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Scott Disick is fine with the idea of ex Kourtney Kardashian hooking up with TikTok star Addison Rae — even though the gal pals claim to be just friends.

“It’s OK if you are,” the “Flip It Like Disick” star, 37, assured Rae, 20, while having lunch with the Kardashian-Jenner clan in a sneak peek of Thursday’s episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

Khloé Kardashian explained to viewers in a confessional that she had invited Rae to her family’s Malibu rental “without Kourtney” to “get to the bottom” of the pair’s blossoming friendship .

While the brood did not get the answer they seemingly hoped for, it appeared that Disick was following the breadcrumbs left by his and Kourtney’s son Mason. In a previous clip, the 11-year-old revealed that his mom and Rae “have sleepovers” together.

Fans have also had plenty to say about the unexpected friendship, prompting both Kourtney and Rae — who have a 21-year age gap — to defend hanging out so often.

From Publisher: Page Six

Kourtney Kardashian, Addison Rae’s Friendship Explained

Going strong! Kourtney Kardashian’s own family may question her friendship with Addison Rae , but the pair’s bond seems stronger than ever.

The TikTok star met the oldest Kardashian-Jenner sister in March 2020 through mutual friend David Dobrik , who was helping Kardashian’s son Mason get an account started on the popular app. “We surprised Mason, because Mason liked my videos on TikTok,” Rae told “The Tom Ward Show” in July 2020. “I kind of just stuck around and we got really close. We started working out together.”

One such workout became an instructional Poosh video that’s racked up more than 4.7 million views. The BFFs have since popped up in each other’s TikToks and Instagram photos.

Though the reality star seems to have a ton of fun with her younger friend, some critics have wondered why the mother of three has been spending so much time with a woman more than 20 years her junior. When one Instagram follower commented, “She’s 41 and hanging around with 19 year olds in swimming pools,” the Poosh founder replied , “Do you suggest a better place? I’m looking for ideas …”

The singer-songwriter, 31, on Friday dropped “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” a newly-recorded version of her second studio album.

Originally released when Swift was 18 and centered in country music, the 2021 version was bound to include some “Changes.” Her voice has matured, which works on tracks like “White Horse” and “Fearless” but feels odd when she sings about high school on “Fifteen”. For the most part, though, the album’s essence is the same and the tweaks are fun reminders for longtime fans of how Swift has developed as an artist through the years.

“Taylor’s Version”, as Swift is calling it, is a make-good on her promise to rerecord her music from before her “Lover” album. In late summer 2019, shortly after Scooter Braun’s purchase of her masters ignited a public battle between the two and renewed debate over music ownership, Swift announced her plan to rerecord her first six studio albums in an effort to own her work, saying “I just think that artists deserve to own their work, I just feel very passionately about that” on “Good Morning America.” She started doing so in late 2020 and “Fearless” is the first of her versions to be released.

The new release gives fans 27 tracks: All the songs from the original and platinum edition, six previously unreleased tracks from the vault and a bonus song. We’ve listened and found the biggest differences between 2008’s “Fearless” and 2021’s “Fearless (Taylor’s Version).”

“Mr. Perfectly Fine” (a surprise release Wednesday) gives us “Forever and Always” vibes, which is probably why it was initially left on the cutting room floor. This one is vintage sentimental Taylor at its finest (as is other vault song “You All Over Me,” released in March) and we can’t stop belting out “It takes everything in me just to get up each day / But it’s wonderful to see that you’re OK.” It also includes the line “casually cruel,” seemingly a precursor to her greatest bridge of all time in 2012’s “All Too Well”?

Keith Urban’s appearance on “That’s When” and “We Were Happy” is a nice homage to the Fearless-era, when Swift was the opening act on Urban’s 2009 Escape Together tour (the pair was also featured on Tim McGraw’s 2013 song “Highway Don’t Care.”) But we probably could have done without those two, along with other vault song “Bye Bye Baby,” which are pretty forgettable compared the rest of Swift’s storied discography.

Of the from-the-vault songs, four are new releases on Friday. The best is “Don’t You,” a slow bop that sonically could have ended up on her “1989” album but lyrically sounds like if the main character of “Folklore”s “The 1” ran into her ex before going to therapy.

