio became an instrument for him.” 

That said, it wasn’t all plain sailing, as Jardine explains: “Mike didn’t like the lyrics on some songs so he insisted on changing a couple around.  

“He thought a song called Hang On To Your Ego was too sophisticated for our crowd so he changed it to I Know There’s An Answer.” 

The story of Pet Sounds wouldn’t be complete without mention of the album title and cover shot of the boys among the goats at San Diego Zoo. Love says: “Brian didn’t know what to call the album.

“At the end [of final track Caroline, No], you hear a train going by and dogs are barking.  

“Those were Brian and [first wife] Marilyn’s dogs. So I said, ‘Why don’t we call it Pet Sounds? It was a double entendre, of course — and it stuck.” 

Jardine picks up the story of the photo shoot: “It was a total mystery to me.  

“We had to drive to San Diego, which was 200 miles away. We had our own zoo in Los Angeles, for God’s sake!” 

The resulting album cover has a quaint charm but it’s not exactly up there with Sgt Pepper’s iconic Peter Blake design. 

Love smiles at the memory and says: “I was in India at the Maharishi’s place when Paul McCartney and I had a conversation one night. 

“He was saying, ‘Mike, you ought to take more care with your album covers’. 

“So I told him, ‘Paul, you’re absolutely right.

We should’. 

“But we always felt that what went into the sleeve was more important than the cover itself.” 

And speaking of goats, to many including Macca, Pet Sounds is the GOAT. 

THE BEACH BOYS 

The Pet Sounds Session Highlights 

★★★★★

AN X Factor star has mysteriously pulled out of a major festival gig for “unforeseen” reasons.

The 30-year-old shot to fame on The X Factor in 2012 and went on to enjoy huge success as a musician.

The In It Together festival, which takes place this month in Wales, has announced that X Factor star Ella Henderson will not be appearing this year.

Taking to social media they said: “We’re very sorry to share that Ella Henderson has unfortunately been forced to cancel some of her upcoming appearances due to unforeseen circumstances, and as a result will no longer be appearing at In It Together Festival this year.

“We completely understand and support Ella’s decision, and we want to send our love and very best wishes to Ella and her entire team at this time.

“We sincerely hope to welcome Ella to In It Together in the near future.”

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The statement continued: “While we know many of you will be disappointed, we’ve worked tirelessly behind the scenes at the last minute to secure a huge replacement artist and someone you absolutely do not want to miss.

“Join us on Sunday at 2PM on the Together Stage for the official reveal. Trust us… this is BIG.”

Ella found fame on the ITV talent show in 2012 aged 16 where she wowed judges with her rendition of Cher’s Believe before reaching the live finals.

But she finished in sixth place behind winner James Arthur.

Following her stint on the show, Ella went on to sign with Simon Cowell’s label Syco Music and released her first studio album, Chapter One, with the music mogul in 2014.

During her time with label, Ella scored several hits with her single Ghost, which she wrote with the American writer producer Ryan Tedder, and emotional ballad Yours.

She went on a four-year hiatus in 2015, and released her second studio album, Everything I Didn’t Say, in 2022. It became her second top 10 album in the UK.

Ella has received the Brit Billion Award, and nominations for four Brit Awards and an Ivor Novello Award.

AKON and Ne-Yo have been the soundtrack of our lives for the past two decades.

Between them, they have sold more than 55million records worldwide, thanks to a series of high-profile collaborations including Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Gewn Stefani and David Guetta.

In 2008, Akon teamed up with Michael Jackson to rework the King of Pop’s 1982 smash Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.

Now he tells Bizarre that he’s got his sights on teaming up with Princess of Pop Britney Spears.

Speaking to Bizarre’s Jack backstage at The O2 as he and Ne-Yo team up for a massive UK arena tour, Akon said: “Yeah, I would f***ing kill that record with Britney. I’m obsessed with her.

“I have some songs lined up, but I can’t even explain it. As for the sound, I think it needs to reflect where she’s at in her life.”

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He added: “That thing is beyond Britney. I can’t think of anyone that I haven’t worked with.

“So this is why I do a lot of collaborations with new artists, because that is what inspires me now.”

The duo have played just about every big arena in the country, including multiple nights at Manchester’s Co-Op Live Arena and four nights at London’s O2.

And fans there for their last night at the capital’s venue this Thursday are in for a treat as the show is nothing short of bonkers in the best way, with Akon crowd-surfing on a pimped-out table.

The hitmaker had kicked off the tour Zorbing over the crowd — but UK health and safety rules forced him to rethink his plans.

Akon said: “Yeah, the inflatable ball was my idea. I’ve been doing it at other places since about 2008, but the UK has got too many restrictions.”

Videos of Akon crowd-surfing have gone viral on social media, with overjoyed fans baffled and stunned at the singer’s ­daring display.

In one clip, the superstar can be heard telling ­security not to worry and to get out of the way, as his fans love him and won’t hurt him.

Admitting he has zero fears when it comes to entering the crowd, Akon said: “No, I’m not nervous about falling off at all.

“You have got to have balance, though.”

After we tell him we would need a vodka before hitting the stage, the teetotal star laughs: “That’s why you could never do it. You couldn’t balance on there.

“You would be wobbly the moment you get on top.”

In fact, the sober star says all he needs is a can of Coca-Cola and some jelly beans to get him pumped up for the two-and-a-half-hour show.

Akon said: “Back in the day I used to work out before a show, but now it comes so second nature, I just chill and relax until it’s time for me to get on. I literally have no rituals.

“I love jelly beans. I have them before my show every day. I like Coke as a nice refreshing drink, and I make fruit juices as well. Just the basic stuff — ginger and lemon teas.

“But for the show itself, it’s totally different. I turn into the Incredible Hulk. I just change when the lights come on. I turn into somebody totally different.

“I’m not exhausted by the end. I’m fully energised and ready to go again.”

While Akon is powered by jelly beans, it seems his co-headliner Ne-Yo gets his energy from Scampi Fries.

Bizarre are led through the rabbit warren of corridors in The O2, passing racks of diamond- encrusted clothes to meet the star ahead of the gig.

And when he emerges from his dressing room, he holds up two packs of the savoury snack, which can be found in most old boozers.

Clearly impressed and baffled by the quintessentially British treat, Ne-Yo says: “I’ve just discovered scampi snacks — I love them.”

Rather than bringing them with him on the road, bosses at The O2 have stocked his dressing room minibar with a ­plentiful supply.

We tell Ne-Yo that if he pops to the pub for a post-show pint, he will be able to ask for a bag of Scampi Fries alongside his Stella.

Ne-Yo, who has clocked up 20 UK Top 40 singles and five UK No1s, jokingly replies: “I’m going to invest in the company.”

Judging by their high-energy set, it seems jelly beans and Scampi Fries really are the way forward.

ZENDAYA: MY BALANCING  ACT

THEY are two of the biggest showbiz names on the planet.

But despite regularly being seen out and about together, Tom Holland and Zendaya are notoriously private when it comes to their relationship.

Now the Dune actress has revealed why she holds things back from fans – describing how she is locked in a daily battle over how much of her private life to share.

Zendaya said: “It’s a complex thing. It’s a balance of how to figure out how much to give of yourself, because I wouldn’t be in this position without the people who support me, and I want to be able to show them how thankful I am for their support.

“But then on the flip side, it is important to pour into yourself as well and hold things sacred to yourself and to your loved ones – to have those moments too and create that little healthy boundary.”

Zendaya and Tom married in secret this year after meeting on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2016.

She added: “At the end of the day, you have to fill your cup too.

“I try to find that balance. There’s really no blueprint. There’s no road map.

“We don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just figuring this out every day.”

A $570m JACKO THRILLER

THE MICHAEL JACKSON biopic, Michael, has only been out for three weeks but is already breaking records.

The film has surpassed $570million (£420m) at the global box office – making it the No1 music biopic of all time in North America.

It is only the second music biopic ever to earn more than $500million at the box office, following in the footsteps of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Released in 2018, that film saw Rami Malek play the late Freddie Mercury, while former EastEnders actor turned X-Men hunk Ben Hardy played drummer Roger Taylor.

Meanwhile, in Michael, the late King of Pop is played by his real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson.

Michael’s daughter, Paris Jackson, has distanced herself from the project, accusing bosses of creating a “fantasy” with “full-blown lies”.

ARIANA: NEW LIFE BUDS IN PETALS

ARIANA GRANDE has continued to tease her upcoming eighth album, Petal.

