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Hey Donald Trump, You thought Taylor Swif5 wss over?
Yesterday’s bombshell announcement has triggered an avalanche of sales.
Taylor bought back the albums she lost in the Scooter Braun deal. She paid $10 million or more.
The result is the fans have gone crazy! They’ve returned FIFTEEN albums to the top 100. “Reputation” is number 1!
The main single from “Reputation,” called “Look What You Made Me Do,” has also charted this morning. That’s good news for the band Right Said Fred. The song contains a big sample of “I’m Too Sexy for My Shirt.”
Swifties are fiercely loyal. You’d think they have all these downloads and various CDs and LPs. Maybe they stockpile them for the future.
The legendary Grammy award winning singer and composer never stops creating and moving forward.
She’s performing to sold out audiences all the time, thrilling them with her rich voice on songs like “Send in the Clowns,” “Both Sides Now,” and “Amazing Grace.”
On Thursday night, Judy’s pal Paige Peterson welcomed a small group of friends to her new high up corner apartment on Central Park West to celebrate Collins’ new book of poetry called “Sometimes It’s Heaven: Poems of Love, Loss, and Redemption.”
Quite a little group showed up including pals Paul Shaffer, Marlo Thomas, Kathie Berlin, Susan Cheever, Lorraine Alterman Boyle, famed record producer Russ Titelman, producer Paula Silver, rock and roll impresario Danny Fields (he signed the Ramones, and the MC5 among others), our own Regina Weinreich, and more.
There’s nothing like watching Judy Collins — a master pianist with the most piercing blue eyes anywhere– improvise underscore music while performing her lyrical semi-autobiographical poems as the “Manhattanhenge” sun is setting! Even better, when Judy left the bench to lead the guests in “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Paul Shaffer took over at the piano impromptu.
One of the evocative poems, called “Hockney in the Mountains,” could be turned into a song. Judy says some 30 of the 200 poems she wrote may be converted in that direction. I hope so!
The summer night was cold and we were giddy Standing there looking out at Ajax when a heart-stopping, blood-curdling scream split the air and struck us, like knives to the heart I said someone is having glorious sex David said someone is being murdered We debated for a while and then had another drink in the resuming quiet of the mountain air I stumbled back into the room Our host called the man at the front desk who said there was nothing they could do about noise in the mountains; everybody screams sometimes
Loretta Swit, who twice won Emmys for playing Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on MASH, is being remembered by friends tonight.
Co-star Alan Alda wrote on X: “Loretta was a supremely talented actor. She deserved all her 10 EMMY nominations and her 2 wins. But more than acting her part, she created it. She worked hard In showing the writing staff how they could turn the character from a one joke sexist stereotype into a real person — with real feelings and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out listing her character not as Hot Lips, but as Margaret. Loretta made the most of her time here.’
Swit was nominated for Emmys every year of the “MASH” and won two of them.
When Sally Kellerman played “Hot Lips” in the “MASH” movie, the character was part of a randy group of American doctors working in the Korean war. Kellerman was very funny.
But by the time “MASH” got going in 1972, it was a different real world for women. Loretta Swit’s portrayal turned “Hot Lips” into Margaret, a forerunner of women’s rights. She was smart first and sexy second. She was the only lead female in a cast of men, and held her head high.
Loretta Swit will be sorely missed, but like Mary Tyler Moore and a a few others she won’t be forgotten as a trailblazer.
I’m devastated to hear my friend of 50 years has passed. Just spoke to Loretta 2 days ago & she was her usual feisty, hysterically funny self. This is a hard one. I was her 1st house guest in her new home in ‘75 & helped her paint her NY apartment. Just heartbroken. So hard to… https://t.co/eDX2JwHECA
VERY SAD 2 SAY AN EXTRAORDINARY WOMAN, ACTIVIST & ACTRESS HAS DIED 2DAY, I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH 2 BEFRIEND HER IN RECENT YRS, SHE STILL HAD THE SHARP WIT & A FIRE BURNING DEEP! #RIPLORETTASWIT Loretta Swit, who won 2 Emmys on “M.A.S.H.," has died. She was 87 https://t.co/GhMermXMri
Trump has randomly fired the head of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian. He’s never been in the Gallery, or any other museum.
This is what he blathered on Truth Social: “Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery. She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Trump is angry that Sajet commissioned portraits of JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon, Temple Grandin (famously overcame autism), Joy Harjo (former US poet laureate) and famed movie director Steven Spielberg. He would rather have chosen Hitler, Putin, Kim Jung Un, and Scott Baio.
Sajet has been director of the Gallery since 2013. She’s Nigerian by birth and was raised in Australia. She’s the first woman ever to hold the position at the museum.
As with the Kennedy Center, this is another boneheaded decision by a person who shouldn’t be sent out for sandwiches.
In her heyday, Mariah Carey was famous for “sampling” songs, meaning — as Maurice White once told me — eating the whole buffet.