A big question heading into the rerecords: Would Swift, a Pennsylvania native who has since moved into the pop and indie spheres revive the country twang she used in her earlier work?

The answer, we’re thrilled to confirm, is yes. It isn’t as noticeable as the original and Swift has a more mature and slightly wider vocal range than she did as a teen, but the emphasis on the “r” in “Fearless” and some long, drawn out “I”s and “Y”s undeniably mark a return of yee-haw Taylor.

From Publisher: USA TODAY

Millennials are terrified of the return of low-rise jeans and Y2K fashion. But what if they looked different this time around?

Some time ago (as in, before pants made out of denim ceased to be part of our day-to-day wardrobes) I made a bet with a friend who said that she’d never wear low-rise jeans again. There were whispers going around that the most maligned item of mid-aughts clothing was starting to pop up on Bella Hadid, fashion show runways, and cool young people in places like downtown Manhattan — basically the trifecta of “things that are going to become a Thing.”

Enter: high-rise jeans, which come with their very own girdle in the form of thick, stretchy denim pressed against our stomachs, and land at or above the natural waist. The 2010s were a magical time for those of us who relish the feeling of being sucked and squeezed into our clothing, and although not always objectively comfortable , per se, they offered their own sort of comfort to people who might have previously been pants-resistant. “Low-rise pants are walking billboards for extreme thinness and androgynous frames,” wrote Rachel Syme in an ode to high-waisted pants in the New Yorker in 2019, “but high-rise styles can conform to bodies of all shapes and sizes. They not only highlight hips and butts — they demand them.”

The mainstreaming of the high waist has been a balm for many women who never wish to go back to a time when one was constantly at risk for exposing their ass crack. There are innumerable posts on Instagram and TikTok devoted to showcasing the superiority of high-waisted bottoms, which often hold in the stomach and accentuate the smallest part of the body, with side-by-side images — one with an hourglass-like figure inside a pair of high-rise leggings, another that invoked the most insidious term from the year 2003, the “muffin top.”

Cultural discourse around female bodies has always been inseparable from clothing, and when we talk about low-rise jeans, it’s obvious that we’re talking about more than pants. It’s now a popular TikTok trend to note how in the 2000s, “women’s bodies were the fashion, not the clothes” (to the extent that this is all that different today is worth questioning, but at the very least it is now considered crass to publicly ridicule a woman’s body when she dares to leave her home). Recall any red carpet image from the 1990s to the late aughts, when jeans were at their lowest and crop tops were really more like bralettes, items for which a flat stomach has often been an unspoken requirement. Those who failed to fit the ideal body type — which Simpson, along with almost every tabloid staple, did at one point or another — were punished.

We have social media and the relative democratization of cultural influence to thank for spreading the idea that perhaps it was a bad thing for women and girls to despise their bodies 99 percent of the time. Via the internet, groups of curvy and fat women could connect, share their stories, trade styling tips, and start the seedlings of what’s since become the huge swath of social media devoted to “body positivity .” It’s also social media that helped us view celebrities more like our own friends rather than out-of-touch elitists, meaning that the snarky tabloid talk scrutinizing famous womens’ bodies was no longer acceptable to fans who’d started to see them as human.

So it isn’t entirely mysterious as to why women, especially those who are now in their 20s and 30s, have long been terrified that low-rise jeans and the culture surrounding them could once again become our reality. “If you were anything above a size 2, you were fat. Millennial women learned that through their most formative years, when they were children and teenagers … they see this trend come back and it’s a trigger,” explains one TikToker in a video with more than 350,000 “Likes.”

Demi Rose is ditching the bra and the shirt, seemingly also any other form of underwear as she wears only a silky skirt and heels to promote clothing brand Pretty Little Thing . The 26-year-old British model got Wednesday off to a bang, posting another bombshell Instagram shot as she flaunted her famous curves, with the post also earning the star some cash. Demi, who has fronted affordable label PLT since October 2020, was proving just why the brand picked her – check it out below.