The We Can’t Be Friends singer has insisted the new collection isn’t like her X-rated 2021 record Positions – despite previously referring to it as “a bit feral”.

Asked if the records will be similar, Ari simply replied: “No, but I love her [Positions] . . . I just enjoy evolving.”

The album’s lead ­single, Hate That I Made You Love Me, drops in just over a fortnight, with Petal released on July 31.

Ari’s previous album, 2024’s Eternal ­Sunshine, was all about her split from ­Dalton Gomez after three years of ­marriage, and finding love once more with her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater.

Insisting Petal will be far more uplifting than her last offering, Ariana added: “Basically, it’s about something that is full of life growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.”

Doja’s frilled to hit  town  

LOOKS like less is more for Doja Cat.

The Paint The Town Red rapper clearly doesn’t feel the cold as she steps out in New York in this tiny outfit.

Looking ready to party into the night, Doja opted for a purple metallic crop-top and a tiny frilly brown skirt – which barely measures more than some of the belts I own.

Doja completed her look with an equally minuscule pink handbag, which looks like it would only be able to fit an iPhone and a ­single lighter.

She may be from Los ­Angeles, but Doja clearly has some northern grit in her.

HELLO JAMES – WHO’S THE LITTLE GUY ON YOUR KNEE?

I’VE posed for my fair share of unflattering pictures with stars over the years.

But James Martin may have just taken the crown when it comes to photographic oddities.

The TV chef shared this picture of himself with presenter Guy Martin after he appeared on James Martin’s Saturday Morning cookery show.

Due to the angle, James appears five times the size of Guy, who is perched next to him like a ­ventriloquist’s dummy.

The Instagram comments section was ­immediately filled with fans of the duo giving them a good old-fashioned ribbing.

One wrote: “Did you have him on a boil wash?” Another added: “Love Guy. I didn’t realise he was only 2ft tall though.”

A third teased: “Faith in the British sense of humour restored by reading this ­comment section.”

Seemingly oblivious to the epic fail, James gushed over his bromance with Guy, with the caption: “I’ve interviewed many people but Guy was a top one . . .fascinating man and a massive eater. Top show – hope you liked it.”

DANCEFLOOR legend Martin Garrix has confirmed my tale that his single with Ed Sheeran is just around the corner.

Over the weekend, a billboard with a message from Martin popped up in the Dominican Republic, where Shape Of You singer Ed has just played a show.

It read: “Hi Ed. Can we please release our song? Xx Marty.”

I told last month how the duo will be releasing Repeat It.

Show support

LEWIS CAPALDI has added some huge support acts to his BST Hyde Park shows in London.

The singer will be supported by a string of top names including The Vaccines for his July 11 gig and Alessi Rose for his July 12 date.

Before he reaches the capital, Lewis will also play the brand-new Roundhay Festival in Leeds on July 4.

Jessie Murph, Kerr Mercer and Nieve Ella have all been announced to support him at the show.

Going all out

WE can always count on Rita Ora to go all out when it comes to weird and wonderful outfit choices.

The singer and actress looks like she stepped straight off the runway in this quirky blue-striped co-ord on Sunday in London.

Rita was in high spirits as she headed to the Royal Albert Hall to rehearse for tonight’s special King’s Trust Celebration concert there.

Bizarre will be backstage to bring you all the gossip from the VIP-packed night.

MUSIC fans were divided after Oli Sykes slammed them for leaving his band’s gig early.

Oli, 39, fronts the massive band Bring Me The Horizon and went on the rant at their recent gig in Nashville, USA.

Kneeling on the stage wearing a large cowboy hat with a pink feather hem, Oli angrily pointed in the direction of the crowd in a video posted to TikTok by user @professionalconcertgoer.

“Now I start seeing t***s leaving early to beat the traffic… I can see one there, that c***t and he’s a VIP one too,” Oli said looking into the audience.

“Why did you pay all that money for?”

Fans of the band explained their reasons for needing to leave gigs before they finished and also slammed Oli’s attitude.

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“I always think it’s wild when artists talk about the fans that lined their pockets like this. I thought better of Oli,” wrote one person in the comment section of the TikTok.

Another added: “Oli my brother in Christ the last bus / train home is like 10:45 we have to leave early or we’re sleeping on the street.”

But a third commented: “I’ll never understand why people leave early. I’ve done it a couple of times and have regretted it every time.”

While a fourth posted: “He said this in toronto too, i felt bad but he’s gotta take it up with go transit 😭 if i miss my train i’m stranded in the city, i don’t have money or a credit card to get a hotel for the night.”

Bring Me The Horizon formed in 2004 and have released six studio albums.

They have been nominated for two Grammys and this year won a Brit for Best Rock/Alternative Act. They’ve also scooped seven Kerrang! gongs in a career that dates back 20 years.

There was no greater sign of a mainstream breakthrough than when they collaborated with Ed Sheeran for a souped-up version of his hit Bad Habits at the Brit Awards in 2022.

Adding rocky riffs and synths to the catchy pop tune, the heavier element clearly thrilled Ed who performed the collab with a big grin.

Last year, Oli officialy became a dad after his Brazilian model wife Victoria Alissa Salles Silva announced she had given birth to twins.

In an Instagram post, she shared an image of the tots – writing, “amor infinito,” which translates to “infinite love”, adding, “grey & zélia.”

IN northern Arkansas on the banks of South Fork Spring River in the region known as the Ozarks, you’ll find a tiny settlement called Saddle.

Today, it comprises a modest Baptist church, an old timber-clad general store turned events venue (now up for sale) — and very little else.

Not so far away, out in the wilds, is the farm where country star Ashley McBryde grew up.

It is the place where she first picked up a guitar and discovered her passion for music, the starting point of her journey to the world stage.

Along the way, she rebelled against her strict preacher father, sang in biker bars, acquired the striking collection of tattoos adorning both arms and fought alcohol addiction.

Yet her inspirational climb has taken her to country music’s spiritual home, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and the O2 Arena in London for the C2C festival.

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And next month she will support a titan of the genre, Garth Brooks, at Hyde Park in front of 65,000 people.

Since becoming sober in June 2022, Grammy-winning McBryde is making some of the best music of her life, and she’s doing it by returning to her roots.

On one of the rousing songs on her fifth studio album, the aptly titled Wild, she sings these lines with mighty conviction…

“It’s in my throat, it’s in my bones, it’s on my boots and in my blood. That Ozark streak sureе runs deep and it sticks to me like that Arkansas mud.”

I tell her that my only experience of her childhood stomping ground is the TV series Ozark about a Chicago family who decamp to the area, for money- laundering reasons as you do, where they encounter small-time hillbilly criminals.

“Yeah, I’ve known some characters like those,” says McBryde with a knowing smile. “They did a great job on Ozark.”

She is one of a new breed who has learned to accept “the Nashville machine” while remaining true to themselves.

“I’ve done a good job, not a perfect one, of being inside the machine but also sticking to my guns,” she affirms.

“It’s an industry that asks the brunette to be blonde and the girl that’s 5ft 3in to be 6ft.”

At times, McBryde felt she was “falling short of being shinier, blonder, skinnier” but, she adds hand on heart: “You’re just not getting rid of what’s in here.”

In the same bracket, you will find two big bearded male artists keeping it real — Luke Combs and Chris Stapleton, who are among America’s biggest selling artists right now.

These are the natural successors to the original country “outlaws,” who include McBryde’s hero Kris Kristofferson, fellow Arkansawyer Johnny Cash and last man standing Willie Nelson.

She delivers kick-ass songs, drawing on rock and roll as much as anything, but she can also turn her intuitive talents to tear-stained balladry or a country-pop masterclass like recent single What If We Don’t.

I’m meeting the vivacious 42-year-old during her whistle- stop visit to London, and we find ourselves beside a picture window overlooking Kensington Gardens filled with people catching the glorious spring sunshine.

I can’t help sensing the contrast between the swish hotel suite in a teeming capital city and Ashley McBryde’s isolated upbringing that is, in part, the inspiration for her new album.

Taking my cue from the name of her album, I ask her if she was a “Wild” child.

“I think I was a good kid but I was also in trouble a lot,” she replies.

“I asked a lot of questions that people didn’t want to answer. They didn’t care for a child who wanted to know why things had to be a certain way.

“But I was always out in the woods, dreaming up this or that. I would be one of the X-Men, making swords and guns out of sticks.”

