songs

As swiftly as Barry Manilow returned to the stage following a health-related hiatus, he has stepped away.

On Friday, Manilow cut his concert short just two songs after it began. The 83-year-old crooner abruptly told the crowd to talk among themselves as he walked off stage, according to concertgoers who detailed the incident on social media. The curtain dropped, and a few moments later the audience was told the show was a wrap. Manilow’s performance slated for Saturday was subsequently nixed.

The day before, on Thursday, the “Copacabana” singer had returned after a six-week break to perform at the International Theater at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, telling the audience, “I’m back!” Manilow appeared to be spry and energetic throughout the show. “God, I feel like I’m a teenage idol again,” he joked when a couple of audience members tossed underwear onto the stage. He picked up a pair of full-coverage briefs and asked if they needed to go to the laundry, then a pink lacy thong and joked, “I’ll keep this pair.”

“After a triumphant welcome-back concert on Thursday, Barry got hit with bronchitis and had to cancel his Friday and Saturday shows,” reps for Manilow told Paste Magazine.

Last year, Manilow revealed that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and that surgery would require him to postpone several performances. In May, he told The Times that, since he had surgery, he was getting winded just walking down the hallway. “Ninety minutes of screaming in tune, which is what I do for a living — I’m not up for that yet,” he said at the time. “I will be, but it’s taking a long time to get my voice back. They warned me that I’d have to learn to breathe again. So these days, I get up, I go to my piano and I try to be creative. Before I know it, the afternoon’s over.”

The star returned to the stage in June following a six-month hiatus, in support of his latest album, “What a Time,” his first LP loaded with new material in almost 15 years.

But in August, Manilow canceled shows because of vocal and technical problems before telling fans he needed to pause. “We just finished a fantastic summer tour, 29 shows in 68 days,” the singer said. “The shows were fantastic. The audiences were fantastic. And I sounded fantastic. But it seems that we were pushing a little too hard.

“Now we all need to sit down and shut up,” Manilow said.

OLIVIA DEAN may be the queen of singing about self-worth, but she won’t be feeling the love right now.

The British chart-topper is facing a messy legal battle after being sued over her song I’ve Seen It.

A fresh lawsuit has been filed claiming she copied the melody of Bill Withers’ 1981 soul classic Just The Two of Us.

Publishers of the late singer’s catalogue allege Olivia’s track, which appears on her album The Art Of Loving, “shares musical features so striking” that they cannot be by chance.

Rather than going after Olivia or her co-writers directly, the lawsuit lists Olivia’s American record label Capitol Records and its parent company Universal Music Group as the defendants.

The song has been streamed 246million times on Spotify alone.

‘WHO HURT HER?’

Emotional moment Olivia Dean breaks down in tears during love song onstage

OFFER DEAN-IED

Olivia Dean turns down Glastonbury as other Brit set to be named headliner

In comparison, Bill’s hit has 948million global streams.

Talking about penning the emotional track, Olivia previously said: “I’d had a lot of red wine.

“When I heard it back for the first time, I burst into tears.

“It felt like the loveliest note to end on.

“Whether it’s within your friends, your family, or just the love that exists in the strangers around you, it’s there, and it’s inside of you, too.”

APPRENTICE DUO LAND SWEET GIG

IT may sound like a flaky idea, but Apprentice star Lawrence Rosenberg will dress up as a croissant to launch a new bakery.

He is reuniting with Kieran McCartney Jones, his fellow competitor on the BBC One show, at Tuesday’s opening of Signorelli Broadgate in London.

And the pair will replicate the street-trader energy they wowed with on TV.

They gained an army of fans selling out supplies of their team’s carbonara at Greenwich Market this year in Lord Sugar’s talent hunt.

I don’t doubt they’ll make this stunt a success, too.

At the bakery, Lawrence will swap the egg costume he wore during the Apprentice challenge for a croissant outfit. He told me: “We’ll be begging for tips like Lord Sugar’s watching.

“I’ll be dressed in a croissant costume and you can even pretend to be Baroness Brady and mark our performance.”

Sounds like a recipe for making dough . . . 

CONGRATULATIONS to Chris Martin and Coldplay.

Their 2000 hit Yellow has just passed 4 BILLION streams on Spotify. It’s their first song to achieve this, but I’m sure it won’t be their last.

Viva La Vida isn’t far behind on 3.5 billion. No wonder they sold out ten nights at Wembley last summer.

AUSSIE rapper Iggy Azalea is plotting a comeback.

Sliding into Instagram DMs, Iggy wrote: “I stepped away from music for a long time, but now I’m back in the studio, this felt like the right place to share my journey.”

Iggy has had huge hits with the likes of Rita Ora and Britney Spears previously.

LILY STEPS UP DOWN UNDER

LILY ALLEN is legging it Down Under.

The Smile singer shows off her pins in an arty shoot after wrapping up the UK and US legs of her West End Girl show.

