NEW YORK (AP) — Federal authorities are pushing back on R. Kelly's claims that he was placed on suicide watch as a form of punishment last week after a judge sentenced him to 30 years behind bars for using his fame to sexually abuse young girls.
NEW YORK (AP) — A 35-year-old New York man is facing trespassing and stalking charges after authorities said he entered two New York City residences linked to the famed singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.
TOKYO (AP) — Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman’s long search came to an end Friday when he was reunited in Tokyo with a cherished guitar 45 years after it was stolen from a Toronto hotel.
“My girlfriend is right there,” said Bachman, 78, a former member of The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, as the Gretsch guitar on which he wrote “American Woman” and other hits was handed to him by a Japanese musician who had bought it at a Tokyo store in 2014 without knowing its history.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— Netflix’s “The Sea Beast” brings a “Moby Dick”-like tale down to kid size.
CHICAGO (AP) — R. Kelly could be in his 80s before the singer is free again, based on a 30-year prison term imposed this week by a New York federal judge for parlaying his fame to sexually abuse young fans, including some who were children.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nipsey Hussle was a hip-hop star who sought to raise up his neighborhood with him until a friend from the same streets gunned him down, a prosecutor said in his closing argument Thursday.
LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) — Sonny Barger, the leather-clad fixture of 1960s counterculture and figurehead of the Hells Angels motorcycle club who was at the notorious Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway, has died.
“Mercury — Act 2,” Imagine Dragons (Interscope)
If you were hiding under your bed after listening to the last album by Imagine Dragons, it's time to come out. The second volume of “Mercury” is upbeat, often Caribbean-spiced and throbbing.
NEW YORK (AP) — Mary J. Blige’s 2022 is going pretty well. Her new album landed in the top 10 of Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and she was featured at the Super Bowl halftime show. Now she's been tapped for a concert like no other.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Both sides rested their cases Wednesday in the trial of a man charged with the killing of rapper Nipsey Hussle after a day's delay because of an assault on the defendant by fellow jail inmates.
NEW YORK (AP) — Disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for using his fame to sexually abuse young fans, including some who were just children, in a systematic scheme that went on for decades.
R. Kelly's musical accomplishments have been accompanied by a long history of allegations that he sexually abused women and children. Now the R&B singer has been sentenced to spend the next three decades behind bars.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Black culture, in all its glory, will be on display over the 4th of July holiday weekend in New Orleans as thousands converge on the city for the in-person return of the Essence Festival of Culture.
MANCHESTER, Tenn. (AP) — Since its debut on a rural Tennessee farm two decades ago, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival strived to be one of the country’s greenest music festivals, investing in recycling, composting, solar energy and other improvements.
ATLANTA (AP) — A man was killed and two others were injured, including rap star Ludacris' manager, in a parking lot shooting in an upscale neighborhood north of downtown Atlanta on Sunday night.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the men were all taken to hospitals, where one was pronounced dead.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— The biggest new movie streaming this week is “The Princess,” coming to Hulu on Friday, starring Joey King as a royal who refuses to marry her intended (with good reason, as he’s a sociopath).
Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 3-9:
July 3: Actor Michael Cole (“The Mod Squad”) is 82. Singer Judith Durham of The Seekers is 79. Actor Kurtwood Smith (“That 70s Show”) is 79. Country singer Johnny Lee is 76.
LONDON (AP) — Rapper Kendrick Lamar has closed this year's Glastonbury Festival with a powerful headline set that saw him chant “Godspeed for women’s rights” as fake blood poured down his face from a crown of thorns.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — With a speech about his own inspirational dream for the Black community, Sean “Diddy” Combs channeled the spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while accepting the BET Awards' highest honor Sunday night.
LONDON (AP) — Paul McCartney’s Glastonbury Festival show was two years late. Fans thought it was worth the wait.
The former Beatle pulled out all the stops — and brought on big-name rock ’n’ roll guest stars — for a 2½-hour concert at the southwest England festival on Saturday night.
CHICAGO (AP) — In the twilight of his music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Riccardo Muti candidly outlined his legacy and implored musicians to remember his instruction on Giuseppe Verdi’s operas: use the 19th century scores without altered notes.
NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a rock musical space odyssey. Star Wars goes to Warped Tour, all grown up. And it’ll make you want to dance.