The youngest of six, she paints a picture of her childhood that conjures up classic American literature — Little Women, Tom Sawyer or Little House On The Prairie.

In fact, every night her “angel” of a mother would read her a chapter of the latter book as well as one from the Bible.

“I didn’t own shorts until I was an adult,” continues McBryde.

“Because my legs would get so ate up with tick bites from being out in the briars and thorns. It was a very physical existence.

“We worked real hard. We had cows, chickens and horses but my favourite thing about it was I could go wherever I wanted.

“I could go out walking for a whole day. I remember one time I asked mom if I could camp out for the night.

“She said, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ And I said, ‘I just want to cook my soup on a campfire’.

“She was like, ‘Well, knock yourself out’.”

But there was a duality to life in this rustic idyll because McBryde’s farmer and preacher father, William, imposed his strict religious beliefs at home.

This perhaps explains why she has been singing the late Randall Clay’s storming Rattlesnake Preacher live for several years and why, finally, her studio version opens Wild in such uncompromising fashion.

“There was freedom even though we lived in a very, very rigid household,” says McBryde.

“It was all right as long as what you wanted to do was within the parameters of what was considered to be right.

“So there was nothing wrong with going for a walk or riding a horse or digging a hole or learning to play a guitar. Those things were totally OK.

“But it was very much a case of the man being the head of the family, the way Christ is the head of the church — and anything that went against that could go to hell. There was no break.”

Although she was generally expected to attend church on “Wednesday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night,” sometimes even that was off-limits “if they were doing something that my father deemed not in alignment with his book”.

This brings McBryde to an extraordinary revelation: “To my knowledge, my father has still not listened to my music.”

That said, she admits that he had to hear one of her songs, Bible And A .44, written about him and appearing on her debut EP in 2016, Jalopies & Expensive Guitars.

It includes the lines: “He taught me how to hunt and how to love the Lord/He carried a Bible and a .44/And they just don’t make ’em like that no more.”

McBryde says: “I sang it to him after I wrote it. He told me, ‘You painted me in an awful nice light. I wish all of it could be true.’

“And I said: ‘You don’t see what I see because you’re not looking at what I’m looking at.’

“It was a nice way to give him a break from being the villain because a lot of the time he was. There were really great qualities about him, too.”

As for her beloved mother Martha, she says: “She’s an absolute angel. I don’t think she’s ever done anything wrong.

“She can make you an outfit right now while she’s making you a casserole while she’s praying for someone who has lost a limb.”

It was in this old-school world that McBryde developed her love of making music, becoming enchanted by the songs of the rugged Kristofferson and the more polished John Denver.

“I knew I wanted to be a singer and a songwriter from a really young age, even before I was a teenager.”

She knew she was on the right path when, after leaving home, she “started making enough playing in bars not to wait tables anymore and to keep the lights on in my apartment”.

A rebel at heart, McBryde recalls playing biker dives and, like the clientele, she got tattoos, wore leather and drank heavily.

As she tried to get a foothold in the country music scene, there wasn’t much hope “for a non-blonde who was covered in tattoos”.

“I did meet a lot of friction,” she says. “Some labels were not in any way interested.”

But her irresistible talent was spotted by, among others, Eric Church, another country star who likes to say it how it is.

“He was a great champion,” says McBryde. “A great name to be associated with because of the way he makes records and the way he approaches music.

“For him to say, ‘I like this songwriter’ does open a door.”

Evidence of that door being opened arrived in 2018 when McBryde’s major label debut, Girl Going Nowhere, was released on Warner Nashville, including one of her signature songs, A Little Dive Bar In Dahlonega.

It’s about resilience in the face of a break-up and, among its references to drinking is the line, “We’ve all got a number we don’t wanna drunk dial.”

I guess it alludes to another aspect of McBryde’s life because, running parallel to her early years in the business, was a dependence on alcohol, which she’s finally coming to terms with.

One of her new album’s most captivating songs is the beautifully sung ballad Bottle Tells Me So.

“I didn’t want to have a problem with alcohol but, like it or not, it’s part of my story,’ admits McBryde. “And I didn’t want to talk about it for a long time.

“I was either drinking, drunk or hung over at all times – and that’s really tough.”

In 2022, matters came to a head when, on the advice of her team, McBryde went into rehab.

Now proudly four years sober, she says: “Writing Bottle Tells Me So was a way to acknowledge it without saying, ‘I’m sober and you should be too.’

“You don’t want to preach but life is so much better for me now that I don’t drink.

“In that song, I’m not saying I’m never going to drink again. There’s no shame involved.”

In explaining why a habit that began while “acting cool and hanging with friends”, McBryde says: “I’ve heard it said that the addicts of all types aren’t addicted to any substance.

“They’re addicted to not feeling their feelings. I would say that is spot on for me.

“Not consuming alcohol anymore is probably the simplest part of becoming sober. You have to completely re-meet yourself and rewire everything.”

McBryde says she feels “1000 per cent” better, both physically and mentally. “I look better and I feel better. Despite still feeling anxious, I’m stronger than I knew and that makes me happy.”

She recalls her first show after leaving after getting sober: “I left treatment on Tuesday, got in the bus on Wednesday and was on the stage on Thursday.

“It was my first time being more than 30 days dry and it was the most terrifying, coolest thing I will ever experience.

“I was worried and asked myself, ‘What if I can’t do this?’ But I got out there and was spot on. Bullseye! Now I’m at the top of my game.”

McBryde is undoubtedly dialled in on Wild, produced with sparkle and empathy by John Osborne of country duo Brothers Osborne.

“John’s magical, playful and curious,” she says. “When I try something, he will say, ‘If you love it, we keep it. If you hate it, we toss it.”

It’s a healthy state of affairs for an artist who is increasingly cherished by the country music establishment in Nashville.

She says: “My friends and I always joke, ‘You can never change where the machine is headed unless you climb inside the machine.’

“I want to make music that people will hear. I like being able to make your guts hurt.

‘And the only way to get it heard is to abide by certain rules.”

One her proudest achievements is becoming a member of Grand Ol’ Opry, showcase for the greats from Hank Williams (even if he did get banned) and Patsy Cline onwards.

“I love it,” says McBryde. “Just thinking about it now, I smile so big. My face is complete cheese.”

And there we have it. Ashley McBryde, force of nature, born and raised in the Arkansas Mud but reaching for the stars.

ASHLEY McBRYDE Wild

4.5 STARS

SIMON Cowell has revealed he is thinking of bringing back The X Factor, nearly eight years after the ITV talent contest was axed.

Over its 14-year run the show discovered huge acts including One Direction, Little Mix, Leona Lewis and Olly Murs.

And now the music mogul is considering a revival for the Gen Z years, following the success of his Netflix show The Next Act, which spawned rising pop stars December 10.

Simon told TV presenter Jamie East on his new podcast Tales From The Celebrity Trenches: “Do you bring it back as X Factor or do you bring it back as the Z Factor? We talk about it a lot.

“There’s still no question — the power of TV in terms of getting people to know an artist.

“It is so important if you are not writing your own material.

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“There is something about being on a big screen.

“You do hear about these artists who break online, but so rarely.

“We could have made [The Next Act] online.

“I just don’t think it would have had the same effect.

“The truth is, thank God, people like being on TV.”

Running such a huge talent show is not always plain sailing, but Simon had a distinctly New Age solution when the stresses got just too much while filming The Next Act.

He turned to crystals.

Simon recalled: “We were running out of money so I did have a little mini meltdown.

“And then I just sat with my crystals and they just comforted me.

“I can feel the energy.

“I thought it was kind of comforting having the crystals rather than everyone in my ear driving me crazy.”

He added: “I definitely believe in the powers of the universe.

“I feel that if you can harness the power of the universe to try and make your mind just calm down for a moment . . . ”

I don’t think I’ll be swapping a medicinal glass of rosé for rose quartz any time soon, but each to their own . . . 

Kylie in Michael tribute

Kylie Minogue will pay tribute to late boyfriend Michael Hutchence in her new self-titled Netflix documentary.

She confirmed yesterday that the Inxs frontman will be included.

In a first-look trailer, Kylie shared photographs of them together while they dated between 1989 and 1991.

Despite splitting, Kylie stayed close to fellow Aussie Michael until his death aged 37 in 1997,

She said previously: “He was a dark bad boy and I was the pure good girl.

“He opened up a whole new world for me.”

The three-parter will also feature Kylie’s friends and family talking about highs and lows she has faced, including her breast cancer diagnosis in 2005.

