Tom Waits "The Fly"

Parade's Rylan Fischer on July 31, 2026 introduced a superb new spoken-word piece "The Fly" by Tom Waits. It serves as the B-side to his stellar collaboration with Massive Attack, "Boots on the Ground". 

And this is what he wrote on Tom Waits. "...He is one of the most singular American artists of all time. He is a potent and sardonic songwriter who utilizes sounds and styles from the most unlikely places to create songs and stories that sound nothing like anything you'll ever hear. With instrumentation as down-and-out as the people he depicts in his music, Waits captures all corners of the idiosyncratic, deranged, depressed, and authentic that makes up America", as noted by Parade. 

And so, "The Fly" is already available digitally on July 31 and the physical eco-conscious vinyl scheduled for September 04.

A satirical, comically wry ode to the common housefly (Musca domestica), written out of a "begrudging admiration for the brief, unsung life of the insect", that's what it it!

 

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I’ve become a big fan of the new song. I'm fascinated by how he trains his singular focus on something as uncommonly common as the common housefly. And I find him to be such a fascinating voice to listen to, and his writing has a way of commanding my attention. 

The fact that Waits relies entirely on the gravel and rhythmic cadence of his own voice to build the tension, turning simple, stark spoken words into a percussive, theatrical performance, proves he doesn't need a band to create a brooding atmosphere.

Overall, the song is packed with all of Waits’ dark wit and gritty honesty. For sure, the choice to forego any instrumentation works brilliantly as well, putting me right in the room with Waits and making me feel like I’m staring right at the eponymous fly. 

I very much appreciate this particular track because I myself have given speeches on the cockroach and the frog! 

As with the housefly ditty, the speeches have stood out!

Pop Music's Bias Towards English is Diminishing

English language music is losing its stranglehold on the charts, according to new data from music streaming giant Spotify. 

The company say songs in 16 different languages, including Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Turkish, Indonesian and Arabic, appeared in their Global Top 50 last year. That's more than double the figure from 2020. 

Bad Bunny, who sings exclusively in Spanish, was the most-streamed artist in the world. And Brit Award winner Rosalía sings in 14 dialects on her latest album, Lux. 

Spotify said Brazilian Funk was the fastest-growing genre in the world, with audiences up by 36%. K-Pop saw a 31% increase, and Trap Latino was up by 29%. 

All of those genres earned more than $100m in royalties from Spotify last year, the company said. English still dominates the charts, with 14 of last year's Top 20 best-selling albums sung exclusively in the language, according to the music industry body the IFPI. 

But South Korean bands such as Stray Kids, Enhypen and Seventeen all featured in the list, as did Japanese rock group Mrs Green Apple, as fans increasingly explore music outside the typical paradigms of rock and pop. 

According to a 2021 analysis of listening behaviour published in the journal Nature, this trend has been accelerating since 2017. Not coincidentally, that's the same year that streaming overtook CDs and vinyl as the music industry's biggest source of income.

Last week, Spotify's most-played chart included songs from Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro (Puerto Rico), Nadhif Basalamah (Indonesia), Tyla (South Africa), Tems (Nigeria), Ryan Castro (Colombia), El Bogueto, Peso Pluma, Neton Vega and Fuerza Regida (Mexico), Blackpink, Jung Kook and Jin (South Korea). 

Spotify's data was revealed as they announced their annual Loud And Clear report, which breaks down the global streaming economy. The streaming giant said they had paid $11bn in royalties to the music industry last year, up from $10bn in 2024. The figure makes it the highest-paying retailer globally, the company claimed. 

It is worth noting, however, that royalties distributed by Spotify don't necessarily go directly to musicians, with record labels, distributors, publishers, managers and songwriters often taking a cut.

At the Squash Australian Open semi-final yesterday, Sivasangari Subramaniam got the better of world No. 12 Nele Gilis, beating her 3-0: 11-8, 13-11, 11-4. 

And Malaysia's world No. 6 is just one match away from ending a 13-month title drought after storming into the final! 

CNY Rap Gets Nonstop Views

Check out these students in Johor, Malaysia who found themselves in the spotlight after their Chinese New Year music video went viral on social media. 

