Source

Paps, more pics of her bodyguard plz. It's cute her fans gave her Disney party favor bags.

For the album she recruited an exhaustive list of talent, including Ne-Yo, Stevie Wonder and Sia. She'll perform her single, Loved Me Back to Life on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Friday, and on The Ellen Degeneres Show on Sept. 11.

Fans can expect 11 new songs:

1. Loved Me Back To Life
2. Somebody Loves Somebody
3. Incredible (duet with Ne-Yo)
4. Water And A Flame
5. Breakaway
6. Save Your Soul
7. Didn't Know Love
8. Thank You
9. Overjoyed (duet with Stevie Wonder)
10. Thankful
11. At Seventeen
12. Always Be Your Girl
13. Unfinished Songs

source

stan your original #mother! how many times have you listened to #lovemeback2life

THE Clarke family of Kempsey has found a way to combine a love of restoration and horses with the thrill of competition. Sharon and Bill Clarke returned last month from the Hunter Valley, where they competed at the St Heliers Heavy Horse Field Days. The two-day yearly event has been running since 1996 and is open to all heavy horse breeds. It features lead, ridden, slide, long rein, ploughing and carriage events as well as novelty events.


Sharon competed with her home-bred Percheron mare Paris Hilton and a sulky, which was restored by her husband Bill. They won the prestigious driving excellence trophy, a new award introduced at this year’s event.

“The trophy was awarded to the driver of a vehicle that the judges believe has displayed the best driving technique and skill during the two and four wheeled vehicle classes,” Sharon said. “Competitors travelled from Queensland to the Victorian border over the two days of competition.

"Most of them had been in the Sydney and Melbourne royals. This has topped off a successful year for Paris and I. We were very successful earlier in the year at Queensland shows and will be competing next at a driving championship to be held at Bathurst in the coming months.”

Sharon dresses up in period costume for the heavy horse events and uses as much memorabilia from the era of the sulky or carriage as possible.

Judges look at finer details such as if you have money from the particular era, or other personal items such as bibles. The unique competition is the perfect combination for the Clarke family, who live on the outskirts of Kempsey.

“I have the horses and he builds the stuff,” Sharon said. “It has always been a passion of ours. We have eight horse drawn vehicles at the moment and are currently restoring a four-wheel wagon.

“The horses we show we breed. We have 10 horses by our stallion.”

Earlier this year Sharon competed in a heavy horse show in Queensland, the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere and placed in every event.

“It’s the 'royal' for draughthorses,” she said.

The Clarkes are aiming to qualify for the royal shows in 2014.
source

Ariel Castro, sentenced to life in prison for the abduction, rape and torture of three Cleveland women he held captive for years in his house, was found dead in his Ohio prison cell late on Tuesday, a state corrections official said.
Castro, 53, a former school bus driver, was under protective custody in isolation from other inmates at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, Ohio. Prison staff found him hanged in his cell during their rounds at the facility, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said.

Castro was transferred to an area hospital and pronounced dead about 90 minutes later, she said.

Castro was sentenced Aug. 1 to life in prison plus 1,000 years after holding Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight captive for nearly a decade before they were rescued by neighbors.






article, STRONG trigger warning, 1, 2, 3

Trent Reznor is known as a detail guy: a meticulous composer and manipulator of sound, layers upon layers of it. From his band's genesis 25 years ago, the leader of Nine Inch Nails has been known for songs of deep, menacing pain, rage and self-destruction. Today, Reznor's dark days of alcohol and drug abuse are behind him — and he finds himself, at 48, with a wife and two young kids.

The new Nine Inch Nails album, Hesitation Marks, ends a hiatus that Reznor announced in 2009 — and, as he tells NPR's Melissa Block, he sees the new record in part as a reaction to his earlier self. He recently spoke with Block about reacting to criticism, working with Lindsey Buckingham and the reasons he thinks opening for Guns N' Roses in Germany was a big mistake. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.

I'm thinking about your new song "Everything," which starts with this really kind of triumphant declaration? What's the first line of that song?

" 'I survived everything.' I think? I haven't listened to it for a few days."

It absolutely is. And in the course of the song you say, "I've become something else."

"Yeah, I meant that song to feel kind of absurd. You know, it's an arrogant, bold statement that might appear defiant but is actually, in my opinion, kind of self-destructive. And by the end of the song, when it doesn't resolve as nice and rosy with me running through a field of dandelions, clouds come over and there's a sense of getting what you asked for.

"My life has been many examples of shortsighted goals that I thought would fix things. If there's something broken inside me, if there's a hole in there, I thought if I could just write a good song someday, then I'd be OK. You know, if I could just get a record deal, or if I could just be onstage in front of people I'd never seen before and be validated by them. I feel very fortunate that I've been able to achieve those things, and there have been moments of feeling good about it, but it didn't fix things, you know? It wasn't the solution to me feeling spiritually complete or whole."

