Category: pop music

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Former teen pop star Debbie Gibson is hopeful that Britney Spears will find her way back to the stage. (Photo: Bruce Glikas/Getty Images)

Debbie Gibson has a soft spot for fellow former teen pop star Britney Spears. 

The “Only in My Dreams” singer, 52, shared that she wants nothing but the best for Spears, who has experienced years of upheaval, including being put under a 13-year conservatorship that ended last year. 

“It’s very easy to kind of mock her social media posts,” Gibson told Page Six. “But I see somebody who is joyful and just dying to get out of that bubble. She’s a natural performer, so if she has to perform in her living room, on social media, that’s what she’s going to do.”

While Spears can often be found posting videos of herself dancing at home, Gibson says she’s hopeful the “Stronger” singer will make her way back to performing live for her millions of fans one day soon. 

“I hope she finds her stage again,” Gibson said.

Gibson, who skyrocketed to fame in the ’80s as a teen pop star with songs like “Foolish Beat” and “Shake Your Love,” credits her protective parents with keeping her safe during her days of music superstardom. Gibson’s mom, the late music manager Diane Gibson, shielded her daughter from the darker side of the industry.

“I jokingly but not jokingly say she literally threw her body in front of anybody that was out to cause me any kind of harm, and she prevented any sort of #MeToo situation from happening,” Gibson continued. “It didn’t always get her brownie points but got her a lot of respect, and it protected me. So, I’m really lucky that I had protective parents that didn’t want anything from me but for me to turn out sane and happy and healthy.”

While her mom died in January of this year, Gibson still has a strong relationship with her father, with whom she’s very close. The duo even take to Instagram together on occasion for live videos. 

“I’m very lucky because I had my mom and my dad. I spoke to my dad last night, and he is one of my favorite people in the world, and I have a great relationship with him,” said Gibson, carefully alluding to the troubled relationship between Britney and her father, Jamie Spears, who placed his daughter under a conservatorship back in 2008. 

Following her mother’s death back in January, Gibson shared an emotional Instagram essay about how her mom managed to skyrocket her daughter to teen superstardom without extensive knowledge of the music industry.

“Diane loved fiercely, protected those she cared about with every fiber of her being, and with no college education and no showbiz connections went on to become a bold and groundbreaking music manager in what was a man’s world,” she wrote. “Self-taught and street smart, a force of nature and the OG ‘Momager,’ guided by her intuition, love of music, and the desire to help see my vision to its fullest potential, she stopped at nothing to help get my music heard leaving an undeniable mark on the world and its cultural landscape. I quite literally couldn’t have done any of this without her.”

Gibson stated that the key to her relationship with her mom was that Diane’s focus remained on her daughter at all times. 

“She did not care about her reputation as much as she cared about me turning out sane and healthy. We went through all the ups and downs and twists and turns of a true partnership but our relationship landed at the most loving and lovely juncture,” she wrote. 

Dianña (pronounced Dee-on-ya) is behind door number 17 of our Essential Advent Calendar, with the official music video for her festive single, ‘Missing You Under The Mistletoe’.

The song was produced and mixed by Mark Needham and recorded at Kent Wells Productions Studio in Nashville.

Produced and directed by Fon Davis of Fonco Studios in Los Angeles, the video features Dianña singing, with backing vocals by Kent Wells. She has a very familiar, and comforting tone, with an easy delivery style all her own.

Speaking of ‘Missing You Underneath The Mistletoe’, Dianña said,

I wrote the first draft of “Missing You Underneath the Mistletoe” over ten years ago but couldn’t seem to come up with a good ending. When I was thinking about writing a Christmas song last year it popped up in my drafts. The ending was kind of sad reflecting where I was in my life at the time. But things in my life have changed for the better and the new happy ending just flowed out naturally.

You can watch the video for ‘Missing You Under The Mistletoe’ below.

Dianña has found her true calling as a traditional country music singer/songwriter after having written, recorded and performed with many well-known R&B, rap, rock, pop, gospel, alternative, and country artists from Snoop Dogg to Amy Grant.  

Dianña’s debut Country single and music video, ‘Andale Yeehaw’ was released in late 2018.  She released two more original light-hearted singles in 2019; ‘Rubberneck’, about men’s tendencies when they see a pretty girl, and ‘You Got Some Nerve’, about online dating.

In 2020 she released the original country version of her novelty song, ‘Calm Down Karen’, which was played over 50 million times on TikTok.  The success of the country version led her to release a POP version in late 2021 ‘Calm Down Karen- Can I Speak to a Manager’ Remix, which reached #48 on the BDS/Billboard Top 40 POP Indicator chart.

Dianña’s newest release ‘Gonna Take a Real Strong Man’ is the first of several new songs she was inspired to write after wading through an old storage locker full of long-suppressed, often painful memories. It is a poignant look back at some of the events that have shaped her life, and the demons she still deals with today.

Find out more about Dianña and her music online on her official website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, ‎Apple Music, and YouTube.