The 3-minute-5-second video has 40 pupils from SJK(C) Pandan in Johor Bahru – boys and girls alike from Years Four to Six – rapping to a song titled "Nonstop CNY":

 

Ku Chong Sin, chairperson of the school's parent-teacher association, said the video was part of an annual school project involving six teachers. He added that the project took about a week to complete, including composing the song and using artificial intelligence software for recording and post-production. 

The music video features Year Four pupil Oswald Chong Bang Qin as one of its main characters, rapping in sunglasses and casual streetwear. In one scene, Chong appears alongside schoolmates Wong Yu Han and Tan Sze Qi, with the trio performing in a slow-moving car driven by teacher Guok Wei Loon, in a style reminiscent of hip-hop music videos. 

Chong’s role added to the ­video’s appeal, as his name was incorporated into the rap lyrics, giving the song a catchy and playful element. 

The upbeat, family-oriented song focuses on Chinese New Year traditions such as reuniting with loved ones, wearing new clothes and spending time with relatives. 

Uploaded to the school’s Facebook page [新山班兰国民型华文小学（班兰华小） (@official.sjkcpandan)] on January 29, the said video has since garnered more than 1.7 million views and over 60,000 likes as of noon today.

The Cost of Everyday Things in China versus US

This visual, by Julie Peasley, compares the cost of 20+ common items in China and the United States using data from Numbeo, the world’s largest crowdsourced cost-of-living database. 

The chart offers a direct side-by-side view of consumer prices in US dollars, giving insight into which country is more affordable across key spending categories. While the US boasts higher average salaries, China’s everyday living expenses are very low. 

The two biggest things to rock the villagers of Auchinleck in East Ayrshire, Scotland were in 1969 when The Who (their notable hits include “I Can See For Miles”, “Happy Jack”, “My Generation”, “Substitute”) performed there as a warm-up for their historic appearance at the Woodstock music festival, and this year, when the non-league footballers of Auchinleck Talbot played against Celtic in the Scottish Cup fourth round. 

That's right! Yesterday, the sixth-tier minnows did themselves proud when they made the Scottish champions toil before the latter secured a hard-fought 2-0 win. 

Despite Martin O'Neill making 10 changes from the midweek win at Falkirk, it was still a strong Celtic team who took the field. But it took them 33 minutes to open the scoring through Johnny Kenny and then saw the tie over the line after substitute Sebastian Tounekti’s 85th-minute strike. 

Celtic travel to Bologna, Italy on Thursday to play in the Europa League, before facing Hearts at Tynecastle next Sunday.

Sinéad O'Connor Dismantles the Myth of the Irish "Famine"

The late Shuhada' Sadaqat, née Sinéad O'Connor (left), Irish singer-songwriter, record producer and activist did not shy away from speaking the truth, to the detriment of her career, but without regret. 

She called out the abuse in the Catholic church long before anyone was ready to hear about it. 

And in her song "Famine", she breaks down the myth of the Irish Potato Famine. In Irish, the famine is called an Gorta Mór, or the Great Hunger. As Sinéad explains: 

Okay, I want to talk about Ireland 
Specifically, I want to talk about the famine 
About the fact that there never really was one 

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While there was a blight in the 1840s that decimated the potato crop, there was no famine. There was plenty of food in Ireland, just not for the Irish people. Absentee British landlords sold food for export and even controlled fishing from "their" streams. 

The highly nutritious potato was the only crop that could be grown on the small plots of land where the Irish, who were essentially sharecroppers, were allowed to grow their own food. 

British "relief" measures were led by Charles Trevelyan, who said that starvation was "a punishment from God for an idle, ungrateful, and rebellious country; an indolent and un-self-reliant people. The Irish are suffering from an affliction of God's providence". He took a laissez-faire approach and shut down programs that would have sent aid. He was later knighted for his efforts. 

The Great Hunger was the beginning of an exodus of the Irish people to the United States. The Irish population has never recovered. Today, there are eight times as many Irish-Americans as there are Irish in Ireland.

Music Created to Make Chocolate Tastes Even Better

Sweet tune, sweeter bite. 

A University of Bristol brainiac has created a song designed to amplify your chocolate experience!  

After doing 60 years of research, which found that music’s pitch, speed and key can trick the brain into thinking something, particularly sweet treats taste more decadent than they already do, as per SWNS – Dr. Natalie Hyacinth (right), a composer and sound expert, created a musical track meant to be listened to while eating a sweet treat to make the experience that much better. 

