Articles from The Guardian's celebrity and entertainment sections. The Guardian is a British newspaper published Monday to Saturday in the Berliner format from its London and Manchester headquarters.
Jason Orange does not believe that I am a Take That fan. We've only just met and he is interrogating me to that end. 'Of course you say you like us,' he says. 'But that could be a tactic.' He is somewhat playful, somewhat serious, very compelling: a feline, considered creation in a razor-sharp suit, with a broach of plastic butterflies attached to his left lapel. 'It's a good tactic; but I've seen it before.' But I am a fan, I say. 'Prove it,' he says. Around us, an improbable quantity of... Read Full Story
In the early Sixties the young George Ivan Morrison briefly played saxophone in a Belfast showband called the Olympics. Once, before a gig in Derry, the band's minibus pulled up outside his house on Hyndford Street, east Belfast and lead singer Alfie Walsh knocked on the door. Van's mother, Violet, answered, and after a few seconds of banter Walsh returned to the minibus alone. 'Yer man can't play,' he told the other band members. 'His ma says he's not coming out... He's upstairs in his room... Read Full Story
If the rumours are true, there may be a new Eminem album before Christmas, the Howard Hughes of hip hop returning from a four-year absence to raise a middle finger to the season of goodwill. Since the release of Encore in 2004, there has been speculation that Marshall Mathers III, 36, has lost his way - devastated by the murder of his best friend, DeShaun 'Proof' Holton, outside a Detroit club two years ago, and piling on the pounds after a short spell in rehab to fix an addiction to... Read Full Story
Boris Godunov Coliseum, London WC2, until 1 Dec Berezovsky Trio IndigO2, London SE10 Where would Russian opera be without Alexander Pushkin? The author of Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, from which Tchaikovsky fashioned two of his finest works, he also wrote the poems upon which Rimsky-Korsakov based his The Golden Cockerel and other operas, and the play from which Mussorgsky adapted his morbid masterpiece, Boris Godunov . Unabashedly nationalist in both style and content, but... Read Full Story
Beyoncé Knowles' third solo album has a pretty enticing pitch. Short enough to fit on one CD, it's nevertheless split over two. The second, ... Sasha Fierce, contains the usual pop-R&B, but the first is being sold as offering a rare insight into Knowles' real psyche: "I Am ... is about who I am underneath all the makeup, underneath the lights, underneath all the exciting star drama." It sounds intriguing. In interviews, Knowles is guarded to the point of banality. Were she any nicer... Read Full Story
Troubled superstars are nothing new. But Kanye West - former hip hop-producer-turned-pop star - has taken brilliance, vainglory and its attendant anguish to new levels. At the second of two nights at London's O2 Arena, the Chicago native holds the stage for more than two hours, rapping with the rope-veined conviction of a battler just starting out. His intensity is matched by the Glow in the Dark tour stage set, a prog-hop opera in which galactic scenery plays out on giant screens and... Read Full Story
The Killers Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 Noah and the Whale Koko, London NW1 Like a Fabergé egg, London's Royal Albert Hall is a venue rigid with its own plushness. Tonight, though, Las Vegas arrives in Kensington - a garish spurt of kitsch, magic and theft. Miniature potted palms, some real, some fake, dot the stage. A giant urn belches blooms. Brandon Flowers's keyboard stand is a jauntily listing lower-case 'k'. Flowers - the most metrosexual Mormon in rock - rocks a cropped... Read Full Story
For anyone too young to remember the early 70s firsthand, progressive rock can seem almost impossibly arcane and strange. Was there really a time when a band could expect to do good business with 21 minute-long songs in 9/8 time about supernatural experiences involving the spirit of the pharaoh Akhenaten, performed by a vocalist dressed as a kind of bulbous alien with an inflatable penis? Punk's scorched-earth policy towards the bands it decried as dinosaurs was ruthlessly effective. Thirty... Read Full Story
BeyoncéI Am… Sasha Fierce ( RCA) £12.99 Sasha Fierce is the nom de guerre that allows a God-fearing Texan wallflower, Beyoncé Knowles, to turn Amazonian. Fierce lends her name to the second of two CDs of this lopsided double album. Unlike Mariah Carey's Mimi alter ego, Fierce is nocturnal, digital and lubricious, fond of stark electro like 'Diva'. The 'real' Be, by contrast, is a wet blanket. Thankfully she's confined to the I Am… CD whose wall-to-wall ballads are... Read Full Story
Music Week recently reported that Staten Island artist Ingrid Michaelson has sold more than 250,000 copies of her self-released debut album and nearly 1m copies of her first single, highlighting a perfect example of the opportunities that have opened up for independent artists through synchs. A synch (meaning a synchronisation licence) is when music is used in TV shows, movies, advertising or computer games. After Michaelson set up her own label - Cabin 24 Records - to release her music, she... Read Full Story
