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Beyoncé is Billboard's greatest pop star of the 21st century. Mom Tina isn't surprised

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Beyoncé is Billboard's greatest pop star of the 21st century. Mom Tina isn't surprised

The end of the 21st century is still decades away, but Billboard has already declared its greatest pop star: Beyoncé.

The music magazine on Tuesday revealed that the “Crazy in Love” and “Formation” diva had secured the top spot among 25 generational pop talents, including Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Drake and Lady Gaga. Billboard’s editorial staff selected Queen Bey for her “full 25 years of influence, evolution and impact,” the outlet announced.

“She’s been Beyoncé for 25 years now, and as she continues to challenge herself (and by extension, the rest of the pop world) to find new and different ways to be define [sic] greatness,” wrote Billboard deputy editor Andrew Unterberger, “it doesn’t seem like she’s going to stop being Beyoncé anytime soon.”

As part of its Beyoncé celebration, Billboard published an essay that chronicled the “Single Ladies” singer’s career from her Destiny’s Child days in the late 1990s to her most recent album, “Cowboy Carter.” The career retrospective praised the Houston native’s consistency, her ubiquity across music and other facets of pop culture — including film and fashion — and her “commitment to innovation.”

While the music outlet dedicated thousands of words to Beyoncé’s life and career, the singer’s mom, Tina Knowles, offered a handful in response to her daughter’s latest honor.

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“That’s nice. That’s very nice,” Knowles told TMZ during a brief exchange Tuesday evening on the Sunset Strip.

When the reporter asked whether her family gets “used to those titles” and accolades, Knowles simply responded, “Yeah.”

The “16 Carriages” and “Texas Hold ’Em” singer has not yet publicly addressed her latest honor.

Knowles, Destiny’s Child’s former costume designer and mother to “Cranes in the Sky” artist Solange, isn’t shy about celebrating her superstar kin. On her Instagram, Knowles hypes her daughters’ magazine covers, album sales and even their nonmusic ventures, such as Beyoncé’s Cécred haircare line and her SirDavis whiskey brand.

On Tuesday, Knowles also touted Beyoncé’s upcoming NFL halftime show. The Grammy winner’s performance will stream Christmas Day on Netflix when the Houston Texans host the Baltimore Ravens at NRG Stadium. Knowles told TMZ that “excellence” is what viewers can expect from the holiday gig.

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Taylor Swift, who soon will wrap her blockbuster Eras tour after nearly two years, secured the No. 2 spot on Billboard’s list. The historic Grammy winner (she is the only artist to win album of the year four times) “is the most famous woman in the world,” according to Billboard. However, the well-meaning praise inadvertently sparked a twofold backlash last week when her ranking was announced. Before Beyoncé landed the top spot, some of Swift’s legion of fans, known as Swifties, called out Billboard about her second-place ranking and made the case for the “Lavender Haze” singer to be No. 1.

“I like Beyoncé but she’s nowhere near Taylor’s level when it comes to impact and numbers,” a fan tweeted last week. Another Swift devotee on X (formerly Twitter) also cited the “Love Story” pop star’s “commercial success” and “record-breaking sales” as reasons for her to claim the top spot.

Adding salt to the wound, Billboard included a controversial snippet of Kanye West’s “Famous” music video in its montage meant to celebrate Swift. The Billboard clip reportedly featured the music video’s infamous wax figure modeled after a naked Swift, prompting Billboard to issue an apology for including the clip “that falsely depicted her.”

“We have removed the clip from our video and sincerely regret the harm we caused with this error,” the outlet tweeted.

In Tuesday’s Beyoncé reveal, Billboard acknowledged Swift’s accomplishments, lauding her as the “lone artist who really challenged Beyoncé for the top spot” and celebrating her dominance in album sales, streaming and touring. However, she “simply hasn’t been around for long enough to be able to match the expansiveness of [Beyoncé’s] quarter-century of dominance,” the magazine said.

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Still, Swift found success with Spotify, which announced Wednesday that the “Shake It Off” diva was its most-streamed artist of the year. Swift also earned the title last year.

“In her Global Top Artist era,” Spotify tweeted Wednesday. “Congratulations Taylor Swift on the over 26+ billion streams in 2024.”

Joining Swift as the audio platform’s top 10 global artists are fellow Billboard 21st century greatest pop star honorees Drake, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny and Kanye West.

“You guys are unbelievable. What an amazing thing to find out going into our last weekend of eras shows,” Swift wrote to fans Wednesday in an Instagram story. “THANK YOU!”

For Beyoncé and Swift, their respective Billboard and Spotify wins can be a boon as they prepare for the 2025 Grammy Awards. In November, Beyoncé earned 11 nominations, the most of the latest crop of Grammy hopefuls. Top nominees also include Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, Post Malone, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Swift.

