completemusicupdate.com - 3 510 Showbiz News and Updates

The nominations for this year’s AIM Independent Music Awards are out. Leading the pack are Raye and Shygirl, who are both up for three prizes each – including going head-to-head in the Best Track and Best Album categories.

BTS singer V has – no, not joined the South Korean army – he’s been announced as the latest brand ambassador for luxury jewellery brand Cartier. He’ll be tasked with letting the world – and specifically K-pop fans – know about the merits of wearing expensive bracelets and shit.V has “distinctive characteristics as a dancer, musician and art enthusiast” and “makes choices driven by his own creativity and shows his unique style and elegance”, says Cartier, explaining exactly why he’s the perfect person for this job.This latest deal makes it even more expensive for BTS fans who want to embrace the jewellery and fashion brands that their favourite pop stars profess to prefer (when paid to do so).Earlier this year, V was also announced as a brand ambassador for the luxury brand Celine.

APPOINTMENTSUniversal Music has appointed Sally Davies as Managing Director of Abbey Road Studios. “It’s truly an honour and privilege to be taking on the role of Managing Director of Abbey Road Studios, a place of great music and ground-breaking sound”, she says.

SoundCloud has announced that it is partnering with Sony Corp on its First On SoundCloud artist accelerator programme this year, offering more opportunities to selected artists to develop their careers. It’s specifically the bit of Sony that makes audio devices and technologies that is getting involved.The artists chosen to participate this year are Wolfacejoeyy, DJ_Dave, Nitepunk, Sojabrat, and Sim0ne, all of whom – we’re told – are “creating new musical landscapes in a unique way that can only be done on SoundCloud”.They will be given access to one-to-one mentoring, early access to SoundCloud beta tools and new Sony audio creation technologies, marketing support, opportunities to perform at SoundCloud and Sony-hosted events, and more.“First On SoundCloud has always been about empowering emerging artists and fostering music discovery for our listeners”, says Emmy Lovell, Global Head Of Music at SoundCloud.“Partnering with Sony’s audio team is a great step in this mission”, she continues.

Celestial North has released her debut album ‘Otherworld’, which – as its title suggests – is a wash of ethereal tunes that transport the listener into a fully realised sonic environment. In order to achieve this, she fuses elements of dream pop, folktronica, techno and more.“I imagined that I was time-travelling through different and exciting worlds”, she says of writing the record.

APPOINTMENTSModest! Management has appointed Sarah Gallagher as Managing Director. She originally joined the company in 2009.

Doja Cat has been teasing a change to her sound for some time now, and in a new interview has elaborated on her declaration earlier this year that there will be “no more pop” in her output.“I do not consider myself a rock star”, she tells V Magazine, when asked if she was becoming more rock n roll based on the outfit worn for the article’s photoshoot. “I have made pop music.

Sentric Music has signed LA-based songwriter and producer Sean Silverman to one of those exclusive administration agreements.Silverman is a member of the pop-rock band Beach Weather, but has also written and produced music for the likes of Burna Boy, Lil Nas X, Tropkillaz, The Maine, Chloe Lilac, Windser, BEL and The Technicolors.Says Sentric’s President and Head Of A&R for North America, Simon Perry: “This is a dream signing for us in the USA. Sean is a creative juggernaut and we’re excited to bring Sentric’s best in class capabilities to support his stellar trajectory”.Silverman, meanwhile, is “THRILLED” about the deal.

Vogue Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour seemingly makes a cameo appearance – albeit in digital form – during the show Drake and 21 Savage recently started touring around the US. And given the recent legal battle between the musicians and the fashion magazine, it’s perhaps unsurprising to know that Wintour’s digital representation is not particularly flattering.Drake and 21 Savage were sued by publisher Condé Nast after they distributed and promoted a fake edition of Vogue – with the musicians as cover stars – as part of the marketing for their joint album ‘Her Loss’.

British singer and actor Jane Birkin, best known for her work with Serge Gainsbourg, has died at her home in France. She was 76.Born in London in 1946, Birkin originally began her career as an actor in the UK, appearing in films such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Blowup’ in 1966.

The Power Up initiative – launched by the PRS Foundation and Ben Wynter back in 2021 – has announced the music-makers and industry professionals that will take part in the third year of its Power Up Participant Programme.That programme, Power Up explains, “elevates pioneering black talent and is a key feature of the long-term initiative launched to address anti-black racism and racial disparities in the music sector”.Participants get access to financial support as well as masterclasses and mentoring, in a bid to support “the development of their careers and practice, to break through glass ceilings and accelerate change across the industry”.The year before the launch of Power Up, many in the music industry made commitments to address ongoing discrimination in the sector following the Black Out Tuesday protest. Staged in response to the murder by US police officers of George Floyd, that protest saw many in the music industry pause their operations for 24 hours, most posting a black square to social media.In the wake of the protest, a number of practical initiatives were launched and supported within the music business, including in the UK, Power Up among them.

