Puerto Rico statehood advocates optimistic about Biden administration
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Three Americans stabbed in Puerto Rico earlier this week while visiting a popular tourist area have been identified as tourists from South Carolina and Georgia.
Authorities in San Juan, Puerto Rico, say 37-year-old Wallace Alonso Florence and 39-year-old Carlos Sanchez Brown from South Carolina and 38-year-old Jackson Bradom Tremayne from Georgia were stabbed around 4 a.m. Monday, the New York Post reported.
The incident began when Brown started filming a hamburger cart in the La Perla neighborhood of San Juan made famous by the music video for Luis Fonsi’s hit song “Despacito.”
Some locals reportedly told the group to stop filming and one suspect, described as having fair skin and long white hair, allegedly assaulted Florence after the group continued filming.
PUERTO RICAN MAN SENTENCED FOR COMMITTING HATE CRIME AGAINST TRANSGENDER WOMAN
The group tried to flee the scene and head to the neighborhood of Old San Juan but soon realized they were being followed.
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At that point, an unknown individual with a knife attacked and stabbed the trio, slicing Brown once in the left forearm and stabbing Tremayne six times across his chest, arm and back.
TOURISTS IN EXOTIC TROPICAL DESTINATIONS VICTIMIZED BY CRIME, TRAVEL MISHAP HORROR STORIES IN 2022
Ahead of the release of their debut EP extra life, the duo discuss inspirations, secret enemies and their worst nightmares
crushed, in all the best ways, sound like your favourite song from a mid-90’s coming-of-age movie – something that makes complete sense when lead singer Bre Morell explains the band’s initial inspirations. “We said we should make a band that sounds like Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’,” she says over Zoom. The band’s new EP extra life (out February 10) serves as a fitting tribute to some of the finest pop tunes of the 1990s: lead single and standout track “waterlily” merges a trip-hop drum loop, aqueous guitar lines reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins, and chord progressions straight out of Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. The rest of extra life showcases a knack for crafting transcendent, melancholy alt-pop layered against lush soundscapes.
The duo came together in what turned out to be a “full circle moment”, according to vocalist Shaun Durkan. Having both been fans of each other’s work in previous bands [Soft Kill and Temple of Angels], Durkan got in touch with Morell to collaborate. “The thing that really stood out to me was her voice,” he tells Dazed. “I had a lot of song ideas, and things that I couldn’t do with the other bands that I was in, so I reached out.” We caught up with the band to talk about their inspirations, secret enemies and favourite artists.
Hey! I thought extra life was so great – how did you guys find the process of writing and recording your debut EP?
Bre Morell: What’s funny about these songs is that when Shaun and I wrote and recorded most of them, we hadn’t even met in person before. It came together with him in Portland and me being in LA. We had already written a handful of songs before we even met, we were just literally just talking online. We were just sending stuff back and forth, which was new for both of us.
What inspired the album, outside of musical sources?
Shaun Durkan: There are a lot of samples on the EP – we both play a lot of video games and so that informed a lot of it. We were absolutely obsessed with playing Elden Ring at the time we were writing and recording this – we probably talked 90 per cent about Elden Ring and then 10 per cent about the music when we were making the EP.
Bre Morell: Stardew Valley is another game that we started talking about before we even started writing music, we both really love that game. We included samples from both of those games in the songs, too.
How would you describe your sound?
Shaun Durkan: It’s hard to say because I think a lot of the music has this atmosphere that can be dark but romantic. It also has an optimistic and hopeful spirit to a lot of it.
Bre Morell: The meme Shaun made [see below] was perfect, that’s our answer. My two huge genres are Britpop and trip-hop. I feel like crushed intersects both things pretty well – it’s the lighter, fun poppier side of trip-hop like Sneaker Pimps, who I love a lot. I’ve always wanted to do a project like that, and I feel like we’re able to lean into that a bit here.
What adjective would you least like to be described as?
Bre Morell: The first thing that comes to my head is shoegaze. Also boring, I wouldn’t want to be called boring.
Shaun Durkan Retro.
Who is your nemesis?
Shaun Durkan: I can’t name them but I think I have one enemy; I made my first enemy this year. It’s an interesting and weird experience. Maybe I’ve been other people’s enemies and I just didn’t know it, but this is a very almost comic book-level rival. I can’t reveal the name.
Bre Morell: It would be sick if we did – they know who they are. They’re definitely gonna see this and read it.
If you could only listen to one musician for the rest of your life who would it be?
Shaun Durkan: First thing that comes to mind is My Bloody Valentine or also Kevin Shields’ soundtrack work – basically anything that Kevin Shields makes.
Bre Morell: The person who comes to mind for me is the person with the shortest discography: Jeff Buckley. I’ve pretty much been listening to Grace on repeat for 15 years. If I went for a longer discography, I feel almost the same way about Radiohead. If I wanted to be a little bit smarter, I might choose Radiohead but I could go either way. I could listen to Grace for the rest of my life and nothing else and I’d be perfectly happy.
What’s your weirdest internet obsession?