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Who will win the top Grammy prizes? It’s best to stick around, ‘round, ‘round for when the ceremony is broadcast on CBS and streams live from Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Feb. 2

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Movie Reviews

Luca Guadagnino – 'Queer' movie review

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Luca Guadagnino – 'Queer' movie review

Luca Guadagnino – ‘Queer’ review

Nobody has had a better year than Luca Guadagnino – the commercial success of Challengers simultaneously revitalised the erotic thriller and made tennis seem like a vaguely appealing sport. However, I had several qualms with the film (for reasons that I won’t get into), but mostly because it felt like a story with no substance, which is very much in contrast to the nuanced emotional layers present in his earlier work. And when I saw that Queer was being sold as a ‘new love story’, I felt tepidly intrigued and wary. But after a less immediate and underwhelming gush of praise towards Queer, I wondered whether that pointed towards a less commercial or palatable story, and after seeing it at the London Film Festival, I felt both disturbed, relieved and thrilled by what I had seen. My theory had been confirmed – Guadagnino had redeemed himself.

As an adaptation of the William Burroughs novel, Queer tells the story of William Lee, a middle-aged expat living in New Mexico whose monotonous and lonely existence is disturbed by the presence of a much younger man called Eugene. While Guadagnino is undoubtedly a master at voicing the many heartaches and pains that come with actually being in a relationship, Queer is the first that explores the deep loneliness of unreciprocated love as someone who is queer, painting it as this deeply fracturing and out of body experience, with William yearning for intimacy but unable to openly express this. 

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William spends his time in seedy bars and clubs, sitting in deserted corners as he scans the room for bodies and other silently longing men, searching for validation and scraps of love that could temporarily lift him from the shackles of being unseen. As someone who has built a career on the image of hyper-masculinity, there could be no better man than Daniel Craig to play the William; completely transformed from his usual aura of effortless charm to being haunting and pitifully desperate as he skulks the streets in search of human connection and everything that lies between the cracks. He awkwardly tries to meet the gaze of the men around him; looking for an unspoken acknowledgement of attraction as he locks eyes with each stranger, painfully viewing every loaded glance and gesture as the one to finally save him. He intensely pines for anything that vaguely resembles attention, with his eyes burning holes into everyone that meets his gaze.

It captures the suffocating loneliness of being queer in a place where your identity has to be discreet, trying to communicate your humanity through a lingering touch and hoping that someone will silently understand while most recoil and are repulsed by the implications of your existence.   

After meeting Eugene, William becomes completely infatuated by the idea of being close to him, meek and unsure of himself as he tries to express his desires through coded glances and awkward gestures, anxiously asking for reassurance from his one queer friend on whether or not Eugene is one of them. “I want to talk to you, without speaking”, he finally says, mustering the courage to boldly express the feeling that is usually silenced.

Despite Eugene’s cryptic response that reveals little about the hidden depths William suspects they both share, the two begin spending time together, even when it is clear that Eugene doesn’t care for him in the same way. Drew Starkey is hypnotic in the role, drawing you in with his stoic demeanour and sinister silence, leaving you feeling as mesmerised and frantic as William, whose feverish infatuation only grows the longer it goes unreciprocated. His obsession slowly becomes an addiction, unable to tell between healthy and unhealthy desires, and he loses himself in a delusional hope that engulfs him entirely. Through the use of eerie and slightly grotesque dream sequences, we see William’s inner world as the line between fantasy and reality fades, dreaming of a hand that will graze his knee or lightly brush over his ribcage, wanting something so pure and simple that it feels cruel when you realise it isn’t possible.

Queer is perhaps Guadgnino’s most experimental film to date, and he masterfully uses this jarring tonal style to explore queerness as a surrealist experience that slowly twists you into a disembodied figure, with William’s image being likened to that of a centipede, with nauseating sequences of bugs that crawl across bed sheets and skin, comparing his existence to that of an insect. The surrealism comes from the intense alienation of being treated as ‘other’ by the people around him for daring to express his need of wanting to be loved/seen, becoming a discombobulated and ghost-like figure that has been dehumanised as a result of his queerness.

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The Italian director goes against the lush romanticism he is known for by creating a grimy and uncomfortable visual style in his portrait of loneliness and desperation, which is only slightly hindered in some scenes by the slightly dodgy visual effects. However, whatever is lacking in the visual effects is made up for in the incredibly visceral and unnerving sound design, with a horror-like score being used during the love scenes to play on the idea that William’s sexuality is perverse and something to be feared, with a raw undercurrent of danger pulsing through each interaction with Eugene. The needle drops are no exception, with Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘All Apologies’ setting the tone during the opening credits, with one mesmerising use of Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ while Craig haunts the streets.