Scroll for the photo. It comes as Demi makes headlines for asking fans to “peep” the dude in the back as her Easter bunny bikini photos included a rather unusual and joyful-looking male bystander. While that photo was a 2019 throwback from the Brit’s California travels, today’s one was fresh.

The snap, tasteful as ever despite the amount of skin on show, showed Demi posing indoors and on a fluffy white rug amid wood paneling, with the model showing off her new ginger-blonde locks.

Shot in profile and teasing her massive assets as she rocked a bare back, Demi highlighted her famous apple bottom in a cinched-waist and light tan skirt, one that was dangerously slit at the hip and came undies-free. The model also wore sexy matching tan stilettos, posing with a fierce gaze as she showed off highlighted cheeks and thick brows.

Demi once came as a Fashion Nova face, with regular shout-outs coming to the brand fronted by “WAP” rapper Cardi B, Aussie Iggy Azalea, plus model Blac Chyna. In October of last year, Demi ceased her promos for the king-pin of cheap clothing, seemingly more tempted by the ambassador status at PLT. Pretty Little Thing, which boasts collabs with singer Doja Cat and model Jordyn Woods , has since upgraded Demi’s promo status. In December 2020, Rose released her own edit with the label.

From Publisher: The Blast

Just a silk skirt, elegant Demi Rose models her charms

The beautiful british model Demi Rose has once again surprised her audience and this time she was only wearing a silk skirt to pose elegant and beautiful in front of the professional camera with which she was captured.

In the Photography What stands out the most is her beautiful silhouette that was with her back to the lens and posing on one of her knees while with one foot she stepped on fruit with and the other rested on a carpet that looks quite comfortable in the background a wooden closet that works perfectly to bring out the colors of the young british .

The tour will begin on Oct. 13. in Milwaukee and make its way to the Allstate Arena the following day. This tour will also be Bocelli’s first time performing in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Bocelli’s “Believe” album, which was released in November 2020, includes “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” “Hallelujah” and many more songs.

The Andrea Bocelli Foundation and the tour has partnered with PLUS1 to empower communities struggling with poverty, illiteracy, social exclusion and illness by donating $1 for every ticket sold.

Bocelli tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020, but had a “swift and full recovery” and shared the news with fans a few months later.

“The pandemic which has shaken the world has also affected — albeit mildly — me and certain members of my family,” Bocelli’s statement read. “I certainly didn’t want to unnecessarily alarm my fans and also wished to protect my family’s privacy.”

From Publisher: chicagotribune.com

Italian opera star hits the high notes in world-first AlUla concert

Italian opera tenor Andrea Bocelli enchanted an audience in AlUla on Thursday in what is believed to be the first-ever performance within the walls of the ancient desert city.

In his third performance in the Kingdom, Bocelli serenaded a limited number of concert-goers at the heritage site due to social distancing measures, but the concert was no less mesmerising than his previous shows at Maraya Concert Hall as part of the Winter at Tantora Festival.

The biggest surprise of the evening was the tenor’s 9-year-old daughter Virginia Bocelli, making a Middle East debut with her father on the stage playing the guitar and singing the lyrics the iconic Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah”.

The master tenor delivered a stripped- back set with musicians from the Arabian Philharmonic, and special guests Loren Allred, Matteo Bocelli, soprano Francesca Maionchi and Eugene Kohn at the piano.

The spectacular backdrop to the concert and the response of the audience left him eager to perform in other Saudi cities.

“It is rare to perceive such a strong empathy such as that experienced in your land,” Bocelli told Arab News.

Bocelli’s performance to fewer than 300 people is believed to be the first within the walls of the ancient desert city of Hegra.

It’s Britney babe! Britney Spears , who typically posts somewhat blurry, highly edited or cryptic pictures, upped her Instagram game on Wednesday, April 8.

The 39-year-old pop singer, who was the subject of Framing Britney Spears , posted a new video to show off a few of her favorite fashion looks, which went way beyond her oft-worn peasant blouse . And damn – not only were her transitions top notch, but the star proved she’s got some serious style!

“ I found my cat suit  … No luck finding my mask but at least I found my body  !!!! Stay joyful my friends and do what makes you happy by darn it !!!! God bless ,” the “Circus” singer captioned the post, which she shared with her 29.2 million followers.

