Even more

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  ‘Somewhere to be themselves, and be kind’: the Filipino folk-popper creating a hand-drawn world for gen Z to escape to

  What started as a school project about plucky fictional kids in animal masks sparked an obsessive fanbase and a major label deal. Now the artist behind it all – known as Yaelokre – is ready to reveal themselfHarpy Hare by Yaelokre is the kind of song you might expect to have gone viral in the 1520s, not the 2020s. Backed by guitalele (that’s a guitar/ukulele hybrid), the lullaby begins with the line “Harpy Hare, where have you buried all your children?” performed by fictional kids from the equally fictional world of Meadowlark who are depicted in fey illustrations wearing animal masks. But two years ago it became an unlikely TikTok hit, reaching No 1 on Spotify’s Global Viral Songs chart.That was in summer 2024, when the world of Meadowlark was a bit more DIY. Not only was its creator still making tracks and illustrations from their “diary turned storybook” in their bedroom, there was no Reddit community around them yet and only the faintest of whispers about Yaelokre online. These days, Keath Ósk, the Icelandic-Filipino artist behind the project, has almost three million monthly Spotify listeners; last year they played a sell-out UK and Ireland tour, and they have just released their first album under their own name, delighting a following of gen Z and queer listeners who write fan fiction about Ósk’s world and cosplay as their hand-drawn characters, prompting questions on Reddit such as: “My costume has bells [on it], should I remove them for the concert?” Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s midterm convention: ‘That arena was as empty as a Waymo’

  Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s ‘promise’ to send $5,000 to every US adult should the Republicans winLate-night hosts recapped the second day of Donald Trump’s underattended and unusual “midterm convention” in which he promised $5,000 for every adult US citizen if the Republicans win. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  Céline Dion sparks mass karaoke and power-ballad fever with return to stage in Paris

  Fans from around the world gather for star’s long-awaited performances after break because of neurological conditionMore than 30,000 Céline Dion fans have gathered in Paris for the Canadian singer’s long-awaited return to performing on Saturday night, four years after she revealed her diagnosis of stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological condition.Thousands more people without tickets have flocked to a series of giant karaoke events across France to belt out Dion’s famous power ballads, in celebration of the star’s health stabilising enough for her to return to the stage. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  ‘Danny Boyle, please make another film about drugs’: Venice film festival’s feedback wall takes no prisoners

  The written forum allows members of the public to vent their fury at the movies they’ve seen – and the festival organisersIn an industry that is reliant on the fickle vagaries of taste, film festivals exist to establish facts. The reason why film-makers still go through the rigmarole of ferrying their cast to the red carpets of Venice, Cannes or Sundance is the need for empirical evidence of unambiguous quality: a solid-gold prize, a top score on the critics’ grid, a record-timed standing ovation that will convince every doubter that this is a great film.Film festivals, in turn, need beautiful A-listers to attract coverage and sponsorship, and hence there is a constant risk that these annual events become gigantic hype machines, in which every turkey is a classic and every half-hearted performance a masterclass. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts: Second Song review – shaky album occasionally strikes gold

  (Reprise)The 80-year-old continues his tireless output, delving into the past for inspiration to variable results – though two lengthy brand-new songs are real showstoppersYou can’t fault Neil Young for his industry. Second Song is his second new album of 2026: the first, a double live set called As Time Explodes, was released just over three months ago. Indeed, at 80, his work schedule seems mind-boggling. Since 2020, he’s released nine new albums, a 30-minute EP, five self-directed films and three more films directed by others, 10 archival live albums, six archival studio albums and two immense box sets. He has embarked on tours with his longstanding backing band Crazy Horse, his recently convened backing band the Chrome Hearts, and solo. He has gone to public war with Spotify, Amazon, Ticketmaster and – briefly – the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury, and penned umpteen op-ed pieces about politics, the environment and corporate media for his online newspaper the Times-Contrarian. When he recently cancelled a European tour citing exhaustion, it was hard not to think: well, I’m not surprised.You do find yourself wondering if his workload is such a good thing: not just for an elderly gentleman’s health but also for the quality of his output. Young has always prized spontaneity over finesse, but some of his more recent releases have suggested that at least a soupçon of finesse might not go amiss. Last year’s Talkin to the Trees, however, seemed to cross the line that separates the instinctive from the dashed off. Young frequently sounded as if he was making the material up as he went along, with nugatory results: “When today has come and gone, I might be singing my new song,” he offered on Family Life. “Might be short, it might be long, but I’ll be singing my new song.” If some of the melodies sounded familiar, that’s because they were. Not one but two tracks echoed the tune of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land; First Fire of Winter was essentially Young’s 1970 masterpiece Helpless with different lyrics; Thankful rewrote 1992’s Harvest Moon. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  100 years after John Coltrane’s birth, secret tapes are emerging. What can they tell us about jazz’s great rulebreaker?