Lily is enjoying a break before returning to the stage in Auckland, New Zealand, on October 21.

She will then play six shows across Australia – belting out the brutal album about her divorce from Stranger Things actor David Harbour.

Lily said: “Doing the shows feels like an act of storytelling.

“It’s almost like I’m in a play every night, because I have to brush myself down and take myself back to a time and a place that isn’t now.

“It doesn’t really feel like it’s about me any more. It’s about other women who have experienced something similar.”

PIXIE SHOWS A LOTTA STYLE

PIXIE LOTT looks fashionable as ever as she heads home from another night on stage.

Dressed in a quirky jacket and tiny hotpants, Pixie strutted through London’s West End.

She’s currently starring in Who Killed Marilyn? At the Emerald Theatre.
Pixie plays the lead role of movie legend Marilyn Monroe, who died in 1962 aged just 36.

Talking about Marilyn, she said: “I grew up loving her. She was very strong and intelligent and witty.

“This whole story is told from her perspective.”

SUPERSTAR Ariana Grande is rumoured to be releasing a remix of a track from her hit album Petal.

In February 2024, she teamed up with Mariah Carey for a remix of her hit single Yes, And?

Previously, Ari featured on The Weeknd’s 2021 remix of Save Your Tears.

If she does have something in the works, I see history repeating itself.

DECEMBER 10’S HAIRY NIGHT OUT

DECEMBER 10 are going from strength to strength, but four of the lads were in for a fright this week ahead of Halloween.

John, Hendrik, Cruz, and Nicolas were seen at the scare mazes at Thorpe Park’s Fright Nights.

Simon Cowell‘s boyband have a busy winter of gigs ahead including in London and Birmingham.

Not bad for a band many thought wouldn’t amount to much.

“You only need to find one person in this entire world who doesn’t find you completely insufferable.”

That’s the wisdom Taylor Swift dispenses near the end of “Cleveland!,” one of four new songs on a newly expanded edition of “The Life of a Showgirl,” and if that exclamation point doesn’t tell you she’s found that person then I don’t know what would.

Released Thursday night, almost exactly a year after the original album came out, “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore” tacks four bonus songs onto the blockbuster 2025 LP that set a new record for the biggest opening week of all time even as it drew the harshest reviews of her career. It also follows Swift’s high-profile wedding in July — her husband, the NFL star Travis Kelce, grew up in Cleveland Heights — and comes just as Grammy voters are about to decide on nominations for February’s awards ceremony, where “The Life of a Showgirl” is eligible for Swift’s eighth album of the year nod. (In case you haven’t been keeping track, that would tie her with Frank Sinatra for the most in Recording Academy history.)

In a statement ahead of “The Encore’s” release, Swift said she’d taken a trip to Sweden to celebrate “Showgirl’s” success with Max Martin and Shellback, her two principal collaborators on the album. “Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in,” she wrote, “but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs.”

Here are the four “Encore” tracks, ranked from worst to best.

4. ‘Cleveland!’
The exclamation point really is hilarious. (No shots at Cleveland.) I kind of dig the airy jangle-pop production, which reminds me a bit of “Ruin the Friendship,” by far the best song on the original “Showgirl.” But writing about her and Kelce’s romance as a bulwark against all the hate she receives as a rich and powerful pop star feels pretty uninspired, at least as rendered here. “The taste of me is acquired, but it’s his favorite dish”? Alas, no.

3. ‘Patient Zero’
“Encore’s” lead single — with a splashy music video set to premiere during Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards — has Swift fielding a phone call from a woman who’s dating one of the singer’s exes and could use a little advice. (“I’ve gotta be honest — I’ve been expecting your call,” Swift tells her.) That’s a rich premise, and I like the way the unexpected fiddle lick scrapes against the glossy synths. Again, though, the lyrics lack the emotional sophistication with which she once would have told a story like this one. And the song’s central image — a guy with a “devil on his shoulder under his halo” — is downright awkward.

2. ‘Pink Clouding’
OK, now we’re getting somewhere. This shimmering electro-pop number takes its title, as I just learned, from a term used among people experiencing addiction to describe the temporary euphoria one might feel in the early stages of recovery. (Recall that Swift wrote “Lavender Haze” a few years ago after hearing the phrase on “Mad Men.”) Here she’s looking back with regret at a relationship that she can see now was clearly a rebound: “You met me at a cursed time / I told you I was fine / And you were so good / That’s why you haunt me like you should.”

1. ‘Babylon’
Look, I’m not crazy about “liberated libertine.” And “Love is ice upon the ladder that you need to climb”? It’s giving Airbnb wall art. But man, oh man, does Swift finally tap into something deep in “Encore’s” closer: a trembling acoustic-guitar ditty about someone who’s realized only too late what they let slip away. Listen for yourself to hear how she sings it — this is a beautifully tender vocal performance — but the verse about the all-but-abandoned young mom sneaking into the bathroom to call her mom is an absolute killer. Taylor Swift: good songwriter!