Music News

James Corden claims presenting the BRIT Awards was "horrid".
The comic admits having an audience that "don't listen to anything you say" was the most frustrating aspect throughout the five years he hosted the annual music ceremony, and it's something he won't miss now that he has stepped down.
Speaking during the 'Michael McIntyre Chat Show', James said: "It was horrid. It was so much fun the week leading up to it and you get to see the bands, and then it is live and you are in a room full of people that don't listen to anything you say. People who beg for a ticket and then pretend they are too cool to be there. They are chatting drinking and eating."
James, 35, admits he will miss the show following his last stint as a host in February but thinks the BRITS would benefit from having a younger host.
He added: "I enjoyed doing it and I'm sure when it comes around in February I will miss being a part of it. But it's time to hand it to someone younger and cooler."
Meanwhile, speculation as to who will take over has been rife with Radio 1 DJ, Nick Grimshaw, 29, expressing interest in the job while James has championed Emma Willis, 38.

Debbie Harry believes the material in her 80s solo albums has been "overlooked".
The 68-year-old singer - who co-founded Blondie in the 70s with Chris Stein - pursued a solo career following the band's split in 1982 and although she was still working, Chris became unwell, suffering from auto-immune condition pemphigus vulgaris, and she had to care for him.
She explained to Mojo magazine: "It was a very difficult time. All I can say is that I did move on in the mid 80s and I started doing a series of solo albums which Chris wrote on and helped me with. I did not five up my career. I had a lot of tours and I had some smaller hits. I really think that there's some great material on those solo albums that I feel to a degree has been overlooked."
She began using her full name - Deborah Harry - with her third solo album, 'Def, Dumb & Blonde', in 1989, to help form her own identity and break away from the image created in Blondie.
Debbie added: "That's my proper name and I was trying to, as you say, draw a line in the sand between the Blondie identification and me as a solo artist. I think I was often confronted by the record company saying, 'Why can't you use the name Blondie?' Well, I'd like to use the name Blondie, but it's not Blondie, it's me."

Manic Street Preachers treated fans to three new songs at their London gigs this weekend.
'Europa Geht Durch Mich', 'Futurology' - both of which were played throughout their current tour - and 'Let's Go To War' were well-received by the audience at the O2 Academy Brixton on Friday (11.04.14) and Saturday (12.04.14), showing a return to the Welsh trio's rockier roots following last year's more subdued and reflective album 'Rewind the Film'.
Introducing 'Let's Go To War' on Friday, bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire said: "Please excuse me if I f**k it up. This is a nice marching song, it's called 'Let's Go To War'."
The new album, also entitled 'Futurology' doesn't yet have a release date but frontman James Dean Bradfield told the audience it will be out "in June".
The band played a crowd-pleasing, 24 track, set which spanned their entire 26-year career and had an energy and enthusiasm as fresh as their younger days, with the audience singing along to every word - and even stepping in when singer James suffered a musicianship mishap and sang his guitar line in the middle of 'Stay Beautiful'.
Elsewhere, Nicky teased fans with the possibility of some special gigs to mark the 20th anniversary of their iconic third album 'The Holy Bible', admitting "We still haven't decided whether to do any anniversary shows yet".
However, when the crowd cheered wildly, he grinned and said: "That's a no then".
The two London gigs marked the end of the 'Design For Life' hitmakers' current tour, but they have a string of European dates lined up for the coming weeks before returning to the UK for a number of festival performances, including Glastonbury and the Virgin Media V Festival.

Anastacia sings about the pain of divorce in her new album.
The 'Left Outside Alone' hitmaker filed for divorced from Wayne Newton 2010 and she used the emotions she felt during that tough period in her life to help shape tracks on her forthcoming record 'Resurrection'.
She said: "I had done a lot of healing on that score prior to writing the album. But there are definitely things in there that attest to the strength, mourning and the pain of divorce - the ebbs and flows. I had such a plethora of unwritten emotions in my heart that once i opened the floodgates it all came pouring out.
"The songs do paint a picture of resurrection - someone who is stripped. I know I've stripped myself of a lot to try and find what's inside."
Anastacia - who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003 and last year she revealed she had a double mastectomy after the disease returned - also wrote her new album in the wake of her second cancer diagnosis, and two of the songs explore her determination to beat the disease.
She added in an interview with Britain's HELLO! magazine: "['Stay'] is pretty much a song that says I'm not ready to go just yet - not ready to die. As I was writing it, I knew it was intense. Then I came home and played it for my sister and she cried.
"But at the same time its got this playful energy - it's almost kind of childlike in the music."