Bre Morell: I could just spend forever looking at stupid stuff on eBay that I’ll never buy, particularly Parappa the Rapper merchandise from the 90s that’s only available in Japan. I have a whole folder of saved shit that I’ll never buy, but I just enjoy looking at it.
Shaun Durkan: It’s usually just whatever video game I’m playing, I’m looking up whatever I can find about it on Reddit.
You encounter a hostile alien race and sound is their only mechanism for communication. What song would you play to them to inspire them to spare you and the rest of the human race?
Bre Morell: I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to be weird, but Shaun can vouch because I make everyone listen to this shit: it’s the Bulgarian Women’s State choir, the song is “Kalimankou Denkou”. It sounds like a good song to play for an alien. If you listen to it, I don’t know if you know it, but it’s such an incredibly beautiful song. Please listen to it, it’s so crazy. You’ll understand when you hear it – you’ll be like yeah, aliens would probably dig this.
Shaun Durkan: Aliens would love “Barely Breathing” by Duncan Sheik, it would soothe them!
extra life is out February 10
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We’re always highlighting great new music added to the Double J playlist.
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Break out the glitter ball because Jake Shears is ready to dazzle.
The Scissor Sisters frontman is releasing his second solo album later this year, it’s called Last Man Dancing and he describes it as the “ultimate house party.”
“Electro-pop, tech-house, poppers-fueled disco, it’s MY afters and YOU just got the address,” he says. “We can be as loud and late as we want.” Sounds good, right?
Well, we already have an invitation in the form of lead single ‘Too Much Music’. It’s a big disco-pop banger, complete with a rubbery bassline, string stabs, a floor-filling groove and a Broadway-scale choir. And as you might expect, that song title is a bait-and-switch.
‘There can never be too much music for me‘ Shears sings, elongating that ‘be’ with his melismatic falsetto.
It’s a big, glamorous blockbuster of a track that fits snugly in step with the current disco revival (think Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, our own Kylie Minogue) and doubles as a homage to the trailblazers of the ’70s and ’80s.
Speaking of Kylie, she’s one of several big names on the guestlist for Shears’ new album.
Alongside Ms. Minogue, you’ll hear from New Orleans’ Queen of Bounce Big Freedia (fresh from being sampled on Beyoncé’s ‘BREAK MY SOUL’), Amber Martin, Le Chev as well as cameos from Iggy Pop and Jane Fonda.
We’re anticipating some kind of spoken word segues or skits, with Shears saying the follow-up to his 2018 self-titled album has a bit of a narrative concept.
“Presented in two distinct halves, it chronicles a night’s journey from sing-along dance anthems into the deeper, darker corners of my living room.”
We’re also enjoying the album cover, ‘cos who doesn’t enjoy a visual gag.
Last Man Dancing is out Friday 2 June.
Check out Double J’s Best New Music playlists on Spotify and Apple Music for more great new tunes.
Wet Leg are now double Grammy Award winners, capping a meteoric rise for the Isle of Wight duo since their emergence in 2020.
Flanked by guitarist Josh Omead Mobaraki, bassist Ellis Durand and drummer Henry Holmes, the core duo of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers appeared stunned as they picked up the gongs for Best Alternative Music Album, for last year’s Wet Leg, and Best Alternative Music Performance, for ‘Chaise Longue’.
“What are we doing here?” said Teasdale, as they collected the latter. “I don’t know, but here we are.” The band, who in their own words started out as “a bit of a joke” in 2019, were apparently not the only ones taken aback by the surprise success, given that they faced stiff competition across both categories from the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Big Thief, Björk, Florence + the Machine and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Love Wet Leg. New bands are exciting, so why not give the Grammy to the exciting new band? It’s pop music.
There was, though, plenty of support for the pair on social media. “Love Wet Leg,” said A. C. Newman, leader of Canadian indie rock stalwarts The New Pornographers, on Twitter. “New bands are exciting, so why not give the Grammy to the exciting new band? It’s pop music.” On a similar note, Josh Gardner, commissioning editor of Guitar.com, said: “Find it weird that so many people seem annoyed that Wet Leg won the Best Alternative Album of 2022 at the Grammys last night, when it was – by some distance – the Best Alternative Album of 2022.”
Find it weird that so many people seem annoyed that Wet Leg won the Best Alternative Album of 2022 at the Grammys last night, when it was – by some distance – the Best Alternative Album of 2022.
“LOL, are the indie boys pissed off that Wet Leg won awards and beat their darlings?” tweeted Debbie M, under the handle @heavenstobetsie. “Good.” She appeared to be referring to a backlash from fans of Arctic Monkeys, who were nominated in the Best Alternative Music Performance Category for ‘There’d Better Be a Mirrorball’. “So glad to see Wet Leg win these Grammys,” added Jen Chaney, TV critic at Vulture. “That album is just so great.”
So glad to see Wet Leg win these Grammys. That album is just so great.
The band themselves had been on typically self-deprecating form on the red carpet ahead of the ceremony, reflecting on their recent support slots to Harry Styles in Los Angeles by revealing how they reacted when they heard he wanted them to open the show: “he must be thinking of the band Let Weg.” Now, Styles and the band will have four Grammys between them after last night’s awards, when they team up for the next European leg of Styles’ ‘Love On Tour’ this summer.