William hides his lack of fulfilment behind a facade of joviality, but despite this, he continuously tells people that he feels ‘disembodied’. After watching Guadagnino’s haunting odyssey of delusion and dehumanisation, you too will feel fragmented and broken, devastated by Wiliam’s innocent pursuit of connection as he turns himself inside out to be accepted, going to each far corner of the world to make himself worthy for the one he loves.

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Demi Moore has a substantial awards past

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Demi Moore has a substantial awards past

Demi Moore has drawn the most focused awards attention of her career for her bold performance in “The Substance” as actor and fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle, who takes an illicit drug in an attempt to retrieve her youth. But looking back, Moore is a veteran of the major awards circuit.

1991

Moore received a lead actress comedy/musical Golden Globe nomination for “Ghost.”

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Although she was not nominated for an Oscar, Moore starred in two best picture nominees, “Ghost” and “A Few Good Men.” And this was when there were only …

5

… best picture contenders in a year.

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1997

Moore received an Emmy producing nomination and Golden Globe producing and acting nominations for the abortion-themed HBO anthology film “If These Walls Could Talk.”

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Moore was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award for the breast cancer-themed 2011 Lifetime short-film anthology “Five,” along with fellow directors Jennifer Aniston, Alicia Keys, Patty Jenkins and Penelope Spheeris.

1/24-6/24:

Great five-month run for Moore, who won sympathy as ostracized socialite Ann Woodward in “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” scored with “The Substance” premiere at Cannes and came off best among ex-Brat Packers in Andrew McCarthy’s documentary “Brats.”

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Moore’s 2024 Gotham Awards lead performance nomination is her second nod from the organization. In 2011, she was recognized as part of the ensemble of the Wall Street drama “Margin Call.”

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Meryl Streep’s 10th Globes nomination came for playing an actor who takes an eternal-youth potion in the 1992 movie “Death Becomes Her” (opposite Moore’s then-husband, Bruce Willis). Streep did not win, but the nomination bodes well for …

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4

… Moore snagging a fourth Globe nomination, since the Globes obviously are unafraid of showbiz-themed satirical body horror.

2056

Roughly when a “Substance” musical — a la the current “Death Becomes Her” adaptation — will premiere on Broadway. Elisabeth Sparkle will be 82 but look either 26 or 260 years old.

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Movie Reviews

Film Review: Magnus von Horn Crafts an Evocative Nightmare in ‘The Girl with the Needle’ – Awards Radar

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Film Review: Magnus von Horn Crafts an Evocative Nightmare in ‘The Girl with the Needle’ – Awards Radar

To say Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle is hard to watch may be the understatement of the year. Even when its harrowing sound design doesn’t make the audience subject to agonizing screams that rattle our bones and haunt our minds long after the credits have finished rolling, the movie’s overall presentation destabilizes and shocks the very minute cinematographer Michał Dymek (who also worked with Jesse Eisenberg on A Real Pain this year, demonstrating massive range) distorts several faces in its opening shot. It’s a complex sequence of images to describe in words, especially when feeling it in front of our eyes. However, it must be seen to be believed. 

The film is thoroughly unpleasant, particularly in the context in which von Horn depicts and the protagonist we follow for 123 minutes. For some, that may be a massively hard sell, and it’s understandable why many will not want to go near a movie like this because it doesn’t simply show brutal acts of violence but makes the audience experience each ounce of dread for two brutal hours. The dirty, almost perverse use of black-and-white primes the audience that this will not be a joyful story, and even if there are fleeting moments of hope in Karoline’s (Vic Carmen Sonne) path, they are almost always supplanted by despair and loss. 

Karoline works in a factory during World War I but is struggling to make ends meet after the presumed death of her husband, Peter (Besir Zeciri). Having not heard anything about him ever since he went to war, she has moved on and becomes infatuated with Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the factory owner, who has also liked Karoline. These moments of love between the two aren’t depicted happily, even if a slight connection begins to blossom. One, however, sees that Jørgen is simply using Karoline to satiate his sexual impulses, which she can’t realize. But since this is a story where pain trumps anything else, their presumptive marriage gets shut down by Jørgen’s mother (Benedikte Hansen), resulting in Karoline being left alone and pregnant. 