Aloe Blacc thinks hip-hop is a "limiting genre".
The 35-year-old star began his music career as an underground rap artist, but he's confessed he decided to move away from the genre because he couldn't write songs about his feelings.
He exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "I wanted to explore different types of messages in songs and I felt like hip-hop was a limiting genre.
"There's a lack of humility, so writing a song that sort of exposes the frailty, fragility, the faults of an individual is not likely what you would hear in the music and not likely what the audience wants to hear either."
The 'I Need a Dollar' hitmaker, who is married to Australian rapper Maya Jupiter, doesn't think it's possible to make a successful love song if you're a hip-hop artist because he claims listeners aren't interested.
He explained: "I felt like there wasn't really an audience for certain topics. I think it's very difficult to communicate to an audience or to have an audience for a love song in hip-hop.
"Knowing the landscape of hip-hop and nearly all of the songs for the last twenty years, it's very difficult for me to find a true, real good love song."
However, if possible, he would like to change the genre for the better in the future.
He added: "I felt like I could accomplish those kinds of things with other forms of songwriting. If I could bring it back to hip-hop then maybe I can help expand the genre."

Ed Sheeran is planning a collaboration with The Vamps.
The 'Wild Heart' singers have been finding the "right time" in their busy schedule to work on a track with 'The A Team' hitmaker after he invited the group to his studio last week to preview his upcoming album 'x'.
Drummer Tristan Evans exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "Yesterday we hung out with Ed Sheeran and he showed us his new album in the studio, that was really cool.
"We really want to get in the studio with each other, it's just finding the right time because he's such a busy dude. It was really cool, we're good friends and it was really nice of him to invite us down to the studio."
The news comes after Ed took to Twitter to share his excitement about the follow-up to his BRIT Award-winning debut album, '+', and Tristan claims the singer was keen to get the seal of approval from the indie pop group ahead of it's release.
Speaking of their meeting, Tristan added: "Ed just is a super normal guy, but he was more about, wanting us to tell him what we think about his new album. It's great. I won't give too much away but it's going to be really good for him."

ABBA's Frida Lyngstad thinks pop music changed after the Swedish group became successful in the 1970s.
The 'Waterloo' hitmakers - including Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog and Benny Andersson - claim the music scene shifted when they started writing chart hits.
Frida told the Guardian newspaper's G2: "The music scene changed with us - something like ABBA didn't exist before, pop like that was not invented yet."
After their huge success early on, Bjorn feels they should have stuck to what they were good at instead of trying to go in a different musical direction with songs like their 1973 single 'Ring Ring'.
He explained: "If you look at the singles we released straight after 'Waterloo', we were trying to be more like The Sweet, a semi-glam rock group. Which was stupid because we were always a pop group."
Bjorn was annoyed when critics claimed the band created hits to order and the songs didn't have any heart.
He said: "Waterloo, Mamma Mia, Fernando, Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes It All ... are they made to a formula?
"What is that formula? It's totally the opposite. We never repeated ourselves. We worked so hard to find different styles every time."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie thinks more women are talking about feminism because of Beyonce.
The Nigerian novelist, whose TED talk about women being expected to aspire to marriage, was sampled on Beyonce's track 'Flawless', thinks the 'XO' hitmaker is inspiring.
She told The Times newspaper: "Because of Beyonce many young women are talking about feminism and hopefully young men because she has such a following."
Chimamanda realises what Beyonce has been singing about in her new music is a departure from her 'Single Ladies' track, in which she asked men to "put a ring on it" but doesn't think it makes her less of a feminist.
She said: "Well, I suppose there are different feminisms. I am all about bringing people to the party and having a good conversation, rather than saying you can't come in. I have had young people in Nigeria who probably would have never heard of my TED talk without Beyonce and who are now talking about feminism."
She added: "I like the idea that Beyonce's song might make girls feel that they can ask to try to do these things."

Lily Allen says her feud with Azealia Banks helped "find her voice."
The 'Hard Out Here' singer admits that her song-writing "sounded terrible" during her four year hiatus from music, but claims her Twitter spat with the '212' hitmaker - which started after the New York rapper called her children "ugly" - inspired her to pen new material.
Lily, who has daughters Ethel, two, and 15 month old Marnie, with husband Sam Cooper, told The Sun newspaper: "I tried to write through my pregnancy with my youngest, but the hormones were really weird and it was just really forced and sounded terrible.
"Then it wasn't until I stopped breastfeeding, six months on Azealia tweeted me on Twitter, that I was like, 'Yes you know who I am.' "
Azealia also took a swipe at the 'Not Fair' singer's husband Sam by saying he looks like a "thumb", which forced Lily to brand the rapper a "one-hit wonder".
However, Lily insists the harsh comments all contributed to her comeback record 'Sheezus'.
She explained: "I found my voice again then, I just bashed it all out. It was like two years of writing before I found it."