Kylie is heard saying off camera: “I felt removed from my body.

“I was so scared of what was ahead.”

Her sister Dannii can then be seen welling up as she says: “We didn’t know if she was ever going to well again.

“I just wanted to be with my sister.

“Music kept us going.”

Fans will have to wait until May 20 to watch the series in full.

Hol lotta Caity

Caity Baser was hostess with the mostess as she opened a beach club in the back garden of her seaside home.

She squeezed into a tight blue dress and posed with bunting and flowers at the party to mark the release of new single Holiday Song this Friday.

The singer’s pal Joel Corry was drafted in as DJ for the bash in Brighton.

She ordered a tonne of sand to turn her garden into a beach – but revealed to TikTok followers that she ordered builders’ sand by mistake.

She referred to her makeshift club as Ibiza Crops – a reference to Ibiza Rocks on the White Isle – but was dreading the prospect of clearing it all up afterwards.

If the release of the single goes as well as her party, she’ll have a very fun summer.

Jack Cullen began his first headline European solo tour in Bristol last night, and has a long slog in front of him.

The musician, who released single Face To Face on Friday, will play across the UK in the next few days then head to Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam and Berlin.

He’ll then Run 22 marathons in 22 days – back from the German capital to London for the tour’s final night, headlining Oslo in Hackney on June 12.

Live gigs in Dolldrums

Pussycat Dolls, Post Malone and Zayn Malik have all cancelled North American tours in the past week – and it’s the clearest sign yet the live music economy is about to turn.

Last summer was one of the best-ever for gigs, with Oasis, Dua Lipa and Coldplay selling out stadiums, while Radiohead, Lewis Capaldi and Tate McRae played to packed arenas.

But ticket prices have only continued to rise since live shows returned after Covid, and now it’s clear punters have had enough of greedy artists taking advantage.

Shows are already hugely expensive in the UK, but over in the US, the prices are even higher.

Suki Waterhouse, Ella Mai and Logic and G-Eazy’s tours there later this year are also struggling to shift tickets, with fears they could be axed too. It’s only a matter of time before we see a similar knock-on effect in the UK.

Even some major tours here this summer are yet to sell out, after insatiable promoters added strings of dates and pushed artists into bigger and bigger venues.

As you know from this column, I love a good concert.

But at a time when everyone is strapped for cash, paying through the nose for a couple of hours of singing is just not an option for many.

So if the music industry keeps moving like it is at the moment, it’s only going to turn people off altogether.

It’s a three-horse race to the No1 album spot this Friday, with Mel C, Michael Jackson and Kneecap all battling it out for the prime position.

Just under 3,000 chart units separate third place from the top spot, so it’s all to play for.

Kneecap are currently at No1 with Fenian, closely followed by Mel’s Sweat and MJ’s 2005 compilation album The Essential, which is back in demand after the Michael biopic.

Pete aims for Kyle collab

Pete Doherty is recruiting The View’s frontman Kyle Falconer to collaborate on songs for his next solo album.

They previously worked together on Pete’s track Midas Touch, on Kyle’s recent LP Lovely Night Of Terror.

Now Kyle has revealed he visited Pete’s home in the South of France and will return soon to work with the Libertines rocker, right, again.

He said: “I was just over in France to see him, we’re talking about loads of stuff.

“It was all very arty. We were painting together, and talking about films.”

Pete’s last solo effort was 2025 album Felt Better Alive, while the last Libertines record was 2024’s All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade.

Two years ago Kyle moved to Alicante in Spain with his wife Laura and their four kids.

He now runs songwriting camps from his La Sierra Casa studio, and said: “The camp is getting bigger and better every year, and we’ve just moved to a new place.”

Celebrity treasures on sale

War Child is back with its Spring Clean auction – packed with some of the most random and brilliant celebrity treasures going.

Fans can get their hands on Alan Carr’s Isabell Kristensen blazer from RuPaul’s Drag Race, and even a signed Devil Wears Prada 2 script donated by Stanley Tucci.

There’s a Fantastic Four script signed by Vanessa Kirby, plus one of the strangest items on offer – the infamous radish prop from Netflix’s Beef, signed by the cast.

You can also win a private film screening and lunch with Simon Pegg.

Meanwhile, sci-fi lovers can snap up a personalised photo signed by X-Files co-stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.

Music lovers are also in for a treat, with signed setlists and memorabilia from Robbie Williams, The 1975 and Coldplay all among items up for grabs.

It runs until May 27, and will raise money to support children in war zones. See springclean.charitystars.com to get involved. Prize draw entries start at £10.

Liz up to sun-thing

Lizzo is lapping up as much sun as she can before she kicks off the promo for her new album, Bitch.

The Truth Hurts singer shared this snap with her 11million Instagram followers with the caption: “Best Birthday Ever”.

Lizzo turned 38 last week and used her special day to announce the record, which is the follow-up to her 2022 album, Special.

Teasing what Bitch has in store, Lizzo said: “I think it’s always going to be the Lizzo sound.

“I posted a snippet of one of my new songs that’s coming out very, very soon and somebody was like, ‘The Nineties are back’.

“I love constructing and producing and creating just well-crafted music and songs.

“I hope everyone likes it.”

As a massive Lizzo fan myself, I am sure I’m going to love it.

They are one of the most in-demand couples in ­Hollywood, so what do Gen Z heartthrobs ­Zendaya and Tom Holland do in their spare time?

The British actor, above with his other half, said: “So we have been ­crocheting at home. I absolutely love it.”

“I just find it turns my brain off. I can’t do anything else and do it. I have to be lasered in.”

I’m sure he still has Zendaya in stitches . . . 

THE Rolling Stones have teamed up with The Cure’s Robert Smith for their new album Foreign Tongues.

Insiders told The Sun that Friday, I’m In Love singer Robert, 67, had recorded three tracks in secret with Sir Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood in London.

Tonight, The Stones will unveil the details of Foreign Tongues, out July 10, at a party in New York .

Sir Paul McCartney, who played bass on Bite My Head Off from The Stones’ 2023 No1 album Hackney Diamonds, is also on the new record.

A source said: “Robert secretly recorded with The Stones in Metropolis Studios in London.

“He plays guitar and synth, and did backing vocals for three of the tracks.

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“The Stones were really pleased with how the songs came out.

“Paul will appear on the album again too. They’ve had this album wrapped for a while now and The Stones are excited about releasing it to their fans.”

This afternoon, the British music legends released the first single from Foreign Tongues, In The Stars.

Hackney Diamonds, which was The Stones’ first original studio album in 18 years when it was released back in 2023, went straight to the top spot.

And Mick and co have been working hard to make sure there is just as much of a buzz around Foreign Tongues.

They kicked off their campaign by reverting back to being The Cockroaches- a moniker they used for surprise, intimate performances in the Seventies and Eighties – and dropped a track called Rough And Twisted last month.

The Stones released a limited number of vinyl copies of the song, which are so rare they’re now being flogged for over £1000 online.

And they pulled in the big guns for their first music video for the record, by enlisting Hollywood rising star Odessa A’Zion to appear in the production.

This evening, Oscars host Conan O’Brien hosted a Q and A session with Mick and Keith, both 82, and Ronnie, 78, in New York.

SPICE GIRLS fans might not be getting a reunion tour for their 30th anniversary — but they could be enjoying something a lot more futuristic.

Victoria Beckham has confirmed they are in discussions about a hologram spectacular, a year after I revealed talks were under way with former manager Simon Fuller.

With a full-blown comeback looking unlikely, Posh said the girls all reckon a digital show would be “great” — and have already been chatting about it over dinner.

The concept would follow in the footsteps of ABBA Voyage, which turned the Swedish band into digital avatars and has been raking it in since launching in East London in 2022.

Victoria said on SiriusXM radio: “I think it would be a great idea.

“The principle of it would be great.

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“We were talking about it at dinner, but we’ll see.”

It comes after Melanie C poured cold water on reunion hopes, insisting a tour “is not happening”.

So fans shouldn’t hold out for the band hitting the road together anytime soon.

Still, a Spice Girls show without the stress of rehearsals, travel or arranging five schedules sounds very on- brand.

And if anyone can make Girl Power go digital, it’s music boss Simon, who first dreamed up ABBA’s avatar take

My insiders first told me of the girl-group’s plans last May, with Simon keen to celebrate their greatest hits with the show.

A source added: “Simon is desperate to have one last hurrah with the Spice Girls and this is his latest idea.