In the high-quality clip, which was played to the beat of Pharell’s “Happy,” Spears rocks a total of 4 different looks ranging from downright sexy and scandalous to classic ‘90s.

For her first outfit, Spears slipped into an itty-bitty green mini skirt, white turtleneck and leather jacket with fur trimming. She accessorized the look with white high socks and rhinestone-embellished boots.

If you ask Us , the next look was hands-down the star of the show. The “Toxic” vocalist, who shares sons Sean Preston and Jayden James with ex-husband Kevin Federline, slipped into a very sexy leotard, or as she calls it, a “catsuit.”

Dressed in the skin-tight and see-through number, Spears gave viewers a little “meow” before swiping the camera up to her next look, which was by far the most tried and true Britney Spears ensemble we’ve ever seen.

Wearing little low-rise white shorts and cropped peasant style blouse that showed off her taught tummy, the star did a catwalk down her balcony. She quickly tossed to her next and final look, a pink floral mini with puff sleeves.

Like most of Spears’ Instagram posts, the video blew up, attracting more than 900,000 likes and 18,000 comments in under 24 hours. Both the Britney Army and those active in the #FreeBritney movement made sure to call out how the post was a departure from her typically less-produced posts.

From Publisher: Us Weekly

20 years before #FreeBritney, a revealing Britney Spears doc

The first time director Judy Hoffman goes in for a superstar close-up of Britney Spears in the rarely circulated 2002 documentary “Stages: Three Days in Mexico,” the performer is soldiering through yet another photo scrum in what was, already, a long, wearying line of press “events,” this time in a Mexico City Four Seasons banquet hall.

Bright, cold red, white and blue illumination from Pepsi’s sponsor signage provides the background, while a wall of flashbulbs lights up the foreground. Spears, then 20 and at the end of a grueling world tour, smiles and holds it, just as filmmaker Hoffman, who teaches film studies at the University of Chicago, and her legendary cinematographer, documentary pioneer Albert Maysles, hold the shot just long enough for a question to form in the viewer’s mind: How long has this hard-working, indelible pop export, this culturally necessary boy-band antidote, held that smile, exactly? A minute? An entire world tour?

IU’s “Lilac” rules the Billboard K-Pop 100 chart, becoming the K-pop queen’s fifth leader on the list.

Upon the track’s rise to the top, IU dominates the chart with seven top 10s this week, breaking the last year’s record of five hits by BTS on the chart dated Feb. 29 and setting the new record high for the most simultaneous top 10s.

Pre-released on Jan. 27, “Celebrity” manages to hold its spot at No. 2 after staying atop for seven weeks. Other tracks including “Coin,” “Hi Spring Bye” and “Flu” are ranked at No. 4, 5 and 6 respectively, while “Troll” and “My Sea” are nested at No. 9 and 10.

The rest of the top 10 spots are filled by Brave Girls, BTS and Rose. Brave Girls’ “Rollin’” falls to No. 3 after leading the chart for the past two weeks, while BTS’s “Dynamite” takes No. 7 followed by Rose’s “On The Ground” at No. 8.

As IU adds six new top 10s this week, she has reached her career record of 14, surpassing BTS’ Suga’s record of ten for the most top 10 hits.

Her triumph does not stop here; “Not Spring, Love, or Cherry Blossoms” re-enters the chart, making it her 19th track on the list this week and breaking the record of the most simultaneous entries, which she held with 18 total tracks in the previous week.

The Billboard K-Pop 100 measures multi-metric consumption including streaming, digital sales, radio and television data to present the most popular K-Pop songs in South Korea every week.

From Publisher: Billboard

K-pop Songstress IU Dominates Music Charts with New, Old Songs

K-pop songstress IU has swept major music charts here with her latest album and past releases, landing more than 15 songs in the top 100 simultaneously.

The 28-year-old soloist placed 16 songs in the top 100 on the latest daily music charts by streaming services Melon and Genie Music, refreshed Saturday, including all 10 tracks of her new album “Lilac.”

“Lilac,” the main track of her new studio album also titled “Lilac,” topped both charts, followed by the pre-released “Celebrity” at No. 3. “Coin,” “Hi Spring Bye” and “Flu,” all from her fifth studio album, claimed top 10 spots on both charts as well.

