Oscar news! In the Best Original Song, the following are nominated. Rihanna was nominated for her 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' song “Lift Me Up,” Lady Gaga got a nomination for “Hold My Hand” in 'Top Gun: Maverick,' Sofia Carson is up for 'Applause' from 'Tell It Like a Woman', Son Lux’s song 'This Is a Life' featuring Mitski and David Byrne from 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' is also up for Oscar, as well as 'Naatu Naatu' from 'RRR' by Rahul Sipligunj, Kaala Bhairava, and M.M. Keeravani. In the Best Picture category, music-themed 'Elvis', and 'Tár' are nominated. Rolling Stone reports.

"Many of the year’s most viral moments on TikTok were derived from live shows this year: Rosalía elaborately chewing gum during her song Bizcochito, Healy relentlessly touching his crotch, Gaga belting a power ballad while wearing an Edward Scissorhands-style claw and standing on a flaming stage. Perhaps these moments are reverse-engineered to go viral?" - Guardian asks about the nature of live shows. Tobias Rylander, who designed the 1975’s At Their Very Best tour, affirms the question - he says he’s always trying to put together “a show that reads well on social media”. LeRoy Bennett says that he and Lady Gaga were “absolutely” thinking about social media when designing her latest tour Chromatica Ball. Lorde and Rosalia had similar approach with their latest tours.

James Howard Jackson has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for shooting and wounding Ryan Fischer, Lady Gaga's dog walker, during a dog theft, Bloomberg reports. Ryan Fischer was walking the singer's three French bulldogs in Hollywood in February 2021 when Jackson shot him in the chest. Jackson and one of four other accomplices took two of the dogs, Koji and Gustav, following the shooting. A third bulldog, Miss Asia, ran away and was later found by police. The two stolen dogs were returned unharmed two days later after Gaga offered a $500,000 reward. The person who returned the dogs, Jennifer McBride, was later charged with being an accessory to attempted murder and her case remains pending. The motive was the value of the French bulldogs, a breed that can run into the thousands of dollars, and detectives do not believe the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the musician.

1. Find your first 50 fans - “For us, it’s about, ‘How do we build an authentic audience and grow it very, very organically?’ It’s slow bake versus the microwave”
2. Create inflection points - “It wasn’t one explosive thing that just happened. It was us planting seeds in every place”
3. Form a personal board of directors - the key is finding people who aren’t intimately invested in your journey and can give rational, level-headed advice
4. Remember that there is no shortcut to success - "whatever it is you do, you actually have to do the work. You can’t just talk about it. You can’t be philosophical about it. You have to get the physical work in”
5. Use failure to propel yourself forward - “Failure breeds fear, and fear paralyzes people, which makes you go into a downward spiral. But how can you use that same exact energy to propel your forward?”

When Lady Gaga fired him, Troy Carter turned to Silicon Valley where he invested in Uber, Lyft, Dropbox, Warby Parker, Spotify, Gimlet, and Slack, Trapital reminds.

Adele has been named as the UK’s best-selling female album artist of the century by The British Phonographic Industry, according to Music Week. She holds the top spot above the stars such as P!nk, Madonna, Rihanna, Dido, Amy Winehouse, Kylie Minogue, Beyonce, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga. Her second album, ‘21‘, also holds the title for the UK’s number one album by a female artist since 2000, after shifting just shy of 6 million copies in the UK alone. The new statistics have been unveiled to coincide with the confirmed return of National Album Day on October 21, which will adopt ‘Celebrating Women In Music’ as its 2021 theme.

The Weeknd’s 'Blinding Lights' won video of the year at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards. Lady Gaga won the most awards during the night - five - followed closely by Ariana Grande and BTS, with four each. See the list of all the winners and all the nominees here. The Weeknd kicked off the 2020 ceremony with a stellar performance of his hit 'Blinding Lights', performed from above Manhattan.

Lady Gaga held a speech about Black Lives Matter movement and protests for graduates during YouTube’s virtual “Dear Class of 2020" commencement celebration, Billboard reports. "You are watching what is a pivotal moment in this [country’s] evolution...change will happen and it will be for the better” - Lady Gaga told the graduates. But it won't happen by itself - "the people who are going to make this change happen are listening to this speech right now. You are the seeds that will grow into a new and different forest that is far more beautiful [than the one we live in right now]”.

Lady Gaga scores her sixth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with the chart-topping debut of 'Chromatica', sold in 274,000 equivalent album units, the biggest week for any album by a woman in 2020, although she ceased promotion due to nationwide unrest over George Floyd's death, Billboard reports. 'Chromatica' album sales comprise 205,000, SEA units total 65,000 (equating to 87.16 million on-demand streams of the set’s tracks in the week ending June 4) and TEA units equal a little more than 4,000. Also new at the top 10 on Billboard 200 are Jimmy Buffet who landed at No. 2 with 'Life on the Flip Side' - earned 75,000 equivalent album units, and Run The Jewels with 'RTJ40, bowing at No. 10 - 38,000 equivalent album units earned.

Lady Gaga's new album 'Chromatica' has entered the UK charts at number one, after outselling the rest of the top 10 combined. The record sold 53,000 copies, the biggest opening week of the year so far. According to the Official Charts Company, 'Chromatica' was the week's most popular album in every format - physical, streaming, and downloads - as well as the year's fastest-seller on vinyl, with 8,500 copies sold.

In a simple and effective marketing move, Lady Gaga was delivering her new album 'Chromatica' by herself yesterday. She posted a picture of herself in the driver's seat of a mid-sized transport truck, adding "delivering 'Chromatica' myself to every retailer around the world. In Chromatica time and distance do not exist". Her disco-pop album is out today.