“ When you've been around for a while and you've created, essentially, a brand, that has a certain level of expectation. And it encourages you to not color outside the lines if you pay too much attention to what you expect that fan base wants from you. I think many, many artists have suffered an artistic death by doing just that.

This song does start out in such a sunny way, with all these joyful harmonies. I'm sure you know there was a disgruntled fan who thought this was entirely too poppy — maybe a softer, happier side of Trent Reznor — and put together an animated video of you riding a unicorn under a rainbow with birds flying by. You're saying, though, that's ignoring what's really going on in this song?

"That certainly wasn't anything that crossed my mind when I was working on this. You know, I still think in terms of album formats: collections of songs and how they relate to each other and how they integrate and tell a bigger story than what's contained in each little four-minute parcel. But when you've been around for a while and you've created, essentially, a brand, that has a certain level of expectation. And it encourages you to not color outside the lines if you pay too much attention to what you expect that fan base wants from you. I think many, many artists have suffered an artistic death by doing just that. I think we live in very dangerous times right now with the Internet and the feedback loop you can get from people who somehow feel their fingers are connected to an impulse — first second of hearing something, I need to write some reaction that gets blasted out to the world."

What did you think of the video?

"I saw about the first five seconds of it, and it lessened my faith that I am reaching an audience that is open-minded enough to understand what I'm trying to do. That's what I thought off the bat. And then I thought, 'I really don't care what you think.' We wouldn't be sitting here doing an interview, because my career would have been over 24 years ago, if I'd have listened to what I think people want to hear from me. [But] this is just my off-the-cuff thesis here. I'm sure it's riddled with holes that I'll be reminded of on the Internet any minute now."

If you choose to read it.

"When we started out, you would get feedback from fan mail, if you dared to read it. And I remember early versions of [online] bulletin boards, where it was exciting to see that somewhere, digitally, people were talking about your band in little chat rooms and things like that. When we got up to whenever Twitter came out, I took it upon myself to try to direct market to people. Myself, Rob Sheridan — my art director and collaborator on pretty much everything creative — we spent an enormous amount of time really studying the behavior of people: how people wanted to consume music, how they learned about music, what formats they liked, what felt insincere to them, what they felt the value of music might be. Really just watching. But it tuned us in to that feedback loop of commentary, and you can easily go down rabbit holes with niches of people that are unpleasable, regardless of what you could possibly do as an artist. My brain is wired to follow the negative down there and try to engage people and defend and fight, but that's an utter waste of time. I left that era of my life realizing that just because everybody now has the ability to be a self-publisher and broadcast every whim and thought to the world, it doesn't mean that that opinion is necessarily valid or needs to be consumed or listened to or paid attention to. I think — and I've said this recently in the press — as an artist it's an incredibly dangerous time to pay attention, too much, to what other people think. Because it inevitably leads to either homogenous, crowd-pleasing, meandering work, or it leads to something that's just as insincere — just to go against that."

You're known for really intricately composed, crafted, layered songs. Walk me through what's going on in the new song "Copy of A." It starts out with this repetitive synth pattern, right?

"Yeah, that's five 16th notes with a rest in there, so it's hard to tell where the downbeat is. I like the way it flips around and doesn't always land on the beat in an expected way. This song is really about repetition and starting to layer small elements of rhythm, percussion and treatment of vocal into something that is meant to feel hypnotic but slightly unnerving. Not comfortable, not EDM dance-tent, wave-your-hands-in-the-air, but more something that keeps you on the edge of your seat, that doesn't feel quite right."

So the intent is to be unsettling?



"In this particular song, yeah. It's about tension. It's about layers of complexity that don't feel showy, that don't feel like, 'Look at all the things I can put in here.' Things suddenly creep in. If you were to study this track or listen to the multitracks of what made it up, there's a lot more in there than what it sounds like. It's meant to feel understandable and minimal in its surface."

Do you remember how many tracks there are on this song, layered on top of each other?

"No, no idea. I remember when we did The Fragile, however large the mixing console we had, we always had to add more tracks — we were always maxed out. This album in general was very much the opposite of that."

And somewhere in here, on guitar, is Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac. How did that happen?

"The idea that [co-producer] Atticus Ross and I had was to bring in some other brains that work in a way that's different than ours. Lindsey Buckingham was kind of the oddball choice: 'Man, it'd be great if we could get him — let's try!' A couple days later, we were sitting in the studio with him."

Why did you want him?