As the 65th Grammy Awards ceremony aired Sunday, during which music fans watched for a showdown between mega performers like Adele, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar for the night’s top honors.
The ceremony, which aired at 8 p.m. ET on CBS, will be hosted by Trevor Noah for the third year in a row.
Actress Viola Davis won a Grammy for the recording of the audiobook for her memoir, “Finding Me,” making her the third Black woman in history and the 18th ever to earn an EGOT—An Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
All eyes were on Beyoncé: She has won 41 Grammys, is nominated for nine, and needed three more to tie, or four more to earn the record for most overall wins in Grammys history (she is tied with her husband Jay-Z for the most nominations, with 88).
So far, has Beyoncé won three awards: Best Traditional R&B Performance (”Plastic Off The Sofa”), Best Dance/Electronic Recording (“Break My Soul”) and Best R&B song (“Cuff It”).
What To Watch For
Kacey Musgraves, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, and Quavo will perform during the “in memoriam” segment. Watch for a performance dedicated to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, when the likes of Missy Elliot, Future, Lil Wayne, Run-D.M.C., Salt-N-Pepa and Spinderella, Queen Latifa and other legends will share the stage. Other performers include Bad Bunny, Lizzo and Harry Styles.
Nominees
Find the full list of nominees for the 91 awards here.
Record Of The Year: “Don’t Shut Me Down,” ABBA; “Easy On Me,” Adele; “Break My Soul,” Beyoncé; “Good Morning Gorgeous,” Mary J. Blige; “You And Me On The Rock,” Brandi Carlile; “Woman,” Doja Cat; “Bad Habit,” Steve Lacy; “The Heart Part 5,” Kendrick Lamar; “About Damn Time,” Lizzo; “As It Was,” Harry Styles
Album Of The Year: Voyage, ABBA; 30, Adele; Un Verano Sin Ti, Bad Bunny; Renaissance, Beyoncé; Good Morning Gorgeous (Deluxe), Mary J, Blige; In These Silent Days, Brandi Carlile; Music Of The Spheres, Coldplay; Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Kendrick Lamar; Special, Lizzo; Harry’s House, Harry Styles
Song Of The Year: “abcdefu,” Gayle; “About Damn Time,” Lizzo;“All Too Well (10 Min. Version) (Taylor’s Version),” Taylor Swift; “As It Was,” Harry Styles; “Break My Soul,” Beyoncé; “Easy On Me,” Adele; “God Did,” DJ Khaled; “The Heart Part 5,” Kendrick Lamar; “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt
Best New Artist: Anitta, Omar Apollo, Måneskin, DOMi & JD Beck, Latto, Muni Long, Wet Leg, Molly Tuttle, Tobe Nwigwe, Samara Joy
Best Pop Solo Performance: “Easy On Me,” Adele; “Moscow Mule,” Bad Bunny, “Woman,” Doja Cat; “Bad Habit,” Steve Lacy; “About Damn Time,” Lizzo; “As It Was,” Harry Styles
Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: “Don’t Shut Me Down,” ABBA; “Bam Bam,” Camila Cabello feat. Ed Sheeran; “My Universe,” Coldplay feat. BTS; “I Like You (A Happier Song),” Post Malone and Doja Cat; “Unholy,” Sam Smith feat. Kim Petras
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album: Higher, Michael Bublé (WINNER); When Christmas Comes Around…, Kelly Clarkson; I Dream of Christmas (Extended), Norah Jones; Evergreen, Pentatonix; Thank You, Diana Ross
Best Pop Vocal Album:Voyage, ABBA; 30, Adele; Music Of The Spheres, Coldplay; Special, Lizzo; Harry’s House, Harry Styles (WINNER)
Key Background
This year’s Album Of The Year contest mirrored 2017’s, when Beyonce’s Lemonade was up against Adele’s 25. Adele won, and said during her acceptance speech that, “I can’t possibly accept this award, and I’m very humbled, and I’m very grateful and gracious, but the artist of my life is Beyoncé.” Lemonade, “was just so monumental… and so well thought out, and so beautiful and soul-bearing, and we all got to see another side to you that you don’t always let us see… I love you, I always have, and I always will,” Adele said. To be eligible for the awards, music had to be released between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023. Still, some of the biggest songs from that time period are noticeably missing from the nominations, including work from Silk Sonic, Drake and The Weeknd, who opted not to submit for consideration.
Further Reading
Beyoncé Dominates 2023 Grammy Nominations—Will Face Off With Adele Again (Forbes)
Adele Vs. Beyoncé: Here Are The Oddsmakers’s Picks For Top Grammy Awards (Forbes)
Silk Sonic Drops Out Of Grammys Consideration—Avoids Faceoff With Beyoncé And Adele (Forbes)
Pink just released her newest music video for her song ‘TRUSTFALL’, and it is everything.
In the video, the singer, 43, flaunts her toned abs in a cut-out top, and her sculpted legs in a short skirt.
