song

Rams defensive end Kobie Turner, a 294-pound man strong enough to carry a piano on his back, can also tap out a tune.

The country saw that Sunday night when, on two occasions, NBC aired video footage of Turner expertly playing a complex version of the “Sunday Night Football” theme song. He learned it by ear, then set up his phone to capture the clip.

The song was written by legendary composer John Williams and originally was called “Wide Receiver,” although NBC never adopted that name.

“He listened to it a couple of times and was able to play it and add his own flair,” NBC coordinating producer Rob Hyland said of Turner, who majored in music theory and composition at University of Richmond.

“I was completely blown away. Kobie has so much talent on the football field and just as much with musical instruments. His nickname, `The Conductor,’ is very fitting.”

Turner had two sacks in the 34-7 trouncing of Tampa Bay. He was instrumental in the Rams assembling their best defensive performance of the year, giving up 70 yards passing and 193 total.

The idea to show Turner’s musical talents was hatched earlier this year, and for “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon Prime. There’s a lot of crossover between those two production crews.

Reid Esocoff, whose father, Drew, directs the Sunday night show, pitched the idea to Prime to have Turner play that song for the Oct. 2 game against San Francisco. The segment got the green light, and Amazon sent the Rams star the sheet music.

“It was like five minutes long,” Turner recalled. “I was like, OK, I’m going to have to rearrange this. There’s like trumpets and strings, and I’m like, ‘I’m only doing piano.’”

Turner did his part, but the video wound up on the cutting-room floor.

Enter NBC, which made the same ask and ensured the Rams it would air the video. This time, Turner didn’t want the sheet music, just a recording of the familiar theme song.

“I picked it up by ear and I rearranged it too,” he said, “Because it was another three-minute-long song.’ I was like, how can I emulate this with just the keys and me in a solo take? It was a lot of fun.”

He nailed it, and the video ran twice, when NBC was going to a commercial and after Turner made a big play.

“Anytime I can learn something new, and anytime I can flex the music muscle it’s a lot of fun,” he said.

After playing the song — on his first take, mind you — Turner paused, then popped up and did a strongman flex in triumph.

Tackled it.

The Chicago Bears didn’t want to seem cocky.

They didn’t want to jinx themselves.

They certainly didn’t want to provide opponents with bulletin board fodder during their attempt to bring a Super Bowl championship to their home city after the 1985 season.

As a large group of players from that team — billed as the Chicago Bears Shufflin’ Crew — said in the lyrics to one of the most unlikely hit songs and music videos of the 1980s: “We’re not here to start no trouble. We’re just here to do ‘The Super Bowl Shuffle.’”

All of those thoughts weighed on the minds of the 30 or so players who recorded “The Super Bowl Shuffle” four decades ago this month, several weeks before the NFL regular season even ended.

“If we don’t go to the Super Bowl, we’re gonna be the biggest idiots ever,” former Bears linebacker and Pro Football Hall of Famer Mike Singletary says in “The Shuffle,” an NFL Films production presented by HBO Documentary Films. “We gotta win this thing, man.’”

Singletary is one of several of people who share their thoughts and memories about their participation in what has become a beloved relic during the 40-minute documentary that premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. PST on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. Director Jeff Cameron told The Times that it’s no coincidence that “The Shuffle” is dropping during the 40th anniversary season of the Bears’ only Super Bowl title.

“Outside of some print media or some articles, no one had really chronicled the entire genesis, development and production of ‘The Super Bowl Shuffle,’ which is so intertwined with that team,“ Cameron said.

The song was the brainchild of Chicago businessman Dick Meyer, who had formed Red Label Records the previous year. With the Bears off to a strong start to the 1985 season, Meyer thought a hip-hop record featuring many of the already beloved personalities from that team might have some success in Chicago.

Many players agreed to participate after learning that part of the proceeds were going toward the Chicago Community Trust. “We’re not doin’ this because we’re greedy,” running back Walter Payton rapped during his verse, “the Bears are doin’ it to feed the needy.”

Other featured Bears players included Singletary, Gary Fencik, Willie Gault, Otis Wilson, Steve Fuller, Mike Richardson, Richard Dent, William “Refrigerator” Perry and Jim McMahon.

The vocal tracks were recorded on Nov. 21, 1985. The Bears were 11-0 at the time, coming off a 44-0 rout of the Dallas Cowboys. They continued to roll the following weekend with a 36-0 victory against the Atlanta Falcons.

But their run of perfection came to an end Dec. 2, 1985, with an ugly 38-24 loss to the Dolphins in Miami on “Monday Night Football.” It just so happened that the music video shoot for “The Super Bowl Shuffle” was scheduled for the next morning in Chicago.

Suddenly, Gault said in the documentary, “Guys don’t want to do the video.”

Two of the team’s biggest stars, Payton and McMahon, didn’t show up. They were added into the video after shooting their parts one day after practice.

“It was pretty audacious of us to talk about going to the Super Bowl, winning it, you know?” McMahon said in the documentary. “We still got games to play, and we just lost.”

Chicago Bears players Mike Singletary (left) and Gary Fencik take part in the filming of ‘The Super Bowl Shuffle’ music video Dec. 3, 1985, at the Park West in Chicago.

(Paul Natkin / HBO / Getty Images)

But the video shoot may have had unexpected benefits for the players who participated.

“If not for ‘The Shuffle,’ they probably don’t even get together” that day, Cameron told The Times. “They probably don’t see each other until Wednesday because they have Tuesdays off after Monday night, and they’re right back in the film room or the practice field. They don’t properly get to just forget about the loss for a second, get together as a group of guys who like playing with each other and just who love each other.”

In behind-the-scenes footage provided to Cameron’s team by Meyer’s widow, Julia Meyer, the players are seen laughing and joking around as they attempt to learn a few dance moves and lip-sync their parts, all with varying degrees of success.

“We bonded in a way that we could never have bonded in any other way,” Singletary said in the documentary. “That was the fun part of working together in a totally different realm. There were guys that were backups teaching guys that were starters. We mixed in a way that we had never had a chance to do before. And it became a rallying point that brought us together, got us refocused. ‘This is what we said we were gonna do, let’s go get it done.’”

The Bears didn’t lose another game on their way to defeating the New England Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX. And “The Super Bowl Shuffle” was a success in its own right, with popularity that extended well beyond Chicago.

The single spent nine weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 41, and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Assn. of America (500,000 units moved). The music video, released commercially on VHS and Betamax, was certified platinum (one million units moved).

The song was even nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best R&B Performance by a Duo or a Group with Vocals,” eventually losing to Prince and the Revolution for the song “Kiss.”

“I think it was the perfect marriage of that cast of characters from the top down … and the fact that, outside of the Miami game, of course, they just kept winning,” Cameron said. “And it wasn’t close. I think that certainly helps propel this video, along with the rise of MTV. It was a perfect storm of a pop cultural phenomenon.”

Self-centered news anchor Tulio Triviño and his reporter best friend Juan Carlos Bodoque, who has a gambling problem, have amused audiences for 22 years. Neither has aged a day. That’s because they are hand puppets — a monkey in a suit and a red rabbit in a striped shirt, respectively — at the forefront of the beloved Chilean TV show “31 Minutos.”

First conceived as a children’s program for Chile’s public television, “31 Minutos” debuted in March 2003, and now spans four seasons. A parody of a traditional newscast, the irreverent concept features dozens of peculiar puppets who populate the fictional town of Titirilquén. Their sharply absurdist misadventures and reportages are accompanied by pun-heavy, humorous original songs.

“The Muppets and ‘Sesame Street’ have been great inspirations for us,” says co-creator Pedro Peirano speaking in Spanish from Santiago, Chile, during a recent Zoom interview. “But we mixed that with a more Latin American idiosyncrasy, so it’s familiar but very different.”

Peirano voices and puppeteers Tulio, while Álvaro Díaz, the show’s other co-creator, gives life to Bodoque (who started out as a green toad before taking on his rabbit form). Among their fabric-made pals are Patana, Tulio’s niece who is a duck, field reporter Mario Hugo, a Chihuahua in a suit, and Juanín, a fuzzy white creature with no visible eyes, the newscast’s producer.

“What we set out to do, I don’t know if consciously, was to create characters who are not role models of anything,” says Peirano. “They have their flaws and their virtues; in fact, they have more flaws, especially Tulio, who is a villain, but he’s also the face of the show.”

Over the years, as the show’s popularity grew across Latin America, “31 Minutos” has transcended the small screen and spilled into other formats. Through Aplaplac, their production company, Díaz and Peirano have created “31 Minutos” live shows that tour the region, a theatrically released feature film, and even an ambitious museum exhibit.

This fall, “31 Minutos” sets its sights on the global market with the release of “Calurosa Navidad” (One Hot Christmas), their first special for Prime Video, streaming on Friday. The Spanish-language film comes on the heels of another big moment for the puppet troupe, when they performed some of their hits on NPR’s “Tiny Desk” last month.

Co-creators Álvaro Díaz, left, and Pedro Peirano on the set of “31 Minutos: Calurosa Navidad.” (Sebastian Utreras)

Although “31 Minutos” emerged as kids’ programming, Díaz and Peirano sidestepped expectations for message-driven storylines.

“In Latin America we tend to confuse children’s television with educational television, as if everything has to be an extension of school,” says Díaz. “We wanted to quickly transform it from that into more of a family show.”

The duo met while studying journalism at the Universidad de Chile in the late 1980s, as the country transitioned from a dictatorship to a democracy. It was their compatible humor, a shared interest in film, and a desire to explore a variety of mediums that brought them together.

“We had a lot of free time to develop our interests,” says Díaz. “And you connect through those interests, even more so that’s based on your personality or your origins.”

Before “31 Minutos,” Díaz and Peirano already had experience working in written media and television, so their impulse was to parody the news world they were familiar with.

When first developing the show, which they produced after winning public funding, the puppets appeared somewhat organically, Díaz says, because neither he nor Peirano wanted to be on camera. And since the project was originally geared toward children, it seemed appropriate.

A scene from Prime Video’s “31 Minutos: Calurosa Navidad.” “We believed that by putting puppets in front of the camera — initially very simple puppets — children would immediately identify with them,” says co-creator Álvaro Díaz.

(Amazon MGM Studios)

“We believed that by putting puppets in front of the camera — initially very simple puppets — children would immediately identify with them, and we wouldn’t be forced to emphasize the children’s tone so much,” recalls Díaz. “On the contrary, the puppets were a vehicle that allowed us to tell stories that interested us.”

And while it was Díaz who first suggested puppets, Peirano, who is also a comic book author, was a lifelong fan of Jim Henson and the worlds he created, including more adult fare like “The Dark Crystal.” The first puppets they used were those that Peirano had made as a child. As self-taught puppeteers, Díaz and Peirano honed their craft along the way.

“It’s much cheaper and faster to make puppets and create this fantastical world than to produce animation,” says Peirano. “Puppets have an immediacy that also makes them fun to perform with and to improvise with.”

As is often the case with children’s shows, they needed to incorporate music. Peirano brought along his friend Pablo Ilabaca, the guitarist and composer of Chilean rock band Chancho en Piedra, who tangentially had created tracks that could work for the show.

“He showed us that music, and we immediately felt that the sound of the ’31 Minutos’ was there,” says Díaz. “There was a lo-fi quality about it. It had something candid that didn’t necessarily have an infantile tone but had a lightness. And we could add lyrics to that music.”

The editorial line for the songs was to validate childhood experiences without trying to impart any life lessons, acknowledging those feelings through comedy.

“There is a song called ‘Diente Blanco’ [White Tooth], for example, which is not about the importance of brushing or taking care of your teeth but, rather, about a child saying goodbye to a tooth he was very fond of,” explains Díaz.

As a father of three (who he hopes will eventually take on the show’s mantle), Díaz operates from a conviction that young audiences deserve quality content that’s not patronizing nor simplistic.

“The entertainment options for children in Latin America, and generally everywhere, are very poor,” says Díaz. “It’s mostly about extracting money from parents with disappointing offerings. As kind of a governing principle for ’31 Minutos,’ we want these options to improve.”

“31 Minutos” rapidly became entrenched in Chilean popular culture. Peirano remembers the exact moment when he realized its cross-generational influence.

“I heard someone whistling the show’s theme song, and it wasn’t a child — it was an adult sweeping the street,” he says. “That was the first time I said, ‘How strange, someone is actually watching it!’ ”

Pedro Peirano remembers the moment he realized “31 Minutos” was becoming entrenched in Chilean pop culture. “I heard someone whistling the show’s theme song, and it wasn’t a child — it was an adult sweeping the street,” he says.