Mariah turned White’s song, Best of My Love, into her “Emotions.” (You hear it below.) The Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” became her “Fantasy,” and so on. Some samples were cleared. She was also sued for plagiarism and settled many times.
It turns out in that back in 2005, Mariah covered a 1975 record called “Here Comes That Feeling Again” by the Dynamic Superiors. The original song was co-written by Motown greats Eddie and Brian Holland, aka as Holland-Dozier-Holland. Mariah called it “When I Feel It,” after changing a few words and adding her own.
Guess who didn’t ‘feel it’? The Hollands. Mariah couldn’t get her version cleared, so the song languished for 20 years.
But now finally a deal has been struck, and “When I Feel It” is released today on the 20th anniversary edition of “The Emancipation of Mimi.” Mariah sounds great because she’s singing a real R&B as opposed to one of her yodeling scat hop hop inventions.
The two records are very similar. I hope this sparks an interest in the Dynamic Superiors, too. Someone should do a podcast of all the R&B staples there were used to make “new” records, like Alicia Keys with “Empire State of Mind” and Beyonce with “Crazy in Love.”
Taylor Swift has been able to buy back the albums Scooter Braun took from her, then sold to Shamrock Holdings.
She writes on social media:
“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.” Thanking the company that sold the rights to her, she added, “All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy. I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. … My first tattoo just might be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
When Taylor left Big Machine Records, Braun and the label’s Scott Borchetta took her masters and sold them to Shamrock.
Swift went ballistic, properly, and re-recorded all the albums as “Taylor’s Version.” They outsold the original albums. Shamrock, which paid millions to Braun and Borchetta, was left hanging.
Now Shamrock has sold the masters back to Taylor for a nine figure sum. She can afford it. She’s a billionaire.
She writes: “I’m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just A flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away’ for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was thiiiiis close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now. I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get say to say these words:
“All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me.”
Now there will be two versions of all the original albums available in all formats.
What a crazy story. All that work Taylor did to make the re-recordings! Of course, she made a lot of money from them, too.
Miley Cyrus was almost out of luck with her new album, “Something Beautiful.”
Before it was released tonight, Miley struck out three times with “End of the World,” “More to Love,” and the title track. They all went nowhere fast.
It didn’t make sense. They were all good songs even if the production on “More to Lose” was a mess.
Tonight she released a new video for “Easy Lover.” It’s more funky than the usual Miley Cyrus song, with a backbeat from the early 80s that sounds like she’s going to launch into Carly Simon’s “You Belong to Me” with Michael McDonald.
This is not the same “Easy Lover” as Phil Collins and Philip Bailey took to number 1 in the 80s.
But this may be an easy hit, dance-able and catchy with a good hook. The video is PG sexy, which won’t hurt. It’s interesting that the only people not credited on the YouTube video are the writers. Did someone write this song?
He’s planning to upstage Donald Trump on his birthday and the day of his military parade in Washington.
The Pope is virtually hosting a huge mass at Chicago’s Rate Park, hone of the White Sox, on June 14th in the afternoon.
The Pope will appear live from the Vatican via video screens.
Trump is planning to spend $100 million later that day with his absurd display of power, a la Adolf Hitler.
The celebration will also include a Mass, music, a film, and in-person testimonials about Pope Leo XIV, a South Side native and lifelong White Sox fan.
Leo knows what he’s doing. His message of peace will certainly be read between the lines for digs at Trump’s militaristic endeavor. The mass will probably get better or more coverage than the parade, and he knows it.
Brooks Boyer, the White Sox executive vice president and chief revenue and marketing officer, told MLB.com last week that the pope “has an open invite to throw out a first pitch” at any White Sox game.
Jake Tapper has been yapping about Joe Biden for two solid weeks.
CNN has allowed him to excoriate Biden 24/7, carrying on incessantly with few quoted sources that Biden was incompetent during his presidency.
Biden’s book, “Original Sin,” with Alex Thompson has had more publicity than any book of recent memory thanks to CNN’s collaboration.
But now come the disappointing sales.
53,737 print units sold, per Circana BookScan for the first week.
That’s not good news. That’s about 1/10th of the people who watch Tapper’s nightly show.
On Amazon, the book has held on to the number 3 spot. But today it’s starting to drop.
By comparison: Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House” sold 1.1 million copies in its first week.
No one will be happier about this news than Tapper’s critics on social media. They are horrified by the book.
I’m more unhappy about Tapper lying all year about writing a stealth book about a subject he was covering in real time. It’s totally unprofessional. He would only have been rooting for Biden to look bad in the famous debate last June, as well as all other times. It was to his advantage.
CNN should be embarrassed but they won’t be. They are so desperate for ratings they are now featuring interviews with fringe witnesses in the Diddy trial. But the Tapper experience has been a bust. It wasn’t worth it.