“He was the person who came up with the original idea for Abba and their digital show and he thinks this model could work perfectly for the group.

“Simon knows this plan would mean the band would be making money in their sleep and it would open up their music to a whole new generation.

“It’s a really exciting concept and he thinks he could make it work.”

Now he’s got Posh on board, I don’t think there is anything stopping them.

DAMON: TOO BUSY TO WIPE

SUCCESSFUL musicians can be lazy sods after years of having lackeys looking after their every whim.

And Damon Albarn has revealed he’s become so high and mighty, that he’s decided to stop doing anything not worth his time.

The result, my friends, is absolutely disgusting.

The Blur frontman said: “Sometimes I don’t even really wipe my bum properly.

“No, it’s not all the time, but you know what I mean. I just don’t allow many of the conventions that slow the day down to get in my way.”

Defending his toilet habit, Beatlebum singer Damon, insisted: “It’s more of the principle of the thing.

“If I’m in a hurry, I won’t waste extra time doing something that is not necessary to do at that moment.”

Remind me to never sit down wind of him at a party.

DUA TO LINE UP TOUR FILM?

HOLIDAY-loving Dua Lipa wore denim and stripes as she zipped off on another trip with her actor fiancé Callum Turner.

They have just returned from a romantic getaway to Copenhagen and she shared snaps online of them together and him tucking into a burger.

But it sounds like she may soon have a surprise up her sleeve, after sending fans wild with a message about a potential film of her Radical Optimism tour, which kicked off in November 2024 in support of her third album.

Dua shared a video on WhatsApp of herself performing and people screaming in the crowds.

In an accompanying note to fans, she wrote: “Happy 2 years of Radical Optimism . . . how should we celebrate?”

Her song End Of An Era features in new flick The Devil Wears Prada 2 and with the singer already hard at work on her next album, now would be the perfect time to close the book on her previous one.

OLIVIA’S STRIP TEASE BEFORE BARCA GIG

THE World Cup kicks off in just over a month and Olivia Rodrigo is already proving she’s on the ball when it comes to the beautiful game.

But rather than getting behind the US team, she’s more focused on La Liga champs Barcelona, teaming up with the Spanish club and Spotify to create a limited-edition jersey.

Perhaps we just forget about her trip to Stamford Bridge in 2023 to see Chelsea when it was proudly claimed she was a Blues fan.

The women’s team will wear the tops in their home match against Levante on Thursday. On Saturday, Olivia will play a Spotify Billions Club Live gig there.

Olivia, who follows acts such as Ed Sheeran, Drake and The Rolling Stones by featuring on the club’s kit, said: “Seeing ‘OR’ on a Barcelona jersey, I don’t even know how to process that.

“Getting to perform for the fans who’ve been listening since day one, in a city like Barcelona, is going to be special.”

EUPHORIA actor Jacob Elordi has broken his foot.

The Page Six gossip column in the US said the Aussie heartthrob’s injury means he is out of the running to be on the Cannes Film Festival jury, which he was expected to be part of.

The festival starts next Tuesday, but the injury means we are unlikely to see him striding down the red carpet.

HELL OF A START FOR DEVIL 2

THERE were plenty of doubters and mixed reviews – but The Devil Wears Prada 2 certainly hasn’t fallen out of fashion.

It has topped the box office worldwide, and over the weekend banked $233.6million, including $77million in North America.

That’s more than double the $27.5million the original 2006 flick made in its opening weekend.

It’s finally proof there is demand for female-fronted films, after male movies such as Michael and Project Hail Mary dominated in cinemas.

Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway reprise their roles, with all eyes back on Runway magazine and its editor Miranda Priestly.

Unlike the fictional mag, there’s nothing to worry about with these bumper figures.

CAMERON DIAZ has become a mum for the third time, aged 53.

She and hubby Benji Madden, of rock band Good Charlotte, have welcomed a baby boy called Nautas.

The Charlie’s Angels actress, who had daughter Raddix and son Cardinal by surrogate, previously said she was conscious about being an older mum.

FUTRA LIGHT

RIHANNA gets fruity in an new shoot for her Savage X Fenty’s latest undies range.

The singer, who looked stunning in sett decorated with strawberries, wrote on X: “It’s giving everything but basic for your everyday basics.”

Rihanna has been really quiet lately, with all whispers of new music once again dying down – a decade after the release of her last album, Anti.

C’mon girl, it’s what we RiRi want.

KATY AND JUSTIN GET PICKLED

KATY PERRY and Justin Trudeau have got themselves in a right little pickle.

The singer proved her unlikely romance with the former Canadian Prime Minister had gone from strength to strength – when she shared loved-up photos on Instagram, including one of their personalised jar of pickles.

The label shows the couple under the name “Katy & Justin’s Pop + Policy Pickles.”

Customised jars like theirs set customers back £22, but she clearly enjoyed the savoury souvenir, given that she shared the photo with her 200million followers.

Katy, pictured with her arms wrapped around her boyfriend, will head out on a six-week tour next month with stops in Dublin, Cardiff, and Isle of MTV festival in Malta.

At least with this momento stashed in her suitcase, she will have a reminder of home.

BOBBY’S BOO TO ROCK SIRS

PRIMAL SCREAM frontman Bobby Gillespie has taken a swipe at rock royalty, accusing some of music’s biggest names of getting too cosy with the Royal Family.

The singer didn’t hold back as he blasted those who accept honours, taking aim at the likes of Sir Brian May, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Rod Stewart.

At the launch of the David Bowie: You’re Not Alone immersive experience in London, Bobby said: “David Bowie was one of the few admirable rock stars who never took an honour from the Royal Family, which I think is incredibly cool.

“Maybe the coolest thing he ever did.

“The rest of them grovel on their knees, Bowie was like, nah. Too cool.”

Bobby made it clear his admiration for Bowie goes far beyond just snubbing a title, though.

He added: “I was a teenager in the Seventies so I’d be going to school in the morning and my mum would have the radio on and The Jean Genie would be blasting out, or Suffragette City or Golden Years.

“So since I was a conscious kid, a teenager, a pop music fan, he’s always been there.”

Bobby also praised Bowie’s constant reinvention, which he says helped shape his own band’s sound.

He added: “The way that he changed as an artist from album to album – he did different styles, as did The Beatles – that’s been a big influence on Primal Scream.”

ROBBIE WILLIAMS had to grin and bare it after breaking off half of his front tooth.

He shared this smiley selfie with the damaged gnasher on full display, telling his Instagram followers he hadn’t noticed it was missing until getting into bed with his wife Ayda Field.

Robbie revealed: “She said I look like Dumb And Dumber. Fair enough, I guess I do.”

But Rob is in Miami and his dentist is in Los Angeles, so he’s in a quandry over whether to fly five hours to get it fixed before his upcoming shows.

Whatever he does, I doubt he will be taking PALOMA FAITH’s advice.

She commented: “Knock them all out to match.”

That sounds more like a threat than a solution.

SHAKIRA suffered major tech issues during her huge Copacabana Beach concert over the weekend.

The global superstar faced backlash as eagle-eyed viewers spotted the mishaps during the performance.

An estimated 2 million people attended the show in Rio De Janeiro, where the popstar delivered a nearly 30-song set that included guest appearances by Anitta, Maria Bethania, and Caetano Veloso.

Although she performed in style, the sound and visuals didn’t match up at times.

Clips from the gig quickly went viral on X, but while some viewers were left disappointed, others weren’t surprised, saying it’s common at large-scale shows.

Taking to X, one person said: “If ur gonna lip at least make it believable”.

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STAGE HORROR

Worker crushed to death while building stage for Shakira’s Rio de Janeiro show

Another added: “This is genuinely a f******* mess”.

The Colombian singer’s performance follows similar shows by Lady Gaga last year and Madonna in 2024, which were also attended by huge crowds.

“I arrived here when I was 18 years old, dreaming about singing for you,” Shakira told the crowd. “And now look at this. Life is magical.”

She sang several fan favourites during her set, including Hips Don’t Lie, La Tortura, Waka Waka, Whenever Wherever, She Wolf and La Bicicleta.

The show also featured a massive drone show, which amazed the crowd.

Despite being a free concert, Shakira’s show was expected to generate an estimated $150 million in tourism revenue to the city, according to local government.

This isn’t the first mishap the pop star has had live on stage.

In February, Shakira suffered a nasty fall during a live stage performance, with the singer twisting her ankle in the middle of her concert.