CMU’s Andy Malt and Chris Cooke review key events in music and the music business from the last week, including the stepping up for the Featured Artists Coalition’s 100% Venues campaign, which encourages music venues to allow artists to sell merchandise at their shows without being charged any commission on sales, and the new legal challenge to the UK government’s festival drug testing policy. Apologies for the sound issues in this episode.

BBC Introducing and the broadcaster’s poetry festival Contains Strong Language have teamed up on a new talent development scheme for spoken word artists, called Words First.A total of 35 artists will be selected to take part, attending online workshops run by spoken word organisations Young Identity and Apples & Snakes.

LEGALTim Westwood has been interviewed under police caution for a third time in relation to alleged sexual offences, the BBC reports. The Metropolitan Police confirmed that officers interviewed a 65 year old man earlier this week.

Wargasm have announced that they will release their debut album this autumn. Titled ‘Venom’, the new single from it, ‘Do It So Good’, is out now.“For the last sixteen months we’ve spent every moment off the road in the studio creating the perfect debut album for Wargasm”, say the duo.“Heavy, melodic, disgusting, honest, sexy, everything this band has experimented with since our inception has been pinned down on the anvil and hammered into shape, thrown at the wall, beaten into a more fucked up shape and gone back onto the anvil”.“We hope you enjoy ‘Do It So Good’ as a taste of what’s to come”, they go on.

Damon Albarn has revealed that he is currently working on an opera, putting Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s ‘The Magic Flute Part II’ to music for the first time.Von Goethe started writing the libretto for a sequel to Mozart’s 1791 opera in the mid-1790s, which he then published in 1807. But it was never actually completed or set to music, a task Albarn has now taken on more than 200 years later.“I’m doing an opera at the moment, using Goethe’s fragment he wrote about ‘The Magic Flute Part II’, which is fascinating”, he explained on a new episode of the Broken Record podcast. “You’ve heard of Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’? Well, Goethe, who is a contemporary of Mozart, wrote ‘Part II’ of that – the sequel – but it never got put to music.

Cherry Glazerr have announced that they will release new album ‘I Don’t Want You Anymore’ later this year. First single ‘Soft Like A Flower’ is out now.Describing the new single as her “Evanescence moment”, the band’s Clementine Creevy says: “It’s a real ‘losing your fucking shit’ kind of vibe.

DEALSUniversal Music Publishing China has signed a global publishing agreement with singer-songwriter Tia Ray. “Music brings people together”, she says. “It transcends borders, culture and gender.

Zayn Malik has spoken about his reasons for leaving One Direction in March 2015, saying that the excuse of “stress” given at the time was not true. In fact, he now says, he had seen that the group’s days were numbered and simply wanted to get “ahead of the curve” in terms of starting a solo career.

Hinako Omori released her debut album ‘A Journey’ last year, filled with layered collages of ambient sound. Last month she returned with the first track from it, ‘In Full Bloom’, which heralded the development of her experimentation on that earlier record into something more song based.

DEALSBucks Music Group has signed new songwriting agreements with Jamie McCool and Simon Pogson. “Jamie and Simon are incredibly talented and sought-after individuals with reputations that are growing every day among artist and industry communities alike”, says the music publisher’s MD Simon Platz. “They combine to make something really special.

Teen drumming sensation Nandi Bushell has announced that she is opening her own music school, helping children and adults who dream of one day performing with Foo Fighters. Or who just want to make some noise.“I am so proud to announce I am opening my first music school with my family and music teachers”, she wrote on Instagram.Open to all ages and abilities, the school in Ipswich will be run by Bushell’s family and that of Ashley Howard, who began teaching Bushell to play drums when she was seven years old.

A jury in Michigan has concluded that a 2014 handwritten document found under a cushion on a sofa can be considered the last will and testament of Aretha Franklin. It means that the late musician’s estate is now likely to be managed and distributed according to the wishes set out in that document.After Franklin died in 2018, two documents were found in her home that could constitute a will, one from 2010 and one from 2014.

If there’s one tour where Ticketmaster was presumably hoping that there would be no technical glitches as tickets went on sale, it was surely the European leg of Taylor Swift’s ongoing The Eras Tour. Given that all the issues that occurred last year around ticket sales for the US dates put the spotlight very much back on the ticketing business in American political circles.And yet, there were issues yesterday as tickets went on sale for Swift’s dates in France next summer.

Sitting somewhere between 90s house music, the Pet Shop Boys and The Streets, Pink Eye Club – aka Haydn Davies – is set to release his debut album ‘Disco Reality’ this week.Over its nine tracks, the record features deadpan complaints about the drudgery of life, with track titles like ‘Same Job For Three Years’, ‘You’re Just A Stupid Fucking Man In A Really Shit Band’ and ‘Angry Things On The Internet’.Out now is anthemic new single ‘You Seemed Like A Nice Guy’, which – he says – is “a song about people you meet and initially they seem nice but then you go on their social media and it turns out they have far-right views”.The track comes with a video directed by Lou Smith, who says: “I happened to catch Pink Eye Club at his debut London show at the Five Bells five years ago”.“I have watched his act and following grow along the way.

