Virginia Tech's women’s basketball team has a No. 1 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament, which means that they get to play their games at home. The NCAA has been trying to make the tournament games more of a neutral environment, so they’ve banned Virgian Tech's team from playing their song - 'Enter Sandman' by Metallica, the USA Today reports. Well, that didn't stop fans from singing the song.

An interesting text to think about in The Face about musicians taking part in the 2022 World Cup: "Looking at the expansive musical programming around the Qatar World Cup, it seems like international acts taking these dirty cheques has become more normalised. The question for artists is whether they want to be complicit in this culture-washing, and whether or not they actually believe that reaching fans in far-flung places is a good enough excuse. When it comes to moral gymnastics, it seems a big booking fee can be quite the performance enhancer".

"When you go to a football match and there’s lots of people all singing together, in the 21st century that’s a unique thing. When do you get groups of people singing together unaccompanied other than at football matches, mass singing like that?" - Alex James (of Blur) says to The New Cue about his football song 'Vindaloo'. Having a football record, James argues, is "half as good as a Christmas record... I’ve come to realise, because it’s every two years that there’s a major tournament and Christmas is still yearly". He also favors "boozy singing late at night" with friends - "there’s nothing more wonderful than singing when you’re drunk, is there? It’s better than headlining Glastonbury, a bunch of mates all singing together".

Russian figure skater Alexandra Trusova won a silver medal for her performance at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She danced to Florence and the Machine’s 'Call Me Cruella' and the Stooges classic 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'.

"This was hip-hop playing the long game, taking its presence and acceptance as an achievement, conceding that the gatekeepers want a level of assimilation with their authenticity" - Pitchfork looks into the Super Bowl, the first-ever hip-hop halftime show. Rolling Stone calls it "a triumph", whereas BBC asks "did too many hooks spoil the broth?". Watch it here.

"The Grand Prix Freestyle event, where riders can choose their own music and moves rather than go through a pre-set test, is the blockbuster event of Olympic dressage" - NPR goes into equestrian events at the events, and the music it is being performed to. So, what is it that the horses like? "Norway's Carina Cassoe Kruth went for an 80s medley including 'I Want To Know What Love Is' by Foreigner and 'Footloose' by Kenny Loggins. The U.K.'s Carl Hester rode his horse, En Vogue, to groovy disco music that channeled the Bee Gees. Germany's Isabell Werth looked to the majesty of Beethoven's 'Ode To Joy' for her performance".

Snoop Dogg and comedian Kevin Hart are providing some fun commentary from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics interviewing athletes, recapping events and doing play-by-play for sports they don’t understand. In a segment called “Cold Call” gave their insight into the equestrian event. “The horse crip-walking! You see that? That’s sick. This horse is off the chain! I gotta get this motherfucker in a video” - Snoop Dogg joyfully announced as a horse pranced during the event. He also asked “do the horses get medals when they win too?”. They do not!

"Tokyo has shaped the sound and image of songs all the time, and this Tokyo emerging in 1964 is the one that shapes ‘70s “new music,” that provides the glitzy excess of “city pop” and other ‘80s offerings (not to mention the fake memory of the capital latched on by people today), the continent-hopping cool of Shibuya-kei in the ‘90s and even the more glum post-Vocaloid hits of now" - Make Believe Mailer writes introducing part one in a series of texts about music from Japan and the Olympics.

Japanese composer Cornelius, real name Keigo Oyamada, who was working on the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony, quit Monday after coming under fire for bullying classmates during his childhood, AP reports. Reports of his past abuse of classmates, including those with disabilities, surfaced online recently and sparked a backlash on social media plus demands for Oyamada’s resignation. Finally, he apologized and quit. A segment of the music Oyamada composed for Friday’s opening ceremony will not be used, and the musician will be also removed from his planned role in the Paralympics opening event.

The lovely Neil Diamond song 'Sweet Caroline' has been adopted by English football fans as their unofficial anthem at the current Euro 2020 championship (yes, it's the year 2021, but it was supposed to be held last year, and it was postponed due to Covid crisis, and the official name held on). England football team will face Italy Sunday for the Euro 2020 championship finals.