French first lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy will jam live with Paul McCartney and Metallica on British television next month in support of her new album Comme si de rien n’etait, which will be sold internationally under the title Simply.
The erstwhile supermodel — who married French President Nicolas Sarkozy in February — will appear on Later ... with Jools Holland on BBC television when it starts a new series on Sept.16.
The late-night show traditionally starts with piano-playing Holland and his guests jamming together.
Bruni, who recently featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine in the US and Britain, will perform “a song or two from her recently released third album,” the BBC said in a statement.
While France’s first lady prepares to charm British music lovers, troubled star Amy Winehouse continues to spread anger and frustration. Winehouse pulled out of the Rock en Seine festival outside Paris after falling ill at home, the singer’s spokesman said Saturday as the furious organizers vowed to sue.
Rock en Seine had to scrap the headline gig at two hours’ notice and has now threatened legal action against the 24-year-old. It is the second year in a row that the British soul singer has pulled out of the festival.
Some 25,000 concertgoers were waiting for the singer to appear on stage in Saint-Cloud outside the French capital.
“Amy Winehouse should have arrived on the site early Friday evening. We were told by her agent at 8pm that she wasn’t coming,” Rock en Seine said in a statement, adding there was “no explanation of the exact reasons for her absence.”
The Grammy Award-winning star, who is fighting drug and alcohol problems, has suffered a string of health scares since apparently being caught smoking crack cocaine in footage released by The Sun newspaper in January.
Another pop legend who is not looking his best these days is singer Michael Jackson, who turned 50 on Friday. He is now a mere shadow of the superstar once known as the “King of Pop” whose records thrilled millions before his bizarre personal life eclipsed his musical brilliance.
Unlike Madonna’s 50th birthday bash and launch of another world tour earlier this month, the singer who wishes he was Peter Pan appears to have no special celebrations planned and a much-touted musical comeback has so far come to nothing.
A semi-recluse since his harrowing 2005 trial and acquittal on child sex abuse charges, Jackson has been living out of the spotlight for the past few months.
In a telephone interview with ABC television program Good Morning America, Jackson said he will “just have a little cake with my children and watch some cartoons,” and he added that he feels “very wise and sage, but at the same time very young.”
Recent pictures of Jackson in Las Vegas showed him dressed in pajamas and slippers, and one had him sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a surgical mask.
Long-time Jackson family friend and lawyer Brian Oxman said the singer sometimes used the wheelchair to get around unobserved. “It is not an indication of any health problems. It is an effort to be unseen,” he said.
In other news, British artist Sam Taylor-Wood is to direct a film recounting the early years of former Beatle John Lennon, the trade magazine Screen International said on its Web site Friday.
Nowhere Boy charts the influence Lennon’s aunt and mother played on the youngster’s life and his first steps towards becoming a superstar.
RSS