Taylor Swift took the most-coveted entertainer of the year award for the second time Wednesday and newcomers The Band Perry reaped a hat trick of honors at the 45th Country Music Awards last week.
“I’m so happy right now ... You’ve made my year. Thank you so much,” said the 21-year-old singer-songwriter with the supermodel looks at the climax of a three-hour gala in country music’s capital city of Nashville, Tennessee.
Just minutes earlier, Swift — whose Speak Now has been one of the year’s top country albums — looked bewildered when she was passed up for female singer of the year and three other categories for which she had been nominated.
Swift last won entertainer of the year — the top honor at the most prestigious of country music’s many award evenings — in 2009, the youngest artist ever to do so.
Taking the evening by storm was Tennessee sibling trio The Band Perry, who first won single of the year for their melancholic hit If I Die Young, then song of the year, and then best new artist.
Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles, who perform as Sugarland, won best vocal duo three months after tragedy struck their latest concert tour when an Indiana stage on which they were about to perform collapsed, killing seven people.
Jason Aldean won album of the year for My Kind of Party. Nashville’s Lady Antebellum took best vocal group. Blake Shelton picked up best male vocalist honors and Miranda Lambert won for best female vocalist.
Going home empty-handed was Brad Paisley, last year’s entertainer of the year, who had to make do with the memory of co-hosting the evening with American Idol alumnus and three-time best female vocalist Carrie Underwood.
Musical performances included Swift in a bright pink sweater on a living room sofa playing a solo acoustic version of Ours, and soul legend Lionel Ritchie, who belted out three numbers from his upcoming album of country duets.
Mercifully not singing was Miss Piggy, who made a brief appearance alongside Paisley and Underwood in support of The Muppets, due for release later this month.
At another celebratory event for the music industry, Prince Charles and record industry royalty paid tribute to pianist, bandleader and television presenter Jools Holland last week when he was awarded the 20th Music Industry Trusts Award.
In a video message played at a swanky dinner in central London, Charles spoke of Holland’s “irresistible music” and “wonderful humanity.”
Holland rose to prominence in the 1970s as a founding member of the band Squeeze, famous for hits like Cool For Cats and Pulling Mussels (From the Shell).
The annual award is designed to honor a leading figure in the music business and raise money for its two chosen charities — music therapy organization Nordoff Robbins and The BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology.
Nordoff Robbins uses music to help people with a range of clinical conditions and The BRIT School is Britain’s only free performing arts school and has produced major recording stars including Amy Winehouse and Adele. “Thirty years of television, 25 of big band and probably 40 years since first playing the pubs ... that’s why I’m delighted to receive this, with all of those in mind,” Holland said.
On the bleaker side of music news, Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted of Michael Jackson’s manslaughter, admitted in comments broadcast Thursday that he made mistakes on the day of the pop icon’s death but denied criminal culpability.
The doctor’s previously unheard comments were made to British journalist Steve Hewlett and aired on Channel 4 immediately before the showing of a controversial documentary charting the singer’s demise. Jackson’s estate is currently working to prevent the program from being aired in the US on the MSNBC network next week.
In related news, Jackson’s death bed will go under the hammer along with other personal items from the LA mansion where he died, the auctioneer behind the sale said Thursday.
Auction house chief Darren Julien said he preferred not to highlight the morbid aspect of the sale, which involves the contents of the mansion in the plush Holmby Hills area of LA where Jackson died on June 25, 2009.
“It includes all the items that surrounded him and his family in the last part of his life,” he said, adding: “It’s the first time that items like this, fine decorative art, have been sold that’s associated with him.”
As well as the bed — crime scene photos of which were shown during Murray’s six-week trial, complete with medical paraphernalia — the sale will also include a mirror from Jackson’s private bathroom.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would