Pink works hard in her training and workout sessions, and she stays super active in her daily life.
Wake up and rush to your nearest laptop or phone, everyone. Pink just dropped her latest music video masterpiece, and it is delivering on *all* fronts.
The“So What” singer is up to her usual tricks in the video, performing acrobatics and standing on top of a very tall building as she dances around to her new song“TRUSTFALL.”
Pink sounds really great in the video, and it’s hard to miss how super toned she is as she rocks a cut-out black top with red gloves.
“TRUSTFALL official video out now!!! I am in LOVE with this piece of brilliance…” she captioned the post. “AND I feel very lucky to have collaborated again with the incomparable @georgia__hudson – who I think is an absolute genius and swims in her own beautiful pond… NOT TO MENTION the ONE and ONLY @ryan.heffington PUT HIS SPIRIT IN MY BODY. THATS WORTH FALLING FOR. #trustfall.”
Obviously, people were psyched to see Pink’s latest project and filled up the comments with flame emojis and hearts to let her know how they felt. “So powerful … we all needed it ,” wrote one fan. Another added, “It is SOOOO BEAUTIFUL! Thank you for always being so incredible and powerful. .”
Of course, Pink is known for delivering a strong dose of empowerment alongside her cool music videos and performances, so this doesn’t come as a total shock.
If you’re wondering what the pop star does to get so incredibly toned, Women’s Health has the answers. For starters, Pink is truly always on the move and she’s also an athlete.
Specifically, she works with fitness coach Jeanette Jenkins on some intense cardio-sculpting workouts.
“Alecia is one of the hardest working women I’ve ever met,” Jeanette said about Pink in an Instagram caption. “When we first started training, she was shooting a movie, recording a new album, learning how to be a new mom, working on getting her body back into top condition so she could deliver her fans an incredible tour.”
The workouts (which Jenkins features on her YouTube btw) include moves like mountain climbers, jumping jack-squat combos, and one-legged squats, all at a pretty quick pace to get the heart rate going.
Pink also incorporates athletic activities into her regular life. Here, she’s bragging about her “thunder thighs” while wakeboarding. But this activity requires some serious quad and core strength:
She absolutely crushes her roller skate choreography in her“Never Gonna Not Dance Again” music video, which is no easy feat.
And let’s not forget the aerial gymnastics Pink pops out on tour (and in this IG video). This kind of twirling around in the air is a total core-burner.
Pink is confident about her body, and she puts in lots of work to stay super strong. She remembered a time during a fitting in an interview with Billboard when she didn’t want to wear anything to show off her new curves.
Reflecting back, she said, “I was so thin. That’s what we do to ourselves, and we should stop it… I look f****** awesome.”
Heck, yes, Pink. You go, girl!
Try 200+ at home workout videos from Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Prevention, and more on All Out Studio free for 14 days!
Primary Wave Music has struck what it says is a ‘multimillion-dollar deal’ with singer, songwriter, and producer Stevie Van Zandt.
According to the announcement, the company says it will manage the artist’s music publishing and recorded music catalogs, as well as a portion of his name and likeness rights.
Terms of the deal also include a stake in producer royalties from Van Zandt’s work with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, along with band member and producer royalties from his long collaboration with Bruce Springsteen.
Amongst this work includes albums such as The River and Born In The U.S.A., as well as songs like Hungry Heart, Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark, Born in the U.S.A., and more.
For more than five decades, Stevie Van Zandt’s songs have been performed by such stars as Nancy Sinatra, Meat Loaf, Ronnie Spector, Damian Marley, Brian Setzer, Michael Monroe, Gary U.S. Bonds, Jimmy Barnes, Black Uhuru, and many others.
Highlights of the deal include some of the artist’s biggest hits, among them Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ I Don’t Want To Go Home and This Time It’s For Real, and I Am A Patriot (famously covered by Jackson Browne, Pearl Jam, and others), and the theme song for his 2019 Netflix series, Lilyhammer, and Darlene Love’s holiday hit, All Alone On Christmas (the latter featured in such films as Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Love Actually).
According to a press release, terms of the deal also include access to Primary Wave’s marketing team and publishing infrastructure, which includes digital strategy, licensing, synch opportunities, and film & TV production.
The news marks the latest deal for Primary Wave and comes two weeks after the company acquired the music rights of Robby Krieger and the late Ray Manzarek of the legendary US rock band, The Doors.
“They have an incredible track record for being creative and proactive. Looking forward to seeing what kind of fun we can have with these songs I’m still really proud of.”
Steve Van Zandt
“Couldn’t be more excited to explore this partnership with Larry and Primary Wave,” says Van Zandt.
“They have an incredible track record for being creative and proactive. Looking forward to seeing what kind of fun we can have with these songs I’m still really proud of.”
We couldn’t be more excited to have him join the Primary Wave family and our team is ready to dig in to this incredible catalog.”
Samantha Rhulen, Primary Wave Music
Samantha Rhulen, SVP, Business & Legal Affairs at Primary Wave Music, said: “Stevie’s legendary career speaks for itself.