Her husband has also returned, morbidly disfigured by the war, and has become an object of attraction for a circus of “freaks” to look at. When he comes back home, Karoline gives him food, but immediately rejects him, wanting nothing to do with the fact that he is now a “monster.” However, after she no longer has a job following her “break-up” with Jørgen, she decides to end it all and sticks a needle in herself to get rid of the baby. The black-and-white subdues the blood and any outright moments of ‘gore’ but makes it even more disturbing when Dymek lingers on her face as the needle slowly penetrates her body. We feel each ounce of the pain she inflicts upon herself, further exacerbated by an unshakably haunting musical score from Frederikke Hoffmeier, recalling the atmosphere Mica Levi laid out through their score in The Zone of Interest

Karoline’s life is ultimately saved by Dagmar Overbye (an incredible Trine Dynholm), the bakery owner who takes a liking to her and promises to help get rid of the baby when she goes into labor. When the day ultimately arrives, Karoline brings her baby to Dagmar, and she is sent to a new family…or so, that’s what women who want to get rid of their newborns think. You see, Dagmar actually kills the babies and disposes of them without their knowledge. This isn’t a spoiler, but what the movie is actually based on – a Danish serial killer who has murdered between 9 and 25 children, including one of her own, from 1913 to 1920 and was sentenced to death in 1921. 

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Her ruling was later amended to a life sentence, but what’s most horrific about von Horn’s depiction of Dagmar is how she has no explanation for why she would do something like this. The second half of the movie attempts (and the keyword is: attempts, she’s beyond saving) to humanize her in developing a close relationship between Dagmar and Karoline, who begins to work for her as a caretaker for the babies before they are “sent” to a new family. Of course, she’s utterly impervious to what is happening until she follows her one day and sees firsthand where they end up. 

But the humanity depicted here is a mere façade in an attempt for Dagmar to manipulate Karoline, whom she thinks is easily gullible. However, when she attaches herself to a baby that will eventually get killed in Dagmar’s bare hands, something clicks within the killer that she didn’t perceive before when it came to Karoline. Unfortunately, von Horn doesn’t explore this path and always portrays the character in a rather cold, ruthless lens. Still, it works in Dynholm’s favor, whose piercing eyes constantly betray what she says to Karoline. But our protagonist can’t realize it since she’s grown to like what Dagmar has brought to her, because she may very well be the only person who likes her for who she is. 

But does she really? It’s in that question that The Girl with the Needle begins to lose itself (and languishingly drag) during its midsection, where its constantly involving (but not too rapid) pace pulled the audience into its evocative nightmare, only for the movie to grind to a halt in developing a relationship based on lies. Despite constantly rock-solid work from Carmen Sonne (who seems like a revelation even after starring in Hlynur Pálmason’s Godland) and Dynholm, von Horn has difficulty translating their connection beyond the dark confines of its black-and-white frame. Of course, this acts as a signifier for what’s to come, and the ultimate reveal is far more disturbing than one thinks, partly due to the most petrifying sound design heard in a movie since Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning 2023 film. 

We never see the babies being killed, but we hear their helpless cries, then turning into terrified screams before they abruptly stop breathing. It’s the year’s most disturbing scene, so hard to stomach it eventually gets repeated in an even more distressing way. The shattering sounds punctuate its morbid aesthetic, which, in turn, burn our retinas and ensure we will never forget what we have seen and heard. Such a moment like this is bound to cause controversy, especially in its depiction of violence against children. But von Horn doesn’t sensationalize, nor does he linger on the killings. They are shocking enough simply because the act itself is so horrible, and one can’t understand why such a person could ever do something like this. 

Visually, it’s also not hard to see the influences Dymek plays with in representing such terror. German expressionism is the most obvious in the black-and-white and grimy, almost otherworldly lens each shot is visualized with, but he even steals Dziga Vertov compositions in its opening extreme close-up of an eye looking at a city. Yet, they don’t feel like outright plagiarism but are always in service of how von Horn wants to portray this tragic tale of hopelessness that, beyond all expectations, ends on a more hopeful note for Karoline. 

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In a world where, at the time, famine, sickness, and poverty sadly plagued most human beings in a post-war setting, von Horn at least ensures that her protagonist gets a fighting chance for survival and happiness. It absolutely won’t be easy, as illustrated in how she has to make ends meet in the movie’s opening section, but her will is strong enough for her to push through the pain and hope that things will get better, at least for her sake. 

Perhaps it may be futile, and maybe the movie does get much colder than it should be, which, in turn, distances us from emotionally latching onto Karoline’s profoundly personal story. Still, there’s no denying The Girl with the Needle’s incredible nightmarish power, which works best when plot efficiency is at its minimum. Most of it is told through its striking visuals and note-perfect sound design, crawling under the audience’s skin before they even have a chance to react to the horror drawn on the screen. It may alienate audiences once more eventually see it, but it’s by design because when the end credits ultimately appear, you will never forget it. 

SCORE: ★★★1/2

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