"I've always greatly admired Fleetwood Mac from as far back as I can remember — and in particular, I've always admired his production skills and his guitar playing, which I think get overlooked because of all the other great aspects of Fleetwood Mac. His picking style, his sound, his aggressiveness and just his mastery of the instrument, I always thought was amazing. I thought it was so different than what I do, it might be interesting to see what happens if we put those things together.

"We did the same thing with [guitarist] Adrian Belew and [bassist] Pino Palladino, which was just to bombard these guys with snippets of music that we assumed would be a bit unfamiliar and kind of a foreign land to drop them into. We would offer guidance, but not strict guidance — basically, 'Do whatever you want, but what if it was something like this? For this track, what if it was just long melodic phrases that were at least four bars long? Or what if your guitar was a percussion instrument [and] we don't hear any sense of melody?' We'd just record everything and sort through it later. I've been doing this with Adrian since The Downward Spiral; what Lindsey brought to the table was, the second he picks up his guitar, it's him. There's all these different sounds coming out and I think, 'What pedals is he using?' And he's not. He just knows how to play his instrument really well."

I'll bet there are lots of tucked-away sounds in these songs that you're really, really pleased by, that are layered so deep in that we may not really hear them — but you know they're there. And I'll bet you love that.

"We all acknowledged — when I say we, I mean Atticus Ross, [mix engineer] Alan Moulder, myself, the core team here — that we thought this was a pretty important collection of songs that would benefit from an extended period of time working on it. It ended up taking almost twice as long as we originally thought. We discovered [that] the sound of the record, the way we built it up and kept it fairly sparse, became very tricky to mix and get the puzzle just right. And what you were mentioning about layers and pieces — we spent a lot of time really weaving a kind of tapestry, a sculpture of things that work in very subtle ways, that lift up choruses or make certain areas feel more intimate or a bit more tense, really taking the time to get the mix and the tiny details right. I think those things come out after repeated listenings. Those are the kind of records that always change my life, that make it feel like my brain got larger or my taste widened a bit, so I try to make those type of records myself."

You mean you're still discovering new things in this record?

"Yeah, I mean, I aspire to make a record that sounds better 10 listens in than it does after two — and still, at 50 listens, you're picking out things that add a depth and a thoughtfulness. There's enough in there that you can still be extracting pieces out of it. I don't know that people listen to records that many times these days, but I do."

There's a sort of a creaky, percussive sound on the song "Find My Way." What is that?

"We put a mic up in a room and had a bunch of just junk around — slats of wood, miscellaneous percussion pieces, a table. We just started banging on things, recording everything and extracting them and treating them. And we stumbled into certain things that work in that context."

I just love that sound so much. What were you trying to get out of it?

"Well, we were trying to make it feel like it wasn't coming from the same place as the loop around it. What's around it is all electronic drums, processed and delayed. They feel very direct; there's a nice, fundamental low end and warmth to it. We wanted something that felt much more live sitting on top — not in a way that fights it, but that makes the track come alive.

"We record a lot of things with a stereo mic in a room so it actually has a sense that it sounds real. If you walk in a room where someone's playing drums, it doesn't sound anything like drums usually sound on records — because drums on records have lots of close mics, and everything's gated and compressed and EQ'ed and polished up. If you walk in a room and Dave Grohl's bashing on a drum kit at full volume, it sounds exciting and live and ringy and chaotic. You're hearing it splash off the walls and the snare's too loud and the cymbals are kinda scary because your eyes vibrate when he hits them that hard."


A few years ago, back in 2009, you wrote on your website that it was time to let Nine Inch Nails disappear for a while and you were done touring under that name. You worked on other projects, but now you're back — doing these big arena shows, huge festivals, Lollapalooza. What's it like feeding off of those crowds again after having been away for a stretch of time?

"It's pretty interesting, the transformation from the idea of it to the actual execution of it. A year and a half ago or so, I realized a record was going to be made, and there was the inevitable talk of doing a supporting tour — you know, do I think I have anything left I can pull off in that format? Can I say something new? If it's for nostalgia, no. If it's for me to just get up and relive running the touchdown across the finish line in the homecoming game, then I can't allow myself to do that. But if I think I haven't done everything I can do — if I have something to say and a way to present it that warrants it, and I can physically pull it off, and it's something that I think belongs under the heading of Nine Inch Nails and what that means to people, then yeah. And I'll catch some flak for saying I wasn't going to do that again, but I changed my mind. I feel much more invigorated and inspired than I did when I said I didn't want do it anymore.

