This year’s Global Citizen Live will take place in Rio de Janerio, London, Seoul, Los Angles, Sydney, Lagos, France’s capital city Paris and US city New York City and will include various artist’s live performances as well as pre-recorded sets. The worldwide concert aims to promote unity whilst rallying citizens of the world to urge major conglobates, governments and politicians as well as philanthropists to band together to help the world’s poverty-stricken communities and help rectify the recent global issues.

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The global event has been dated to take place this September to match with the UN General Assembly which is also taking place this September. Global Citizen Live will also coincide with other important meetings and summits including the G20 and COP26 set to take later on in 2021. Each act performing will be taking part in a 24-hour historic musical event, the concerts will be aired over many broadcasted mediums including ABC, ABC News Live, BBC, FX, IHeartRadio, Hulu, YouTube, TIME, Twitter as well as many more social media and televised channels.

Ed Sheeran will join the impressive list of artists billed to perform in Paris, joining the ‘Shape of You’ singer are hitmakers Black Eyed Peas, H.E.R., Dj Snake, Christine and the Queens and ‘Kiss Me More’ singer Doja Cat.  The line-up featured in Lagos include musician Femi Kuti, singer-songwriter Davido, Made Kuti and MTV Europe music award winner Tiwa Savage.

New York City’s event will take place at the famous landmark, Central Park, Global Citizen has been hosting events at the famed landmark since 2012. Performing at the city’s venue includes a vast array of artists such as ‘Bad Guy’ singer Billie Eilish and former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello. Also included to play the city that never sleeps are British hitmakers Coldplay, legendary artist Jennifer Lopez, ‘Good as Hell’ singer Lizzo, Shawn Mendes and rapper Meek Mill. New York City’s event will also see performances by special guests Burna Boy and Lang Lang, also set to take the stage at Central Park is 80’s pop icon Cyndi Lauper, known for her ‘Girl’s Just Want To Have Fun’ mega-hit.

Other artists donating themselves to the cause include Queen + Adam Lambert singer Adam Lambert, Alessia Cara, Opera tenor singer Andrea Bocelli, Angélique Kidjo, BTS, Demi Lovato, legendary 80’s band Duran Duran, iconic punk rockers Green Day, Hugh Jackman & Deborra-Lee Furness, Jon Batiste, Country music artist Keith Urban, ‘Royals’ singer-songwriter Lorde, The Lumineers, thrash metal pioneers Metallica, Rag ‘ n’ Bone Man, Ricky Martin, The Weeknd and Usher with even more acts to be announced.

Global Citizen’s Head of Music, Entertainment and Artist Relations, Katie Hill, has provided the following statement describing the organisation’s mission statement whilst expressing the organisation’s excitement to work with the host of artists. “Over the last year and a half, we’ve seen music bring communities together and inspire action during one of the most challenging times of our generation, We’re excited to join these incredible artists to unite people across the globe on September 25 as we hold world leaders and business leaders accountable to rectify the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As we carefully resume Global Citizen’s live events, we couldn’t be more grateful to each of these artists for donating their time and performances to make an impact through this urgent campaign.”

Potential ticket-holders must earn their way into the amazing event by winning their tickets and each location has its own draw. You must begin by downloading the Global Citizen app and creating an account, within this app users can sign petitions, write letters to government officials and politicians, share news and messages via social media plus many more actions. These actions can earn users points, which they can then use to enter to win tickets to the event. The first collection of actions was released on 10th August 2021, fans have until 24th August 2021 to fulfil enough actions to place them in the competition to receive tickets. The lucky winners will be selected at random and will be notified via email, once the email has been received, ticket winners have 48 hours in which to claim their tickets.

Click here to learn more about the event.

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The band did get a chance to play some intimate shows in the UK in February before the album came out but any plans they had for a tour was put on hold because of the ongoing global health crisis. Wake Up, Sunshine is the band’s eighth studio album, it came out in April of this year and brought back all the nostalgic memories that comes with a band of All Time Low’s calibre. The album peaked at #3 in the UK charts.