Hyacinth discovered that the brain does a party trick called “multisensory integration”, where senses start to mingle. 

Pair chocolate or sweet fruit with a tune, and the brain turns dessert into a full-blown orchestration. Think of it as your senses having a jam session. 

Her research found that silky, more lush tunes in a major key make chocolate taste creamier and sweeter, while sharp notes crank up the bitter bite – and fast beats are best left to fast food. 

Galaxy Chocolate put the science to work with the scientist commissioned 90-second track, “Sweetest Melody” – a 78-BPM track designed to melt in your ears during the same amount of time that the chocolate melts on your tongue. 

Think piano for sweetness, strings for silkiness and a harp to make it all go down smoothly. The song is now streaming on YouTube and Spotify. 

Here's that tune:

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Hyacinth noted that this initiative demonstrates how “enjoying chocolate can be a multisensory experience that goes beyond taste to engage all senses”. 

Of course, I experimented and got myself a 135g bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. 

To be honest, I really can't tell! 😐😐😐

Harimau Malaya’s Official Anthem "Demi Lencana Di Dada"

The Football Association of Malaysia (FAM), in collaboration with Warner Music Malaysia (WMM), on Saturday, launched the official Harimau Malaya song titled "Demi Lencana Di Dada", performed by the Malaysian indie rock band Hujan.

 

According to Hujan’s vocalist Noh Salleh, the project was initiated in February this year to ensure the quality of the music, lyrics and message truly resonates with the hearts of Malaysians. 

“We feel very honoured and proud to be given the opportunity to perform the official Harimau Malaya song. As Malaysians, football has always been part of our soul. When we sing this song, it is not just a song, but a spirit that unites the whole nation behind our pride and joy, the national team”, he was quoted as saying in the statement.

 

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The song is available for streaming on all platforms from Saturday, while the lyric video has premiered on WMM’s YouTube channel.

Baby Shark Song Not Plagiarised

South Korea's Supreme Court have rejected a lawsuit from a US children's songwriter who alleged that the producers of the inescapably catchy children's song "Baby Shark" plagiarised his work, ending a six-year-long legal battle. 

The court upheld two lower court verdicts that favored Pinkfong, the South Korean company behind the tune with the "doo doo doo doo doo doo" refrain that has been streamed billions of times. 

Jonathan Wright, known as Johnny Only, recorded a version of the tune in 2011 based on a children's folk song. Pinkfong's version was released in 2016. 

Wright said he owned the copyright to the interpretation, but Pinkfong argued that their version was an arrangement of the same folk song, which is in the public domain. 

The court ruled Thursday that Wright's version "had not reached a level of substantial alteration" from the original folk song for it to be considered a separate work, which means it is not protected as a separate piece of work under copyright law. 

Pinkfong's "Baby Shark" went wildly viral after it was released on YouTube, in a clip that included hand gestures for children to dance along with. 

It became the most-viewed YouTube video of all time in November 2020, at the height of the pandemic, after raking up seven billion views. Just over a year later, it became the first YouTube video to reach 10 billion views.

After Pinkfong’s renditions captured the world’s attention, sparking social media moments like the #BabySharkChallenge and seeing the song hit No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Wright filed his plagiarism claim, seeking 30 million won ($21,600) in compensation. 

In fact, there are also international adaptations of Baby Shark before Pinkfong's interpretation, including the French "Bebe Requin" and the German "Kleiner Hai" (Little Shark), which became a viral hit in Europe in 2007. But none of these have reached the phenomenal success of Pinkfong's adaptation. 

Yesterday, the new Premier League season kicked off with the English champions triumphing 4-2 over AFC Bournemouth. 

Liverpool's £70m signing from Eintracht Frankfurt, Hugo Ekitike broke the latter's stubborn resistance with a composed finish in the 37th minute before turning provider to set up Cody Gakpo for a second in the 49th minute. The Reds looked on course for a comfortable victory but the Cherries had other ideas, their winger striking back on two occasions in the 64th and 76th minutes to draw Bournemouth level. 

