Muna Mixes Sexy Club Jams With Empowering Singalongs, Rock Star Swagger: Concert Review

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Grace Jones was one of the most iconic artists of the early ‘80s, with a boldly androgynous and prescient image and string of brilliant albums with a pioneering sound and expertly curated covers that fused R&B, new wave and reggae into a fusion that has been echoed everywhere from Rihanna to Massive Attack and beyond. Now 75, she’s continued performing but hasn’t released an album since 2008, and seemed to drop below the radar for all but her fanbase, influencees and the LGBTQ and Pitchfork audiences until the past few years, when the brilliance of her “Warm Leatherette,” “Nightclubbing” and “Living My Life” albums became even more undeniable. Yet even fans who’d seen her shows in the past probably were not prepared for the eye-popping, mind-blowing concert she staged as part of Blue Note Jazz Festival at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Wednesday night, which mere words cannot do justice. At 75, her always-deep voice sounds as great as ever, her outfits and staging are as provocative as ever, and she could give Mick Jagger a literal run for his money in terms of fitness and dexterity at a certain age. Best of all, for all her hauteur, diva-tude and icon status, she never takes herself too seriously and every outfit, headdress, and staging touch had an undercurrent of humor that’s sadly lacking in most artists — and her stage banter is absolutely hilarious, although the humor often lay less in what she was saying than the way she said it (although lines like “Why do you need a dick if you’ve got a dildo?” land in a multitude of contexts).

Jordan Moreau Hayley Williams, the lead singer of rock band Paramore, and Lil Uzi Vert, the Philly rapper behind “Just Wanna Rock” and more, have been fans of each other for a long time, but it wasn’t until Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden that they finally met. The mutual adoration started in January 2016 when Uzi posted a video of himself on Twitter singing along with Paramore’s hit song “Ain’t It Fun.” At the time, Uzi was still an up-and-coming rapper with a few catchy tracks under his belt, but Williams must have taken note. Over the years, they traded compliments for each other — Uzi named her his dream collaboration and that “there’s no one better than Hayley Williams” in a recent Complex interview, and Williams revealed the two had talked about a collab that never came to fruition — until the two took the stage together in New York City.

Jessica Biel has reunited with her on-screen sister Beverley Mitchell!

David and Victoria Beckham are celebrating a fun night out with their family.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “It’s been about 25 years since I stood on this stage,” since Shania Twain, not long after the kickoff to her set Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl. She had that figured about right — the calendar shows she last played America’s most favored amphitheater on May 6, 1999. That was a few weeks shy of the moment that her signature song among all signature songs, “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” peaked on the charts. When she pulled it out as her inevitable final encore number Saturday, it still felt like it was cresting. It’s a song that may never have truly peaked until all the generations represented at the Bowl this Memorial Day weekend have passed away and/or the day the prerogative to have a little fun has been codified into the criminal as a felony. For as long as there are women, and gay men, and straight men relaxed with themselves enough to buy “Let’s go, girls” T-shirt and diode-blinking pink cowboy hats, Twain will own rights to the ultimate ladies’ night anthem, just as surely as she owns the federal trademark on exclamation points. (She does, doesn’t she?)

William Earl Taylor Swift is such a force that her post-quarantine “Eras Tour” was a sensation the moment tickets went on sale. Despite Swift playing the biggest venues possible for multiple days in each city, the wild demand has helped to make each stop national news, especially as they are documented in real time on social media. Livestreams dominate on TikTok, “I-can’t-believe-you-got-tickets” posts rise to the top on Instagram, and the media cycle analyzes every change in Swift’s setlist, as well her famous friends in attendance. Beyond the hoopla, Swift’s May 26 NYC show at MetLife Stadium was a dazzling display of an artist at the height of her powers, able to elevate her success over her previously-set peaks. Swift paved the way to the “Eras Tour” via a wildly productive quarantine, when she recorded her sound-shifting trilogy of albums “Folklore,” “Evermore,” and “Midnights.” Those records broadened her appeal and won new fans, but her audience wondered how she’d ever be able to properly tour that trio plus her previous album, “Lover,” the tour of which was canceled because of COVID-19.

Mandy Moore is feeling wholesome after a mini “This Is Us” reunion.

Piers Morgan reignited his feud with Denise Welch as he hit out at his former employer ITV.The controversial broadcaster, 58, sensationally quit Good Morning Britain back in 2021 following an on-air row with Alex Beresford about Meghan Markle. And with Phillip Schofield's drama hitting headlines, Piers hasn't missed the chance to speak out about his former employer and one-time ITV stablemates.