“Hold My Hand,” the singer’s first self-written song released in 2011 , came in at No. 7 and No. 11 on the Melon and Genie Music charts, respectively.

The high-profile 2020 collaboration between the K-pop queen and BTS’ Suga, “Eight,” ranked No. 20 on the charts, almost one year after its release.

On the Melon chart, even her 2014 spring number “Not Spring, Love, or Cherry Blossoms” ranked at 89th place.

This photo, provided by EDAM Entertainment, shows a promotional image for the singer IU’s album “Lilac” released on March 25, 2021.

Pop culture experts say the dominance of a single musician’s past and present hits on music charts is notable, even compared to popular K-pop boy and girl groups’ success on music charts.

From Publisher: Be Korea-savvy

Blackpink member Rosé has released the video for her solo single, “Gone,” which she first shared last month.

The clip shows the South Korean singer mourning the loss of a relationship in an elaborately decorated old house. In various scenes, Rosé poses with gorgeous blue flowers, throws feathery pillows around the room in frustration, and cries against a bathtub. The video’s happier moments are interspersed with sadder scenes, where the house’s furniture is covered in tarp and Rosé is throwing out old picture frames.

“Gone” is featured on Rosé’s debut solo project  R , which also includes the track “On the Ground.” In an interview for Rolling Stone ‘s The First Time , she described how she “hadn’t heard a song like that before” when her producer showed her the backing track for “On the Ground.”

“I didn’t expect to hear a song like that because every song that we get or begin with doesn’t have these kinds of messages in it. For us, it was kind of like, I think this song kinda speaks our mind.”

From Publisher: Rolling Stone

Blackpink’s Debut Album Is The First By A Korean Girl Group To Spend Half A Year On The Billboard

Even before they released an album, Blackpink worked their way up to the top, establishing themselves as not only one of the most exciting musical acts to emerge from South Korea, but one of the most popular and bestselling girl groups in the world. When the time finally did come to drop a complete project, the band made history on charts seemingly everywhere, and now, months after it first arrived, the set is still going strong in the largest music market in the world.

This week, Blackpink’s debut full-length The Album falls 20 spaces on the Billboard 200, dipping from No. 160 to No. 180.

The longest-charting albums by any South Korean musical act (which in this specific instance just means BTS) are Love Yourself: Answer (98 weeks), Map of the Soul: 7 (58 weeks), Love Yourself: Her (44 weeks) and Map of the Soul: Persona (35 weeks).

The Album narrowly missed out on becoming a leader when it debuted last fall, as it opened at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. That still makes it by far the highest-charting effort by a South Korean girl group, and it gave the quartet their third placement on the tally, which still stands as the most among all-female vocal troupes from the Asian country.

From Dangal to Pagglait, every role is a challenge, every part is fresh, and doing things the easy way seems to be an alien concept.

In an interview a couple of years ago, Sanya Malhotra told me that the most adventurous thing she has ever done was riding a 350cc Bullet from Manali to Leh. Many might disagree with her on that one though, because her career has been nothing if not adventurous.

It has not been easy for the 29-year-old though. Having trained in contemporary dance and ballet, Malhotra moved from New Delhi to Mumbai after finishing college in order to participate in reality show Dance India Dance . And while she did not make it past the Top 100, she stayed back in the city of dreams chasing her own ambitions of making it as an actor. What followed was the rigour of the audition circuit and a few small gigs in commercials, both in front of the camera and also assisting behind the scenes.

Having shared screen space with another female actor in her first two films, Malhotra’s first leading lady role came about a few months later with Badhaai Ho , one of the top grossing films of 2018. It is probably her safest role to date, playing the supportive girlfriend to Ayushmann Khurrana’s character in a film that really was hijacked by its older cast (Neena Gupta, Gajraj Rao, and Surekha Sikri). It is easy, after all, to build a successful résumé by picking up the heroine roles in films dominated by other people – it is something most of our leading ladies in the past would do. Not so much for this generation though, as evidenced by young Malhotra. Not only did she hold her own amongst the seasoned cast of Badhaai Ho , she followed it up with what is arguably her most solid performance till date.