Coheed and Cambria's “Vaxis II” is a sprawling 13-track prog-rock symphony, out Friday.
HAVANA (AP) — Two members of a loose-knit group of dissident artists have been sentenced to prison in Cuba, the country's prosecutor's office said Friday.
Maikel Castillo was sentenced to nine years for attacks and defamation against the country's institutions and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, 34, to five years for insulting national symbols.
The arrival of the compact disc nearly killed off record albums, with vinyl pressing machines sold, scrapped and dismantled by major record labels.
Four decades later, with resuscitated record album sales producing double-digit annual growth, manufacturers are rapidly rebuilding an industry to keep pace with sales that reached $1 billion last year.
PILTON, England (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged music fans at the Glastonbury Festival on Friday to “spread the truth about Russia’s war ” on his country.
PARIS (AP) — He may have died last November, but Virgil Abloh lived on at Paris Fashion Week Thursday in a high-energy runway spectacular for Louis Vuitton menswear. A Black marching band gave a rousing performance on a surreal yellow brick road installation inside the Louvre, while rapper Kendrick Lamar performed a live ode to the American fashion star who was Vuitton’s menswear designer from 2018 until his death.
NEW YORK (AP) — How does Rick Astley handle one of his songs being part of the biggest internet meme of all time? He rolls with it, obviously.
“Listen, let’s face it, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ has sort of become something else," he says.
NEW YORK (AP) — After more than six decades of making bicycles soar, sending panicked swimmers to the shore and other spellbinding close encounters, John Williams is putting the final notes on what may be his last film score.
NEW YORK (AP) — After more than six decades of making bicycles soar, sending panicked swimmers to the shore and other spellbinding close encounters, John Williams is putting the final notes on what may be his last film score.
NEW YORK (AP) — “MJ,” the hit-filled Broadway musical about the King of Pop, got a huge bump at the box office after nabbing four Tony Awards and getting valuable exposure in front of millions during its electric telecast performance.
NEW YORK (AP) — James Rado, co-creator of the groundbreaking hippie musical “Hair,” which celebrated protest, pot and free love and paved the way for the sound of rock on Broadway, has died. He was 90.
The brief life of Elvis Presley is not something that fits neatly into a conventional biopic formula, though many have tried. It was, perhaps, always going to take a director as wild and visionary as Baz Luhrmann to do something that evokes the essence of the King’s 42 years.
NEW YORK (AP) — How songs come to Sophie Allison is pretty simple. They just sort of show up, raw and in need of attention.
“The way I write is I just sit down and — I could be watching TV, be having coffee or something — I’m just kind of mindlessly playing guitar until I stumble upon an idea I like,” the singer-songwriter says.
LONDON (AP) — Thousands of people are returning to England's Glastonbury Festival as the five-day music and performing arts event reopened Wednesday for the first time in three years after being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
NEW YORK (AP) — Two former college roommates who created a successful clothing line under the “Rhode” trademark sued model Hailey Bieber on Tuesday, saying she’s creating market confusion by marketing a skin care line under the Rhode name.
Diane Warren will finally be able to thank the Academy this November.
The oft-nominated songwriter has been selected to receive an honorary Oscar at the annual Governors Awards alongside directors Peter Weir and Euzhan Palcy.
NEW YORK (AP) — The first line of Olivia Harrison's book of poetry captures a feeling universal to everyone who has lost a loved one. “All I wanted was another spring,” she writes. “Was it so much to ask?”
The Rolling Stones will help celebrate their 60th anniversary with an upcoming four-part docuseries on EPIX that takes turns focusing on the band’s most iconic members, with in-depth portraits of singer Mick Jagger, guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, and the late drummer Charlie Watts.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The surprise announcement by BTS last week that they were taking a break to focus on members’ solo projects stunned their global fanbase, shaking their label's stock price and leaving many questions about the K-pop supergroup’s future.
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s central government and authorities in the capital joined forces on Monday to bring back home an international music festival founded by the father of singer-songwriter Dua Lipa which had been moved following a dispute with its organizers.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett was arrested Friday night for allegedly driving under the influence after leaving a music festival in the state.
Hargett, a Republican, was booked into the Coffee County Jail shortly after midnight Saturday and released a few hours later, according to jail records.