Federico Chiesa was brought in and it well and truly paid off – the Italian volleying in with 88 minutes on the clock to secure an unlikely late win. That wasn’t to be it, either, with Mohamed Salah adding a fourth in stoppage time, scoring for the eighth time in nine opening-day fixtures.

Citizenship of 3 Countries

I must admit this is the first time I've heard of someone with triple citizenship. Hit maker Dua Lipa now has citizenship for Britain, Albania and Kosovo.

Yes, I checked and it is possible to have triple citizenship. While some countries restrict dual citizenship, meaning a person can only have one other citizenship besides their own, there are countries that permit holding three or more citizenships. This is often referred to as multiple citizenship, and it's a status where a person is simultaneously recognized as a citizen by multiple countries.  

The 29-year-old pop star (right) was born in London, UK to Kosovan-Albanian parents, Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa, and moved to Pristina, Kosovo’s capital aged 11, when her family returned after it "gained" independence in 2008, before moving back to London aged 15. 

Since finding fame with hits like New Rules, Be The One, Don't Start Now and Levitating, the singer has made a point of honoring her heritage. 

In 2022, she was granted Albanian citizenship for promoting the country through her music and fame. On Friday, she was granted Kosovo citizenship. 

And Lipa reportedly said she "feels like my two sides are now one".  

Kosovo is a landlocked country bordered by Serbia to the north and east, North Macedonia to the south, Albania to the west, and Montenegro to the northwest. 

International governments are divided on the issue of recognition of the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, which was declared in 2008. The Government of Serbia does not diplomatically recognise Kosovo as a sovereign state, although the two countries have enjoyed normalised economic relations since 2020. At least, that's what I've read. 

It has been claimed that Kosovo has received 116 diplomatic recognitions by UN member states; however disagreements have arisen regarding the exact number of countries recognising Kosovo. Kosovo claims that the number of countries recognising its independence is 119, whilst Serbia claims the number is 84, stating that some countries have withdrawn recognition. Third party sources give the number of recognising countries as around 110. FYI, Malaysia under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi officially recognized the Republic of Kosovo on October 30, 2008.

Ozzy Osbourne: There Won't Be Another Like Him

On Tuesday, Ozzy Osbourne, the iconic frontman of Black Sabbath, the man who helped birth heavy metal, has passed on. He was 76 years old.

His family announced the death in a statement, which did not say where he died or specify a cause. He had been treated in recent years for a variant of Parkinson's disease that he identified as Parkinsonism or Parkin 2, a condition exacerbated by his chronic drug abuse.

Just as recently as July 05, he was on stage at the "Back to the Beginning" farewell concert in Birmingham, UK, the city where it all started. Surrounded by guest stars and reunited with the classic Sabbath line-up, he performed chained to a bat-shaped chair, singing with the wild, unrelenting force that defined his career. 

He left this world as he lived in it – on his own terms. A rock star until the end. 

Most who don’t follow rock know Ozzy only as the man who bit the head off a bat – a story that became a kind of curse. He grew tired of it in later years, annoyed that a moment of shock theater had come to overshadow a lifetime of art. Others remember him as a foul-mouthed, lovable old rocker – the Prince of Darkness turned reality TV grandpa. A man who swore like a sailor and laughed like a child. 

But there was more to him than the antics. He was outrageous, yes – he once threw raw meat into a crowd, and at Madame Tussauds, posed as a wax figure of himself, startling tourists for fun. He was devoted too. Even in a wheelchair, battling Parkinson’s, he kept making music. He once said he would perform until his last breath. And he nearly did. 

Osbourne’s final solo album, Ordinary Man (2020), was widely seen as a swan song – romantic, tragic, and defiantly honest. One of its standout tracks, "Under the Graveyard", plays like a hymn of regret. It’s an unflinching confession of the wildness and wreckage of his youth: the drinking, the drugs, the chaos. His treatment of his wife Sharon. His battles with himself. In that song, he sings: 

Don’t take care of me, be scared of me 
My misery owns me 
I don’t want to be my enemy 
My misery owns me now 

The man behind the myth emerges here – not Ozzy the bat-eater, but Ozzy the broken soul who somehow stitched himself back together. It must be said that he readily owned his flaws, every single one of them. And it was how he faced them that we find the heart of who he truly was. 