(Sebastian Utreras)

For Díaz, it was when he heard the album with the first batch of songs, released about four months after the show’s debut, playing in multiple record stores around Santiago. Not long after that, they saw the first bootleg merchandise: a toy version of Mico, el Micófono, a character that is just a microphone with googly eyes that street vendors could easily replicate.

Internationally, Mexico became a key market for “31 Minutos.” The creators first realized that country’s adoration for the show when an email address where viewers could write to Tulio was flooded with more messages from Mexico than Chile.

A tribute album, “Yo Nunca Vi Television” (I Never Watched Television), where Mexican and Chilean bands reinterpreted songs from “31 Minutos,” was released in 2009. The show’s museum exhibit, “Museo 31,” visited two Mexican cities (Mexico City and Monterrey) between 2024 and 2025 after its time in Santiago at Centro Cultural La Moneda.

Díaz believes that “31 Minutos” benefited from evolving in front of a young audience who accepted the show’s peculiarities at face value. The industry these days, he thinks, demands every narrative choice be justified with substantial meaning.

“You now have to write with an explicit intention and give everything coherence, as if life is a series of very coherent interconnections,” Díaz says. “It’s impossible to make something like ‘31 Minutos’ today.”

That’s especially true, in their eyes, of the U.S. entertainment industry where one must “understand fun down to its smallest detail” even before anything has been produced.

“Much of the fun of making ’31 Minutos’ has to do with spontaneity,” says Díaz.

Nevertheless, their “Tiny Desk” concert and the Christmas special have brought them to their closest proximity yet to American audiences.

To prepare for their “Tiny Desk” performance, which features some of the show’s most emblematic puppets, the “31 Minutos” team re-created the set in Santiago — a famously tight space where bands are sandwiched between a desk and overflowing bookshelves. “We had to reduce the idea of ‘31 minutes’ to 20 minutes in a small space, without lighting, without special effects,” explains Díaz.

Tapping into current events, the running joke of their “Tiny Desk” appearance is that their work visas will expire immediately after performing.

“We didn’t intend to make a political statement, but since we were in the United States, what’s the joke in the air? That they are going to kick us — as Latin Americans, the joke is always that the U.S. wants us out,” says Peirano. “In the end, it still ends up being a commentary, and we included this crocodile puppet [as an immigration agent] because that’s the satirical nature of ‘31 Minutos.’ ”

Meanwhile, making “Calurosa Navidad” for Prime Video fulfilled their goal of entering the streaming realm. Amazon was interested in genre films, and they opted for a Christmas one.

Fans of “31 Minutos” will recognize that the story, in which Bodoque has to search for Santa and bring him to heat-stricken Titirilquén; it’s the expansion of a story from an earlier special Christmas episode that later evolved into a Christmas live show. The cheeky charm remains intact, but now it’s going to be accessible to a global audience.

Currently, Peirano splits his time between Santiago and Los Angeles. In the U.S., away from the media empire that “31 Minutos” has built in Latin America, he works as a screenwriter. His credits include the HBO series “Perry Mason.” He’s working on a project for horror outfit Blumhouse with collaborator Mauricio Katz. The two recently signed an exclusive overall deal with Sony Pictures Television.

But don’t expect Tulio or Bodoque to speak English anytime soon or for their adventures to be crafted outside of their South American homeland. Díaz has no desire to leave Chile.

“I live five kilometers from the hospital where I was born. And that’s the farthest I can be,” he says. “Chile is the reality that I understand, and, above all, that nourishes us. I like to travel and go on tour, but I hope things always happen here, with the people we know here.”

Díaz cites director Peter Jackson’s ethos to establishing WETA FX, a world-renowned digital effects company, in his home country of New Zealand instead of moving abroad, as a mindset that resembles their own — in admittedly a smaller scale.

“What we advocate for in ‘31 Minutos’ is artistic excellence from Chile,” Díaz adds. “From Chile to Latin America first, and hopefully from Chile to the world.”

Somebody should check with SoFi Stadium to see if it rescinded its offer.

In what could have been UCLA’s last game at the Rose Bowl after 43 years of calling the place home, the Bruins unfurled the kind of showing that no one would ever want to relive or put in a scrapbook.

If this was goodbye, it was a sad sendoff.

There were lost fumbles, a laughably bad fake field goal that resulted in a touchdown for the other team and a dropped pass that probably cost UCLA its own score. And that was just in the first half.

Adding injury to insult, UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava took a crunching hit that sidelined him late in the third quarter, ending his gritty return from a concussion that had forced him to miss his team’s last game.

UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava passes in the first half against Washington on Saturday night.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

There’s mercifully only one game left for the Bruins this season after a 48-14 loss to Washington on Saturday night led to a fast-emptying stadium, no fond farewells in store for the home fans amid an announced crowd of 38,201 that was too depleted by game’s end to boo.

The site of UCLA’s next home game remains as big of an unknown as its next head coach. School officials have said they are still contemplating plans for where the team will play in the future, though that decision could be up to a court to decide given the Bruins have nearly two decades left on a Rose Bowl lease that doesn’t expire until the summer of 2044.

It’s believed that if school officials have their way, they will move to SoFi Stadium in time for their 2026 season opener.

Wherever the Bruins play, they have a lot of improvements to make. They looked lethargic in falling behind by 34 points Saturday while making one mistake after another on the way to a fourth consecutive defeat.

By the time he entered the game, there was little backup quarterback Luke Duncan could do except make the final score slightly more palatable. He succeeded on that front, firing a 37-yard touchdown pass to Mikey Matthews late in the third quarter that helped UCLA (3-8 overall, 3-5 Big Ten) avoid a shutout.

There was another highlight for the Bruins early in the fourth quarter when Kanye Clark forced a fumble on Washington’s punt return, allowing Jamir Benjamin to pick up the ball and run 13 yards for a touchdown.

But make no mistake: This was complete domination by the Huskies (8-3, 5-3), who rolled up 426 yards of offense while holding the Bruins to 207 yards, including just 57 yards rushing.

Washington alumnus and comedian Joel McHale performed a short recorded bit that was shown on the scoreboard before the game, but the real slapstick was about to come.

The Bruins coughed up two fumbles in the first half and would have lost a third had the Huskies not been called for defensive holding on the play, nullifying the turnover.

UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava watches as Washington players celebrate a defensive touchdown in the first half Saturday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

UCLA wide receiver Titus Mokiao-Atimalala dropped what could have been a touchdown pass at the Huskies’ 38-yard line with nothing but open field in front of him.

But there was no blunder quite like what happened when the Bruins lined up for a 46-yard field goal late in the second quarter. Holder Cash Peterman took the snap and flipped the ball over his shoulder as kicker Mateen Bhaghani circled behind him, the ball hitting the turf instead of Bhaghani’s hands.

Washington’s Alex McLaughlin picked up the ball and ran 59 yards for a touchdown that put the Huskies ahead, 20-0. It was the second straight game UCLA was held scoreless in the first half.

Things never got appreciably better, the Bruins left adrift without a haven in sight.

To get it out of the way: Yes, Tobias Jesso Jr. has heard about gooning.

“Somebody put me up on it and said it was about masturbation?” says the 40-year-old singer and songwriter, which is about half-right: As detailed in an essay in Harper’s that went viral last month, to goon — a term heretofore associated with Jesso thanks to his cult-fave 2015 album “Goon” — means in Gen Z parlance to masturbate at such great lengths that the act leads to a kind of trance state.

“Well, I’ve never done that,” Jesso says. “‘Goon’ I got from ‘The Goonies’ — it’s just a brilliant movie.” He laughs. “But I don’t care. If it sells more records, sure.”

That Jesso has a record to sell at all might take some by surprise. Though “Goon” thoroughly charmed critics and fellow musicians with its early-’70s-balladeer vibe — many said he evoked the glory days of Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and beard-and-shearling-coat-era Paul McCartney — Jesso didn’t cotton to the life of a sort-of-famous performer and almost immediately walked away from his solo career to write songs for other singers instead.

He’s thrived in that role, penning hits for the likes of Adele, Niall Horan, Harry Styles and Dua Lipa. In 2023, he was named songwriter of the year at the Grammy Awards; this month he was nominated for that prize for a second time, with the Recording Academy citing his work with Justin Bieber (“Daisies”), Haim (“Relationships”) and Olivia Dean (“Man I Need”), among others.

Yet now he’s back with an unexpected follow-up to his debut called “Shine,” which came out Friday. Stripped back for the most part to just voice and piano, it’s an earnest work of introspection from a guy who knows how to make tenderness feel like strength.

Jesso, who grew up in Vancouver and lives in Los Angeles, announced the album just last week with a music video for his song “I Love You” that features the actors Riley Keough and Dakota Johnson, with whom he’s been close since he first touched down here around 2008.

“I hit them up and was like, ‘You girls think it’s about time I use your fame to get some extra clicks?’” he says on a recent morning at his place in Silver Lake. “The video opens up on them, then it pans away and it goes to me and you never see them again.”

Says Keough, a former girlfriend: “It was a very Tobias ask.”

So why return to the spotlight? According to Jesso, he wouldn’t have had it not been for a breakup that left him “the most depressed I’ve ever been in my life, by far.” We’re sitting in a cozy den that looks out over a lush hillside garden; a bowl of persimmons sits on a coffee table while a copy of “McCartney II” peeks out from a stack of LPs.

Jesso, whose mop of curly hair has begun ever so slightly to gray, says that when he enters a songwriting session with another artist, “I leave my worries and woes outside the door. I’m there to serve you — to write the song you want to write.” It’s an approach that’s endeared him to his star collaborators and yielded songs as deep as Adele’s “To Be Loved,” a stunning meditation on the costs of divorce from her 2021 album “30.”

But earlier this year, for the first time in Jesso’s decade of behind-the-scenes work, he found himself struggling to deliver. “I was feeling so in the dumps that I’d be choking on a line that I didn’t even want to say because if I say it, I’ll start crying,” he recalls.

He cleared six weeks from his busy schedule to process his emotions; the result was a set of songs for himself about heartache — “I can see the love leaving from your eyes in the form of a tear,” he sings in “Rain” — but also about his mom’s experience with dementia and about the young son he shares with his ex-wife.

To record the music, Jesso’s instinct was to go big. “I’m a dreamer, so I was like, ‘Imagine all the people I could have help me now that I didn’t have 10 years ago,’” he says. “I went from so-and-so to so-and-so, trying out studios, making promises I couldn’t keep. But all that stuff over the weeks just kind of flaked away.”

What remained was the beautifully mellow sound of a vintage Steinway piano he’d had restored after buying it on Craiglist for $800. He keeps the piano in a small, uncluttered studio upstairs from the den at his house; that’s where he cut “Shine,” singing live as he accompanied himself in real time.

A small handful of other players appear on the album, most prominently in “I Love You,” which erupts near the end with a wild drum fill performed by Jesso’s old pal Kane Ritchotte. The idea for the percussive outburst came to Jesso after he’d consumed “a s— ton of mushrooms,” he says. “I turned to my assistant at the time — I wonder if I have it — and I said, ‘Record me right now.’ She started recording me, and what came out was that fill.”

He picks up his phone and scrolls for a moment. “Look at this,” he says, turning the screen my way: There’s Jesso in the same room we’re in right now, staring wide-eyed into the camera as he mouths the drum sounds Ritchotte would later replicate exactly.

“That song is about somebody’s inner child being in the middle of a labyrinth, and you’re trying to find them so you can convince them that you’re in love,” Jesso tells me. “You can’t get there and you’re wishing that the whole labyrinth would just be destroyed. So when it gets to that part — ‘Shatter the cracks wide open / And say, “I love you”’ — the drums are the walls coming down. That’s the shattering.”

Tobias Jesso Jr. at the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Drum theatrics aside, Jesso’s singing is the album’s clear focal point; his pleading, slightly unsteady tone gives the music an emotional intimacy that makes you feel as though you’re sitting right next to him on the piano bench.

Jesso describes his voice as something of a liability, which Keough says has been true since he was ducking the frontman’s job in the various bands he played in when he was in his early 20s. “I always loved his voice, and he just didn’t feel that way for whatever reason,” she recalls. “I don’t know if he felt a sort of shyness, which is really interesting because as a person he’s not shy whatsoever.”

Asked whether Jesso’s decision to follow up “Goon” surprised her, she says, “I was surprised he released ‘Goon’ to begin with.”

The way Jesso sees it, “My voice isn’t good enough for the songs I write, which is why I’ve chosen to work with all these other people.” What he’s comes to realize, though, is that “my voice is perfect for my songs.”

Which doesn’t mean it’s easy for him to hear it. Once he’d finished recording, Jesso asked his friend Shawn Everett to mix “Shine”; what he got back — with every imperfection of his voice under a virtual magnifying glass — terrified him. “It felt way, way, way too vulnerable,” Jesso says.