“His talent as a songwriter and producer is renowned. We couldn’t be more excited to have him join the Primary Wave family and our team is ready to dig in to this incredible catalog.”
Other deals struck by Primary Wave include the acquisition in November of the copyrights to hit Whitney Houston songs as part of a deal for about 60 songs written by songwriters Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill, of American pop-music duo Boy Meets Girl.
In October, Primary Wave struck a $2 billion deal with financial giant Brookfield, which included the acquisition of a minority stake in Primary Wave and Brookfield investing $1.7 billion into a new “permanent capital vehicle”.
As MBW reported in October, Primary Wave still has a little over $1 billion in unspent Brookfield investment after an initial $700 million was spent acquiring some rights from Primary Wave’s Fund 1 and Fund 2.
(Fund 3 was born in 2021. MBW’s sources suggest it was backed with $800 million in capital. The launch of Fund 3 coincided with a $375 million investment into Primary Wave by Oaktree Capital.)
The new “permanent capital vehicle” is essentially a fourth fund – in which Primary Wave itself is a minority ownerMusic Business Worldwide
It happens again and again on Shania Twain’s new album, Queen of Me, only her second new release in the past two decades: a vocal touch, a melodic cadence, or a lyrical stratagem that makes one think, “Wow, it sure seems like Shania’s been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift.”
On “Best Friend,” it’s the intimate details of mildly scandalous barroom antics: “Let’s go out to Vegas/ I bet they hate us/ At that casino bar/ But it made us who we are.” On “Brand New,” it’sTwain’s sudden vocal swoop upwards on “you’ll,” followed by a cascade of jammed-together words on the descent—“always-be-the-same-old-you”—capped with the triumphant proclamation, “But I’m a brand new me!” On “Waking Up Dreaming,” the exhortation to “dress up crazy like superstars” can’t help but summon a certain someone wanting to “dress up like hipsters” back in 2013. Much less charmingly, it’s also the way the clunky title track couches its forced self-affirmations in shouty unison vocals, echoing Swift’s cringey 2019 single “Me!”
Some of these borrowed new clothes suit the former country-pop empress better than others, at the age of 57. But set that aside for a moment and appreciate the sound of Twain, at long last, reclaiming what she is owed.
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It’s not simply that Swift and innumerable other younger artists across genres adopted a whole repertoire of stylistic gestures from Twain’s enormous late 1990s hits, like her conversational lyrics and her tendency to punctuate songs with sassy spoken interjections, laughter, or pauses for dramatic effect. Last year, Harry Styles brought Twain on stage with him at Coachella; he’s said that thanks to his mom’s fandom, he counts the Canadian-born country star as one of his North Stars of music and fashion. A few months later, one of England’s most interesting young cross-genre pop creators, Rina Sawayama, lifted Twain’s classic salvo, “Let’s go, girls!” to launch her single “This Hell,” and had an in-depth chat with the icon for Rolling Stone. The year before, Twain teamed with the masked queer Canadian crooner Orville Peck for a song and video. And the list of Twain’s Millennial and Gen-Z acolytes does not end there.
But more broadly, as Swift herself has always acknowledged, the whole template for careers like Swift’s was set by Twain. They both began as prodigies in their hometowns and arrived in Nashville as outsiders. Despite chauvinistic opposition, each came to dominate country music on her own terms, forging non-traditional sounds and images while insisting on writing her own material. Each then pivoted towards pop and global, multimedia superstardom, in Twain’s case partly in the footsteps of Dolly Parton but even more ambitiously on the mainstream models of Michael Jackson, Madonna, or Bruce Springsteen. (Twain even brought aboard Springsteen’s longtime manager.)
It’s hard to comprehend today the sheer scale of Twain’s commercial success, coming as it did during the peak CD era, when music still made real money. From 1995 to 2002, she became the only solo woman artist ever to release three consecutive “diamond”-certified albums, meaning they each sold more than 10 million copies. Her 1997 album Come On Over,with 12 singles among its 16 songs, is by most accounts still the best-selling album by any solo woman artist ever in the U.S. and worldwide, and among or near the top 10 best-selling albums, period. It was only last year that Swift finally surpassed Twain’s record for cumulative weeks atop the Billboard country-album chart.
Twain’s larger cultural impact is less easy to quantify. She stood alongside Garth Brooks in revolutionizing country’s sound and sensibility in the 1990s, dispensing with most of the previous obligatory down-home trappings and making it more arena-ready, with the kinds of big studio productions and stage spectacles that prevail in the genre to this day.
Of course, they weren’t the first country artists ever to cross over to pop. For Twain, another key precedent might be 1970s Olivia Newton-John, whose ability to find new directions in country-pop might partly have stemmed from her distance, as an Australian, from Nashville insularity. Twain had that kind of perspective too: As a Canadian from northern Ontario, she was enough of a stranger to the scene that when she arrived in Tennessee, she was surprised to find that people there actually spoke in Southern accents. She’d thought that was just a Hollywood invention. (As a fellow Canadian, I’d bet she was misled by how many of our country-singing compatriots do fake a twang, consciously or not.)