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For a Thai pop group who just made their debut, the five members of Perses appeared like your typical boys next door — dressed in casual jackets and jeans with minimal makeup.

But for more than two years, Jung, Nay, Krittin, Palm and Pluggy trained like K-pop trainees, keeping to a strict schedule of vocal and dance lessons, and for one member, even practising smiling. 

Perses is formed by GNest, an entertainment agency under GMM, Thailand’s biggest media and events company. They released their first single My Time on Sept 28 and their second song Touchdown on Nov 23. 

AsiaOne sat down with the rookie boy band earlier this month when they were in Singapore for music promotions. Oldest member Jung and 19-year-old vocalist Pluggy were the most proficient in English and helped translate for their bandmates.

Jung, who is also the group’s main rapper, told AsiaOne that they did around six hours of training daily. 

The 25-year-old gave a rundown of each day: “If we had dance practice, we would be in class for two hours to learn the foundations of the dance piece, and after that we’d prepare for the event or show we were doing. 

“We also had vocal lessons for an hour-and-a-half and we repeated that every day.”

Pluggy, the maknae (youngest member in Korean), added: “We would have a performance test every month and, every three months, we had an elimination test.”

Some of them even got extra lessons. Twenty-four-year-old Nay, the ‘visual’ in Perses, said in English: “I had to attend solo classes by myself with the teacher, those days were really tiring. But I think it was a way for me to improve myself.”

Pluggy added: “So we could all be equal in our performance skills.”

It’s not all dancing and singing skills they had to work on, because lead vocalist Krittin said that he had to practise smiling more often because he had a “resting b**** face” — which Pluggy was hesitant to translate — and he didn’t want to give off the appearance of being unfriendly.

When asked about what they had to give up, the 23-year-old added: “Trips, holidays and trips — and probably living a normal life as a teenager.”

Main dancer Palm, 19, had difficulties for a different reason —  according to his bandmates at least — because he had a 10pm bedtime but they would only finish training at 11pm.

“After getting back to our dormitory, I like to have some me-time,” Palm said. “But we return so late and I have to sleep immediately so I can wake up on time for my schedule the next day.”

Pluggy was still in high school when he became a trainee, and saw his friends hanging out every day through their Instagram posts. On the other hand, he had to rush to the record label to train after school each day. 

By the time he became a trainee, Jung was already an engineering graduate. He said: “Most of my friends were going on long vacations to other countries or getting jobs, but I was starting from zero as a trainee.”

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With their strong vocals and perfectly-synchronised dance moves, the comparisons to K-pop groups aren’t unfounded. They even worked with South Korean music production company Jam Factory, masterminds behind singles by K-pop stars like NCT, Itzy and Got7.

“We learnt so much from Jam Factory,” Jung said. “From learning how they work, the settings and production process they use, to the workflow they have envisioned.”

Pluggy chimed in with praise for their group’s leader: “Jung was like our producer because he was the one who talked to Jam Factory all the time. He was our mouth — we’d discuss together and tell Jung, and Jung would speak to Jam Factory for us.”

Despite the sacrifices, the group is aware of how fortunate they are to be in their position, and wouldn’t give it up for anything.

“We can still have fun any time, but we must set aside time for practice,” Krittin mused. “All the hardships and struggles are worth it because being pop idols is what all of us want, and it’s not a typical experience for everyone.”

Pluggy added: “We have so much time in our lives and we can be happier in the future. But right now, not many people are gonna have this chance, to be where we are right now. 

“So I think it’s quite worth it since we’ve come so far.”

For the full interview including Perses spilling secrets about each other, watch our latest episode of E-Junkies.

ALSO READ: ‘Better than a male host’: Jackson Wang lets fans caress his shirtless body in Thai concert

drimac@asiaone.com

No part of this article can be reproduced without permission from AsiaOne.

For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard is counting down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2022 all this week. At No. 6, we remember the year in Lizzo — who once again used a runaway viral smash as a springboard to total pop cultural ubiquity.

The year 2022 was not just a ‘Special’ one for Lizzo – it was the year she proved that she could navigate and command the pop landscape alongside splashy newcomers and veterans alike.

Three years removed from her seismic breakthrough with Cuz I Love You, Lizzo had entered the new decade unproven as a major force in pop music. In 2021, she unveiled “Rumors,” a Cardi B-assisted standalone single that debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and fizzled out too quickly to really maintain the excitement from her previous hit singles “Truth Hurts” and “Good as Hell.” But the brief silence that followed would eventually give way to a year that yielded Lizzo the fastest-moving and highest-charting album of her career — while she expanded her reach in different fields of entertainment and cultivated a coherent and powerful public image to complement her pop stardom.

Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2022:Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Year: Steve Lacy | Comeback of the Year: Sam Smith | No. 10: Nicki Minaj | No. 9: Future | No. 8: Jack Harlow | No. 7: Doja Cat

When Lizzo reemerged in 2022, she chose television, not music, as her entry point. Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, an unscripted reality competition series chronicling the journey to becoming one of Lizzo’s dancers, debuted on Amazon Prime — her first project under her production deal with Amazon Studios. Lizzo smartly used the launch of the show, which was met with a generally positive critical reception, to launch her proper return to the music scene. A day before Watch Out for the Big Grrrls went live, Lizzo announced the release date for “About Damn Time.” 