"A year and a half ago, that seed gets planted and the decision gets made: 'Let's play some shows, and let's put this record out.' Then it turns into executing it, and in the last month, it's turned into actually being onstage. Festivals can be the greatest and they can be the worst; I think we had a taste of both of that on this little run we just did. You're up there and it's a sea of people, and it's not a given that it's going to be your crowd because people are there for a variety of reasons — but when you see it connect, it feels fantastic. I think the show that we just built to play festivals was very smart, and I had that feeling as we were about to walk onstage that I can't wait to show this to people. You know, at song 22, I'm completely exhausted with a sore throat, saying, 'Did I just sign up for a full year of this?' I'm a hundred years old right now. It feels a little different in that way. But it's felt great."

So when you say it could be the greatest or the worst, what's the worst?

"There were a couple festivals where we were sandwiched in the wrong kind of bill, to be honest with you. Nine Inch Nails is kind of an anomaly because we've never had hits. We had one kind-of hit, 'Closer,' but we're not like a singles band. And to see us sandwiched with the people making Rihanna singles and some of the stuff that's at the top of the charts right now. ... We played a show in Belgium, essentially opening for Eminem. And there was a realization about midway through the first song that, OK, this audience doesn't care about what I'm up to."

So what do you do when that happens? How do you adapt or calibrate what you're doing next?

"I don't know. Twenty years ago, it would have been smash equipment and insult the audience and throw a tantrum. Now, it's smash equipment, throw a tantrum internally, maybe. I'm not sure what you do.

"I'm trying to think if I should say this out loud, but I will say it out loud because it's what I do. In '91, Nine Inch Nails was kind of the new, hot band that was starting to break in the States. We had just played the first Lollapalooza and our song that had been out for a year and a half had just gotten picked up on MTV; you could feel a kind of momentum. Guns N' Roses was the biggest band in the world at that time, and Axl Rose, who was a fan, publicly asked us, 'Come play some shows with us in Germany.' You know, play in front of 65,000 people in Mannheim. [I thought], 'I've never been there; let's do it.' Stepping onstage, I'm sure it didn't take the whole first song for me to realize, OK, this was a huge miscalculation, because the only thing that can be achieved here is confrontation. There's an audience that's here for a certain thing, and what we're doing is not in the wheelhouse of what's acceptable for that thing. And then you question, 'Are these people that even I would want to have as my audience?' And generally, no — I don't like this kind of music; I wouldn't come to this concert myself. And then you think, 'I should have thought this through before I said yes and flew to Germany.' We made a couple of those mistakes on this festival run.

"But you can get comfortable playing to your own audience all the time. We're about to embark on an arena tour in the U.S. here — that will be our audience. And what's good about that is I feel we can get away with more things, we can stretch your attention span further, I can play songs that I feel are more challenging. But you're also walking into a home-court advantage every night. Sometimes it's humbling and can be beneficial in a sense that you still have something that you have to prove."

When you're onstage now and you're doing old Nine Inch Nails songs from the dark days, songs full of hurt and pain and anger, how do you pull that off? Does it feel very different from where you are now, in that it's painful in a visceral way — like peeling off a scab?

"I've kind of watched with amusement as the press has latched on to 'Reznor, now 48, happily married with two kids and an Oscar winner,' as if I can be summed up as that now. 'He made a song with a major chord in it that we don't understand' is something that references Joy Division and New Order. It's pop-punk. That's the tagline for who I am now. I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago, and I'm happy to not be that person. When I'm onstage, the songs that we've chosen to play from the back catalog are things that still resonate with me and matter to me, and when I'm in those songs, I get transported into those songs. It can be draining to go through that."

You mentioned your kids — you have two young sons. Are they on the road with you when you go out on these tours?

"Yep."

What's that like?

"We're just at the beginning of it, but so far, it's been great. I said I wasn't going to tour if it meant missing them grow up, and I mean that. I love playing and I love touring, but I'm not going to miss out on their lives to do that, so I'm attempting — and so far, so good — a balance there."

Are you with them right before you go onstage? I mean, do you have to sort of shed one persona to become the other?

"Generally, they don't come to the venues. But to be able to wake up and hang out with your family, to have that normal aspect of being present for them, that matters. I find that quite centering. You know, instead of sitting on a bus with a bunch of guys — nothing against it, but I've done that for quite some time. And it adds an interesting duality where I can kind of switch that off and kick into show mode. It keeps things, so far, feeling kind of sane. Ask me in a few months and we'll see what the answer is."

You were talking before about the through-line in some of the new media coverage — the happily married guy with the two kids, and how that can be sort of misleading. What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding about you?

"That's a good question. There were times when I kind of believed what I read about myself because I wasn't sure who I was in the first place. In the mid-'90s, I certainly fell prey to that. Nowadays, I don't care as much about what people think, and certainly what the press thinks. And I say that not out of arrogance — just, I've learned to tune out things that I find destructive.

