Ozzy Osbourne's fame never felt as big as his music
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Kate Bush tribute held on 'Wuthering Heights Day'
A government minister was among dozens of women in Birmingham who took part in an event celebrating writer Emily Brontë and singer Kate Bush. The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever also raised funds for women's charities as the group joined thousands of people across the world recreating the video to Bush's 1978 song Wuthering Heights. Birmingham's inaugural event earlier was organised by The Heath Bookshop, in King's Heath. The proceedings were opened by Home Office minister and Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips. Charities set to benefit from the event include Anawim - Birmingham's Centre for Women and WE:ARE (Women's Empowerment And Recovery Educators). Shop owner Claire Dawes said it was a "great event" to put on "as the local community support the many arts events that happen here and always support charity events." The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever events have previously taken place in locations such as Sydney, Copenhagen, Berlin, Folkestone, and Preston. For the first time this year the event was set to take place on moorland on Penistone Hill, not far from the famous Brontë sister's home in Haworth. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram. More on this story Kate Bush fans hold dance tribute on Brontë moors Fans recreate iconic Wuthering Heights dance New heights as Kate Bush fans 'come home'
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Lehrer, the popular song satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities, has died. He was 97. Longtime friend David Herder said Lehrer died Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not specify a cause of death. Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format, without any fee in return. A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and current events. His songs included 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,' 'The Old Dope Peddler' (set to a tune reminiscent of 'The Old Lamplighter'), 'Be Prepared' (in which he mocked the Boy Scouts) and 'The Vatican Rag,' in which Lehrer, an atheist, poked at the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. (Sample lyrics: 'Get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.') Accompanying himself on piano, he performed the songs in a colorful style reminiscent of such musical heroes as Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sondheim, the latter a lifelong friend. Lehrer was often likened to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comic riffs on culture and politics and he was cited by Randy Newman and 'Weird Al' Jankovic among others as an influence. He mocked the forms of music he didn't like (modern folk songs, rock 'n' roll and modern jazz), laughed at the threat of nuclear annihilation and denounced discrimination. But he attacked in such an erudite, even polite, manner that almost no one objected. 'Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,' musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer's songs, 'The Remains of Tom Lehrer,' and had featured Lehrer's music for decades on his syndicated 'Dr. Demento' radio show. Lehrer's body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs. 'When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn't, I didn't,' Lehrer told The Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. 'I wasn't like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit. ... It wasn't like I had writer's block.' He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master's degree in math. He cut his first record in 1953, 'Songs by Tom Lehrer,' which included 'I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,' lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the 'Fight Fiercely, Harvard,' suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song. After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called 'More of Tom Lehrer' and a live recording called 'An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,' nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960. But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching math, though he did some writing and performing on the side. Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public. 'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told The AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.' He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show 'That Was the Week That Was,' a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated 'Saturday Night Live' a decade later. He released the songs the following year in an album titled 'That Was the Year That Was.' The material included 'Who's Next?' ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb ... perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) 'Pollution' takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up. He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show 'The Electric Company.' He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works. His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue 'Tomfoolery' and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honoring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh. Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York City, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night. After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his master's degree, he spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate. 'I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,' he once said. 'But I just wanted to be a grad student, it's a wonderful life. That's what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a Ph.D. and a grad student at the same time.' He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters. From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs. 'But it's a real math class,' he said at the time. 'I don't do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly.' ___ Former Associated Press writer John Rogers contributed to this story. Rogrers retired from The AP in 2021.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Jennifer Lopez Suffers Mid-Performance Wardrobe Malfunction During Her Concert: 'I'm Glad I Had Underwear on, I Don't Usually'
Fans praised the singer for handling the situation "like a pro" Jennifer Lopez's skirt ended up "On the Floor" during her latest concert, but she didn't let it detract from the show! The musician, who recently celebrated her 56th birthday, handled a mid-performance wardrobe malfunction like a pro while she was in Warsaw, Poland, on July 25. During her gig at the PGE Narodowy stadium — as part of her Up All Night: Live in 2025 tour — Lopez thanked fans for coming out to the show, when a glittery skirt she was wearing randomly snapped off her body and fell to the stage floor. Though Lopez was unsuccessful in trying to stop the skirt from hitting the ground, she didn't let the mishap take away from the moment, which was shared on her official YouTube channel, as well as by fans on Instagram. The hitmaker played the incident off by smiling big and strutting around the stage with her arms in the air, even pulling off a little spin. "I'm out here in my underwear," Lopez joked, as a dancer approached her with the skirt and attempted to put it back on. "That's gonna be everywhere." "I'm glad that they reinforced that costume," she later said. "And I'm glad I had underwear on. I don't usually wear underwear." Lopez later tossed the skirt to fans in the crowd and told them to "keep it," joking that she didn't "want it back." Lopez was praised by fans for how she laughed off the onstage wardrobe malfunction. "She's adorable & handled it like a pro that she is 🙌🏻," one supporter captioned footage of the moment shared on Instagram. "👏👏🙌🔥😍😂life is too short," another fan wrote in the comments section of a post. The "Ain't Your Mama" singer's latest tour stop came after she celebrated her birthday on July 24. Lopez marked the occasion by dropping a new song titled "Birthday," and she was presented with a huge three-tiered cake as she celebrated with dancers and musicians on the road with her. Lopez kicked off the tour, her first in six years, with a performance in Galicia, Spain, on July 8. It took place over a year after she canceled her This Is Me... Live tour in May 2024. In celebration of her birthday in Antalya, Turkey, Lopez shared a bare-faced photo of herself — as well as some celebratory clips — with a caption dedicated to her fans. 'What a gift you all are," the mother of two wrote. "Thank you so much for all your beautiful birthday wishes.' Lopez is next set to perform in Bucharest, Romania, on Sunday, July 27. She will then make her way to Istanbul and beyond in the weeks to follow, before her international run wraps on Aug. 12 in Sardinia. Read the original article on People