Ellise Shafer The first words sang by Robert Smith at the Cure’s Hollywood Bowl show in L.A. on Tuesday night — “This is the end/ Of every song that we sing” — set a reflective tone for the rest of the famed goth rock band’s performance as attendees were taken through its 45-year history. The two-hour and 45-minute set kicked off with “Alone,” an unreleased track from the Cure’s long-awaited 14th album, “Songs of a Lost World.” Judging from the several new songs the band played, including the world premiere of refashioned ’90s demo “Another (Happy) Birthday,” the Cure’s forthcoming project sees Smith grappling heavily with mortality and the loss that comes with growing older. But the music itself showed no signs of aging: Smith’s voice is as velvety smooth and strong as ever, drummer Jason Cooper didn’t miss a beat and bassist Simon Gallup provided a powerful backbone for the rest of the band’s lush instrumentals.

Ike Turner, however, was as bad a husband as he was good a songwriter. Violent, addictive and adulterous, he terrorised his wife until she walked out with only a young family and huge debts to show for 15 years at the top of the music industry. Through sheer willpower, however, Tina Turner reinvented herself as a rock singer and slowly rebuilt her career by giving her all, in everything from McDonald’s sales conferences to grimy cabaret venues.

Tina Turner has died at the age of 83 after a long illness – but leaves behind her a legacy of legendary performances in Scotland and even a surprise holiday here less than a decade ago.

In today’s episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo gets in the weeds with Joel Edgerton (“Warrior,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “Thirteen Lives”). The talented writer/actor/director is promoting his latest film, “Master Gardener,” directed by the great Paul Schrader.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “More stars than there are in heaven!” crowed Peter Zaremba, lead singer of the Fleshtones, taking a cue from MGM’s famous slogan of the 1930s and ’40s as he boisterously extolled the cast of performers taking part in Friday night’s tribute to the garage-rock of the middle and 1960s. The salute took the form of a semi-reconstruction of the 1972 compilation album “Nuggets,” put together by the Wild Honey Foundation as one of its annual autism benefits at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, with the original compiler of “Nuggets,” Lenny Kaye, on board as emcee, resident historian, cheerleader and intermittent singer-guitarist.

William Earl A year ago, it would have been tough to imagine that one of the hottest summer tours would be a Blink-182 arena trek. But a heathy mix of nostalgia and adoration for the recently-reunited classic lineup primed a sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd on May 19 to revisit their elder emo feelings in a show that sent the audience and band alike flying back to their halcyon days. Although Blink-182 never broke up, the pop-punkers shifted hard with the 2015 departure of co-frontman and guitarist Tom DeLonge. Although Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba gamely stepped into the vacant role, the band’s breezy charisma and creative chops took a hit, delivering two soon-to-be-forgotten albums and earning their biggest headlines as “the band that would have headlined Fyre Festival.”

The opening weekend box office results for Universal’s “Fast X” are mixed as the latest “Fast & Furious” film is performing like a franchise in decline in the U.S. but is still grossing quite well overseas.

A lap dancing club in Altrincham which has been the source of residents’ complaints over fighting, shouting and people urinating outside looks set to close after operating for 17 years. The owner of the town centre building which is home to Totties on George Street has submitted a planning application to redevelop the site which includes the ‘cessation’ of lap dancing on the first floor of the building and the creation of eight self-contained apartments.

Just last month, fans were shocked to hear that Fox had officially cancelled 9-1-1, which had been the network’s most popular primetime television series for six seasons.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Perhaps you saw the gossip-site reports coming out of the Lovers & Friends Festival in Las Vegas last weekend: Allegedly, Chris Brown and Usher had gotten into some kind of tiff backstage during Missy Elliott’s set. The two singers went on to… Wait a minute. There was a Missy Elliott show? Stop the presses … this seemed like a case of burying the lead, as they say in news circles. Hip-hop fans knew what the real headlines should have been on that story: A unicorn had been sighted during a full solar eclipse, as Halley’s comet made a rare pass over Brigadoon — or other metaphors to that effect — if Elliott was being sighted back on a stage. Something slightly rarer still occurred Tuesday night in southern California’s Inland Empire: a stand-alone headlining show by Elliott. As one tweeter put it: “Why Yaamava’ Theatre?” — wondering, reasonably, why Elliott was following her festival appearance not with a full tour or, say, a night or two at the Hollywood Bowl, but a one-off gig at a 2,500-seat theater at a casino-resort at least an hour outside of L.A. in off-the-beaten-track Highland? The Vegas festival and subsequent casino concert are it, as far as what’s on Elliott’s public itinerary following the news of her impending Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. The last time she did anything like a standard tour was 13 years ago, and since then, Elliott might not have done much more than a dozen full sets, almost all of them at festivals, none in theaters. So no wonder the cheapest tickets on the day of the show for her SoCal appearance were going for $500-plus.

Of all the buzzy films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, like “Past Lives,” “Eileen,” and the Grand Jury Prize winner “A Thousand And One,” Ira Sachs‘ “Passages” is undoubtedly the sexiest. And by year’s end, it may rank higher than those other three on critics’ top 10 lists for 2023.