"I could spend a lot of time being frustrated about one aspect of the press, which is what low qualifications are required to become a quote-unquote journalist these days. I can do an interview with somebody and have a conversation with them. That person can extract their version of what was said, and then I'll get hundreds of Google Alerts extracting that quote out of context as some new slogan that's link bait — so they can sell advertisements. One of the ones — well, I won't even give it credit. Somehow it's being twisted into, I'm anti-'do-it-yourself' and I'm criticizing anybody that's trying to have a Kickstarter or do things on their own. That couldn't be further from the truth. There's been a big thing of, 'My album costs 10 bucks or go screw yourself,' with a different word in there — all taken out of context of what I was actually trying to say. And even trying to explain myself is tedious and kind of pointless, because this explanation will be taken out of context. So the end result of all that, for me, is to kind of just tune it out. Try to do the best work I can, try to do that work with integrity — and then, I can't control how you're gonna feel about it or what you're gonna think about it or how I'm gonna be represented about it."

If you look back farther at how you've been viewed as a musician or as an artist, are there other misperceptions that make you feel like, "They just don't get who I am and what I'm doing here"?

"Well, there's always been a need to put things in boxes — understandable little headings so you know what the thing is. What were we called in the '90s — industrial? What does that mean? Well, we don't know. It's not alternative like grunge, and it has synthesizers — let's call it industrial. That was never me out there, waving that banner around. I think in Europe we got called metal at some point, and so we'd wind up in this kind of metal heading as if we're brethren with whoever's considered a metal band. I don't know. I think if you've been around long enough and you're attempting to continue to expand and reinvent, it becomes more difficult to niche — until they can comfortably place you in a Neil Young slot, as someone that's been around long enough that they've proven themselves to be something else."

You decided to master the new album, Hesitation Marks, two different ways: There's the standard version and the "audiophile" version. How are they different?

"When we were working on the album, we realized the songs had a lot of dynamics: They went from very quiet to fairly loud. There was also a lot of low-end frequency: We made this record kind of inspired by a lot of what's happened in hip-hop and club stuff, where there's a lot of information happening down in the low end that you won't hear out of your computer speakers. In the last several years, the 'loudness wars' you hear about [have] been everybody trying to make their record louder than everybody else's — the idea being when you put your song on, it blasts out of the speakers and it sounds more exciting than one that's not as loud. The compromise that happens when you make things louder and louder is, you lose the dynamic range. The fidelity suffers, but the hype goes up.



"We were faced with a dilemma at the very end of mastering, which was, do we compete with everyone else? Do we want to be as loud as other acts when you're shuffling through on iTunes? Or do we a make it just a purist thing where it's exactly how we want it to sound? So we decided to master it two different ways. And this wasn't meant to be any kind of tricky marketing way to fool you into buying the record twice — it was just for the small percentage of people that would appreciate the difference. If you have a high-end system, you'll need to turn it up a little bit louder, but you'll hear it closer to what we actually were listening to in the studio. Don't get it expecting [that] you're going to radically notice the difference, particularly if you're listening to it on your computer. It's a subtle thing that was meant for the people that care about that sort of detail."

That's got to make you happy, to know that some people will hear the album as you heard it.

"Well, it's just like a number of other things. In the olden days, being on a major label, we'd get into fights about the cost of the package. I would be arguing, 'It needs four-color ink and it needs this kind of paper.' And the argument would be, 'Nobody cares about that stuff.' I don't know if the guy that bought the Eminem record cares about that — and that's nothing against Eminem. I don't know that my biggest fan cares about that. But I care about it. I care about the way that paper feels, and if it leaves fingerprints, and I would prefer that it's not the jewel box that explodes when you try to take the plastic off the outside. And with vinyl, I care about what's written on the inside with the engineer's handwriting. I think about those things. So if I'm able to offer something that actually makes it sound a little closer to how we wanted it to sound, I don't expect everyone to care about that. But if you do, then here it is."

source: NPR, listen to interview at the source
this interview was really great, but lol @ him taking this "Everything" spoof video seriously - he loved the equally ridiculous "Discipline" video and made it the official MV so idk...

Almost 2 months after announcing the delay of her long-awaited debut LP, Sky Ferreira took to her official Facebook page to announce that the album is once again on track for a late 2013 release. While the exact date and album title has yet to be announced, Ferreira teased that she has confirmed the date with her label and that fans can expect to hear it before the new year. In addition to the announcement, Ferreira posted a seemingly nonsensical jumble of letters, which fans quickly found to contain names of eight tracks from the album.



Nobody Asked Me If I Was Okay
Can’t Say No
Night Time
My Time
24 Hours
Boys
I Blame Myself (possible lyrics)
Heavy Metal Hearts

So in review: Sky's new EP and music video for "You're Not the One" are set to premiere on September 17, with the full-length album sometime between then and January 1!