She was performing in San Salvador when she left fans worried during a mid-song tumble.

Singing her hit song Si Te Vas during the night, Shakira was walking across the stage when her right ankle suddenly twisted.

She then completely toppled to her side, falling onto her elbow as she brought her microphone stand down with her.

During the moment, Shakira stopped singing as gasps could be heard amongst the audience.

But ever the professional, she quickly got herself back up and managed to continue the song – with the star’s band continuing as her guitarist cheered her on.

THEY say good things come to those who wait, so I have high expectations for Roger Sanchez’s first studio album in two decades.

And as he gears up to release the 13-track record, Spectrum, on June 5, the superstar DJ reveals he’s thrown fans a curveball after teaming up with Melanie C on his song I Don’t Wanna Know.

“That’s one I didn’t have on my dance card,” Roger tells me after popping into Bizarre HQ, where he takes his tea “milky, two sweeteners”.

“When the Spice Girls first came out, I always felt she was underrated. There was such a power in her voice and I didn’t feel in the Spice Girls she got her due for how powerful her voice is.

“She’s the bubbliest one of the group. She’s a powerhouse.

“I had this track and I was talking to my team about artists who people wouldn’t expect me to work with.

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“My manager was like, ‘How about the Spice Girls?’ and I said, ‘Well it’s got to be Mel C if we’re going to do it.’

“We sent the track that I had originally done to her team, and she loved it. And so she sent me back the song that she wrote. And I was like, let’s go.”

Sanchez has scored numerous hits in the European and World Charts with both his own music and the remixes he has created for an array of superstars including Diana Ross, Kylie Minogue, Daft Punk, Madonna, The Police, No Doubt and Maroon 5.

Like us, Roger is now waiting to hear Madonna’s new album Confessions On A Dancefloor: Part II after previously working with her on remixes of her songs.

“You don’t ever count Madonna out,” Roger explains.

“I know she’s been around for quite some time.

“And as somebody who’s been around for a minute myself, I can say creative forces like that are probably becoming a little more rare as time goes on, because of just the way things are done now.

“You just never count her out because she’s always brewing something

“And it’s always going to be something that moves the needle somehow.”

Just days after Roger drops Spectrum, he will head to his spiritual home in Ibiza to take up a residency at super club Pacha, after spending weeks in the UK finishing the record.

“I started forming where I wanted a body of work to go around 2020. Before we dove into the hell that was known as Covid.

“Coming out of that, the UK was one of the first markets to reopen so I started touring.

“I wound up spending a lot of time in London and I’ve got a flat in Shoreditch.

“The UK became a real central point for me. I connected with a lot of writers and artists here. This is a London album.”

Spectrum is packed with dance bangers including my favourites Midas Touch, Come My Way and How Do We Say Goodbye with Karen Harding, which will be the next single to be released.

And Roger is hoping to return to Glastonbury one day to play the record, after a killer headline set at NYC Downlow back in 2016.

“That was my first kind of performing experience at Glastonbury,” Roger explains.

“It felt like a 1989 rave in the UK. Very, very dark and very loud.

“And people weren’t on their phones. They really plugged into the moment.

“I’ve played a few times since. I did one for Glitterbox and I did another for Greenpeace in a tree.

“There’s a little door opening in the base, and you climb up a bloody ladder.

“You feel like you’re a hobbit. It felt a bit like Gandalf walking into Bilbo Baggins’ home.”

SPICE IT UP

MELANIE C teamed up with another special someone at the weekend – Spice Girls bandmate Mel B.

They sang Spice Up Your Life for the first time since the group’s 2019 tour at a concert in Leeds.

Mel C played the gig to celebrate the release of latest solo album Sweat, which is on course to go to No2 this Friday.

TENSIONS between Gordon Ramsey and Brooklyn Beckham were high back in February after the famous chef fired a warning shot to the wannabe over his feud with his parents.

Now it seems Gordon is coming for Brooklyn in business.

Gordon has trademarked Hotter Than Hell by Gordon Ramsay – the name given to the spicy relishes he uses in some of his restaurants.

But it appears he could be preparing to flog bottles of the sauce to customers and if he goes ahead with the venture, he will be competing with Brookylyn’s Cloud 23 hot sauce, which he launched back in 2024.

“If Gordon is launching his own sauce he’ll be going up against Brooklyn in that market,” an insider told me.

“Things will get spicy if they end up clashing over it.”

In February, Gordon told our newspaper he thought Brooklyn had got carried away by his marriage to Nicola Peltz.

Asked about how Posh and Becks were coping after their son’s acid-tongued Instagram statement about them, Gordon said: “Victoria is upset, and I know 24/7, seven days a week, just how much David loves Brooklyn.

“Brooklyn and I have messaged a little bit. Our relationship is solid. I love him.

“His heart is incredible. But it’s hard, isn’t it, when you’re infatuated?

“Love is blind. It’s easy to get up on that rollercoaster and get carried away. But it will come back.”

Awkward.

Moment in the sun

PROMISING British pop star Bellah Mae is having her moment in the sun after signing a record deal in the States.

The Birmingham-born singer posed on a lounger in a snap to promote her new single Salt And Sugar from her upcoming EP, Keep It Peachy, which will be out on May 29.

It’s the first release for Bellah, who is currently on tour across the US, with her new label Sony Nashville.

She told me: “I’ve been coming to Nashville to write since I was 19 years old and knew I wanted to eventually spend more time here from the first time I came over, so to be one of the first UK artists signing to Sony Nashville and be here is a lot of dreams all coming true.

“I wanna bridge the gap between the UK and US country-pop worlds and take over the space one song at a time… the British Hannah Montana!

“The new era is fun, flirty and confident.”

Shakira loves a Brazilian

SHAKIRA made history on Saturday as she played one of the highest attended concerts of all time.

More than 2million fans saw the Colombian superstar play a free gig at Copacabana Beach in Rio De Janeiro.

During the spectacular show, the She Wolf singer wore ten costumes, many of which were made by local designers – including a jumpsuit with Swarovski crystals in the pattern of the Brazilian flag.

More than 1,500 drones lit up the sky before Shakira took to the stage.

And the singer was later joined by Anitta to perform their new single, Choka Choka.

Shakira’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran Tour will come to Europe in September, where she will play 11 nights at the purpose-built Shakira Stadium in Madrid.

GRAHAM DRINKS IN EURO FUN

GRAHAM NORTON has told how he turns to drink to survive the madness of Eurovision.

The BBC star, who will be commentating on the song contest in Vienna on May 16, said the live final is such a slog, he needs a drink to get through it.

On Alan Carr’s Bottoms Up! podcast, Graham said former host Terry Wogan called him before his first ever contest in Moscow with some tips.

He said: “The only bit of advice he gave me was, ‘Don’t have a drink before song nine’.

“But I’m drinking whatever I can lay my hands on because it’s a long old stretch.”

Graham also admitted that refreshments are not easy to source at the venues, saying “normally, it’s smuggled in”.

But he knows better than to overdo it during the live show.

Given the quality of some of the songs, I’m amazed he can wait until number nine.

OLIVIA RODRIGO mocked Jake Paul as she hosted Saturday Night Live in the US.

Speaking about the boxer, who she starred with on the Disney show Bizaardvark a decade ago, Olivia said: “We’d always talk about our futures, me and Jake.

“I’d say, ‘I wanna create music that explores the complexities of girls my age’, and he’d say, ‘One day I wanna beat up old guys on Netflix’.”

LIAM AND NOEL NOT IN TUNE

LIAM GALLAGHER has admitted he’s in the dark when it comes to the new music his brother Noel has been writing – and whether it could be for Oasis.

Last month, Noel revealed he had been “in the studio, noodling away” on new tunes.

But when asked about it on X at the weekend, Liam was none the wiser.

He said: “I’ve not heard anything unless he’s doing a solo album, which would be a real shame, I mean really good.”

When someone else commented: “So he just doesn’t tell you his plans?” he replied: “Pretty much.”

Given how much Liam spouts off online, I can’t really blame Noel for keeping schtum.

Spotted looking chic

NICOLE SCHERZINGER is spotted in Kentucky – 4,000 miles away from her Pussycat Dolls bandmates back in London.

While Nicole looked chic in a polka dot dress as she sang the US national anthem at Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, Ashley Roberts and Kimberly Wyatt were busy going through their paces during rehearsals.

The Dolls, who are now a trio, kick off their reunion tour in California in a month’s time, before shows on this side of the Atlantic in September.

