Neuigkeiten

The worst of Covid is now well behind us, but a lingering alienation, along with desperation for physical connection, can still be felt everywhere. FKA twigs invented her own word for the feeling: “eusexua.” The surrealist video for the song depicts the singer’s inner escape from corporate drudgery to a flesh-on-flesh fantasia. Pointedly, Twigs is less interested in traditional love than bodily transcendence.

Touch seems more profound than ever to people in the wake of the pandemic. From the likes of Kevin Abstract and Lil Nas X’s unapologetically queer (and horny) “Tennessee,” Sabrina Carpenter luring Barry Keoghan into a jailhouse romance in “Please Please Please,” and Billie Eilish batting her wide-as-pie eyes at the unattainably straight Charli Xcx in “Guess,” it’s clear that we’re all longing for physical connection.

Other videos, like Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” reinforced a communal spirit inextricably tied to geographical...

There are few television shows as warm and comforting as "Columbo," the long-running mystery series starring Peter Falk as the eponymous detective. Each episode begins with a murder, and the fun isn't trying to figure out whodunnit but instead watching Columbo put together the pieces and catch the bad guy. Whether you're watching one of the original 1970s television episodes or one of the movie-of-the-week "episodes" that came out all the way through 2003, you can sit secure in the knowledge that Columbo will probably take the rich and powerful down a peg or two and be almost impossibly lovable while doing it. Despite the fact that Peter Falk wasn't originally the series' creator's choice to play Columbo, he is what makes the show so incredible watchable as he seems to aimlessly wander through crime scenes in his rumpled trench coat and ruin criminals' days with his trademark "just one more thing.

Pop history is littered with prolific partnerships, but the artist-producer pairing is arguably one of the most indispensable. Not only can an intrepid knob-twirler coax the best out of an artist, the most fruitful of these collaborations are often reciprocal. Think George Martin and the Beatles; Timbaland and Missy Elliott; or Jam & Lewis and Janet Jackson. Taylor Swift and former Fun guitarist-drummer Jack Antonoff have both achieved commercial and critical success outside of their work together, but their alliance over the last several years has, more often than not, resulted in pop magic.

The duo first worked together over a decade ago, on the unassuming “Sweeter Than Fiction,” a song from the British-American film One Chance. The following year, Antonoff co-wrote and co-produced three tracks for Swift’s blockbuster album 1989, the success of which propelled him to the top of every A&r exec’s wish list, helming tracks for Pink,...

There’s no doubting that the budgets and ambitions of music videos have dwindled since the glory days of MTV. We live in the age of TikTok-targeted ephemera. Yet miraculously, 2023 gave a much-needed shot of cinematic life to the form.

The best videos of the year emphasized meticulous technique over virality, offering intimate, impressionistic portraits of their respective artists’ interior lives and thoughts. Lana Del Rey and Lucy Dacus subverted Old Hollywood tropes, with a meta riff on studio system-era glamor and a lesbian tweaking of Wizard of Oz, respectively.

Others went bigger. Troye Sivan brought back the sheen and unabashed sexuality of Y2K pop princesses with a drag transformation that represents the performance of his career to date. Doja Cat took a maximalist approach to portraying the simultaneous highs and horrors of stardom, while Olivia Rodrigo constructed an elaborate, blood-splattered supernatural story to rival The Lost Boys.

As...

Postmodern attempts at genre defiance have become de rigueur for pop artists today. In a streaming-dominated world where we can type away on our laptops to ambient hip-hop in the morning, sing along to old yacht-rock hits on our afternoon commute, and dance to Edm at night, what other way is there to keep our attention than to try to give us everything everywhere all at once? We’ve gotten a few attempts to do just that so far in 2023, from Kara Jackson’s quietly rebellious blending of folk and R&b, to Yves Tumor’s kitchen-sink instrumentation, to 100 gecs’s audacious and absurd hyperpop assaults.

Many of the artists who appear on this list, though, no longer seem content to just break down old barriers, as they also seek to shatter interpersonal and emotional ones as well. The oft-cited isolation of modern living, heavily exacerbated by the pandemic, has...

Tori Amos has a long history of personifying her music, treating her songs as if they’re discrete, sentient beings. On her fourth album, 1998’s From the Choirgirl Hotel, the singer-songwriter imagines a place—the titular hotel—where her songs could live, granting them life separate from the commercial packaging of a pop album.

It’s no wonder that Amos would embrace this type of escapist worldbuilding. Her solo debut, Little Earthquakes, confronts traumas like sexual assault and religious oppression, and From the Choirgirl Hotel was recorded after she suffered a miscarriage, a topic addressed most directly by the album’s arresting lead single, “Spark.”

While, at the time, From the Choirgirl Hotel represented a deeper entrenchment of Amos’s themes and worldview—namely in her increasingly grim and cryptic exploration of the connections between womanhood and suffering—it also features her most forward-minded production to date, with elements of...

1983: All My Children's Tad returned to Pine Valley.

1990: Days of our Lives' Hope "died" in an explosion.

1999: As the World Turns' Jack gave Carly a compass.

2009: The Young and the Restless' Phillip revealed he was gay."History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images."

― Anselm Kiefer

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1965: On Another World, Lee Randolph (Gaye Huston) wasn't happy when Dr. Lewis said she could go home at the end of the week.

1966: On The Guiding Light, Leslie Bauer (Lynne Adams) accused her husband, Ed (Robert Gentry), of becoming a "cold...

1983: All My Children's Tad returned to Pine Valley.

1990: Days of our Lives' Hope "died" in an explosion.

1999: As the World Turns' Jack gave Carly a compass.

2009: The Young and the Restless' Phillip revealed he was gay."All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut."

― Anne Brontë in "Agnes Grey"

"Today in Soap Opera History" is a collection of the most memorable, interesting and influential events in the history of scripted, serialized programs. From birthdays and anniversaries to scandals and controversies, every day this column celebrates the soap opera in American culture.

On this date in...

1965: On Another World, Lee Randolph (Gaye Huston) wasn't happy when Dr. Lewis said she could go home at the end of the week.

'I'm going all the way to Hollywood this time,' one repeat auditioner tells MTV News.

By James Dinh

An "American Idol" auditioner

Photo: MTV News

"American Idol" might not have announced the final judges' panel for the upcoming 10th season, but that hasn't kept the show from kicking off the search for new singers.

On Tuesday, MTV News caught up with a few "Idol" wannabes at the East Rutherford, New Jersey, auditions to get an idea of who we'll be rooting for next season.

"I did make it to the next round," Stewart Taylor told MTV News. "I'm very, very, very excited, and I'm not stopping here, baby. I'm going all the way to Hollywood this time, because I did this last year and almost made it. You're in it to win it."

Gregory Higbee explained the preliminary audition round, which isn't quite the wacky tryouts you see at the start of the season.