  The sax star turned his back on fame to embrace free jazz. Caught on a tape machine hidden in an overcoat, newly revealed recordings show how he did itIn August 1965, at the height of his fame, saxophonist John Coltrane headlined the DownBeat jazz festival in Chicago. Taking to the stage with a new member of his band, young experimentalist Archie Shepp on tenor, Coltrane’s quartet blew through a series of jagged and free improvisations, straying from structured compositions and, instead, hurling down sheets of sound so loud and aggressive that they reportedly caused widespread walk-outs. DownBeat’s own reviewer later wrote: “They gave as tasteless a display of musicianship as I’ve ever heard … Shepp and Coltrane seemed to be more interested in trying to out-honk, out-squeal and out-bleat each other than in playing music.”That 1965 performance should have been a triumphant moment, after five years of Coltrane’s star ascending. Since leaving Miles Davis’s “first great quintet”, with whom he had recorded what would become the bestselling jazz album of all time – 1959’s Kind of Blue – Coltrane founded an entirely new harmonic language in jazz with the 1960 release of his solo LP Giant Steps, had a radio hit with his 1961 version of The Sound of Music’s My Favourite Things and, in January 1965, formulated his own spiritual imagining of jazz music with the Grammy-nominated album A Love Supreme. He was already a giant of the genre, contributing dozens of compositions to the standard repertoire, but two years later, in 1967, aged just 40, he would be dead of liver cancer. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  ‘A fierce need to be independent’: Gerda Taro biopic pulls photographer out of lover Robert Capa’s shadow

  Film premieres at Venice as researchers question who took famous Spanish civil war shot of ‘falling soldier’, credited to the pair’s Robert Capa aliasShe was one of the most fearless female photojournalists of the 20th century, and the first known to have been killed while covering a war. But in life and in death, the work of Gerda Taro has often been overshadowed by the collaborator and lover whose alias she invented and sometimes shared: Robert Capa.That may be about to change with a new biopic that seeks to pull the pioneering photographer from out of Capa’s shadow, which is premiering at the Venice film festival just as researchers claim to have proof that his most famous and controversial picture was actually taken by her. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  ‘People think fame is a magic wand’: Jarvis Cocker on old songs, young fans and his granny’s verdict on Pulp

  Before the release of a joyful film on the history of the Sheffield band, frontman Cocker and director Garth Jennings talk dark times, taking inspiration from Abba – and why there could yet be another recordWhen the director Garth Jennings first moved to Paris, Jarvis Cocker, who was living there, dropped in on his old friend. “And I nearly got you arrested,” the Pulp frontman recalls. It was bonfire night, and Cocker had taken some welcoming fireworks over to Jennings’ place. “It turned out Garth’s apartment was quite near to the – not an army base, but what’s it called?”“The École Militaire,” says Jennings. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 2d ago

  Angine de Poitrine review – mind-boggling math rock mastery from freaky Québécois duo

  Le Poisson Rouge, New YorkThe brilliantly strange experimental band’s live show is a must-see spectacle powered by glorious noise and wild flairTheir masks light up now. To the extent there was a hard news event from Wednesday’s exhilarating sold-out New York debut of Angine de Poitrine, that was it. The Québécois duo went viral in corners of the internet earlier this year thanks in part to their microtonal, odd-metered take on hard-driving rock, but also because of those ostentatious costumes and masks – black and white polka dot tunics and jumpsuits with oversized papier-mache faces and exaggerated features, originally featuring golden glittery eyes and signature pyramid accoutrements. The new ones have all those same things but with the added ability to light up in a bright yellow at key moments.A small detail, to be sure, but one got the sense that the weeknight crowd was reveling in it and many others at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge (LPR) – an appropriately French-named venue given the band’s home province. Wednesday was the first of the band’s two shows at the 700-capacity basement venue renowned for its sound system and commitment to adventurous programming. Both Angine shows had been sold out for many months, ever since a video of them playing in a French studio was uploaded to KEXP’s YouTube channel and went viral. At time of writing, the video is closing in on 20m views – a remarkable tally given that the music, by mass-appeal standards, is so magnificently odd. Continue reading...

• 
  The Guardian · 3d ago

  Two times a charm: Is Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman’s agelessness the real trick of Practical Magic 2?

  A film about sisterhood with fifty- and sixtysomething female leads is something to cheer – but would it have been made if its stars had aged like mere mortals since the 1998 original?Would Hollywood have brought Practical Magic back from the dead if the intervening 28 years looked more visible on Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman? An awkward question, as it risks subjecting their faces to the invasive scrutiny older female actors already endure. Their return as leads in their late 50s and early 60s should count as progress. Yet it reveals a condition of female stardom: age can increase a female actor’s nostalgic value, provided it does not show too clearly on her face.In Practical Magic 2, Bullock, 62, and Kidman, 59, return as sisters Sally and Gillian Owens. Dianne Wiest, 78, and Stockard Channing, 82, are back too. Joey King and Maisie Williams play Sally’s adult daughters, but Sally and Gillian remain central. Continue reading...

About Culture on The Terrible Facts

Every culture story on this page is aggregated live from trusted global newsrooms including BBC, NPR, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, WIRED, TechCrunch, ESPN and more. Headlines refresh automatically every two minutes, so what you see here is always the current picture — no staleness, no manual curation delay.