He texted Everett and said he was sorry but that he couldn’t put out the record like this. “I told him, ‘You just brought out more of me than I’m willing to share,’” he says now. “Then I got home, I smoked a big fat joint and I sat on the couch. I was like, I’m gonna wait until I’m high enough that I can press play and pretend this isn’t me.” He laughs. “I put on the headphones, and I have never in my life had such a profound experience with music.”

Who’d you imagine was singing?
I don’t know — like a 50-year-old dude or maybe a 20-year-old girl who’s got a low voice? It didn’t matter — it wasn’t me, so I wasn’t listening with judgmental ears.

The paradox is that “Shine” feels like the you-est possible album.
There’s no tricks. I didn’t auto-tune, I didn’t cut anything together, I didn’t do any of that. It’s me singing a take, and it’s the best take I got. Whereas with “Goon,” there were a lot of elements that maybe weren’t possible for me to do.

“Goon” was a little more elaborate — more players and producers.
Which was tortuous because I’m like, “How do I recreate this thing that I didn’t even fully make myself?”

Given the unhappiness of your experience after “Goon” came out, I wondered whether this time you’d put certain restrictions on what you’re willing to do.
I’ll say right off the bat: I’m not touring — no way. I’ve met enough artists who say, “I feel totally myself onstage,” to know that there’s a natural state in which people feel comfortable up there. And I’ve tried every which way — by which I mean drinking and not drinking — and I just can’t. It’s not me.

Maybe this is something I still need to work on in therapy, but by being onstage and singing, I’m basically saying, “I’m a singer,” and I’m not comfortable saying that. I’m comfortable saying, “I’m a songwriter.” So there’s this weird shame that comes in where I’m presenting myself beyond what I know my ability to be.

One of the benchmarks I needed to hit on this record was to be comfortable that I’m not misrepresenting myself, which is why I’m OK if there’s an out-of-tune note here and there or if it’s a little bit fast or slow. But even knowing that I can perform it exactly like it is on the record, there’s nothing drawing me to the stage. I don’t really want to have a relationship with fans in that way. I feel very privileged that this is not my main job.

Between “Goon” and now, songwriting became your main job.
So I don’t have to take this as seriously. The parts I do take seriously — the art — I’m willing to put in the work for.

But not for success per se.
Exactly. This is weird to say, but there were moments where I was toiling over this record — listening to Take No. 73 and being like, “Wait, what was the other one?” — and the thought would occur to me: I could go to work today instead of do this and potentially create much more wealth for myself than this album could ever do.

I mean, that’s almost certainly the case.
In comparison, “Shine” is meaningless in terms of success and potential. And yet I was still drawn to doing it, which made me feel like I was making the right choice for myself. But when it comes to the stuff I don’t think is important, just try to get me to do it. It ain’t happening.

I went back and looked at something I wrote about a show you played at South by Southwest in 2015 where you had to start your song “True Love” five times.
Oh God.

But it’s not like anybody in the crowd was mad about it. People thought it was cute.
I feel like if I was onstage now — and everything’s pointing to I probably should play a show or two — I’d be able to see the value in vulnerability. It’s human, and I like that about it. But at the time I wasn’t able to cope with the people who wouldn’t see it that way. Because I wasn’t seeing it that way. I was seeing it as: I’m trying to pretend I’m OK with this, but I’m actually forgetting my song because I’m such a s— performer. Yeah, the crowd loves it, but I go offstage and I’m not looking for the comments saying, “It was so funny.” I’m looking for the ones that are like, “This guy’s a joke.” And I’m like, f—, I knew it.

Keough shares Jesso’s assessment of what’s put him in a different position today versus 10 years ago.

“With ‘Goon,’ he would have put pressure on himself” to jump through the hoops required of a performer, she says. “He was a barista straight out of the coffee shop. ‘Shine’ is straight off all his Grammys and his big songwriting career. He’s able to be more free as an artist now because the stakes are lower.”

Yet not so long ago Jesso reckoned he might be close to burning out in the pop realm. “I was kind of getting ready to dip,” he says, “because I don’t like going into a room and saying, ‘Oh, this song is blowing up — let’s do the same thing.’”

Tobias Jesso Jr. at home in Silver Lake.

(Ian Spanier / For The Times)

He clarifies that he’s not talking about working with an artist like Dua Lipa, who recruited him as a writer for her 2024 “Radical Optimism” LP. “Dua was great,” he says. “I’m talking about going into pitch sessions and sitting with a bunch of writers and figuring out how to get a song pitched. That’s never really worked for me, and the higher you get with producers, the more into that formula you’re putting yourself.”

What he found with Bieber earlier this year was nothing like that. “It was balls to the wall, ideas just flying around,” Jesso says of the roving sessions for the pop superstar’s experimental “Swag” and “Swag II” albums, which took Jesso and the rest of Bieber’s crew to France and the Bahamas and Iceland before Jesso began work on “Shine.”

“I nearly wept on more than one occasion because of how moved I felt about what Justin was doing,” Jesso says. “It was raw emotion without any tricks, without any wordplay, without any of the stuff that I’d been so jaded by in the industry.” The experience, he adds, “reinvigorated my belief in pop music.”

Which makes it an interesting time to move to Australia, as Jesso plans to do soon in order to be close to his son, Ellsworth, who’s there with Jesso’s ex-wife, the Australian singer and songwriter Emma Louise.

“D-I-V-O-R-C-E, you know — it’s always give and take to meet each other’s needs,” he says. “And one of the things was Australia. She really wants Ellsworth to go to school there, which makes sense in one sense — and professionally makes no sense at all. But I committed to it, and I want to at least give it a try and see it through.

“This album coming out and moving to Australia within the same couple months — it feels like a big moment of change,” Jesso continues. “Maybe I’m letting go of some old things, like music being scary, and embracing some new scary things. I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do over there. Hopefully I get busy doing something. Otherwise I’ll be pitching the groundskeeper ideas for TV shows the whole time.”

Y la chona se mueve, al ritmo que los Fortniteros toquen.

Starting Friday, “Fortnite Festival” players across the globe can rock out to the story of la chona as Los Tucanes de Tijuana’s mega hit “La Chona” is the latest track to hit the “Fortnite” universe.

The 1995 song — which has long been a staple on party dance floors — has crossed over into international fame thanks to its prevalence on social media and the overall increased visibility of Latinos. People from within and outside of the culture have embraced the track’s playful nature and undeniably catchy melody—Metallica even got in on the fun with a 2024 live cover of the single at a show in Mexico City.

Like “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band,” “Fortnite Festival” — a spinoff of the popular survival/ battle royale-style online game “Fortnite” — is a rhythm game that requires players to hit notes in-time to properly perform songs as members of a virtual band.

Los Tucanes de Tijuana have long been a staple of the música Mexicana scene on both sides of the border. In 2019, the group became the first norteño band to perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and have played massive gigs at Dodger Stadium, New York’s Central Park and Mexico City’s Zócalo Plaza.

The band made headlines in 2010 when it was banned playing in its hometown of Tijuana as a result of a 2008 concert in which the group’s lead singer, Mario Quintero Lara, sent his regards from the stage to the city’s most notorious and wanted men, “El Teo and his compadre, El Muletas.”

“El Teo” refers to Tijuana drug cartel leader Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured by authorities in 2012. “El Muletas” — which Spanish for “crutches” — was the nickname of Tijuana cartel leader Raydel Lopez Uriarte, who was captured in Mexico in 2010. The moniker stands for the trail of disabled people Lopez Uriarte left behind as part of his brutal attacks.

The shout-out enraged the city’s then-police chief Julian Leyzaola. He said the band’s polka-driven narcocorrido songs glorified drug lords and their exploits and were, therefore, inappropriate to play in a border city that had long suffered from drug-related violence.

“La Chona” is only the most recent playable song available as part of “Fortnite Festival’s” 11th season, which unlike previous iterations, is made up of songs from several performers rather than having only one featured artist. Other artists featured in the latest season include Jennie from Blackpink, Doja Cat, Simple Plan, Elton John, Fall Out Boy, Tyler the Creator, Slipknot and Olivia Rodrigo. Previous seasons of the game revolved around the music of Billie Eilish, Karol G, Bruno Mars, the Weeknd and Lady Gaga.

The “Fortnite” franchise first dabbled in the world of music in 2019 when DJ Marshmello performed a virtual concert on “Fortnite Battle Royale.” It was estimated that over 10.7 million people tuned in for the concert.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fortnite metaverse became a refuge for artists looking to connect with audiences. Travis Scott performed for over 12.3 million players in April 2020, and Ariana Grande played inside the game in August 2021. Other artists who have rocked the “Fornite” stage are Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Juice Wrld, Metallica and Ice Spice.

Last December, Ravyn Lenae stood in the street and pointed her phone at herself to film a TikTok set to her song “Love Me Not.”

“Me after linking with him one last time cause I’m not bringing him into 2025,” she captioned the video — a cutesy kiss-off to a guy she’d clearly decided was holding her back from where she was meant to go.

Nearly a year later, it appears the singer was right: In early April, “Love Me Not” — a swinging, lightly psychedelic soul number about a hot-and-cold lover — gave Lenae her first entry on Billboard’s Hot 100; a week later, she made her debut at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Several months after that, she performed to an enthusiastic crowd at Lollapalooza just before “Love Me Not” peaked at No. 5 in mid-August.

Now, with one of 2025’s biggest hits under her belt, Lenae, 26, is winding down her breakout year by opening for Sabrina Carpenter as Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet tour wraps up this week with six sold-out shows through Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.

“A lot of this period has been me asking other artists, ‘Is this how it normally is?’” Lenae tells me on a recent evening. “How do you balance the social aspect and the online aspect and the touring with also staying highly creative?”

Not to mention tending to a personal life.

“What’s that?” she asks with a laugh. “That’s literally nonexistent.”

The runaway success of “Love Me Not,” which has been streamed more than 700 million times on Spotify, is no doubt what’s put the breathy-voiced Lenae before many listeners for the first time. (A remix featuring Rex Orange County has another 164 million Spotify streams.)

At one point as the song was blowing up, she responded to a fan on TikTok who’d been surprised to learn that Lenae is Black — “Y’all didn’t read the name Ravyn Lenae and think, ‘Oh, that’s a Black girl?’” the singer asks in the clip — then went ahead and clarified that also she’s not British, as some evidently had assumed.

Yet “Love Me Not” actually comes a decade into a career that began while Lenae was still in high school. She signed to Atlantic Records at age 16 and soon was touring and working in the studio with the likes of SZA and Steve Lacy; “Hypnos,” her debut LP, came out in 2022 and made Pitchfork’s closely watched list of the year’s best albums.

“I’m pretty conceited about the fact that I’ve loved Ravyn for as long as I have,” says the singer and actor Reneé Rapp, who like Carpenter took Lenae out on the road this year as an opening act. Rapp discovered one of Lenae’s early EPs when she herself was in high school and has been a fan ever since. “I’m like, ‘You bitches are new, and don’t get me wrong — I’m so happy you’re here. But let’s get it right: I was boots on the ground first.’”

To Rapp’s ears, Lenae’s airy soprano “has this beautiful ping at the top that I’ve only ever heard in Minnie Riperton,” she says. “She’s just like a little fairy. She floats around, and her voice does the same thing.”

“Love Me Not,” which is still hanging out in the upper reaches of the Hot 100, is from Lenae’s sophomore album, “Bird’s Eye,” which came out in August 2024. She recorded the song with the producer Dahi, who’s known for his work with Kendrick Lamar and Vince Staples; Dahi started the track years ago with Anderson .Paak then put it in a drawer before he’d finished it.

“At the time, I was really into MGMT,” Dahi says, referring to the alternative rock duo whose dreamy-jangly guitar sound echoes throughout “Love Me Not.” With Lenae, he pushed the song toward classic R&B — “something that would be played on ‘Happy Days’ or some s—,” he says — but retained a spacey vibe that keeps it from feeling rooted in any specific era or genre.

Lenae says her goal was to create something “soulful and Black but that transcends time and race”; the result can be heard in a lineage of enduring hard-to-classify hits like Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” that charm listeners across demographic lines.

“If you don’t like ‘Crazy,’ there’s something wrong with you,” Lenae says as a pedicurist exfoliates her feet in a West Hollywood hotel room. It’s the end of a long day that began with an early-morning flight from New York, where Lenae performed with Kali Uchis on “The Tonight Show” and at Madison Square Garden. Now, after a photo shoot, she’s changed into gray sweats to sneak in a moment of self-care during our chat.

