Planet Pop opens this week with the sad reminder that youth fades away. The woman who as a beautiful teen inspired Brazil’s best-known song, The Girl from Ipanema, was in a Sao Paulo hospital Friday suffering from a gastric problem, the news Web site Terra reported.
Helo Pinheiro, now in her mid-60s, said she had checked into the Sirio-Libanese Hospital in the city because of chest pains she feared were symptoms of “a cardiac problem,” but tests showed it was “only gastric.”
The woman, whom songwriters Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes described as “tall and tan and young and lovely” when she walked by their cafe in Rio de Janeiro’s upmarket Ipanema district aged 15, was accompanied by her husband.
Doctors said the tests showed she was also suffering hypertension, which she blamed on stress from juggling family, a TV presenting job and studies.
But back in the world of the currently bright and beautiful, nobody draws attention like Lindsay Lohan and gal pal Samantha Ronson.
The duo sat in the front row for the Saturday morning presentation of Ronson’s sister Charlotte’s spring collection at New York Fashion Week, where they were immediately swarmed by photographers who brushed past other famous folks like Sean Lennon to get shots of the actress and DJ.
Lohan sported a denim dress and blue pumps, and wore her blonde hair pulled back in a bun; Ronson had on a black T-shirt and a gray skinny jeans and vest — she usually incorporates a hat into her rocker look, but this time she opted to show off her pixie haircut.
They stood up for a standing ovation when Charlotte Ronson appeared on the runway after the show, and made a quick exit as media chased them backstage (where they hid in a VIP lounge).
Actress Emma Roberts, the niece of Julia Roberts, joked that she was stuck in a “Lindsay traffic jam’’ as she tried to leave the crowded event. In-demand music producer Mark Ronson — brother of Charlotte and Samantha — deejayed the music at the show.
In other celebrity news, Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus and Charlize Theron were among the celebrities who appeared at the fifth annual Fashion Rocks concert celebrating the relationship between music and fashion.
They walked the red carpet Friday night at Radio City Music Hall amid a media circus angling for glamour shots of other stars including Fergie, Rihanna, Chris Brown and the “Gossip Girl” gang.
Brown, the R&B heartthrob, soaked up all the attention with a smile as he showed off his dapper ensemble of a black vest and shirt, gray pants, shiny shoes and diamond stud earrings.
“To be a musician and a great entertainer, you have to be a trendsetter. To be a trendsetter, you have to know fashion — and I have fun with it,’’ explained the singer, who later changed into khakis and a black shirt and scarf for a performance of his hit song Forever.
Getting away from the celebrities and looking at the people who listen to music, it has been found that heavy metal fans and lovers of classical music have more in common than they like to think, according to research published Friday by a British university.
Although fans of bands like Metallica are traditionally portrayed as work-shy, long-haired students and lovers of Mozart are seen as sober and hard-working, researchers found that both music types attract creative people who are at ease with themselves but can be introverted.
But classical music fans have high self-esteem while heavy rock fans lack self-belief, the team at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh found.
Indie music listeners lack self-esteem and lovers of pop music are uncreative, while country and western fans are hard-working and rap fans have an outgoing personality.
The three-year study on the links between personality and music taste was led by psychology professor Adrian North.
“We have always suspected a link between music taste and personality. This is the first time that we’ve been able to look at it in real detail. No-one has ever done this on this scale before,” he said.
“People do actually define themselves through music and relate to other people through it but we haven’t known in detail how music is connected to identity.”
North added: “The general public has held a stereotype of heavy metal fans being suicidally depressed and of being a danger to themselves and society in general. But they are quite delicate things.”
The research could have many uses in marketing, the professor said.
“If you know a person’s music preference you can tell what kind of person they are, who to sell to. There are obvious implications for the music industry who are worried about declining CD sales.”
More than 36,000 people around the world took part in the research, making it the biggest survey of its kind ever conducted.
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