Madonna has issued her first statement since receiving treatment for a bacterial infection, which resulted in the postponement of her 40th anniversary world tour. She thanked fans for their support and gave an update on plans for rescheduled dates.“Thank you for your positive energy, prayers and words of healing and encouragement”, she wrote.

Last month Fall Out Boy released an updated version of Billy Joel’s song ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, with new lyrics referencing people and events that have been noteworthy since the release of the original in 1989.Everyone had an opinion on it, of course. Everyone except Billy Joel, that is. But now he’s finally passed comment and, well, it seems he hasn’t actually heard it.

Courtney Barnett has announced that she is closing her Milk! Records label, through which she has released her own music and that of other artists for more than a decade. The company’s final release will be her new instrumental album, the appropriately titled ‘End Of The Day’.In a statement on social media yesterday, the label confirmed the news, saying: “After eleven magical years, Milk! Records will be closing at the end of 2023.

A court in Michigan heard testimonies from Aretha Franklin’s children yesterday in a dispute over the late musician’s will. Franklin’s sons disagree over whether documents from 2010 or 2014 best represent their mother’s wishes in terms of how her estate should be managed.Following Franklin’s death in 2018 two documents were found at her home, both of which could be considered her last will and testament.The one written in 2014 is obviously the more recent.

RELEASESCorey Taylor has released new solo single ‘Post Traumatic Blues’. The song, he says, is “my attempt to describe for people what it’s like to deal with PTSD. Sometimes it’s so hard for people to understand the ups and downs, the severity of the cold and numbness, that I wanted to try and build a bridge lyrically between the ones living with the disease and the ones who are trying to help them”.

An NHS trust has apologised for the level of medical care received by MF Doom, saying that it “was not to the standard we would expect”. This follows an inquest into the rapper’s death in 2020.Real name Dumile Daniel Thompson – known as Daniel – the rapper died as a result of a “rare” allergic reaction to a drug prescribed to control blood pressure, reports Leeds Live.

An ongoing termination rights dispute between Lil Joe Records and the 2 Live Crew got a hearing in the American courts last week. A key part of the dispute centres on whether or not bankruptcy proceedings that took place in the mid-1990s impact the rights of each 2 Live Crew member to reclaim copyrights in their old recordings.

A former teacher at Kanye West’s Donda Academy in California has filed a lawsuit claiming that he was fired after raising concerns about safety issues at the school, as well as making complaints regarding changes to his employment terms. Among the list of allegations made in the legal filing is that windows in the school were not glazed because West “did not like glass”.Isaiah Meadows – who was also an assistant principal at the academy – filed his complaint with the Los Angeles County Superior Court last week.According to Law360, he claims that as well as having no proper windows – which meant that a skylight had no glass covering so that water fell directly into the school – there were also serious issues with the building’s wiring, which at one point led to an electrical fire.For several months, he adds, the school had no electricity, with lessons lit by flood lamps powered by a generator.

Global has signed up a stack of pop stars to appear in a new marketing campaign for its Capital Radio brand. And why the hell not? Who doesn’t love some pop stars? No one, that’s who.Among those taking part are Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Jonas Brothers, Stormzy, Niall Horan, Anne-Marie, Tom Grennan, Raye, ArrDee, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Adam Lambert.They all feature in ads that will pop up on both TV and social media over the next month.

DEALSHarbourView, one of those equity funds buying up music rights, has done some big old deals with Nelly and Wiz Khalifa. TMZ reports that the former was worth $50 million and got HarbourView a 50% stake in Nelly’s entire catalogue, though the official statement implied the deal relates specially to the musician’s recordings.

The Rolling Stones have filed a motion to dismiss the song-theft lawsuit that was launched against them earlier this year. Said motion mainly raises jurisdiction issues with the lawsuit, which was filed by a Spanish musician against a British band with the courts in Louisiana.Sergio Garcia Fernandez claims that the Stones’ 2020 track ‘Living In A Ghost Town’ rips off two songs he wrote in the 2000s, ‘So Sorry’ and ‘Seed Of God’.His lawsuit claims that the Stones track lifted “vocal melodies, the chord progressions, the drum beat patterns, the harmonica parts, the electric bass line parts, the tempos, and other key signatures” from ‘So Sorry’ and the “harmonic and chord progression and melody” from ‘Seed Of God’.As for how Mick Jagger and Keith Richards might have heard Fernandez’s music before writing ‘Living In A Ghost Town’, the Spanish musician alleged that he had previously sent a demo CD to “an immediate family member” of Jagger.According to Digital Music News, legal reps for the Stones filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit last month.