Source

Today Paris Hilton reunited with Darren Bousman, the director of their beloved cult classic goth opera Repo! the Genetic Opera. The pulchritudinous superstar tweeted "Just finished having lunch with my friend @Darren_Bousman. Fun talking about memories from the #RepoTheGeneticOpera movie set. #AmberSweet." While it can't be known if it was purely a catch up, or if some business was involved.. it is fun to speculate the thought of a Repo! sequel, or that Paris may appear in the second episode of Devil's Carnival!


source
Paris was so good in this. I always love the stories of how hard she worked to get this role, and all the set stories. Bless! Darren tweeted a little while ago about being with Alexa Vega and her still wanting to do a Repo! sequel. So who knows~

Episode 9

CHALLENGE

"Rampage"

Challengers must carry a ball down a ramp and deposit it into the basket located on the ramp directly across from them. Most balls wins.

CHALLENGE WINNERS

CT & Wes



Paula & Emily

CHALLENGE LOSERS / SENT INTO THE JUNGLE

Preston & Knight

VOTED INTO THE JUNGLE

Jordan & Marlon

JUNGLE CHALLENGE

"Breaking on Through"

Challengers must break through a three story building, alternating between teammates, and finally through a steal door. First team to ring their bell wins.

ELIMINATED

Preston & Knight

---

SOURCE + My TV
Final next week!!

Leaves your other favs wondering why they even bother trying anymore



Emeli Sande is certainly one of the busiest women in pop with the 'Clown' star confirming that she has written a song for Katy Perry's upcoming album 'Prism' while describing her recording session with the US singer as “awesome.”

The 'Read All About It' hitmaker, who is working on her second album following the success of her debut record 'Our Version of Events,' has been bridging the gap between her releases by penning songs with some of the biggest names in music and impressively, she has managed to lock down none other than one of pop's princesses, Katy Perry.

Revealing details of their working relationship, Emeli told The Sun: “I've written a song for Katy Perry's album. We did a session together in New York. She was awesome, she knows what she's doing.”

Katy will be releasing 'Prism' on October 22 and has already enjoyed success with the lead single 'Roar' which is currently at number one on the iTunes chart in several countries including the US, UK and Australia.

Rapper Juicy J also praised Katy's work ethic while recording their collaboration 'Dark Horse.'

“I just did something with Katy Perry, man. That song is amazing,” Juicy J told MTV News. “She's very professional, everything went smooth and she's a great person. My verse I did on that song, she was singing it.”

Emeli, 26, has also scored writing credits on Britney Spears' upcoming album and recalls working with her longtime collaborator producer Naughty Boy.

“Me and Naughty Boy did the Britney song and sent it off. It's fun writing for an icon and being Britney for the day,” Emeli admitted.

source

every day news about britney's (and katy's) album slays me i feel like i'm getting whiplash.mp3 (written by Britney Spears). is this what the beyhive feels like???? (in 2008?)

Lady Gaga made her live return at the iTunes festival last night and debuted seven songs from her new album 'ARTPOP'. Reactions from critics have been mixed. Long-term believer Eve Barlow went down to London’s Roundhouse to observe Gaga's sink or swim moment and has all the details.


IT BEGINS WITH A WORLD OF UNCERTAINTY



There's a sense of the unknown about Lady Gaga's return to the stage tonight. For a start, she's been away for a long time. Technically, she's been absent mere months – but in 2013, months can feel like YEARS. Remember the first time you heard 'Get Lucky'? That was only four and a half months ago. As the omnipresent star of the internet era, Gaga knows too well how sands can shift in an instant. She has manipulated social media and light-speed connectivity to her advantage, she became a God among mere memes. And now she sets another new precedent by being the first ever star of her level to effectively disappear, then attempt to come back. How it's going to work out is anyone's guess. Can she still dance post-‘hip’ surgery? Does she still have her musical ear to the ground? Is she going to be even less predictable than before? What is this #swinefest she's been tweeting about? Does it involve her slaughtering a piglet onstage? Who knows what the audience has let itself in for. The fact Gaga's so late doesn't bode well. Maybe she's bottled it. Hey Gaga, shall we just go to the kebab joint over the road instead?

THEN SHE APPEARS! WHAT A RELIEF!