“With the heels I’m wearing all the time, you can see the corns,” she says, looking down to check out the pedicurist’s progress. “I wonder what Beyoncé’s feet look like. ’Cause if mine look like this? She’s putting in work.”

Though “Love Me Not” was singled out by critics right away, the song really took off late last year after a DJ posted a viral TikTok that mashed it up with Solange’s “Losing You” as part of a series exploring “euphoric” breakup songs. An admiring post on X by SZA — “One of my fav albums this year,” she wrote of “Bird’s Eye” — helped bring more attention to Lenae’s music.

Ravyn Lenae in West Hollywood.

(Ian Spanier / For The Times)

The singer grew up in Chicago, where her mother’s parents landed in the late ’70s as immigrants from Panama. That’s their house on the city’s south side in the music video for “Love Me Not,” which Lenae directed and which shows her and her younger sister dancing just outside the bedroom where Lenae slept as a kid.

“I knew this song would be a lot of people’s introduction to me, so I wanted them to immediately jump into my world,” she says. “My grandparents are very shy people, and when my grandma saw the video, she was like, ‘Oh, Ravyn, baby …’”

Singing at talent shows as a 12-year-old, Lenae wanted to be a “a mix between Alicia Keys and Beyoncé,” as she puts it; later, she learned to perform Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and Rihanna’s “Take a Bow.”

“I was like, ‘I’m-a win ’em over with this one,’” she says of the dramatic ballads. “I’m sure I sound crazy on video.”

Lenae, who went on to study at the Chicago High School for the Arts, came to understand that the soft lilt of her voice distinguished her from those powerhouses; she found inspiration in “the sensuality and the femininity” of music by Diana Ross, Patrice Rushen and Janet Jackson, whose “All for You” album — released in 2001, when Lenae was 2 — would become a touchstone.

“There’s a lot to win by not being the loudest in the room,” says Rapp.

Lenae moved to L.A. in 2020. Her first year here was rough, she says — she missed her mom and felt the burden of a bank account with $100 in it. “I remember some crying in the shower,” the singer says now.

Her 2022 song “Skin Tight,” a yearning flirtation she wrote and recorded with Lacy, registered as a turning point; so did the success of Lacy’s quirky soul-rock hit “Bad Habit,” which topped the Hot 100 on its way to Grammy nominations for record and song of the year.

“That was a historical moment for artists like us that have been working at it for a long time — Black artists who’ve always been a little to the left of what was going on,” Lenae says. “Steve going No. 1 showed there really are no rules and that there’s space for all of us.”

Beyond “Love Me Not,” highlights on “Bird’s Eye” include an intimate acoustic number, “From Scratch,” that Lenae says she and Dahi modeled on Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo’s “Nothing Even Matters”; the lush and whispery “Dream Girl,” which features input by Jackson’s longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis; and “Bad Idea,” a percussive electro-funk jam that interpolates Bow Wow and Ciara’s early-2000s “Like You.”

“All those Ciara hits, I had the choreo down,” Lenae says.

The album also contains the tender yet mournful “One Wish,” which Lenae wrote about her dad not being around as she was growing up.

“I never, ever thought I’d talk about that publicly, but I think I was just at a point in my life where it felt natural,” she says. “And me and him had just started reconciling, so it was very top of mind.” She invited her father to come to L.A. to appear in the song’s video, which depicts a young girl running after a car as a man angrily drives away; the day after the shoot, they went to Roscoe’s and had a long talk about her childhood.

“Yesterday was his birthday, and I forgot,” she tells me. “I felt horrible, but then I was like, Should I feel horrible? I go back and forth with it all the time.”

Lenae is extremely close with her mother, who’ll sometimes join her on the road “just to spend time with me or hold my hand — to sleep in the same hotel bed,” she says. “That’s the person I know I can keep counting on.”

After this week’s dates with Carpenter, Lenae will head east for a handful of shows on iHeartRadio’s Jingle Ball tour — one more chance to build upon “Love Me Not’s” Top 40 breakthrough. Then she and Dahi plan to focus on finishing her next album.

So far, Lenae says, it’s shaping up to be “a little more punchy and explosive” than “Bird’s Eye.” One of the new songs is about her mom; Lenae played it for her when she was here visiting not long ago.

“I had the lyrics up, and as she was reading it, she looked up at me and there was a tear in her eye,” she recalls. “Then we started bawling together. I think that one might end up her favorite.”

Hugh Jackman never thought he’d be a karaoke guy. But then Neil Diamond happened.

Starring opposite Kate Hudson in the Christmas Day release “Song Sung Blue,” the 57-year-old Australian actor portrays not the legendary Grammy winner and shaggy-haired sex symbol, but rather a Neil Diamond “interpreter,” the real-life Mike Sardina, who, with his wife and stage partner, Claire (Hudson), found unexpected success with a tribute band in mid-1990s Milwaukee.

It was this film that recently brought the “Greatest Showman” star to Diamond’s Colorado ranch, where the two participated in a singing session that convinced Jackman to buy his own karaoke machine.

The only guide you need for holiday entertainment.

“Normally, I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’” says Jackman, over Zoom from a New York hotel room, as if he’s confessing a mortal sin. “But I did karaoke with Neil, and I’m like, ‘All right, now I’m in.’”

What did they sing? Diamond soloed on “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables,” paying tribute to Jackman’s musical theater bona fides, before the two duetted on Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and, of course, Diamond’s own “Sweet Caroline.” The good times never seemed so good.

It was a hang session so epic that Hudson, joining the call, seems green with an envy that matches her sweater. “I can’t believe I missed this karaoke party,” she says. “I have a whole karaoke setup at my house with a microphone and everything. I feel very left out.”

Thankfully, when it came to making “Song Sung Blue,” it didn’t seem so lonely for her. Based on Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name, the film is as much Claire’s tale as it is Mike’s, following the real couple’s love story set to the tune of Diamond’s extensive songbook. At the height of their success, which included playing with Pearl Jam at Eddie Vedder’s request, the Sardinas became local celebrities, billed as the duo “Lightning & Thunder.”

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”

(Focus Features)

A Vietnam vet and mechanic with a dream of entertaining, Sardina seems a role tailor-made for Jackman, who can go from Wolverine to Broadway in a single season. “Song Sung Blue” writer-director Craig Brewer, who first saw the documentary at a small film festival in Memphis, Tenn., never envisioned anyone but Jackman as the insatiable Wisconsinite.

“It was always Hugh because there’s not anybody else out there who could understand the wild showmanship that Mike Sardina had,” says Brewer, calling from his Memphis home. “He’s doing two layers of a character. He’s playing this working-class guy that loves to entertain any way he can. If he’s got to wear sequined shirts, he’s going to. He’s going to give you everything he has.”

The role presented a puzzle for Jackman, despite having played career impresarios like pop idol Peter Allen and P.T. Barnum. “I had to lose Hugh Jackman to be Mike,” says the actor, relaxed in an umber-colored button-down shirt. “How does Mike find himself within his love of Neil? It took me a second to find him and lose my shtick, because I’m a performer too.”

Ultimately, the solution wasn’t his Neil Diamond impersonation, though Brewer encouraged Jackman to make a meal of that. “You can lay a little bit more butter on it,” the director remembers telling him.

Instead, Jackman’s breakthrough came via deep self-identification.

“His dream was always huge but this was not how he thought it was going to go,” Jackman says. “It was that ‘one plus one equals three’ thing where, all of a sudden, they found themselves being the next big thing.” Similarly, Jackman never intended to become a movie star synonymous with musical theater. He’d never even sung before a post-university audition changed the course of his life.

“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Kate Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection.”

(Victoria Will / For The Times)

Hudson is a less-obvious casting choice. Though she’s made a career playing rom-com heroines, with “Song Sung Blue,” she’s already generating awards buzz for her turn as a guileless Midwestern mom miles away from the glittering women Hudson typically portrays, and one with her fair share of trauma. She has to go to some dark places, channeling Claire’s depression, addiction to painkillers and more — but despite her penchant for playing more carefree women, Hudson says she wasn’t intimidated by the role’s meatier aspects.

“When you grow up with storytellers,” she says, referencing her actor parents Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, “you forget the camera’s there. You’re not thinking about anything glamorous. You’re looking at the role and what it needs. It’s what you long for as a performer. It allows you to almost leave your body.”

For Hudson, the opportunity also dovetailed with a new act in her own life as a recording artist. Even though she released her debut album “Glorious” only last year, Hudson has long identified as a singer-songwriter. “I was always so scared of it,” she confesses of her fear of going public about her songwriting. “But the studio is where I’m very happy. I’ve been in the studio since I was 19, but I just never shared my music because I was too scared to put it out.”

It was a discovery Jackman made while they were recording their vocal tracks for the film. “I said, ‘You’re a musician,’” he recalls, Hudson beaming at him. “You were so relaxed and in your home.”

“I’ve always had a lot of cheerleaders for me to do music,” Hudson replies, sheepishly.

Some might see it as a full circle moment for Hudson, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance as the groupie Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 rock memoir “Almost Famous.” It was such a formative experience that Hudson still remains close with Crowe. She tells me she’s reading his new book, “The Uncool,” to prepare to interview him on his tour.

But no matter how much Penny Lane has shaped her life, Hudson doesn’t see a through line from her to Claire. Instead, she draws a line between fandom and musicianship, specifically the distinction between those who chase the high of being in the room or backstage living the lifestyle, and those who have a song they have a visceral need to share.

“With Claire, it needs to come out,” she continues. “It doesn’t matter where or what we’re doing or how we’re doing it — we just need to do it. That is also how I feel about music.”

The real-life Claire Sardina and her two children (played by Ella Anderson and Hudson Hensley on-screen) threw their full support behind “Song Sung Blue.” But Hudson’s instinct was to build her own version of Claire without too much outside influence. “You want to make a choice in a film because it’s the right choice for the character, not because you’re trying to mimic something,” says Hudson.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”

(Focus Features)

That need to avoid mimicry and feel the moment was particularly crucial for the film’s heartbreaking second act, in which Claire is hit by a car in her front yard and loses a leg, plunging into self-loathing, depression, body dysmorphia and addiction. Hudson had to do extensive physical work to prepare to authentically represent Claire’s lived experience. “Movement is a huge part of what actors do,” she says. “There’s the emotional part but the physicality is like rebalancing your brain.”

In addition to watching YouTube videos of amputees and speaking with those in the disabled community, Hudson got useful advice from another screen legend — her dad.

“Kurt said that Claire is like Rocky,” she says, referring to the iconic character’s grit and determination to go the distance. “The part that really got my dad emotional was that she just wanted to figure out how to get on her feet.”

Jackman marvels at the bravery and skill of Hudson’s performance, noting that she even captured something the real Claire told him off-camera.

“Claire said, ‘The thing is Mike was a leg guy,’” he remembers. “Kate played that so well. That feeling of shame about: Is my partner attracted to me anymore? I found that incredibly moving.”

Hudson welcomed the challenge, but she did worry about one thing outside her control. For “Song Sung Blue” to work, the actors playing Claire and Mike need to be in perfect alignment: one the words, the other the tune.

“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection. That was my biggest anxiety.”

Jackman shared this concern. “I remember the first day after our table reading, you said, ‘This movie works if we work,’” he reminds her.

They needn’t have worried. “They were a net for each other as the other one was up on a tightrope,” Brewer says. “It was incredibly inspiring for the crew to see that kinship and respect.”

Their mutual generosity is evident in the way Jackman checks in with Hudson after each anecdote during our interview, confirming she has nothing to add or correct. Though this is their first film together, their repartee is so easy and warm it’s hard to believe they haven’t co-starred in at least a dozen movies.

“It felt easy to just inhabit these characters,” Jackman says. “The word that comes to me is trust. All of the scenes, particularly in that darker period, we could just live in that — the frustration, the paranoia, the anger, the loss, the fear. Every take felt really very different. I felt very free.”

Hudson agrees, adding with a giggle, “I told Hugh, ‘I’m really tactile. Just tell me if I make you uncomfortable. I’m going to kiss you all the time.’”

It helps that Hudson and Jackman are naturally sunny, curious people, celebrities who’ve never cared for the sound of being alone. “We like to connect with people,” Hudson says. “There’s no internal process that removes us. We’re both community people. We like to be in the circus. When we’re on set, we sit on set. There’s no separation of crew and cast. It’s very rare that you work with someone who is like that.”

Ultimately, that openness allowed Hudson and Jackman to approach Claire and Mike with honesty, essential for a film that’s a fullhearted paean to dreamers at their highest and lowest.

“Eddie Vedder told me something that moved me so much,” Jackman says, a note of emotion in his voice. “He goes, ‘Some might say these people led small lives. Their dreams were so huge and perhaps, naive. But dreams are so powerful that 30 years later, it’s come true.’”