Twain’s attempt to adapt to Nashville thinking lasted only as long as it took to make a 1993 debut album full of second-string material by Music Row writers. It pretty much ended when she decided to bare her midriff in the video for the album’s first single, with figures like Madonna and Janet Jackson on her mind. Coming up in clubs and hotel revue shows in Ontario, Twain had performed and listened to plenty of styles beyond country, and she wanted to bring it all to bear.
Like Brooks, Twain started importing the mainstream-rock sensibilities of the previous decade to country. In her case, the import was literal, through her partnership with (and soon marriage to) South African-born producer “Mutt” Lange, previously better known for his work with AC/DC and Def Leppard. This got Lange mistaken for a string-pulling Svengali, while Twain’s songwriting was discounted, the way it often was for Parton before her and for Swift after her. But as demo recordings and collaborators attest, the couple contributed roughly equally to the core material: The studio arrangements were Lange’s, while most of the melodies, lyrics, and zeitgeist were Twain’s.
Her songs were first and foremost delivered as a woman for other women, translating the approaches of country forbears like Loretta Lynn and Reba McEntire for a more youthful and cosmopolitan audience. She was country’s representative among the pantheon of 1990s divas, as evidenced by her appearance in the first VH1 Divas special in 1998, alongside Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey, and godmother figures Carole King and Aretha Franklin. Much more than someone like Dion, though, the insouciant sex-positivity and stress on personal autonomy in Twain’s music partook of the prevailing mood of third-wave feminism, however much she might avoid the term. Her version lay somewhere on the spectrum between Lilith Fair and the bubblegum girl-power of the Spice Girls.
For Nashville, that was more than subversive enough. There was abundant carping from traditionalists. But she didn’t get much more of a break from self-styled country nonconformists—outlaw songwriter Steve Earle notoriously called Twain “the highest-paid lapdancer in Nashville”—or from music critics, who slammed her as manufactured and manipulative. It was true that Twain put no premium on authenticity and self-expression. If she wrote a song full of truly personal meaning, as she told Rolling Stone in 2003, she’d prefer to keep it to herself, and move on to something more universally appealing. That interview was around the release of Up, an album where maniacal marketing morphed into a kind of bizarro experimentalism, as it came in three different versions—country, pop, and “international,” meaning a Bollywood-accented remix, for a time when bhangra was trendy and South Asian sounds were appearing in rap and dance productions like Missy Elliott’s with Timbaland. No matter, it went diamond too.
That Twain and Lange’s work managed to convey so much personality while holding the genuinely personal at a distance is part of its camp appeal, helping to spawn her loyal LGBTQ fanbase. (They probably also read more than she’d anticipated into the gender play of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”, and the ever-changing costumed personae of her music videos.) But her withholding stance also came from a working-class ethic that being an entertainer is above all a job; in her prime Twain was easily one of the hardest-working women in showbiz.And on another level, I think, it served as self-protection.
This is the sense in which Twain’s path actually seems worlds away from Taylor Swift’s. The story was told and retold from the start of her career of Twain’s upbringing in poverty in the northern mining town of Timmins, Ont., of her mother having her sing as a child in local bars for tips, and of the death of her parents in an accident in her early 20s, which left her supporting her younger siblings. (As a result she was already entering her 30s when she made it to Nashville.) It emerged only gradually how violent and abusive that home truly had been, and only much later that her alcoholic stepfather’s abuse was also sexual.
So perhaps there was a more charged undercurrent to the way her songs lightheartedly engaged the “battle of the sexes.” But she wasn’t about to divulge that in the music. In a 1998 interview, talking about her adolescent discomfort with her sexuality, and her relatively tepid libido as an adult, she said, “I’ve got a song on [Come On Over] called ‘If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask!’ … I could have made it a much deeper, darker song. But that’s not the way I go.”
This urge to sidestep the really hard stuff is at once the grace and the flaw in all the karaoke-ready anthems and sentimental ballads of Twain’s peak. Perhaps it was inevitable that something had to give way. In the mid-2000s, living in her and Lange’s mansion in Switzerland, not long after she became a mother, Twain developed dysphonia, meaning that she lost her ability to sing. It was eventually diagnosed as a neurological symptom of Lyme disease, and treated with surgeries, but that took years. Meanwhile, she found out that Lange was having an affair with her best friend, and the marriage imploded. That crisis brought her close to that friend’s ex-husband, who she in turn would eventually marry.
In the ensuing chaos, Twain all but disappeared from the music world. She would show up sometimes on duets with other artists or as a presenter on an awards show, and she had an eccentric reality series on the Oprah channel. As her voice strengthened, she made the ultimate aging-diva move and took up a residency in Las Vegas, where she performed from 2012 to 2014. And in contrast with her years of guardedness, in 2011 she published a memoir.
But it was not until 2017 that she finally released a new album, her first body of work without Lange since her first record. It was called Now. And despite an audible tug-of-war between Twain’s evolving impulses, between privacy and self-disclosure, it was more vulnerable than any of her past work. That confiding tone was sometimes tricky to take in, though, because Twain’s post-Lyme voice was much altered. It was noticeably lower, and in places conspicuously processed in ways that could be off-putting to someone seeking the sparkle of Twain’s past. The same was true of the stripped-down feel of the production, which couldn’t match the crackling perfection of the Lange years, but inventively investigated up-to-date alternatives. In retrospect, the album seems underappreciated.