If their tour is anything like their shows back in the day, they will have a lot of dance moves to learn between now and then.

A huge singer and rapper has apologised to fans saying “I love you all” after he was forced to cancel the first three weeks of his tour.

The star got candid with his loyal fans on social media as he revealed the reason why – and it’s not what you might expect.

Post Malone, kicked off the Big A** Stadium Tour in Salt Lake City last April and was due to begin part 2 on May 13 in El Paso, Texas.

But unfortunately the Circles singer has now postponed the tour with Jelly Roll until June 9 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Taking to Instagram, Post Malone said in a statement: “Looking at the upcoming schedule after Stagecoach [festival], I came to the realization that what we were trying to do, and what’s possible isn’t really lining up.

“Truth is I promised y’all beautiful people new music, and I don’t have the time to finish it before our tour starts. We ain’t ready for tour just yet, so I’m making the decision to push the tour back about 3 weeks to get this music done.”

Post Malone, who’s real name is Austin Post, continued: “That being said I’m so sorry to the folks who were planning on coming to the few cancelled shows…

“That THAT being said we’ve been making some bada** s**t for this album… and I can’t wait to perform for y’all. I love you and can’t wait to see you crazy motherf*****s soon.”

The rapper has cancelled five dates more dates after the opening night including May 19 in Waco, Texas; May 23 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; May 26 in Birmingham, Alabama; May 29 in Tampa, Florida and June 5 in Oxford, Mississippi.

Post Malone’s upcoming seventh studio album The Eternal Buzz has been teased as a mega project with 40 songs.

The star last released F-1 Trillion back in 2024 and it was a huge hit – charting at number 1 in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and The Netherlands.

His pending project will be more traditionally country as opposed to F-1 Trillion, which is categorized under country pop.

AS I strolled through the vineyards with a glass of bubbles in my hand, I imagined myself in the South of France.

Yet I was just a one-hour train ride from my home in Kent – one of the most established regions for producing English sparkling wine.

While it may not boast the same sunshine levels as France’s Bordeaux, the soil here is very similar to the Champagne region, offering optimal growing conditions.

And it produces some excellent wines.

I’d been touring one of Kent’s most famous vineyards – Chapel Down, in the village of Small Hythe, near Tenterden.

Visitors can book a three-hour Wine And Dine experience, starting in the vines on the beautiful 22-acre estate, which was founded in 1977.

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It has immaculate rows of grape varieties that include Bacchus, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc.

Following a stroll among the vines, we were taken into the barn to learn about the art of riddling. The process was made famous by France’s Grand Dame of Champagne – Madame Clicquot, who invented the first riddling table in 1816.

It sees each bottle periodically turned to loosen the sediment and achieve a crystal-clear wine.

Sitting among oak barrels in the barn, it gave us a taste of the generations of wine wisdom in every glass.

But it’s not all about wine. Guests can enjoy a taste of Shakespeare, too from £18pp. Sussex-based company This Is My Theatre will bring William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Chapel Down, and visitors can bring a blanket and pick up a bottle of English sparkling wine to toast a night of magical comedy among the vines on June 12.

If you are not a Shakespeare fan, Chapel Down will also host a summer series of music including the Bacchus Wind Orchestra and an evening of jazz playing on July 5. Tickets are from £20pp.

Instead of the gym, why not book a spot for sunset yoga at the vineyard followed by a one-hour tasting of five wines?

These sessions will take place among the vines (weather permitting) on selected dates in May, June and August for £35pp.

Following my history lesson, it was time to put my knowledge to the test with a tasting session.

The best-selling bottle here is the £30 Brut, which has notes of fresh citrus and strawberry. But my favourite was the Chapel Down Grand Reserve 2019, which matures for five years to create a rich, toasted taste.

Then it was time for lunch at The Swan restaurant. Dishes included beetroot and vodka cured trout, which pairs well with a crisp glass of Chapel Down Bacchus.

Those visiting on a Sunday should try the roasted pork loin served with a tart apple sauce.

Then grab a tipple to take home from the on-site shop. I picked up a bottle of the Grand Reserve for £45.

After all, every day should be toasted with the best.

ZAYN Malik shared a heartfelt statement with fans after cancelling 22 gigs following his shock hospitalisation.

The former One Direction star revealed he is now back at home and recovering from his mystery illness – but his world tour dates have taken a hit.

The singer has been forced to cancel the entire US leg of his KONNAKOL tour, as well as some UK performances.

In an Instagram story today, he wrote: “To my fans : Thank you so much for all the support and love you’ve shown me on the album release and more importantly, your love, prayers and well wishes for my health.

“I’ve felt it, and it’s meant the world. I’ve been at home recovering and I’m doing well and will be better and stronger than before.

“I’ve had to take another look at my schedule for the months ahead and reduce the number of shows on the KONNAKOL Tour.

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“I want to make sure I still get out and see as many of you as I possibly can. I’m really looking forward to playing these shows for you, and I hope to see the rest of you around the world very soon.”

The cause of Zayn’s hospitalisation is not yet known, but in a previous statement, he thanked his cardiologist, which suggests it could be to do with his heart and or blood vessels.

Alongside a photo of him in a hospital bed, he wrote: “To my fans – thank you to all of you for your love and support now and always.

“[It’s] been a long week and am still unexpectedly recovering. Heartbroken that I can’t see you all this week, I wouldn’t be in the place I am today without you guys and am so thankful for your understanding.

“Thank you to the incredible hospital staff or Drs, nurses, cardiologists, management, admin, and everyone who has helped along the way and continue to. You are all legends! Big big love xxx z.”

The health scare came amid the revelation from The Sun that Zayn had punched his close pal and former band member Louis Tomlinson as they found themselves in a vicious row whilst filming for their new Netflix documentary.

Louis and Zayn were joining forces to film a three-part road trip docuseries for the streaming service, which has since been axed.

Sources told The Sun their astonishing on-set row was triggered by a remark from Zayn about Louis’ mum Johannah Deakin, who died of leukaemia in 2016.

The Sun understands Louis and Zayn have not spoken since the incident six months ago.

A FREE-to-visit wine festival is set to return to the UK this summer.

Battersea Power Station in London has confirmed The Wine Circuit will return from June 12 to 14 with everything from a markets to street food and bar pop ups.

Wine Merchant Stalls at the festival will be open from 11am to 8pm on June 13 and between 11am and 6pm on June 14 and include popular brands such as Vagabond Wines.

There’s also an Artisan Market on June 12 and 13 between 10am and 8pm and again on June 14 between 11am and 6pm where you can shop handmade wine glass and wine-themed gifts.

Alternatively, you could buy a ticket to one of the panel talks at the festival, or The Wine Cup, where you can try different tasters of wine.

The Wine Cup allows visitors to enjoy up to 10 wines from around the world and then vote for the ‘Best in Show’, as well as ‘Highly Commended’.

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Tickets are split into the different types of wine including red, white, rose and sparkling and range from £37.90 to £41.10 per person – and even includes a tote bag and cup.

Events already confirmed for this year include Drag Wine Tasting on June 13 between 7pm and 9pm.

While little details have been released about the wine festival this year, last year the festival hosted sessions about wine making, drinking trends and insider tips from experts.

There were also live music, talks on topics such as natural wine and alcohol-free wine, and for pub quiz lovers, even a wine quiz with blind tastings

As for the wine market, stalls sold wine-related gifts such as bottle stoppers and decanters while food pop-ups included Ashes BBQ and Masa Tacos.

The Power Station already has a number of wine destinations for visitors to explore including Vagabond Wines and Searcys Champagne Bar.

THE black leather biker jacket George Michael wore for the music video of 1987 hit Faith fetched £176,400 at auction.

Organisers said “a fan” bought the item, made by London fashion brand La Rocka, and confirmed it would remain in the UK.

The jacket, which George also wore on his 1988 Faith tour, features a BSA logo on the back embellished with crystals.

When first sold in La Rocka’s London shop, the jackets cost £290.

Also sold at the Propstore auction in London was a Gibson Les Paul ’59 once owned by Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

It fetched £233,100, a record for a guitar at auction.

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It was one of 327 rare instruments, handwritten lyrics, stage-used pieces, and iconic personal artefacts sold at the event, which achieved an auction total of £1.9m.

Further success came from the sale of Peter Hince’s Queen collection, which realised a total of £350,000.

Lots from the former roadie for the legendary rock band were led by Freddie Mercury’s Gold Shure 565 SD Microphone Award, the first of his microphones with direct provenance to come to market, which sold for £151,200.