From playing Milwaukee dive bars to becoming the subjects of a major motion picture, the Sardinas have far exceeded even their own expectations. To quote another beloved Diamond tune, it’s enough to make anyone a believer.

The line where the sky meets the sea is calling to the new “Moana.”

The first teaser trailer for the live-action Disney film released Monday features star Catherine Laga’aia singing a few lines of her character’s signature “I Want” song as the footage offers glimpses of the island and people of Motunui, the demigod Maui, the seafaring Kakamora and Moana’s clumsy rooster Heihei.

“I am a girl who loves my island and the girl who loves the sea,” Laga’aia as Moana sings in the opening moments of the trailer. “It calls me.”

Fans of the original animated movie will recognize the scene of a young Moana playing with the ocean after seeing a seashell on the shore. Speaking of the 2016 film, Dwayne Johnson, who voiced the shapeshifter demigod and hero of men in the animated “Moana,” will also portray the live-action version of the arrogant trickster. You’re welcome.

Directed by Thomas Kail, the live-action remake will follow Moana, who dreams of being a wayfinder and exploring the ocean. She leaves Motonui in search of Maui and the Heart of Te Fiti to help save her people.

In addition to Laga’aia and Johnson, the “Moana” cast includes John Tui as Moana’s father, Chief Tui; Frankie Adams as her mother, Sina; and Rena Owen as Gramma Tala.

The trailer ends with Laga’aia triumphantly singing, “I am Moana.”

The animated “Moana,” with Hawaiian actor Auliʻi Cravalho in the title role, grossed $643.3 million worldwide during its initial run. Its follow-up “Moana 2” was one of three films released in 2024 that crossed the $1-billion mark at the worldwide box office. Cravalho serves as one of the executive producers of the live-action film, along with Kail, Scott Sheldon and Charles Newirth.

The live-action “Moana” will hit theaters July 10.

Sabrina Carpenter brought her latest world tour in for a landing Sunday night at Crypto.com Arena, where the pop star will play half a dozen sold-out dates through Nov. 23 to wrap up her year-long road show behind 2024’s “Short n’ Sweet.”

I was at Crypto when Carpenter played the arena last November, just after “Short n’ Sweet” was nominated for six Grammys. (It went on to win prizes for pop vocal album and pop solo performance.) But since then she’s released a speedy follow-up LP, “Man’s Best Friend,” which itself earned another six Grammy nods this month, including album, record and song of the year.

So it seemed worth checking in on the tour again as Carpenter, 26, gets close to stepping offstage. At least for a moment, that is: Come April, she’ll be back in the spotlight to headline Coachella along with Karol G and Justin Bieber. Here are the seven best moments from Sunday’s concert:

1. Turns out that earlier visit to the Lakers’ home wasn’t quite as cheery as it seemed then. “This time last year, when I played this show, I was going through it,” Carpenter told the crowd Sunday night. “I was not in a good headspace, and thankfully because of that I was able to write a whole new album for you guys this year.”

“Man’s Best Friend” follows Carpenter’s breakup with the Irish actor Barry Keoghan, whom she seems to refer to in her song “Go Go Juice” when she threatens to drunk-dial an ex named Larry. “So thank you for Crypto last year,” she added, “’cause you really inspired ‘Man’s Best Friend’ and what was to come after that.”

2. Carpenter didn’t sing “Go Go Juice” on Sunday, though she did throw a few tunes from “Man’s Best Friend” into a set list still dominated by material from “Short n’ Sweet.” (“Short n’ Sweet” is the better of the two albums, so this was fine.)

For the lightly country-fied “Manchild,” the singer and her dancers did a cute little line dance, and Carpenter’s live band powered “Tears” with some appealingly skanky disco-funk energy. The evening’s surprise song — the product of a regular bit in which Carpenter selects a tune via spin the bottle — was the new album’s “Nobody’s Son,” which emulates Ace of Base’s Nordic reggae more precisely than anyone else has in the past 30 years.

3. In one of the show’s other recurring bits, Carpenter pretended to arrest one of her opening acts, Amber Mark, with a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs before singing the very horny “Juno.” That song features Carpenter simulating a different sexual position every night; here, well, you can look it up on TikTok.

4. Shout out to Carpenter’s guitar player, Caleb Nelson, whose ripping solo in “Juno” made the tune sound just like the theme from “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

5. “I’m gonna give you a little bit of history that you didn’t ask for,” Carpenter said about halfway through the concert, which ended up being a selective rundown of gigs she’s played in L.A. since she was a teenager on the Disney Channel.

“I played the Roxy when I was 16, and then I think played the Wiltern,” she said. “Then I played the Fonda and then the Wiltern again. And then I went to the … the Greek! Went to the Greek, of course — that was the best night ever.”

6. It says something about Carpenter’s commitment to the concept of her show, which takes place in the various rooms of a late-’60s/early-’70s-style bachelorette pad, that after dozens of tour dates she’s still performing one of her most emotionally cutting songs, “Sharpest Tool,” while sitting on a toilet.

7. Carpenter closed, as she always does, with “Espresso,” and if you’d assumed that by now this breezy electro-pop bop would inevitably have lost some of its fizz, think again. “I’m working late ’cause I’m a singer,” she sang as she strutted down a runway jutting onto the arena floor. It’s a task she’s still up to.

NOEL Edmonds left fans stunned when he reunited with Cliff Richard – and revealed their combined age. 

The TV presenter was over-the-moon to see singer Cliff in Wellington, New Zealand and the pals couldn’t resist a few jokes. 

Ageless Noel, 76, took to Instagram to share a clip of them together and told him: “At last, I get to see you again after all these years.”

Cliff, 85, joked: “I know… it’s been too long. I mean, there’s a hundred years separating us.”

Laughing, former Deal or No Deal host Noel replied: “It was 25 years ago that you were on my Christmas Day show and you’ve done wonderful, kind things for me ever since, over the years. 

“So I wanted to come and say thank you. But I then started to do some mathematics – and we have a combined age of 161.”

NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY

Noel Edmonds buying house in Britain after New Zealand show was AXED

RIDE OFF

Eerie demise of Noel Edmonds’ 90s theme park that opened for just 13 weeks

And Cliff quipped: “Oh my goodness me, I didn’t know that you were older than me!”

The two stars then broke out into song, treating Noel’s followers to a rendition of Cliff’s hit The Young Ones. 

Rushing to comment, one fan wrote: “Lovely to see you both having fun.” 

Someone else said: “Love this! Two legends.”

Another fan wrote: “Awwww, that was sweet. Yet another reminder to us all that the years fly by in the blink of an eye.”

And a fourth added: “Noel never seems to age.” 

Earlier this year Noel revealed plans to split his time between New Zealand and the UK after buying a home on the Isle of Man.

Noel dubbed the island “the Smile of Man” because “everyone seems so happy” and people “look out for each other”.

It comes after ITV axed his Kiwi Adventure series, which aired in June and followed his life in New Zealand with his fifth wife, Liz.

Noel, who moved there in 2018, had reportedly hoped the three-parter would become a fixture on the channel, but it failed to be a ratings hit.

Todd Snider, a singer and songwriter beloved in the Americana music scene for his funny yet empathetic portraits of people struggling to survive an uncaring world, died Friday. He was 59.

His death was announced in a post on his Instagram account, which didn’t state a cause or say where he died. An earlier post signed by “Todd’s Friends & Family” said that he’d been admitted to a hospital in Hendersonville, Tenn., after experiencing breathing problems and that he’d been diagnosed with pneumonia; before that, he called off a tour this month after telling fans that he’d been injured in a “violent assault” outside a hotel in Salt Lake City.

Frequently compared to the likes of John Prine and Kris Kristofferson — both of whom mentored him at various points — Snider wrote about “how poor people sometimes cope with pain and hardship,” he told the New York Times in 2009. “A little drugs here, a little sex here, a little denial there.”

In a prolific recording career that stretched three decades, Snider made albums for labels owned by Prine and by Jimmy Buffett and for his own company, Aimless Records. Yet to many he was best experienced onstage, where he’d thread his songs into a kind of running monologue about his rough-and-tumble life.

Among his best-known tunes were the rollicking “Beer Run”; “Can’t Complain,” about a guy with “nothing to lose ’cause there is nothing to gain”; and “Alright Guy,” which opens with a scene in which a friend catches him leafing through “that new book with pictures of Madonna naked.”

“Said she’d never pegged me for a scumbag before,” he sings, “She said she didn’t ever want to see me anymore / And I still don’t know why.”

In his 2014 memoir, Snider told a shaggy-dog story about the time Garth Brooks summoned him to a studio to help him record a cover of “Alright Guy” in the guise of his alter ego, Chris Gaines.

“I was already starstruck before Garth walked up and introduced himself,” Snider wrote. “He said, ‘I thought you had red hair,’ because he’d seen me on the ‘Austin City Limits’ television show, and I’d dyed my hair red for that show. It wasn’t supposed to be red. It was supposed to be dark brown. My plan was to look like John Fogerty, but instead I ended up looking like the guy from the movie ‘Dumb and Dumber.’” (Brooks didn’t release the cover, though Snider said the country superstar sent him a check for $10,000 anyway.)

Todd Daniel Snider was born Oct. 11, 1966, and grew up in Oregon before making his way to Texas and then Nashville. His debut album, “Songs for the Daily Planet,” came out in 1994 via Buffett’s Margaritaville label; it closed with a motor-mouthed acoustic ditty called “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” in which he lovingly lampooned the era’s alternative rock boom:

Now, to fit in fast, we wear flannel shirts

We turn our amps up until it hurts

We got bad attitudes, and what’s more

When we play, we stare straight down at the floor

A critics’ fave from the get-go, Snider earned rave reviews with 2004’s “East Nashville Skyline,” whose highlights include a characteristically wordy depiction of the culture wars then roiling America in the wake of 9/11 — “Conservative, Christian, Right Wing Republican, Straight, White, American Males,” it’s called — and “The Ballad of the Kingsmen,” in which he contemplates the meaning of the lyrics to “Louie Louie.”

Among the many other LPs he went on to release were 2009’s “The Excitement Plan,” which was produced by Don Was, and a 2012 collection of songs by Jerry Jeff Walker, the country-folk songwriter who’d served as a crucial influence on him. Snider’s most recent record, “High, Lonesome and Then Some,” came out in October.

Snider spoke openly throughout his life about his struggles with drugs and with chronic pain related to spinal stenosis. “I do a lot of things to try to help it, but I have to make peace with it, too,” he said of the condition in an interview last month with Rolling Stone. “Which hasn’t been easy.” Information about Snider’s survivors wasn’t immediately available.

The most insulting thing about the success of Breaking Rust, an artificial intelligence “artist” that topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales Chart this week, is the titles of the hits.

“Walk My Way.”

“Living on Borrowed Time.”

The EP — which is also on the charts — is called “Resilient,” as if Breaking Rust spent years playing for tips in empty bars. And maybe Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, who is credited for writing the songs, did. But the bluesy voice we hear singing about pain and suffering did not overcome anything.

In fact, you could say this completely computer-generated country singer found chart success by mocking people. A year ago, a handful of loud industry folks in Nashville questioned whether Beyoncé, who was born and raised in Texas, was country enough to do a country album. Good times. Today AI-generated “performers” such as Breaking Rust and Xania Monet, which hit the Billboard R&B charts, are suggesting you don’t even need to be human to fit into those genres.

Eric Church, whose latest release “Evangeline vs. the Machine,” was nominated this month in the best contemporary country album category at the Grammys, told me he’s not too worried because fans still want to see live shows and “AI algorithm is not going to be able to walk on stage and play.” He says that the best thing the industry can do is establish AI music as its own genre and that award shows should establish a separate category.

“I think it’s a fad,” he said, adding that he finds it fun. “When people like a song or connect with an artist the ultimate thing for them is then to go experience that artist with people who also like that artist, that’s the ultimate payoff. You’re not going to be able to do that with AI.”

Church wraps up touring on Saturday at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood. In addition to promoting the new album, this year his foundation began providing housing for victims of Hurricane Helene using funds from a benefit concert. The North Carolina native also released a single to raise funds to help his neighbors. You know, things only a flesh-and-blood artist can do. Regarding Breaking Rust, he said: “The better thing we should be doing is making the general public aware that it’s AI because … I don’t think they know that.”

“The biggest problem is the ability to deceive people or manipulate people because it looks real, it sounds real, it’s pretty disingenuous if you didn’t say it,” Church told me. “I’ve seen stuff from me that is online.… They take my face and they put it on another body.… My mom sent me one and I was like, ‘Mom, that’s not me.’