Despite the dark image – crosses, bats, devils, and all – Ozzy was a man of faith. He often said that Satanism frightened him. The symbols were theater, not creed. In truth, he hoped for the light. Not eternal party-in-hell nonsense, but peace. 

I fondly remembered listening to Black Sabbath's Paranoid album at full throttle while preparing for my final Strathclyde exams in Glasgow, Scotland in the late seventies. A whole week. It helped me study better.

And I’ll surely remember him as a person who stumbled, fell, and still staggered forward anyway. A man who clawed his way back from himself, through the mist of fame, the haze of addiction, and the fog of regret. 

Thanks for the Metal, Ozzy! Rest in peace!

Fresh Sounds Coming From Austria's Vegetable Orchestra

They’ve got the beet! 

For the last 27 years, the eleven members of the Vegetable Orchestra in Vienna, Austria, have been playing with their food. 

They're a touring orchestra and they've earned a Guinness World Record having performed 344 concerts on their veggies, and officially becoming the uncontested record holders for most concerts by a vegetable orchestra.

This unorthodox band prepare for their concerts by hollowing out carrots and celery, peeling onion skins and cutting aubergines (brinjals/eggplants), and piling up fresh produce onstage to create their distinctive sounds. 

Some of their classics include the carrot recorder, a cucumberphone, percussive pieces of aubergine or even a leek violin. The performers purchase all of the vegetables fresh the day of their performance, and the audience can see in live-time how the sounds of the instruments change as they break and dry out in the stage lights.

“We believe that we can produce sound that cannot be (easily) produced by other instruments. You can hear the difference. It sometimes sounds like animals, sometimes just like abstract sounds”, say the Orchestra. “You can say that the vegetables’ 'hidden' inside sound life is brought to the surface and made visual during the performance”.

The innovative group is constantly inventing new instruments — and they have to be prepared to improvise, since the vegetables can break or dry out while they are on stage.

Naturally, these instruments are pretty single-use, so the band have a chef that turns all the unused vegetables into a soup for the concert-goers to enjoy after the performance. 

The musicians – who come from backgrounds in genres like electronic, rock, punk and classical – hope to show audiences that music can be created from just about anything.

Celtic booked their place in the last four when they won 2-0 over Hibernian in a keenly contested Scottish Cup quarter-final yesterday. 

Daizen Maeda pounced on a rebound to net from close range in the 39th minute for his 14th goal in 13 matches, and 28th for the season. And fellow substitute Luke McCowan set up Adam Idah for a tidy finish from a tight angle in second-half stoppage time. 

And so, Celtic are on track for the domestic treble. They've already won the Scottish League Cup; they have an unassailable lead in the Scottish Premiership; and they've booked a semi-final spot in the Scottish Cup.

Silent Album In Protest Against AI

More than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Billy Ocean, Kate Bush and Mystery Jets – released a "silent" album on Tuesday in protest at the UK government's planned changes to copyright law, which they say would make it easier for AI companies to train models using copyrighted work without a licence.

Generative AI programmes mine, or learn, from vast amounts of data like text, images, or music online to generate new content which feels like it has been made by a human. 

The said proposals would give artists or creators a so-called "rights reservation" – the ability to opt out. But critics of the plan believe it is not possible for an individual writer or artist to notify thousands of different AI service providers that they do not want their content used in that way, or to monitor what has happened to their work across the whole Internet. 

The artists hope the album – which features sound recordings of empty studios and performance spaces – entitled "Is This What We Want?", will draw attention to the potential impact on livelihoods and the UK music industry. 

The tracklisting for the record simply spells out the message: "The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies". All profits will be donated to the charity Help Musicians. 

On the same day, the UK's creative industries launched a campaign to highlight how their content is at risk of being given away for free to AI firms. The "Make it Fair" campaign, which includes wrap-around adverts in national newspapers, is urging people to write to their MPs to object to the government's plans.

Ruthless Celtic extended their advantage at the top of the Scottish Premiership to 16 points by cruising past Aberdeen 5-1 in Glasgow on Tuesday.

Daizen Maeda opened the floodgates with a composed finish from close range in the 24th minute. Six minutes later, Jota broke on the counter with pace against a stretched Dons defence and when his pass to Engels was returned, he scuffed the ball into the net from 10 yards. And in the forty-fifth minute, Callum McGregor's ruthless side-foot finish piled on the misery. Substitutes Luke McCowan and Yang Hyun-jun combined for the South Korean to slot in the fourth in the seventy-second minute. 