Peter Hince said: “I’m absolutely thrilled with how the auction has turned out, especially seeing Freddie’s gold microphone achieve such a strong price.

“It means a lot to know these pieces are going to fans who truly appreciate what Queen meant and still means today.”

A poster signed by John Lennon, one of the last four items he signed, was sold for £75,600 and Oasis hitmaker Noel Gallagher’s Les Paul Custom 20th Anniversary Guitar also sold for £34,650.

The fedora worn by Michael Jackson in his 1987 Pepsi commercial sold for an eye-watering £34,650.

LEWIS Capaldi was forced to halt one of his performances in the US, exclaiming he didn’t know “what the f*** just happened.”

The popular singer, 29, is currently on his Survive Tour after taking some time away from the spotlight to prioritise his mental and physical health.

But during his gig at Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre he encountered a major technical issue, leaving him unable to sing.

Lewis giggled next to the mic, sharing with the crowd: “Something has happened. Usually I’d be singing by now.

“Something technological has gone wrong. I’m not sure what the f***s happened.”

He then joked: “This feels like… erectile dysfunction in a way,” before checking in with his team to see if the error had been fixed.

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After learning it hadn’t, Lewis continued to entertain the crowd, saying: “Right, we’re not back. Hi.”

Fans of the musician found the moment hilarious and loved the way he chose to handle it – both with humour and then by deciding to go ahead with an acoustic performance while the tech issue was fixed.

One user on Instagram said: “Who needs all the technology with a voice like that?!?”

A second shared: “It was a once in a lifetime experience and we were very excited to be part of the “technical issue”.

A third added: “Well no one can claim he can’t sing live.”

Lewis’ tour shares the same name as his latest EP release which came out last year.

The new music followed him taking a two-year hiatus from the industry, after his anxiety and Tourette’s syndrome symptoms increased.

After Lewis finishes up his shows in America, he’s due to perform in Vancouver before heading over to the UK.

His first UK tour date is on June 19, taking place at the Isle Of Wight Festival.

SHE’S been branded arrogant, entitled and irritating by people who’ve watched her growing up on The Kardashians.

And as I braced myself to listen to North West’s debut EP N0rth4evr, I was expecting to absolutely hate it. But in all honesty, I love it.

The six-track record proves that the 12-year-old daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian does actually have talent.

She mixes heavy-metal guitar riffs with rage-rap and a flavour of the Japanese culture she loves so much.

Critics will argue that having two of the most famous people on the planet as parents would mean she couldn’t produce something that’s utterly rubbish.

But I’d argue North has a flair of originality and authenticity on all the tracks.

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She samples Mumford & Sons’ 2009 track Little Lion Man on punchy and pacy Th!s t!me, and the final 28 seconds of W0ah crunching has an electric guitar solo.

For a child who has grown up knowing only fame and privilege, North carries the expectations on her shoulders in her lyrics.

No doubt she’s had a big helping hand, working with American rock siblings Meg and Dia Frampton, but it opens your eyes to what life might really be like as a kid everyone thinks they know.

On How I Feel, North sings: “In the back of the Lamb’, it get lonely, they be all up in my comments like they know me.

“If they approach me no phones please, lot of eyes on me that I don’t need.”

While on Th!s t!me, she raps: “They hear the name, they don’t hear what I’m sayin’.

“They want the fame, but you know I ain’t playin’.”

North4evr links to Kanye’s 2018 track Violent Crimes, where he rapped about protecting daughter North from danger.

On it, she sings: “So much people ’round me, but I know they all fake, so much goin’ in my head that I can’t say.

“Know my minds in a place that is not safe.”

She balances the pitfalls with plenty of not-so- humble brags though, and on D!e boasts about her influence on fashion and culture.

The track, which contains some influences of Post Malone, has her rapping: “How am I younger than you, but I’m who you look up to?

“Once they on trend, I’m already off it.

“I’m a rock star, you could tell by my closet. Once they on trend, I’m already off it.”

The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, clearly.

But North West, she’s definitely on to something.

Beyonce rocks

BEYONCE’s next era is just around the corner – and she’s dropped yet another hint that her new rock-inspired album is waiting.

The singer removed all the country- inspired Cowboy Carter merchandise from her website last night as she prepares to start promoting the record.

Bey also dropped another big clue about the direction she is heading by posting a video on her website of Destiny‘s Child hanging out with Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks on the set of their Bootylicious video from 2001.

As I told you last week, Beyonce is planning to reveal all about her new record around the Met Gala in New York on Monday.

The album, believed to be called Betty Black, is the third in a trilogy of records following on from 2022’s Renaissance and Cowboy Carter in 2024.

We first revealed in July that Beyonce was working on a rock-themed album.

She hinted the record could be called Betty Black in a reclaiming of the African-American work song Black Betty which was remade in 1977 by rock group Ram Jam.

ZAYN MALIK has cancelled shows in Glasgow and Birmingham after telling fans he was ill.

He has also rescheduled the Manchester AO Arena gig to May 24.

His concert at London’s O2 Arena is still planned to take place on May 23.

Zayn said he was recovering and wanted to come back “stronger”.

Roses taxman tussle

THE STONE ROSES have been locked in a secret 13-year battle with the taxman involving their failed touring company.

HMRC has been fighting the indie rockers – who made £26million from two huge reunion tours – over an unpaid £127,000 corporation tax bill from BMSW Ltd.

Over the years, the figure has risen to £158,000. The touring firm collapsed and went into liquidation.

Documents filed at Companies House reveal the Roses tried to close down BMSW Ltd in July 2013 after the end of the first tour, with £10million being distributed to the band after paying a £3.1million tax bill.

But there was a change in HMRC policy, which meant liquidators asked the group – late bassist Gary Mounfield, singer Ian Brown, guitarist John Squire and drummer Alan Wren – for £32,000 each.

That was received badly by the lads, below, who felt “extremely aggrieved” after signing an indemnity protecting them from such a liability.

It meant the firm moved from a member’s voluntary liquidation into a creditor’s voluntary liquidation in 2022 . . .  and the battle is still going on.

Graham: Traitors turn-off

GRAHAM NORTON has ruled himself out of Celebrity Traitors – because he fancies the gossip, not the graft.

The chat show host said he would happily take a seat at the famous round table, where contestants accuse each other of back-stabbing.

Graham revealed: “I would say yes to the round table. That looks fabulous.”

But the thought of lugging barrels, climbing hills and wading through muddy missions was clearly a step too far.

He added: “I don’t want to carry s**t up a hill. So for that reason, I’m out.”
Fair play.

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Ash African wounds all heeled

ASHLEY ROBERTS has a spring back in her step, after fearing she’d get a whack during the mad I’m A Celebrity live final.

The Pussycat Dolls singer headed home in shades and killer heels after hosting the Heart Breakfast Show in London.

Following her stint in the All Stars version of I’m A Celeb, Ash is getting ready to start rehearsals for the upcoming PCD tour.

She will hit the road with Nicole Scherzinger and Kimberly Wyatt next month, kicking off the North America tour in California.

The group will head back to the UK in September, playing nine shows.

Clues to Tay Story film tune

TAYLOR SWIFT could be heading to infinity . . .  and beyond.

The singer appears to have got a track on Toy Story 5, if you follow the trail of clues that have been dropped.

Her website was running a countdown set against the franchise’s famous cloud wallpaper, while the film’s initials just so happen to match her own.

If that wasn’t enough, she was snapped this week dressed head to toe in the classic Toy Story colours of blue, yellow and red. Subtle, Tay.

The timing is just as telling. The movie is due out on June 19, exactly 20 years after she released her first single.

It would also make sense given her close ties with Disney, after striking a deal to stream her Eras Tour film.

Fans will hear the track for the first time today.

False teeth for Harry Potter

DANIEL RADCLIFFE has revealed there was more wizardry behind the scenes of Harry Potter than fans ever clocked – as the young stars had fake teeth.

Movie bosses hired a specialist dentist for him, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint after realising their baby gnashers would start falling out.

Daniel, who was 11 when he was cast, said: “We had a prosthetic dentist who would basically knock up a fake tooth in a day and put it in.

“We could keep filming without missing anything.”

He added: “There’s various points in the first two movies where me, Rupert and Emma all have little fake teeth.”

Cameras could keep rolling without any awkward gaps appearing in the smiles.

Forget spells and potions, the real hero of Hogwarts was clearly the tooth fairy.