Tag Archives: pop music

YouTube has removed popular musician and remix artist Pogo’s anti-gay rant for hate speech violations after the clip went wildly viral and spawned headlines on dozens of news and music sites. Yesterday afternoon Pogo, whose real name is Nick Bertke, posted a response in which he claims that the entire rant, in which he celebrated the Pulse massacre, was some …

As longtime readers know, over the last decade I’ve posted many of Australian musician Nick Bertke’s truly amazing videos and even blogged about his ten-year banning from the US in 2011 for not having a valid work permit. Berkte’s clips typically get many millions of views. Bertke originally posted his innovative compositions on a YouTube channel titled “Fagottron” – leading …

Vice reports: Beyoncé is undeniably the most powerful force in pop culture. So it makes sense that someone decided to bring her music and philosophy into church, where it belongs. Broadly recently attended a jam-packed Beyoncé Mass held at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which was organized by reverend and theologian Yolanda Norton, who teaches a class on Beyoncé and …

Entertainment Weekly reports: Rami Malek is out from behind the computer and rocking the mic with style in the first trailer for Bohemian Rhapsody. In the upcoming Queen biopic, the Mr. Robot star takes on the role of legendary rocker Freddie Mercury. The journey to the big screen hasn’t been an easy one for Bohemian Rhapsody. First, after years of …

The BBC reports: A man stormed the stage while the UK’s entry, SuRie, was performing at the Eurovision Song Contest. SuRie was singing her song Storm when a man wearing a rucksack ran onto the stage, grabbed her microphone, and appeared to say: “Nazis of the UK media, we demand freedom.” He was swiftly dragged off stage and SuRie continued …

NBC News reports: Today, the EU is more fragile than at any point since its founding in 1993, and yet Eurovision is still one of the highest rated global events of the year, beating out more U.S.-centric events like the Oscars and the Super Bowl handily. Eurovision encourages songs to stay “universal” in their messaging.  But most that perform are …

The Guardian reports: The European Broadcasting Union has blocked a Chinese broadcaster from airing the Eurovision song contest after it edited out LGBT elements from an online stream of the semi-finals on Tuesday. Mango TV, a video-streaming site linked to one of China’s most watched channels, Hunan TV, blacked out the performance of Ireland’s Ryan O’Shaugnessy, during which two male …

The Wrap reports: TMZ executive producer and host Charles Latibeaudiere called out Kanye West as “an under-medicated, mentally unstable megalomaniac” after the rapper said slavery was “a choice” in an interview on Tuesday. “Since so many of you asked,” Latibeaudiere wrote in a series of tweets. “Yes, I was pissed about a lot of Kanye’s comments… especially the s— about …

The Wrap reports: President Donald Trump continued showing Kanye West love on Friday, tweeting out some fresh praise for the rapper who has vigorously embraced him in recent days. After a period of Twitter dormancy, Kanye has emerged in the last week as a vocal defender of Donald Trump, tweeting out increasingly brash statements of support for the president and …

The Guardian reports: ABBA have announced that they have written and recorded their first new songs since they split in 1982. The Swedish four-piece, who had nine No 1 hits in the UK between 1974 and 1980, and who have sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide, announced on Instagram that they had recorded two new songs for a project …

Variety reports: In the past, Janelle Monáe had been coy or quiet about her sexuality. But she certainly isn’t when talking about the issue in a new Rolling Stone cover story, in which she says she’s had relationships with both men and women and currently identifies as pansexual. “Being a queer black woman in America — someone who has been …

Billboard Magazine reports: Swedish DJ Avicii, real name Tim Bergling, died at age 28 on Friday, April 20, his publicist confirmed. “It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii,” his publicist Diana Baron said in a statement. “He was found dead in Muscat, Oman this Friday afternoon local time, April 20th. …

The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports: Carver County Attorney Mark Metz announced Thursday that he was closing the investigation into the death of musician Prince Rogers Nelson without issuing any criminal charges. Metz said county, state and federal investigators undertook an “extensive, painstaking and thorough” investigation but were unable to determine who provided Prince the fentanyl painkillers, disguised as counterfeit Percocet tablets, …

The Guardian reports: Morrissey has made an extraordinary – even by his standards – series of pronouncements in a new interview published on his website, attacking halal meat producers, Theresa May, Diane Abbott and Sadiq Khan, among others. Accusations of racism have long dogged Morrissey, who once referred to Chinese people as a “sub-species” and said that British identity was …

The BBC reports: Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst says she is HIV positive, and has been receiving regular treatment for “several years”. The 29-year-old star said she had intended to keep the information private, but an ex-boyfriend had “threatened to go public”. “I will not give anyone the right to frighten me and influence my life,” she wrote on Instagram. “Coming …

The New York Times reports: Shortly after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, Justice Antonin Scalia attended a party where he signaled his displeasure by singing Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” “He sang with great verve,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told The Washington Post at the time. Now Mr. Dylan himself is crooning about same-sex love. …

The New York Daily News reports: In the spirit of Holy Week, Jesse Hughes attempted to walk back his attack on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students. The Eagles of Death Metal front man blasted the March For Our Lives protests in now-deleted Instagram comments that accused the “pathetic and disgusting” students of “playing hooky at the expense of …

The Associated Press reports: A toxicology report from Prince’s autopsy, obtained by The Associated Press, shows he had what multiple experts called an “exceedingly high” concentration of fentanyl in his body when he died. Prince was 57 when he was found alone and unresponsive in an elevator at his Paisley Park estate on April 21, 2016. Public data released six …

The Eagles Of Death Metal are the American band that was onstage in November 2015 as terrorists opened fired at Paris’ Bataclan Theater, killing 89 people. Spin Magazine reports: Jesse Hughes, the frontman for Eagles of Death Metal, took to Instagram on Sunday for a lengthy, impassioned decrying Saturday’s March For Our Lives protests as well as the Parkland teens …

Variety reports: Phil Anschutz, chairman of the live music giant Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), has taken no small amount of criticism since it was revealed that his private family foundation had donated to organizations with anti-LGBT agendas. But today the Elton John AIDS Foundation announced that Anschutz has donated $1 million dollars to support its LGBT Fund. According to Freedom …