The Dons pulled a goal back in the 90th minute. But Maeda had the final say by rounding off the scoring with a tap in from Alistair Johnston's teasing cross in stoppage time.

Māori Haka in NZ Parliament Goes Metal

André Antunes (right) is a guitarist and YouTube personality from Portugal. And he's brilliant with the electric guitar.

This time around, he's turned his attention to the haka, a ceremonial dance and performance art in Māori culture that is known for its vigorous movements and rhythmic foot-stamping. 

Check out his latest initiative to turn New Zealand's twenty-two-year-old MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke (left) hakas into a metal song!

Starting with her maiden parliamentary speech on December 13, 2023, where she performed a haka and ending with the protest where she tore up a contentious bill – the Treaty Principles Bill, which aimed to reinterpret the 184-year-old Treaty of Waitangi (in Māori, Hīkoi mo te Tiriti) – and led her parliamentary colleagues in a haka on November 14, 2024, causing parliament to be briefly suspended:

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World Bank Upgrade Russia to High Income Country

The World Bank’s annual national income rankings, released on Monday, showed that Russia has advanced from “upper middle” to “high” category on the strength of its economic growth. 

 

The bank measures gross national income (GNI) based on a method dating back to 1989, and updates its classifications every July 01, based on the previous calendar year’s GNI per capita. 

 

The income is measured in the equivalent of US dollars. “Economic activity in Russia was influenced by a large increase in military related activity in 2023, while growth was also boosted by a rebound in trade (+6.8%), the financial sector (+8.7%), and construction (+6.6%)”, said a post on the World Bank blog.

 

“These factors led to increases in both real (3.6%) and nominal (10.9%) GDP, and Russia’s Atlas GNI per capita grew by 11.2%”, the bank added.

 

This economic growth happened even after the US and its allies levied thousands of sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict, openly stating that their goal was to destroy the Russian economy and provoke regime change in Moscow. 

 

To be considered high-income, a country has to have a GNI of over $14,005, adjusted up from $13,845 for the previous fiscal year. The adjustment relies on a weighted average of GDP deflators of China, Japan, the UK, the US, and the Eurozone. The income classification is supposed to reflect a country’s level of development, using the GNI as “broadly available indicator of economic capacity”.

 

Rick Beato, American YouTube personality, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, and educator discusses the “James Bond Chord”, the film score and why it’s the most iconic.

 

 

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

A Lennon-McCartney Collab

When two musicians with famous fathers co-create a song, it's bound to attract attention. That goes double when the names attached to the song are Lennon and McCartney. 

 

"Primrose Hill" is a gently nostalgic ditty by James McCartney with co-writing credit to Sean Ono Lennon. They are the youngest offspring of one of the most famous songwriting duos, Paul McCartney and John Lennon (of The Beatles fame).

 

In a picture (left) McCartney posted on Instagram, the two musicians strikingly resemble their famous Beatles fathers. 

 

Lennon was born in 1975, five years before his dad's murder, and has carved out a respectable, if uneven, career as a musician since the 1990s, performing with his mother, Yoko Ono, as well as bands such as Cibo Matto.  

 

James McCartney, whose mother was the late Linda McCartney, is two years younger. He began his recording career by making contributions to music by his parents in the late 1990s, but didn't begin releasing his own recordings until a decade later. On Instagram, he said the song was inspired by an idyllic boyhood memory.

 

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

 

Those who might be reflexively cynical about nepo-baby collabs will not be shocked to learn that the song has not performed particularly well on Spotify, where it earned fewer than 40,000 listens in the five days after its release. No matter because it is a recognizable tribute to a legendary lineage. 

 

Just a thought. Perhaps the two can get George Harrison's son Dhani and Ringo Starr's son Zak to join them on the next track?

 

One of fashion's biggest nights, Met Gala 2024 falls on May 06. And it will celebrate The Costume Institute’s spring exhibition and gala titled “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”. 

 

According to a release from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the theme will "explore notions of rebirth and renewal, using nature as a metaphor for the impermanence of fashion". 