The Lunchbox director Ritesh Batra’s Photograph (2019) was the first film Malhotra had signed after Dangal , though it ended up getting made and released only a couple of years later. The intimate story of an unlikely couple finding each other amidst the chaos that is Mumbai, made waves at the Sundance Film Festival that year. More than the film though, it was the then-27-year-old Malhotra who caught the attention of the international film fraternity. So much did she impress with her performance as the fake fiancée of a struggling street photographer Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) that The Hollywood Reporter named her as one of the five breakout talents to watch out for at the Berlin Film Festival.

It is this drive to keep learning new things that has pushed Malhotra to foray into unfamiliar territory with every role that she picks. 2020 saw her in a couple of streaming releases. True to form, her roles in the two films are like chalk and cheese. In Ludo , she plays a young woman desperate to marry a rich man, and her on-screen chemistry with Aditya Roy Kapur hogged paragraphs in every review of the film. In Shakuntala Devi , she plays the role of the disillusioned daughter, and brings a certain amount of nuance to that troubled relationship between mother and daughter.

“It’s a very complex character,” says Sanya Malhotra about Sandhya, from her upcoming film Pagglait, which premieres on Netflix on 26 March.

From Publisher: Firstpost

This isn’t the first time  artists have received shares from  HYBE .   When  the company   went public last October on the Korean stock exchange,  the seven members of  BTS  each  got shares valued at $8 million .  But sources say the equity being awarded to Ithaca’s  artists  is coming out of Braun’s stake.

HYBE, the company behind powerhouse K-pop group BTS, said Friday (April 2) that it would  pay cash and shares to acquire  Ithaca Holdings ,  in a move   designed to help the  Korean company  establish a strong U.S. presence in music and entertainment.

In February, HYBE and Universal announced the Korean company would  create  a joint label with Geffen Records and co-produce an  American Idol -like show to search for the next global K-pop boy band .  The new label will be run out of Los Angeles, where HYBE plans to open a newly expanded  U.S.  office later this year .

From Publisher: Billboard

Justin Bieber’s ‘Justice’ Presents a Consistent Spiritual Message

The cover of Justin Bieber’s sixth studio album “Justice” shows the pop singer crouched in a highway tunnel. The deluxe version of the album, released March 26, features 22 songs and includes collaborations with Khalid, Daniel Caesar, Quavo and many others.

Justin Bieber’s sixth studio album, “ Justice ,” is a reflective pop album that finds Bieber at a variety of moods and production styles.

The 27-year-old pop icon released the album March 19 under Def Jam Recordings , followed by a deluxe version with six additional tracks just a week later. “Justice: Triple Chucks Deluxe” weighs in at a hearty 22 songs, providing listeners just over an hour of music, compared to 16 tracks on the original.

Bieber’s sound is hard to nail down on this album. The music on “Justice” ranges from Christian-inspired ballads, true-to-form Bieber pop anthems, Afro-pop dancehall bops and radio-friendly hip-hop tracks, featuring everyone from Tori Kelly to Skrillex to DaBaby . While many of the collaborations are fun and dynamic, the mood of the album shifts so drastically from track to track that “Justice” as a whole feels disjointed to listeners.

The cover artwork for Bieber’s single, “Anyone,” from his new album, “Justice,” features Bieber laying down exhausted after a boxing match. In the song, Bieber asserted his love for his wife, Hailey Baldwin Bieber, who he married in 2018.

According to Bieber, there are a few reasons why this album is called “Justice.” In an interview with Vogue, Bieber shared that his first name “Justin” actually means “justice” in Latin, which he felt was an appropriate album title in a year filled with so much pain and racial discrimination. For these reasons, Bieber said he decided to include two Martin Luther King Jr. sound bites in the record.

It seems like Bieber’s decision to include the MLK snippets came from an earnest place. In an interview with the Zach Sang Show , Bieber said his reasoning for including the sound bites was that he wanted to amplify King’s voice to his younger audience. However, because King’s words are lacking context and do not relate to the subject matter of the rest of the record, their inclusion feels performative at best and inconsistent with “Justice” as a whole.