It’s hard to guess whether Queen of Me is, partly, Twain’s over-corrective reaction to that reception. It’s certainly explicit in its ambition to get back to the self-empowering tone fans are supposed to love. “Enough of that dreary self-pitying stuff,” it seems to declare. Don’t mistake me, I have no desire to confine Twain to confessionals, nor to the tabloid-baiting techniques that Swift so long made her specialty, which I often wish the younger star would leave behind. But Twain ricocheting back to the themes of her greatest hits, especially after the two decades of self-empowerment pop she left in her wake, feels overly self-conscious and redundant. She’s said that she wrote four albums’ worth of material during the pandemic. If only she hadn’t decided to select the most pandering parts.
The album opens, for instance, with a proudly dumb party anthem called “Giddy Up!” (making sure to use an exclamation mark, in classic Shania style). Twain pretty much invented the drunken bachelorette banger, which plenty of lesser, sillier songs imitated (along with a precious few very smart ones), and now she’s imitating them in turn. Elsewhere, such as on “Queen of Me” and the kiss-off “Pretty Liar”—which strains to conjure a double entendre out of repeating “your pants are on fire”—the empowerment clichés accumulate to near Meghan Trainor levels. And “Number One” may be a passable love song, but the way it’s recorded here, in a blind listen I’d never have guessed it was Shania Twain.
There are spots where it all comes together. Along with a few of the songs I mentioned at the top of this piece, “Not Just a Girl” effortlessly conveys the wit and spark that’s missing from most of the album’s acts of self-assertion, seeming to address at once a current partner and the critics who sniped at Twain in her heyday. And “Inhale/Exhale Air,” inspired by Twain’s own near-fatal bout of COVID-19, is a sincerely eccentric tribute to breathing and all the other things air does for us—filling balloons, making champagne bubbles, giving us a place to throw up our hands. I find it irresistible, like some kind of perversely sunny flip side to Talking Heads’ perversely grim “Air” from 1979’s Fear of Music, where David Byrne paranoiacally advises, “Some people say not to worry about the air/ Some people never had experience with air!”
Unlike Now, though, Queen of Me lacks a tonal center. Twain hasn’t returned to the producers who served her fairly well on the previous album, primary among them Ron Aniello, Springsteen’s own most consistent studio hand in the past decade. Instead she has a scattershot group of industry hired guns, mostly from the U.K., and what comes out is a vague array of attempts at contemporaryish country-pop that averages out to “kinda-sorta Taylor.” In which case, like her near-contemporaries the Chicks on their last album, maybe she would have been better off just calling in Jack Antonoff himself.
All of which makes me reflect not only on what place today’s Twain might find in the world that she helped make, but on how much was lost in the period she withdrew from the field. How much might her continuing presence have helped to stave off the re-machoization of country in the Bush era, which led first to the Chicks’ expulsion from the genre and then to the entrenchment of “bro country,” which all but shuts women out of mainstream country radio to this day? What kind of further sonic hybrids might she have helped nurture, maybe preparing the way for a world where country would never have reacted with such shock to the novelty of “Old Town Road” a few years ago? Let alone the fact that she missed her chance to make an album with Prince. Prince!
Twain herself would probably shut down that kind of what-if speculation with a who-the-hell-knows shrug. She’d ask me to focus instead on realities like her upcoming tour, with a roster of new-generation opening talent such as Kelsea Ballerini and Mickey Guyton. Whatever she’s come through, and whatever might have been, Twain’s always wanted to be where the action is, and that’s always from this moment on.
The Daily POP Crosswords is a daily puzzle game that challenges players to fill in the blanks of a crossword puzzle with words and phrases related to pop culture. Players can test their knowledge of current events, movies, music, and more while enjoying a classic word game format. The game is available online and can be played anytime, anywhere, making it an accessible and convenient form of entertainment for crossword enthusiasts of all ages. Below, you’ll find the answers to the Daily Pop Crossword for February 4 2023 below!
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Travel for most of us falls into two categories: vacations and trips.
Vacations are when daily life has you stressed to the max, so you arrive at your destination to relax and do as little as possible the entire time you’re there.
Trips are when you think you may be at a special place only once in your life, so you rush around trying to cram in as many activities, excursions and photo ops as possible.
Each approach comes with its own problems. Vacationers often spend the first few days of their time off unwinding and the last few days thinking about the problems waiting for their return. People on comprehensive, don’t-miss-anything trips can be so exhausted by the last day that they feel they need a vacation.
What is slow travel?
The good news is there’s a new form of travel popular among the 50-plus set that hits a happy medium between these two extremes. It’s called slow travel.
Inspired by the slow food movement that began in Italy in the 1980s as a reaction to the proliferation of fast food restaurants, slow travel started, well, slowly. It has accelerated significantly since the COVID pandemic turned travel upside down and Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, the world’s first hotel school, expects it to grow 10% a year.