“That’s where it gets dangerous and that’s where it gets scary.”

If AI-generated “musicians” like Breaking Rust are a passing fad, as Church suggests, it’s one that’s been 50 years in the making. While use of the voice box on recordings goes back to the 1960s, it was the 1975 recording of Peter Frampton’s double live album, “Frampton Comes Alive,” that popularized its use. In the 1980s Zapp had a string of gold albums with front man Roger Troutman using the voice box technology to make his voice sound futuristic, and in the 1990s AutoTune went from being a tool producers use to fine-tune a singer’s pitch on a recording to being the featured sound on a recording. This gave us Cher’s global chart-topper “Believe.”

Over the decades, technology in the studio has made it possible for the vocally challenged to usurp craftsmanship and talent.

Before MTV debuted in 1981, we were warned that video was going to kill the radio star. That obviously didn’t happen. And now, AI-generated video can theoretically replace filmed human performances. But even that should not be a threat to real stars.

As with most things in life, when expertise is devalued, it’s easier to pass trash off as treasure. AutoTune and AI are enabling people who lack musical talent to game the system — like audio catfish.

When an artist like Church sings of heartbreak, listeners can identify with his lived experience. However, Breaking Rust is on the top of the charts with a song called “Walk My Way” … and the entity singing those words has never taken a step.

That’s not to say an AI ditty can’t be catchy. It most certainly can be. I just wonder: If the artist isn’t real, how can the art be?

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

Alfredo Flores is always moving, but you wouldn’t know it from the precise stills he takes of Sabrina Carpenter emerging onstage, her cheekiness and sparkly go-go boots shining through his images.

The portfolio of 36-year-old Flores, Carpenter’s tour photographer, is already familiar to most. Those photos of Carpenter posed with the tour stop’s city labeled on a mug and sealed with a kiss — that’s Flores’ work.

He has captured Carpenter’s rise from her “Emails I Can’t Send” era to the dazzlingly successful Short n’ Sweet tour, the work from which earned Flores the iHeart Radio Award for favorite tour photographer and puts him back on the road next week for an additional North American leg, including her six-night run at Crypto.com Arena next week.

But Carpenter’s towel reveals, set changes and winks won’t look exactly the same.

“Creatively, I just try my best to figure out different ways to shoot the same show,” said Flores, fresh off VMAs adrenaline and the release buzz of Carpenter’s latest album, “Man’s Best Friend.”

He constantly alters angles and lenses, including long, short and fish-eye, all with his Canon — the camera brand he’s been loyal to his entire career. However, that doesn’t make his first forays into photography any less impactful.

Alfredo Flores smiling with Sabrina Carpenter.

(Courtesy of Alfredo Flores)

Flores’ trajectory as a live music photographer is informed by the era he grew up in, one of disposable cameras, 24-hour photo labs, VHS camcorders, photo books full of family vacation pictures and the visionaries behind the hits that made us press the replay button on CD players.

He recalls his path was charted before him one afternoon in his native Belleview, N.J., on a sick day home from school in the form of the VH1 show “Pop-Up Video,” which featured music videos accompanied by trivia-filled text bubbles.

“It was Mariah Carey’s music video for ‘Honey,’ and it said, ‘This video is directed by Paul Hunter. The location is Puerto Rico. This is an extra. This is a body double,’ ” said Flores, who added, “And it clicked in my brain, ‘Oh, this is something that people create’ … and that’s where my interest really peaked in a more professional way.”

In 2008, when the ultimate music video platform was no longer VH1, but YouTube, Flores moved to Los Angeles and sought out the minds who inspired him — the directors and producers who shaped his camcorder and disposable days, before he ever strapped a Canon around his neck.

“I went to the [Geffen Records] offices every day until I got a yes,” said Flores.

He spent his initial internship days showcasing his perceptive eye by compiling magazine photos for music video storyboards. It was this eye that quickly put Flores on set, shooting bonus footage for a 2009 Nickelodeon production, “School Gyrls.” The made-for-TV movie featured a certain Canadian teen who benefited from the YouTube boom.

The Justin Bieber cameo would develop into a working relationship, allowing Flores to pursue the art form that prompted his move to Los Angeles: directing music videos.

Flores’s music video for Bieber’s song “Love Me” encapsulates the early stages of Bieber’s career. Flores intercut Bieber singing to the camera with footage of fans, behind-the-scenes chats with Usher and numerous angles of Bieber’s signature look — the swoop that inspired hair flips round the world.

Years later, in 2020, when the world stopped, Flores didn’t. He co-directed Bieber once again for the “Stuck with U” music video, a montage of loved ones dancing and embracing in their homes. It was 4 minutes and 17 seconds of celebrated togetherness in the midst of government-enforced close proximity. The song is a duet between Bieber and Ariana Grande, an artist whom Flores defines as a “once-in-a-lifetime kind of talent.”

Flores spent much of the 2010s working with Grande, all angles taken into consideration. From her upside-down album cover for “Thank U, Next” to co-directing her more festive side for the “Santa Tell Me” video to incorporating nostalgia into a Grande-Victoria Monét collaboration, “Monopoly.” Co-directing the friendship anthem’s music video, Flores nodded to a ‘90s upbringing by using a decent amount of camcorder footage.

“Joan [Grande’s mom] probably has so many VHS videos of Ari growing up. And Beth [Carpenter’s mom] has so many VHS recordings of Sabrina,” he said.

The artistic journeys of Carpenter, Grande and Flores are intertwined with the sought-after music video director Dave Meyers. The Grammy winner has bestowed the world with distinct visuals, such as Kendrick Lamar re-creating “The Last Supper” while rapping “HUMBLE.,” Britney Spears accepting an acting award in the midst of belting out “Lucky,” and Grande as an ethereal being singing “God Is a Woman.”

Meyers directed two music videos for Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet” album with Flores as the behind-the-scenes photographer. Both videos helped facilitate Carpenter’s catapult into the cultural lexicon with the summer-infused shots in “Espresso” and the “Death Becomes Her” story line in “Taste.”

Alfredo Flores in the photo pit for Sabrina Carpenter.

(Courtesy of Alfredo Flores)

“BTS for me in the hands of Alfredo feels like a living yearbook of the experience we all had. I’m so deep in the creative process that I’m not self-aware of what’s happening, and to re-watch through his work allows me to enjoy the stories being told all around us. The capturing of the actual process, the passion we all share to create — those are the stories he captures over and over,” said Meyers.

Often, Flores takes those candid moments even further with a Polaroid camera — he points, shoots and hopes for the best. The instant photo is at the mercy of light and luck, which are part of the magic, he said.

“It’s the color, the grain, the imperfection of it all,” he said.

By definition, pop music is inextricably tied to its time period, the subject matter and sound speaking to its modern, often younger audiences. This can denote a fleeting quality, a trend to pass us by, not unlike the evolution of photography and videography.

However, the artists of today suggest otherwise. Carpenter covered Abba’s hit “Mamma Mia.” Grande sampled ‘N Sync in her “Thank U, Next” album. Both MTV and VH1 still have something to teach the music video directors of today. There’s lasting power in pop songs as are the mediums we associate with them. Who are we creatively if not an amalgamation of all we’ve seen, the people we know, the ways in which we originally consumed them?

“When I work with an artist we have longevity,” said Flores.

Not a surprising sentiment from the man taking a backstage Polaroid picture of a Gen Z pop star who praises disco.

Director Kacho López Mari’s critically and culturally acclaimed portfolio includes over 40 music videos and short films that, if played at a YouTube watch party, could leave you and your primos feeling as if you just flip-booked through modern Latin music history.

Some of the music videos have captured the trophies of genres, like Tego Calderón’s “Abayarde” and Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina,” both essentials on any reggaetón playlist. Other visuals were works of activism — like Bad Bunny’s “El Apagón — Aquí Vive Gente,” the 22-minute music video and investigative short that shed light on the economic crisis that Puerto Ricans continued to face after Hurricane Maria.

A music video has the power to capture today’s culture, tomorrow’s stars, and yesterday’s immediacy. And thanks to López Mari’s legendary lens, we’re able to behold many iconic Latin music moments. Here are 15 of his must-see videos.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tego Calderón, “Abayarde / Gracias” (2003)

Filmed in Manatí, Puerto Rico

Before producing and directing music videos, López Mari produced “underground” parties in Puerto Rico — and commercials at Paradiso Films.

That changed when López Mari’s superior, Sigfredo “Freddy” Bellaflores, heard his young son, Sigfredo Jr. — who would go on to produce videos for Bad Bunny — listening to Tego Calderón’s music in the shower. The next day, Freddy came into the office and threw the Calderón CD at López Mari.

“ ‘If you can reach that guy, we’ll do a video for him for free,’ ” López Mari recalled Freddy telling him. “ And I’m like, OK, I’ll get that guy.”

A few days later, López Mari used his party-producing connections to set up a meeting with Calderón’s team, which told López Mari he could pick the song off Calderón’s debut album, since Paradiso Films was financing the video; the team then asked him to meld another song, “Gracias,” into the visual.

“ That’s why the video is a six-minute piece,” said López Mari. “Back in the day, the reggaetón videos would be two or three songs in each video.”

The young director scouted the location, created the storyline to connect the two songs and presented the treatment to Calderón. Soon afterward, López Mari shot his first music video.

“It was a big phenomenon,” he said. “When that came out, Tego was like a rocket going up to the moon.”

Ricky Martin, “Tal Vez” (2003)

Filmed in Buenos Aires

López Mari co-directed this video with Carlos Pérez, his childhood friend who would later direct the video for Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito.” Both 20-somethings at the time, López Mari and Pérez, recruited a “dream team” to execute it — including Andrzej Sekula, cinematographer for “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs,” as well as Brigitte Broch, Oscar-winning production designer and art director for “Amores Perros” and “Romeo + Juliet.” The editor was Jeff Selis, the most nominated editor in the history of the MTV Video Music Awards.

Ricky Martin needed ample star power for what would be his first Spanish release since “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” Martin liked López Mari’s treatment so much that he would commission the same crew to make the video for 2003’s “Jaleo.”

Daddy Yankee, “Gasolina” (2005)

Filmed in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Released pre-YouTube, the original video for “Gasolina,” the lead single off Daddy Yankee’s 2004 album “Barrio Fino,” maximized MTV’s four-minute allotment by mixing in two additional songs into the same visual: “No Me Dejes Solo” (which featured Wisin y Yandel) and “King Daddy.”

Yet when the song blew up, Daddy Yankee needed a longer video — and fast. However creatively edited, the visual actually loops the minute-and-a-half of material originally shot, making it a controversial piece for the co-directors.

In a phone interview, Pérez said that he values the song’s cultural and historical impact, but the video “never felt reflective of our work.” López Mari agreed it wasn’t his finest piece, but it did introduce the world to reggaetón and helped establish an aesthetic for the genre.

Calle 13, “Adentro” (2014)

Filmed in Arizona and Puerto Rico (Barriada Morales in Caguas and Cantera Roca Dura in Manatí)

From Calle 13’s final album, the video for “Adentro” earned López Mari a Latin Grammy nomination for best short form music video. In it, frontman René Pérez Joglar, or Residente, raps regretfully about buying a Maserati as baseball legend Willie Mays hands him a bat, which he then uses to smash the car. It’s later pushed off a cliff.

“For me, it’s a work of art,” said López Mari. “It’s basically a piece to destroy a half-million-dollar car — that [Residente] bought as an anti-capitalist statement.”

Calle 13, “Multi_Viral” featuring Julian Assange, Kamilya Jubran, Tom Morello (2014)

Filmed in the West Bank

Art is a weapon for López Mari and Calle 13, who sympathized with the Palestinian struggle. López Mari told me he considered the “Multi_Viral” video, which was filmed in the West Bank in 2013, was “one of the most important projects” he’s ever worked on.

The video follows Palestinian children as they build a guitar from parts of a gun. Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who’s featured on the song, joined them onset in the West Bank. López Mari’s brother, Santiago “Chago” Benet Mari, who served as deputy photographer, told me how filmmaking has taken him and his family places he would have likely never otherwise visited.

“Film is a universal language,” said Benet Mari.

Calle 13, “Ojos Color Sol” featuring Silvio Rodríguez (2014)

Filmed in Buenos Aires

“Ojos Color Sol” was filmed the same day as the memorable 2014 World Cup semifinal match in which Germany thrashed Brazil, 7-1, so concentration levels onset were “fragile” among die-hard soccer fans that day, López Mari recalled.