The Rolling Stones, Billie Eilish (covering Bobby Hebb), Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga (covering Charlie Chaplin’s 'Smile'), Elton John, Stevie Wonder (covering Bill Withers), Lizzo (covering Sam Cooke), Kacey Musgraves, The Killers, Kesha, Billie Joe Armstrong, Eddie Vedder, Common, Christine and the Queens, Taylor Swift, Jimmy Fallon & The Roots (covering Men Without Hats‘ 'Safety Dance'), John Legend, and many other have performed at Global Citizen’s One World: Together at Home live stream. Watch them all at Global Citizen's YoutTube.

Dua Lipa, Sam Hunt, and The Weeknd are pop stars who decided to release their new albums despite the big lockdown. Lady Gaga, Haim, and Sam Smith have decided to wait. Dua Lipa said, as Variety reports, she "thought I’d be doing them a disservice to delay it, especially during this time”, while Lady Gaga said - “it just doesn’t feel right to me to release this album with all that is going on during this global pandemic”. Whether to release an album or not depends on the genre also - hip-hop sells close to 100% in digital formats so there's a good chance of selling the album in expected numbers, while some older-demographic artists are still selling 70%-80% physical, and the records stores are closed... Tours are equally cancelled for both sides.

London rapper Jelani Blackman lives the usual life, judging by the lyric "I just eat, work, and then I swerve" from his new song 'Swerve'; avantgarde Mexican musician Nnux is both experimental and enjoyable in her new video 'Piezas'; Lady Gaga unveiled her first solo single in three years, disco-pop 'Stupid Love', with a Slipknot-meets-Klingon-meets-Avatar video; Jessie Ware has shared a disco-banger 'Spotlight' with a video set in Belgrade aboard the Blue Train, the private transport of former Yugoslavian leader Tito; some good country by Steve Earle & the Dukes about one of the worst mining disasters in American history in 'Devil Put The Coal In The Ground'; Gorillaz go Afropop in 'Désolé' ("sorry") featuring Malian star Fatoumata Diawara on vocals; Lovelorn combine goth and synth-pop in 'Around You'; Azusa is comprised by members of Dillinger Escape Plan, Extol, Sea + Air, and, as if that wasn't enough, they have Testament’s Alex Skolnick on guitar solo on 'Detach'; Stephen Malkmus has shared 'Shadowbanned', a psych-folk jam featuring Kim Gordon, Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, Conor Oberst in video.

Dr. Dre hasn’t released an album since 2015, haven't been on tour since the turn of the millennium, and his last production credit on a No. 1 hit was in 2009 (Eminem’s 'Crack a Bottle'), but still he managed to climb to the top of Forbes list of highest-earning musician of this decade. He earned […]

There's some well known videos like Lady Gaga's 'Telephone', Jamie XX's 'Gosh', and Grimes' 'Oblivion', and then there are a few surprises like Leningrad's 'Kolshik' and Duck Sauce's 'Barbra Streisand'. Childing Gambino's 'This Is America', below, is sixth on the list. Stereogum...

YouTube Music and Universal Music Group have started a project of remastering a series of iconic music videos. The first group of videos to be remastered include works by Lady Gaga, Janet Jackson, Tom Petty, Nirvana ('Smells Like Teen Spirit' included), Beastie Boys (watch Sabotage' below), with new titles appearing each week, and over the […]

'The Greatest Showman: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack' was the best-selling album globally in 2018 with 3,5 million copies sold. South Korean boyband BTS take both the second and third chart positions with the albums 'Love Yourself 結 'Answer' released in August 2018, sold in 2,7 million copies, and 'Love Yourself 轉 'Tear', released in May […]

Guardian's Rhik Samadder got proper upset by post-Oscar comments about Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's "secret love". "When did we lose all desire to distinguish between art and life? Why do we want to own celebrities’ souls, imprisoned in hashtags and gifs and gossip, regardless of the human fallout?... We should recognise that #friendshipgoals and […]

'Bohemian Rhapsody', the authorised biopic of Queen and Freddie Mercury, won record four Oscars last night, including best actor for Rami Malek, who won rave reviews for playing the late singer. Lady Gaga was among the winners for the best original song prize for 'Shallow' from 'A Star Is Born' after performing an impassioned duet […]

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga sang ‘Shallow’, the hit song from the 'A Star Is Born' soundtrack, to an unsuspecting audience for Gaga’s 'Enigma' Residency show in Las Vegas. Watch it on Instagram. NME...

Lady Gaga is the second Oscar nominee, ever, to be nominated both for best song and in an acting category in the same year (Mary J. Blige was first). 'Shallow', her duet with Bradley Cooper is up for best song against 'All the Stars', Kendrick Lamar and SZA's contribution to the 'Black Panther' soundtrack, Diane Warren's 'I'll […]

'Shallow', performed by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in 'A Star is Born', was named best song at the 2019 Critics' Choice Awards. 'Shallow' also won best original song at the 2019 Golden Globes on Jan. 6. (Billboard). Lady Gaga took home the award for best actress that same night, in a tie with Glenn Close […]

Lady Gaga has apologised for working with R Kelly on duet 'Do What U Want' and said she intends to remove the song from download and streaming services. Kelly has been accused by numerous women of violent and controlling behaviour, including keeping them, some while under the age of consent, in what’s been described as […]

"In an age of hyperdocumentation, pop stars are more precious than ever about how their star personas are perceived. Yet in the reflection of another’s star image, we can often see them more clearly" - Guardian writes in praise of 'A Star is Born', fourth on-screen-incarnation of the story. "Actor-director Bradley Cooper and his pop-star […]