Hold that thought – Gaga's onstage looking shit hot in a ninja mask. Or is it a Burka mask? Oh, who cares, it really suits her. She's locked herself in some weird sex toy canon and as I sit in the firing line I wonder whether she'll be launched at me from the middle of The Roundhouse (or RoundHAUS, riiiiiight)? She's surrounded by naked ninja men, or maybe they're Imams. So many questions as usual. Gaga hasn't so much built up a back catalogue over the past half decade in so much as she's developed installations in an ever-expanding modern art museum (The Gaganheim, if you like). It's all open to your interpretation. This opening song ‘Aura’ is much better than the dodgy version that leaked a few weeks back. Before it has time to sink in, Gaga starts stripping into her bra for the first of many occasions, for this second slice of new material – a song called ‘MANiCURE’. It's about nail art. No wait, it's about her addiction to men. Woah, I got it: it's about trading her addiction to men for an afternoon in the nail salon. I think.



THINGS GET CONFUSING

There seemed to be a consistent theme developing in the first 10 minutes: EDM by way of cockrock, lots of black lycra, hot hard torsos, dungeon sex (well, that's more inferred). Then some old geezer with grey hair comes on (he looks a bit like John Lithgow) and helps Gaga get entirely starkers. It takes a surprising length of time considering she doesn't really do clothes. Gaga has changed into an outfit made of shells. I use the term 'outfit' loosely. She's glued two shells to her boobs and one… use your imagination. She's also acquired her second hair-do of the night, apparently from Shakira. The mane soon becomes the main event, overshadowing everything else that's going on, including this hip-hop channeling ‘Jewels & Drugs’ song, which apparently features T.I. who Gaga reveals is not allowed in the UK. He shouldn't be allowed on the track. Gaga's face is on the backdrop video blowing bubble gum with the wig on. How the gum doesn't get caught in the wig is life's latest mystery. The greatest mystery of all however, is Gaga's speech (the first of many) in which she claims to have stopped creating a character for herself, instead choosing to reveal the woman under the make-up and the wigs. Right you are, ShaGagakira. Does this mean we can call you Stefani now?



PIGS DO FLY

Pigs! Human pigs! Bouncing up and down from the ceiling! ‘Swine’ graffiti’d everywhere! Gaga confessing that she may have been abused in her early years in New York while her fans throw soft toy pigs at her! Soft toy pigs soaring through the air! Whatever #swinefest means, it's terrifying enough to put you off Percy Pigs for life. Believe it or not, though, there's something even more terrifying than cuddly pigs, men dressed as pigs, Little Monsters with pig snouts on top of their noses and Gaga shrieking 'SQUEALER SQUEALER SQUEAL OUT YOU'RE SO DISGUSTING'. It's a ballad called ‘I Wanna Be With You’. The last time Gaga took to balladry at Twickenham Stadium, she sang a song called 'Princess Die' which tragically segued into 'Imagine', a trite tribute megamix to both Diana and John Lennon. 'I Wanna Be With You', however, is far worse. It's about Gaga's addiction to her superfans. It's petrifying. She paints herself as a dead corpse whose life support is her audience's affections. "But when the lights come on," she sings. "You lift me up and I feel strong." Tell you what would make me feel strong: 'Bad Romance' dropping right about now.

SILENCE FILLS THE SPACE

As proceedings come to an end, the melancholy of what we’ve all just witnessed sets in. Nobody knows quite what to say. Even the Little Monsters seem deflated. Or perhaps that's just exhaustion, they've been camping outside for days. The promise of 'ArtPOP' seems slight. The concept of failure feels possible. Actually, the concept of failure seems necessary. Gaga must fail. She must fail, she must go away, hang out with some normal people for a while, switch off her Little Monsters website, tell Terry Richardson to leave her alone for five minutes, listen to something other than the din of late-night post-show European clubs, forget about art, jesters, performance technique, forget fame, expectation, pursuit, success and the notion that time is never on her side. Then maybe, just maybe she will learn to laugh on her own again. And then we'll all laugh in turn. Because Gaga was funny once. She sang about "bluffin'" with her "muffin". And she wore an outfit made of Kermit The Frogs. And she seemed to know that it was all a bit ridiculous.

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The Top 4 face off on "MasterChef" Wednesday night (Sept. 4) for a chance to get to the Season 4 finale, with maybe the most heated episode we've ever seen on the show.

For the first mystery box, the final four have to cook in pairs. Luca chooses Natasha, leaving Jesse with Krissi, who continues her streak of not being able to get along with anybody ever. When she can't help Jesse out with anything, she just leaves. Jesse calls her out about how, basically, worthless she's being and she storms off like the mannerless child that she is.


She does come back, but it's ridiculous, with Jesse ending up doing almost everything and Krissi barely being able to slap some apples and cream on a plate for dessert. Of course Jesse and Krissi are in the pressure test.

The pressure test is a chocolate mousse for Graham, a chocolate molten lava cake for Joe and a chocolate souffle for Gordon. They have 75 minutes. In the end, Krissi's souffle is undercooked (and looks terrible), while Jesse's mousse is too dense. It comes down to the molten cake, which is nearly cake soup on Krissi's end, so Jesse advances to the Top 3.