Still, López Mari’s video would go on to win him his first Latin Grammy for best short form music video, alongside Tristana Robles, López Mari’s life partner, as well as the producer and co-founder of Filmes Zapatero. The song featured Cuban musical legend Silvio Rodríguez, and the video starred Golden Globe Award-winning Mexican actor Gael García Bernal and Spanish actress María Valverde, who share a powerful kiss.

Juanes, “Loco de Amor (La Historia)” (2014)

Filmed in Puerto Rico (San Juan, Río Piedras, Bayamón)

The 16th annual Latin Grammy Awards were historic. After “Ojos de Sol” won best short form music video, “Loco de Amor (La Historia)” won best long form music video — a 16-minute project visualizing four of Colombian superstar Juanes’ songs. This made López Mari the winner of both categories in the same night — a feat never accomplished before or repeated since.

“I like the aesthetics of [López Mari]’s work and his way of working,” Juanes told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2014.

Calle 13, “La Vida (Respira el Momento)” (2015)

Filmed in Salinas, Puerto Rico

“La Vida (Respira el Momento)” was the final video López Mari released with Calle 13 before they disbanded. It featured López Mari’s daughter and nephew, Residente’s nephew, as well as pro boxer Miguel Cotto and MLB player Ángel Pagán. But there’s an even buzzier person who makes an appearance in this video — filmmaker, actor and poet Jacobo Morales, the director behind the 1989 film “Lo Que le Pasó a Santiago,” the only Puerto Rican film to earn an Oscar nomination to date.

Morales sits down in the middle of a road to look through a handful of photos, reflecting on his life’s most precious moments — inadvertently foreshadowing his later role in videos from Bad Bunny’s 2025 album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” such as “Baile Inolvidable,” which were also directed by López Mari.

Juanes, “Mis Planes Son Amarte” (2017)

Filmed in Mexico (Veracruz, Mexico City and its outskirts) and Medellín, Colombia

“Mis Planes Son Amarte” directly translates to “My Plans Are to Love You.” A play on words in Spanish, it could also be heard as “My Plans Are to Mars.” Using that double meaning, Juanes and López Mari innovated what’s considered to be Latin music’s first major visual album (every song has a video): a one-hour film of 12 songs that follows Juanes’ character as an archaeologist and astronaut, exploring the dimensions of life and love.

Chayanne, “Di Qué Sientes Tú” (2018)

Filmed in Mexico City

In 2018, López Mari added the actor and pop balladeer Chayanne to his roster of Puerto Rican icons he’s collaborated with. For the making of Chayanne’s music video for “Di Que Sientes Tú” (Say What You Feel), López Mari took the crew to Mexico City.

“It came at a time when I was falling in love with books again,” said López Mari. “I was surrounded by literature [by Gabriel García Márquez], [Jorge Luis] Borges, Luis Rafael Sánchez — and that literary energy made its way into the set. It all came together in a way that was beautiful and poetic.”

Bad Bunny, “Callaíta” (2019)

Filmed in Puerto Rico (Arecibo, Hato Rey neighborhood of San Juan, Guaynabo)

In the first of many collaborations between Bad Bunny and López Mari, they created a “dream-like atmosphere” of summertime in Puerto Rico. In a 2023 video interview with Vanity Fair, Bad Bunny said it successfully conveyed the feeling of a “hug.” Bad Bunny also said he knew the actress, Natalia L. Garcia, was the right woman for the project as soon as he saw her.

López Mari discovered Garcia on Instagram. “I [loved] her look,” he said. “She reminded me of Uma Thurman in ‘Pulp Fiction’ because of the haircut.”

López Mari’s brother Benet Mari, served as the director of photography — and happened to have the resources to get a carousel on the beach. “Everything was perfect,” said López Mari, calling it a “beautifully executed video” that hit all the notes and goals of marrying image and song.

Don Omar, Residente, “Flow HP” (2021)

Filmed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles

In the video for their first-time collaboration, “Flow HP,” Don Omar and Residente, both Puerto Rican industry veterans, amplify their pride for the motherland by rapping in front of the island’s flag, resulting in an unforgettably powerful visual. López Mari and Residente actually directed the video together.

Bad Bunny, “El Apagón — Aquí Vive Gente” (2022)

Filmed in Puerto Rico (San Juan, Güajataca, Rincón)

“[Taylor Swift] fills it [her videos] with Easter eggs,” said López Mari. “So, what does Benito do? He fills it with Puerto Rican history.”

In nearly six months, López Mari and his team worked to produce what began as a Bad Bunny video and expanded into a hard-hitting documentary. In collaboration with Puerto Rican investigative journalist Bianca Graulau, the short film shed light on the recurring blackouts in Puerto Rico after 2017’s Hurricane Maria and how the government’s lackluster recovery efforts exacerbated the greater infrastructural crisis — all of which they strongly consider to be byproducts of U.S. colonialism.

(Fun fact: This video also featured clips from López Mari’s directorial debut with Calderón.)

Juanes, “Canción Desaparecida” featuring Mabiland (official video) (2023)

Filmed in Medellín, Colombia, and rural outskirts

In this video, Juanes and singer-MC Mabiland call to mind more than 121,000 people forcibly disappeared between 1985 and 2016 in their native Colombia. After long shying away from political and social content that colored his first album, Juanes knew he wanted to make an impactful video with López Mari, who felt connected to the story because of his own political inheritance.

Bad Bunny, “Baile Inolvidable” (2025)

FILMING LOCATION: San Juan, Puerto Rico

Normally, López Mari listens to a song several times before he writes a treatment for the direction of a music video. Yet for “Baile Inolvidable,” he only got to listen to it once. He happened to be in the room when Bad Bunny presented the album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” to Apple Music executives and his crew for the first time.

López Mari says he met with Bad Bunny weeks later, in the Río Piedras music studio where the artist had recorded the song. There, López Mari presented his storyboard drawings and location ideas for the video and listened to the song “like 20 times,” he said.

López Mari shot the dance class portion at the Arthur Murray Dance Studios, a famous school for classic salsa in San Juan. The live performance portion of the video was filmed at the University of Puerto Rico’s auditorium, where Robles and López Mari had recently creative directed a Concert for Energy Independence for Casa Pueblo.

“As every artist evolves, the same happens to us directors,” said López Mari. “We keep learning… [And] hopefully, more videos will be made that are more relevant, [that] contribute more to the cultural exchange, [and] that aren’t just a bunch of flashy visuals and bells and whistles.”

Ever since the ascent of BTS, the Grammys have been K-pop-curious, but not typically in its marquee categories. This year marks a notable change — several acts with roots in K-pop have major-category nominations, which suggests the Academy has embraced the genre as a staple part of pop music.

First off, while the success of “KPop Demon Hunters” and its flagship soundtrack single, “Golden,” might need a qualifier for being a piece of film music for a fictional band, the tune’s nomination for song is a milestone. It caps a huge year for the animated ladies of Huntr/x — they also scored nods in pop duo/group performance, remixed recording and song written for visual media. Whatever comes next for the human artists Ejae, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami and “Golden” co-songwriter Mark Sonnenblick, it’s part of a big moment for K-pop in the Grammys’ top categories.

They’re far from alone there, though. Rosé of Blackpink had a monster hit with Bruno Mars on “Apt.,” which scored even more Top 4 nods in record and song and pop duo/group performance. The snazzy Motown rocker was one of the year’s undeniable singles, hitting No. 3 on the Hot 100.

These nods showed just how far the Blackpink members’ solo careers can reach into the broader music and entertainment industries — including TV, major festivals, the Hot 100 and now the Grammys elite categories.

A K-pop act finally got a new artist nod as well, with the polyglot girl group Katseye landing alongside Addison Rae, Lola Young and Sombr. The band was conceived as a global twist on what constitutes as K-pop, given the members’ varied backgrounds (they hail from the United States, the Philippines, South Korea and Switzerland, and trained under BTS’ parent label, Hybe, in the United States).

“Beautiful Chaos” hit No. 4 on the Billboard 200, and the group’s “Gabriela” also got a nomination for pop duo/group performance, so the experiment clearly resonated with Academy voters on its own terms.

While Grammy voters have often looked upon K-pop as a fandom phenomenon more than a musical one, this year’s class suggests the genre has been taken on its own terms like any piece of pop, which can only bode well for its future at the Academy.

Among the nominees for the 68th Grammy Awards announced Friday morning were a slate of Latinx artists, with Bad Bunny leading the way with six and making Grammys history in the process.

The Puerto Rican singer became the first Spanish-language artist to earn nominations in several top categories for his critically acclaimed album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” including record of the year, album of the year and song of the year.

The 31-year-old is also up for música urbana album, global music performance (“EoO”) and album cover — a new category.

To date, Bad Bunny has won three Grammys out of 10 nominations. He also leads the 2025 Latin Grammy Awards nominations with 12, including record of the year, album of the year and song of the year. The Latin Grammys will take place Nov. 13 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

The not-so-new band the Marías — led by singer María Zardoya — were nominated in the ever-perplexing new artist category. This marked the long-present L.A. indie group’s first ever Grammy nomination.

Global girl group Katseye — which features Venezuelan Cuban American dancer/singer Daniela Avanzini — also picked up a nomination in the new artist category, as well as a nod in the pop duo/group performance category for the track “Gabriela.”

Colombian hitmaker Karol G’s “Tropicoqueta” received a Latin pop album nomination.

Recording Academy darling Edgar Barrera nabbed his third consecutive songwriter of the year (non-classical) nomination for his work with Karol G, Juanes, Shakira, Fuerza Regida, Grupo Frontera, Young Miko, Marco Antonio Solís, Manuel Turizo and Carlos Santana.

Kooky Argentine duo Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso received their first ever Grammy nomination under Latin rock or alternative album for their nine-track EP, “Papota.” If they win, they will be the second Argentine group to win in that category; Los Fabulosos Cadillacs won back in 1998 when the category first appeared.

The boisterous San Bernardino band Fuerza Regida are also first-time nominees, receiving a música mexicana album nomination for their joint EP with Grupo Frontera, “Mala Mía.” The Texas norteño group is also up in the same category for their album “Y Lo Que Viene.”

Sacramento alt-metal group Deftones nabbed a rock album nomination for “Private Music,” the band’s fourth overall Grammy nod and first in this category.

On Tuesday, the Recording Academy announced that voting members of the Latin Recording Academy had been invited to join the Recording Academy as part of its 2025 new member class.

“This year’s class reflects the vibrancy of today’s diverse music landscape,” said Harvey Mason Jr., chief executive of the Recording Academy. “The addition of many Latin Recording Academy voting members underscores that music has no borders and that our mission to serve music people, regardless of where they are from, is stronger than ever.”

The Grammy Awards will take place on Feb. 1 at L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena. The awards show will broadcast live on CBS and stream on Paramount+ starting at 5 p.m. PT.

On the lamp-lit steps of a sombre gothic church, a young woman stands before a microphone. Beside her, a man plucks a slow melody from his guitar. Arrayed on chairs and cobblestones in front of them, a large crowd sits in an expectant silence. From a nearby balcony, laundry sways in the sultry Calabrian breeze.

The guitar quickens, and the woman issues a string of tremulous notes with all the solemnity of a muezzin. She clutches a hand drum, beating out a rhythm that draws the crowd to its feet. As people surge forward, stamping and whirling around the square, the singing intensifies and the drum’s relentless thud deepens. The festival of Sustarìa has begun.

“Sustarìa is a word in the dialect of Lago,” says Cristina Muto, who co-founded the festival in summer 2020. “It is a creative restlessness, which doesn’t let you sit still.” We’re speaking at a drinks party the evening before the annual event, on a terrace overlooking Lago’s clay-tiled roofs, when her brother Daniele appears with a jug of local wine in hand. “Welcome to Lagos Angeles, Calabrifornia,” he winks, pouring me a cup.

Lago is a hilltop village in the province of Cosenza, overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s surrounded by sprawling olive groves and small plots where families cultivate figs, chestnuts and local grains. Cristina and Daniele were born and raised in this grey-stoned hamlet, a medieval outpost of the Kingdom of the Lombards. Although their pride in Lago is palpable, few of the Laghitani I meet live here all year round. Like many young people from southern Italy, they have left in search of opportunities that are scarce in Calabria.

It’s against this backdrop that Cristina co-founded Sustarìa. “The trend is longstanding and severe,” she tells me, “but people still live here, and there are communities that thrive despite the problems. If more people stay or return, things will get better.” By spotlighting the allure of the region’s heritage, she hopes to play a part in this.

With agriculture historically shaping Calabria’s economy and its inhabitants’ daily lives, many traditions have agrarian roots. The dance that erupted on the festival’s first night was the tarantella. It features distinctive footwork, with dancers kicking their heels rapidly. “It’s a dance of the field workers,” Cristina says. “Some say it began as a way to sweat out venom from spider bites during harvests; others say tired workers in need of a creative outlet danced slowly and just with their feet, and over time the pace and range of movement increased.”