The following week, in a move straight from the playbook of pop titans past and present, Lizzo previewed yet another venture: This time, she was entering the world of shapewear with Yitty, her collaboration with Fabletics. Through a series of smartly sequenced announcements and releases, Lizzo reemerged as a full-fledged pop star — one whose brand permeated different industries and yielded successful returns in each.

By April, Lizzo fixed her attention squarely on music. “About Damn Time,” an uplifting disco-tinged anthem of affirmation, was released on April 15, alongside the announcement of its parent album, Special. With a quiet debut at No. 50, “About Damn Time” got off to a much slower start on the Hot 100 than “Rumors.” Nonetheless, Lizzo used the familiarity and bottled momentum she accrued on TikTok in 2020 to inform her aggressive promotion of the song on the platform. Thanks largely to added exposure from a dance trend created by TikTok personality Jaeden Gomez, “About Damn Time” reached the Hot 100’s top 10 in its fourth week. 

In a move that shifted Lizzo’s promotional approach from that of a mid-level pop star to one that more closely mirrored a superstar’s, she tapped into how the song connected with audiences on an emotional and political level. Obviously, “About Damn Time” made people feel good, hence the cute dances that Lizzo would often stitch and repost on her official TikTok page. But she also knew that the song would make people feel empowered: In an April 8 TikTok, Lizzo used a snippet of “About Damn Time” to celebrate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. During her performance of the song at the 2022 BET Awards, Lizzo proclaimed, “It’s about damn time we stand in our power. Black people, my people.” This combination of marketing savvy and innate ability to make music that can mean different things to different audiences at different times resulted in “About Damn Time” becoming both Lizzo’s second Hot 100-topper in late July, and ultimately one of the defining hits of 2022.

When “About Damn Time” reached the pole position on the Hot 100, its parent album, Special, zoomed to a No. 2 finish on the Billboard 200. Although the set earned a less rapturous reception than its predecessor, Special earned the best first week of Lizzo’s career so far, with 69,000 units moved. Special debuted alongside “Lizzoverse,” a Twitch-streamed cosmic light show extravaganza that found Lizzo tapping into yet another media platform to expand the reach of her music and brand. 

Although Special was blocked from the top of the Billboard 200 by Bad Bunny’s monstrous Un Verano Sin Ti, the album’s strong performance proved that Lizzo had built herself a legion of fans that were guaranteed to show up for her, regardless of whether her albums were packed with buzzy guest artists. Special also spawned one more minor hit in “2 B Loved (Am I Ready),” which Lizzo spotlighted in a characteristically impressive performance in a medley with “Time” at the MTV Video Music Awards in August. Outside of hit singles, the Special campaign showed how deftly Lizzo could maneuver controversy after, she humbly changed a lyric in “Grrrls,” one of the set’s promotional singles, that was criticized as ableist.

Although the singles campaign for Special seemed to end with “2 B Loved,” Lizzo remained a leading pop culture figure in 2022, and she only continued to amass more cultural capital. In September, Lizzo embarked on her first headlining arena tour; the tour boasted openers such as Latto and Saucy Santana, two rappers who each turned 2022 into career-defining years, and surprise guests at different stops, including Missy Elliott (“Tempo”), Cardi B (“Rumors”), and SZA (“Special”). 

A week into the tour, Lizzo, a classically trained flautist, found herself at the center of a firestorm of controversy when she played James Madison’s 209-year-old crystal flute while twerking onstage. Ultimately, the controversy didn’t stick because, as the Library of Congress tweeted, Lizzo’s performance with the historic instrument was “not all that unusual.” In fact, the controversy did more to expose her detractors’ own misogynoir and fatphobia – and showed that the general public would be quick to come to Lizzo’s defense. Two weeks before she launched the Special Tour, Watch Out for the Big Grrrls took home three trophies at the Primetime Emmy Awards, lifting Lizzo halfway to EGOT status.

As 2022 drew to a close, Lizzo continued to rack up awards and nominations. She earned nods for herself and “About Damn Time” at the American Music Awards, as well as triumphs at the Soul Train Music Awards (best dance performance), MTV Video Music Awards (video for good), and the People’s Choice Awards (song of 2022). At the People’s Choice Awards, Lizzo used her acceptance speech for the People’s Champion award to uplift and amplify the marginalized voices of 17 activists including Tamika Palmer, the mother of the late Breonna Taylor. Yet again, Lizzo found a way to use her passion for activism and political empowerment to continue to transcend and reinvent what pop stardom can look like.

Closing out the year with the premiere of her Love, Lizzo documentary on HBO Max, a writing credit on SZA’s acclaimed SOS album, and five Grammy nominations including album, record, and song of the year, Lizzo ends 2022 a solidified capital-letters Pop Star — and it’s about damn time.