 

With around 600 attendees, the guest list is generally kept top secret until the evening before the event. Past guests have included everyone from Rihanna and Lady Gaga to Blake Lively and Kim Kardashian, all wearing unforgettable looks.

 

The said exhibition, which will be open to the public from May 10 through September 02, 2024, will look to bridge the gap between the natural world and fashion.

 

Tied to the aforementioned exhibition, the dress code is “The Garden of Time" as announced by US fashion and lifestyle magazine, Vogue. 

 

Not missing a beat, Ryanair's take on the Met Gala 2024 theme wins over the Internet. The European budget airline shared an edited photo of one of their planes adorned with flowers and leaves, as well as a pair of lips wearing pink lipstick and writing, "Born to slay, forced to fly".

 

New Lizard Species Named After Iron Maiden Frontman

It is claimed that among taxonomists and museum curators who appreciate rock music, Iron Maiden are a hot favorite. 

 

And so, when a new species of wood lizard has been found in the Cordillera de Colán mountain range 460 miles north of Lima, Peru, the biologists involved in finding the reptile decided to name it after Bruce Dickinson. 

 

Dr. Alessandro Catenazzi, a Peruvian involved in the discovery of Enyalioides dickinsoni – or in English, Dickinson's wood lizard – explains: "Bruce Dickinson is not only a legend in the world of heavy metal, but also an inspiration to many due to his diverse talents and accomplishments". 

 

According to the January 31, 2024's edition of the Journal of Vertebrate Biology, the specific name is a noun in the genitive form and is a patronymic, honoring Paul Bruce Dickinson (right), who is best known as the lead singer of the legendary heavy metal band Iron Maiden, though he is also a music producer, entrepreneur, competitive fencer, novelist, aviator, broadcaster and the recipient of many honorary degrees and awards. In 2016, he flew a loggerhead sea turtle, Caretta caretta, that washed up on a Jersey beach to the Canary Islands in his private plane, thus contributing to the awareness and protection of this vulnerable species.

Welcoming Chinese New Year 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brace yourself for a spectacular East-meets-West musical fusion! 

 

CGTN have invited artists from nine countries and 12 cities worldwide to interpret the Chinese percussion classic "Rising Dragons, Leaping Tigers":

 

 

May these beats bring you energy-giving vibes and deliver auspicious Chinese New Year wishes to all and sundry!

Ferdinand Marcos Jr Takes Presidential Chopper to Coldplay Concert

Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos Jr received fierce backlash for using a presidential chopper to attend a musical performance north of the capital Manila, bypassing the area’s notorious traffic jams.

 

Marcos Jr  and wife (left) had arrived at the British rock band Coldplay's concert at the Philippine Arena, Ciudad de Victoria in Bocaue and Santa Maria, Bulacan, about 30 kilometers north of Manila on Friday.

 

On social media, many accused the president of wasting taxpayers’ money, and pointed out that the public has to endure Metro Manila’s infamous traffic daily while commuting. 

 

The Presidential Security Group said the Philippine Arena had “experienced an unprecedented influx of 40,000 individuals eagerly attending a concert, resulting in unforeseen traffic complications along the route”. The traffic situation posed “a potential threat to the security of our president”, they claimed.

 

In a column for the Philippine Star, Ana Marie T Pamintuan wrote: “Perhaps the horrendous traffic that forced the first couple to take a helicopter will end the state of denial in the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority about the Philippine capital region having the worst traffic congestion among ‘metros’ in the world”.

 

For the older generations, the incident had revived memories of Marcos’ parents, Pamintuan wrote. The late dictator Marcos Sr ruled the Philippines for two decades, and the family, known for their extravagance, were accused of plundering billions of dollars.

 

Harimau Malaya lost 1-0 to Bahrain in Saturday's Asian Cup Group E match. 

 

"Nothing went wrong. This is the level we are at", said a frustrated Pan Gon. "Maybe I'm the wrong coach? Maybe I placed too much expectations and gave too much hope to the public and the players. But, these are my problems and not those of the players, the FA of Malaysia, or the public. These are all my problems".

 

The 55-year-old said Malaysia failed to control and dominate the game. 

 

Oh well, back to the drawing board. And don't expect a miracle on Thursday when Harimau Malaya face South Korea.