Slow travel emphasizes staying in one place long enough to personally connect with the local people, culture, food and even music. While purists advocate avoiding touristy spots in favor of locations more off the beaten path, there are no hard and fast rules. You decide where, how, and for what period of time to apply these basic principles:
Travel independently. With large, organized tours, participants travel together, lodge together and eat together. Historical context and architectural highlights are selected by one person, the tour guide. While slow travel can involve small-group tours within specific geographic areas, the goal is to enable travelers to independently participate in a rich and meaningful experience.
Stay, eat, and buy local. Forego the international chains and book your stay in a locally owned hotel, B&B, or Airbnb Tap into the knowledge of guides and drivers with deep roots in the community. Sample regional delicacies in a restaurant where you’re the only foreigner in sight. Cherish the skill of the indigenous weaver who crafted the embroidered poncho you just purchased. Insider tip:Look into the possibility of house sitting for a local family. In exchange for keeping an eye on their home and probably caring for a pet, you’ll have free accommodations and maybe even the use of a vehicle.
Don’t overschedule. Forget about bouncing from attraction to attraction snapping photos all day every day in a whirlwind “greatest hits” frenzy. With slow travel you purposely leave gaps in your itinerary to be spontaneous, perhaps by planning one activity and leaving the rest of the day to freely explore. Or resisting the urge to “stay on schedule” by leaving an entire day open.
Don’t miss: This 82-year-old woman ended up traveling alone in France for 3 weeks, and it turned out pretty great
Why to consider slow travel
Richer experiences. Have you ever found yourself looking at travel photos trying to figure out where the heck you were? Or what you are even looking at? And you’ve only been home a week?
Savoring each day. Having stories to tell for years to come about a meal shared in a local’s home. Remembering the taste of the fresh artisanal goat cheese you bought at a small farm. Returning home energized instead of exhausted. That’s slow travel.
How to be a slow traveler
Richer experiences. Have you ever found yourself looking at travel photos trying to figure out where the heck you were? Or what you are even looking at? And you’ve only been home a week?
Savoring each day. Having stories to tell for years to come about a meal shared in a local’s home. Remembering the taste of the fresh artisanal goat cheese you bought at a small farm. Returning home energized instead of exhausted. That’s slow travel.
Cheaper trips. It might seem counterintuitive that an extended stay in one place might save you money. Often the biggest travel expense is getting to and from your destination. The more stops you make, the more money you spend. Besides minimizing transportation costs, multiweek stays frequently come with substantial discounts. Airbnb has a dedicated site for bookings longer than 27 days with savings of 30% or more versus the daily rate. Insider tip:Don’t be shy about asking the host for an even better rate, especially if the calendar for the listing is empty. A “no” costs you nothing.
Relaxed pace. What slow travel definitely is not is “speed traveling” for a longer period of time. Especially for older travelers, it’s important to pencil in adequate rest and relaxation between activities to avoid burnout.
As full-time travelers for the past several years, we’ve practiced slow travel without knowing it was a “thing.” The benefits were evident during a recent European visit when we spent two weeks each in Lisbon, Madrid, Bordeaux and Paris.
A more leisurely pace in these popular cities with tons of attractions allowed us to take in all the sights, randomly wander through interesting neighborhoods, and guiltlessly do nothing on days we needed to rest. Sometimes we planned our own outings, but when it made more sense, we didn’t hesitate to book a guided excursion. Purists we are not!
If slow travel sounds intriguing, here are some ideas to get you started:
Set a leisurely pace. Looking to visit a bucket list destination? Decide what you want to see and do, then figure out the shortest amount of time your trip would take if you were in nonstop attack mode. Then either increase the length of your travel (if possible, double it), or scale back your itinerary.
Choose dates wisely. Consider planning your slow travel during “shoulder season,” the period between peak and off-peak months. In most areas of the world this is the spring and fall. Crowds are gone, the weather is glorious and prices are lower. More of that, please!
Pick affordable spots. Are your vacation days or budget limited? Narrow your list of potential destinations to places where you can enjoy an immersive experience without a major investment of time or money. We spent a month in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a popular retirement spot, last autumn and had a blast touring the Amish countryside and nearby historical sites.
See:Off-season travel can save you money, but there’s more than just weather data to consider
A different approach
Twenty years ago “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” sounded like a great idea. However, many of us have concluded that passport stamp collecting is too exhausting a hobby to continue pursuing.
Slow travel focuses more on custom designing the journey. It’s truly a metaphor for a different approach to life: Take your time. Be present. Connect to your surroundings. Practice environmental consciousness. Create meaningful moments.
Read next: Don’t let technology issues ruin your trip abroad: Here’s a list of travel-tech do’s and don’ts
If you are ready to make your future travel adventures more memorable, relaxed and enjoyable, join us on the road slow traveled.
Edd and Cynthia Staton write about retirement, expat living and health and wellness. They are authors of three bestselling books and creators of Retirement Reimagined!, an online program to help people considering the retirement option of moving abroad. Visit them at eddandcynthia.com.
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