The vocals on display that night told of another aspect of the region’s history: its frequent colonisation. Calabria was variously conquered by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Arabs, Lombards and Bourbons. The folk songs we heard were replete with Greek scales and Arabic cadences, a melting pot of Mediterranean timbres.

After the concert, the crowd migrated to a field by a small waterfall on the outskirts of Lago for dinner featuring regional dishes: rosamarina (the pescatarian version of nduja, known as “Calabrian caviar” made from tiny fish); fried courgette flowers; cipolla rossa di Tropea (red onions from the popular beachtown of Tropea); and pecorino crotonese, a sheep’s cheese from the Crotone province.

Over dinner I spoke with two other festival organisers, Claudia and her husband Alberto. Claudia, a Lago native, returned permanently, after a career in aerospace engineering, to run the B&B Agriturismo Cupiglione with Alberto. Nestled in woodland a few kilometres from Lago, Cupiglione was founded 25 years ago by Claudia’s parents as a restaurant with guest rooms. After closing during the pandemic, it was renovated and reopened in 2023 as a B&B with seven rooms for up to 18 guests (doubles from €40). The change in direction paid off, and Cupiglione has since welcomed hundreds of visitors to the area, evenly split between Italian and international travellers.

During my stay, I’m lodging in a house on the edge of Lago, thanks to the Sustarìa team. Hospitality runs deep during the festival; organisers open up their homes and those of their relatives to anyone who enquires through social media. Other options abound during the festival and year-round, including B&Bs such as Cupiglione and A Casa di Ely (doubles from €60), a short walk from where I stayed.

The following afternoon, I return to the field before aperitivi, where I meet up with Cristina, who explains the growth of her initiative: “Initially, it was just locals who came to Sustarìa, but then people from other parts of Italy and even other countries started coming. Every year it grows.” This year, there are nearly 600 people in attendance.

Eric, a Londoner studying in Zurich, is one such international guest. Eric also attended Felici & Conflenti, a festival in late July hosted by friends of the Sustarìa team, which focuses on preserving and reviving the region’s ancient music. It has held 11 editions over as many years, each one featuring a winter and summer instalment, to which more people flock each year. It takes place in Conflenti, a small inland village nestled at the foot of the Reventino mountain, at the confluence of two small rivers (hence its name).

“Thanks to their work and research, instruments that were becoming extinct, like the zampogna [Italian bagpipe], are finding new life,” Cristina says.

The three of us sit chatting over plates of crisp taralli (wheat crackers) as twilight fades, and a reedy piping starts up from across the field. I stroll over, and catch sight of someone playing the zampogna, which looks like a set of bagpipes improvised from foraged materials, and is truly ancient – it counts the Roman emperor Nero among its historical admirers.

The next morning, we head to the hilltop town of Fiumefreddo Bruzio, a short drive from Lago and officially recognised as one of “Italy’s most beautiful villages”. Clinging to the western slopes of the Apennines, this medieval village offers panoramic views of the swelling coastline, which traces the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its narrow, meandering streets are lined with squat houses made of the local grey stone, quarried from the surrounding mountains. We wander around Il castello della Valle, a sprawling 13th-century Norman castle partly destroyed by Napoleonic troops, but retaining a splendid portale Rinascimentale – or Renaissance gate – still in excellent condition.

At Palazzo Rossi, on the edge of town, we take a seat at a cafe and sip local craft beer as we admire the view of the active volcano Mount Stromboli, across the water.

“You should see it in the winter,” Cristina says. “The air is cooler, so it becomes even clearer. Everything here is completely different in the winter, but most people don’t see it as visitors come mainly in the summer,” she adds with a note of regret.

The sun starts to sink into the horizon. In the square, a band starts setting up for an evening gig. A waiter brings over a plate of bread and olives to our table, on the house. “Things are quieter but not empty. There are almost as many events as in summer. And you get to see how the locals live during the rest of the year.” Cristina tears off a piece of bread. “And, of course, the hospitality never changes – people are always welcomed with open arms.”

Sustarìa will return to Lago for its sixth instalment on 1-3 August 2026. There is a winter edition of Felici & Conflenti in Calabria on 27-29 December 2025; its next summer instalment is in July 2026

When Xavier “X” Atencio was plucked by Walt Disney in 1965 to be one of his early theme park designers, he was slotted on a number of projects that placed him out of his comfort zone.

Atencio, for instance, never would have envisioned himself a songwriter.

One of Atencio’s first major projects with Walt Disney Imagineering — WED Enterprises (for Walter Elias Disney), as it was known at the time — was Pirates of the Caribbean. In the mid-’60s when Atencio joined the Pirates team, the attraction was well underway, with the likes of fellow animators-turned-theme park designers Marc Davis and Claude Coats crafting many of its exaggerated characters and enveloping environments. Atencio’s job? Make it all make sense by giving it a cohesive story. While Atencio had once dreamed of being a journalist, his work as an animator had led him astray of a writer’s path.

Atencio would not only figure it out but end up as the draftman of one of Disneyland’s most recognizable songs, “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me).” In the process, he was key in creating the template for the modern theme park dark ride, a term often applied to slow-moving indoor attractions. Such career twists and turns are detailed in a new book about Atencio, who died in 2017. “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” (Disney Editions), written by three of his family members, follows Atencio’s unexpected trajectory, starting from his roots in animation (his resume includes “Fantasia,” the Oscar-winning short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom” and even stop-motion work in “Mary Poppins”).

For Pirates of the Caribbean, Atencio is said to have received little direction from Disney, only that the park’s patriarch was unhappy with previous stabs at a narration and dialogue, finding them leaning a bit stodgy. So he knew, essentially, what not to do. Atencio, according to the book, immersed himself in films like Disney’s own “Treasure Island” and pop-cultural interpretations of pirates, striving for something that felt borderline caricature rather than ripped from the history books.

Xavier “X” Atencio got his start in animation. Here, he is seen drawing dinosaurs for a sequence in “Fantasia.”

(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)

Indeed, Atencio’s words — some of those quoted in the book, such as “Avast there! Ye come seeking adventure and salty old pirates, aye?” — have become shorthand for how to speak like a pirate. The first scene written for the attraction was the mid-point auction sequence, a section of the ride that was changed in 2017 due to its outdated cultural implications. In the original, a proud redheaded pirate is the lead prisoner in a bridal auction, but today the “wench” has graduated to pirate status of her own and is helping to auction off stolen goods.

At first, Atencio thought he had over-written the scene, noticing that dialogue overlapped with one another. In a now-famous theme park moment, and one retold in the book, Atencio apologized to Disney, who shrugged off Atencio’s insecurity.

“Hey, X, when you go to a cocktail party, you pick up a little conversation here, another conversation there,” Disney told the animator. “Each time people will go through, they’ll find something new.”

This was the green light that Atencio, Davis and Coats needed to continue developing their attraction as one that would be a tableau of scenes rather than a strict plot.

Tying it all together, Atencio thought, should be a song. Not a songwriter himself, of course, Atencio sketched out a few lyrics and a simple melody. As the authors write, he turned to the thesaurus and made lists of traditional “pirating” words. He presented it to Disney and, to Atencio’s surprise, the company founder promptly gave him the sign off.

“Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me),” Atencio would relay, was a challenge as the ride doesn’t have a typical beginning and ending, meaning the tune needed to work with whatever pirate vignette we were sailing by. Ultimately, the song, with music by George Bruns, underlines the ride’s humorous feel, allowing the looting, the pillaging and the chasing of women, another scene that has been altered over the years, to be delivered with a playful bent.

The song “altered the trajectory” of Atencio’s career. While Atencio was not considered a musical person — “No, not at all,” says his daughter Tori Atencio McCullough, one of the book’s co-authors — the biography reveals how music became a signature aspect of his work. The short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,” for instance, is a humorous tale about the discovery of music. And elsewhere in Atencio’s career he worked on the band-focused opening animations for “Mickey Mouse Club.”

“That one has a pretty cool kind of modern instrument medley in the middle,” Kelsey McCullough, Atencio’s granddaughter and another one of the book’s authors, says of “Mickey Mouse Club.” “It was interesting, because when we lined everything up, it was like, ‘Of course he felt like the ride needed a song.’ Everything he had been doing up to that point had a song in it. Once we looked it at from that perspective, it was sort of unsurprising to us. He was doing a lot around music.”

Xavier “X” Atencio contributed concepts to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, including its famous one-eyed cat.

(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)

Atencio would go on to write lyrics for the Country Bear Jamboree and the Haunted Mansion. While the Haunted Mansion vacillates between spooky and lighthearted imagery, it’s Atencio’s “Grim Grinning Ghosts” that telegraphs the ride’s tone and makes it clear it’s a celebratory attraction, one in which many of those in the afterlife prefer to live it up rather than haunt.

Despite his newfound music career, Atencio never gave up drawing and contributing concepts to Disney theme park attractions. Two of my favorites are captured in the book — his abstract flights through molecular lights for the defunct Adventure Thru Inner Space and his one-eyed black cat for the Haunted Mansion. The latter has become a fabled Mansion character over the years. Atencio’s fiendish feline would have followed guests throughout the ride, a creature said to despise living humans and with predatory, possessive instincts.

In Atencio’s concept art, the cat featured elongated, vampire-like fangs and a piercing red eye. In a nod to Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” it had just one eyeball, which sat in its socket with all the subtlety of a fire alarm. Discarded eventually — a raven essentially fills a similar role — the cat today has been resurrected for the Mansion, most notably in a revised attic scene where the kitty is spotted near a mournful bride.

Xavier “X” Atencio retired from Disney in 1984 after four-plus decades with the company. He drew his own retirement announcement.

(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)

Co-author Bobbie Lucas, a relative of Atencio’s colloquially referred to by the family as his “grandchild-in-law,” was asked what ties all of Atencio’s work together.

“No matter the different style or no matter the era, there’s such a sense of life and humanity,” Lucas says. “There’s a sense of play.”

Play is a fitting way to describe Atencio’s contributions to two of Disneyland’s most beloved attractions, where pirates and ghosts are captured at their most frivolous and jovial.

“I like that,” Lucas adds. “I like someone who will put their heart on their sleeve and show you that in their art.”

Rapper RBX has sued Spotify, alleging that the Swedish audio company has failed to stop the artificial inflation of music streams for artists like Drake and is hurting the revenue other rights holders receive through the platform.

RBX, whose real name is Eric Dwayne Collins, is seeking a class-action status and damages and restitution from Spotify. RBX, along with other rights holders, receive payment based on how often their music is streamed on Spotify, according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in L.A. on Sunday.

Spotify pays rights holders a percentage of revenue based on the total streams attributed to them compared with total volume of streams for all songs, the lawsuit said.

The Long Beach-based rapper said that rights holders are losing money on Spotify because streams of some artists are being artificially inflated through bots powered by automated software, even though the use of such bots is prohibited on the platform, according to the lawsuit.

For example, the lawsuit notes that over a four-day period in 2024 there were at least 250,000 streams of Drake’s “No Face” song that appeared to originate in Turkey, but “were falsely geomapped through the coordinated use of VPNs to the United Kingdom in attempt to obscure their origins.”

Spotify knew or should have known “with reasonable diligence, that fraudulent activities were occurring on its platform,” states the lawsuit, describing the streamer’s policies to root out fraud as “window dressing.”

Spotify declined to comment on the pending litigation but said it “in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming.”

“We heavily invest in always-improving, best-in-class systems to combat it and safeguard artist payouts with strong protections like removing fake streams, withholding royalties, and charging penalties,” Spotify said in a statement.

Last year, a U.S. producer was accused of stealing $10 million from streaming services and Spotify said it was able to limit the theft on its platform to $60,000, touting it as evidence that its systems are working.

The platform is also making efforts to push back against AI-generated music that is made without artists’ permission. In September, Spotify announced it had removed more than 75 million AI-generated “spammy” music tracks from its platform over the last 12 months.

A representative for Drake did not immediately return a request for comment.

RBX is known for his work on Dr. Dre’s 1992 album “The Chronic” and Snoop Dogg’s 1993 album “Doggystyle.” He has multiple solo albums and has collaborated with artists including on Eminem’s “The Marshall Mathers LP” and Kris Kross’ “Da Bomb.” RBX is Snoop Dogg’s cousin.

Artificial intelligence continues to change the way that the entertainment industry operates, affecting everything from film and TV production to music. In the music industry, companies have sued AI startups, accusing the businesses of taking copyrighted music to train AI models.

At the same time, some music artists have embraced AI, using the technology to test bold ideas in music videos and in their songs.