The mystery box challenge for the Top 3 is to remake their initial audition dish that got them onto the show. Natasha has empanadas and skirt steak, Luca has broccoli rabe ravioli and Jesse has seabass en croute.

The chefs are ranked and Luca is last, followed by Natasha and then Jesse is the winner of the challenge, which gives her an advantage in the final elimination challenge -- she gets first dibs on the main ingredient for the challenge. Natasha gets second pick and Luca is stuck with whatever is left.

Jesse chooses kobe beef and Natasha chooses Alaskan king crab, which leaves Luca with the grana padano cheese. That may prove to be a fatal error, since Jesse set Natasha up to give Luca the crab, which he struggles with. But giving the Italian man the finest Italian cheese? Possibly huge mistake.

For their dishes, Jesse makes some veggie and noodles with her kobe beef, Natasha makes a cold yakisoba noodle salad with her crab (risky) and Luca does a stuffed veal cutlet filled with grana padano along with frico (an Italian tart made of cheese, potatoes and onions). Luca appears to have quite an edge given his ingredient.

In the end, Natasha nails her cold salad, while Luca's dish is a bit heavy. Jesse makes a big mistake in leaving her papaya slaw off her plate in favor of the veggies and noodles. It seems as though Luca should be heading home, plus we think Natasha and Jesse have been more consistent than he has this season.

But the judges choose to send through Natasha first, then they pick Luca and send Jesse home. Huh. That surprises us a bit.

What do you think, "MasterChef" fans? Did the right two chefs advance? And who do you think will win next week?

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Episode 23

Episode 24

lmao hell noooo! No way would I be afraid of Krissy's sloppy ass. I would have mollywhopped her if she ran up on me like she did those other three.

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This week marks the release of Yours Truly, the debut album from 20-year-old Nickelodeon star turned R&B singer Ariana Grande. Perhaps you have heard "The Way" and wondered, Who is that Mariah Carey–like tween singing with Mac Miller? Perhaps you watched the VMAs red carpet and thought, I am too old to tell these child star singers apart. You are not! You are young at heart, and you can still keep up. But we have gone ahead and answered some of your Ariana Grande questions, just in case.



Is it Ariana Grande (silent e) or Ariana Grand-e?

Grand-e. Here, let the Today show anchors demonstrate:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Are you sure that's her and not Mariah Carey singing on "The Way"?
Yes, though you are not the first person to ask that question. Basically every review of the song and/or Yours Truly invokes Mimi, which is easy to understand once Ariana starts doing the crazy-high melismas.
(See also: "Baby I" and "Daydreamin'.")



Okay, but how am I supposed to tell her apart from all the other Disney singers?
Well, first of all, she's a Nickelodeon star, not Disney. She was on Victorious and just began a spinoff called Sam & Cat.

That is not really much of a distinction to me.
Fair enough. Here's the breakdown: Selena Gomez dated Justin Bieber and sings that "Come and Get It" na-na-na song; Demi Lovato hosted X Factor and does inspirational stuff; and Ariana Grande is like the Carly Rae Jepsen of R&B. (Grande is even repped by Scooter Braun, who managed Jepsen, Bieber, and second-tier British boy band the Wanted.)

Can she sing as high as Mariah?
No. But she has a four-octave range and goes all the way to E7, which is not too shabby.

Can she sing "All I Want for Christmas Is You," at least?
She is trying to be Mariah. Of course she can:



Can she imitate anyone else, or just Mariah?
She's a theater kid. (Grande had a role in 13 on Broadway.) Of course she can do impressions! Here is Ariana doing Ariel, Britney, Shakira, and a lamb, among others.



Has Mariah said anything about her yet?
No, come on. Mariah is our greatest living diva; she's not going to make room for anyone.
Okay, I'm almost overloaded here. Is there anything else I should know?
The Spanglish version of "The Way" is pretty good. And that key change on "Baby I"? This album is fun! Don't fight it!

Source: Vulture Magazine

OWN’s most popular series to date, “The Haves and the Have Nots,” wrapped its first season with a record audience Tuesday night.

Nielsen estimates than an average crowd of 2.6 million watched the Tyler Perry-created soap starring John Schneider and Tika Sumpter — nearly 50% more than the 1.77 million who tuned in for the series premiere in late May.

It has performed especially well for OWN in the net’s target women 25-54 demo, rising week to week with each of its last eight episodes.

The series about the powerful Cryer family and the hired help who work in their Savannah, Ga., mansion returns with its second season in January.

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O collecting them coins. Hopefully they'll up the budget for the other half of the season.