This news comes just days after All Time Low dropped a revamped version of their track Monsters with Demi Lovato and producer blackbear. They also released an animated music video to go with the revised track. Demi Lovato took to Instagram to express her gratitude of being a part of the project, saying; “Feels like I’ve known these guys forever. I’m SO stoked that the @alltimelow guys asked me to jump on MONSTERS and it’s sooo dope to also have a song out with @bear!!!”

Vocalist for All Time Low, Alex Gaskarth also discussed the track saying; “Demi’s been a friend for a long time and we’re really excited that she was down to lend her absolutely incredible voice to this song as we reimagine it and continue to celebrate all the ways it’s connecting with fans around the world.”

You can get tickets to All Time Low’s UK shows here, the dates are below. Tickets go on sale on Friday the 11th of December at 9am.

23/09/2021 - O2 Academy Brixton – London
26/09 – O2 Apollo – Manchester
27/09 – Barrowland Ballroom – Glasgow

After much speculation about the possible collaboration between these two vocal powerhouses, they finally dropped a song together. “I’m Ready” is the latest cut from Smith’s upcoming untitled third studio album expected to be release later this year. The song is the two singers’ yearning to find someone to love them, as they both croon “I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready for someone to love me.”

Swedish pop producer ILYA helps craft this seriously catchy song. He also co-writes it with both Smith and Lovato. Smith and ILYA already worked together once for the previous dancey track, “How Do You Sleep?”.

In support of the track, the “Stay with Me” hitmaker also debuts a music video with the theme of Olympic events. It is directed by Jora Frantzis, who has worked with numerous artists with the likes of Cardi B and Rosalía, and it features the guest appearances from LGBTQ performers and drag queens, including RuPaul’s Drag Race royalty Valentina and current competitor of Season 12 Gigi Goode.

Smith originally planned to drop their third record titled ‘To Die For‘ on May 1. Unfortunately, due to the global pandemic of COVID-19, they decided to push back the release indefinitely until they deemed a more appropriate time to drop it. The Grammy-winning singer also determined to rename the album, as they believed the title, as well as the release date, did “not feel right”. Read the full story here.

“I’m Ready” will join initial singles, namely “Dancing with a Stranger“, “How Do You Sleep?“, “To Die For“, “I Feel Love“, and “Fire on Fire“, in compiling the full-length.

Elsewhere, Lovato recently made a return to the music scene with two comeback singles: “Anyone” and “I Love Me”. She awed the audience at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards with the immensely emotional performance of the first track, and she subsequently shared the latter track as the lead single of her upcoming seventh album.

The “Cool for the Summer” singer took a break from music since 2017’s ‘Tell Me You Love Me‘ and got a recovery from a borderline-fatal overdose. This year, apart from releasing new music, she also landed in an acting role for Netflix’s original comedy film Eurovision set to be released soon.

Despite a difficult and weird time of ours right now, it is delightful to see two big pop stars working together in bringing joy to fans around the world. Smith promised to drop their new album this year, similar to Lovato. Let’s hope that the coronavirus crisis will not get into their ways of releasing again.

Shazam’s software allows users of smart phones to find out which song it is playing on the radio, just by holding their smart phone up to a speaker. 

For years the age old question has always been, “who sings this song?”, “what’s this song called?”, and we had no way of knowing the answer. Shazam is the answer to those prayers, and knows through its analysing technology the answer to those questions.

In 2018, Shazam revealed that the most searched for song of 2018 was Clean Bandit’s “Solo” featuring Demi Lovato. It was revealed to have been tagged 9.1 million times.

The second most popularly searched for song, was X by Nicky Jam and J Balvin, with Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa’s “One Kiss’ coming in at third place.

The company was bought by the giant Apple last year, for a reported $400m (£316m). Shazam had over 120 million users, and was one of the only music technology companies to be making a profit.

Apple has used its purchase of Shazam to get users over to their streaming service.

Ed Sheehan also proved popular in 2018 with his track “Perfect” coming in at the fifth most Shazamed song, and the number one song in Shazam’s global charts this year. “Perfect” had been at the top of the bill for nine weeks, as well as being the most shared song worldwide. Sheehan is the only artist to have claimed pop’s most Shazamed song of 2017 hit the number one spot in the same genre twice.

Shazam revealed that “Friends” by Marshmallow and Anne-Marie was 2018’s most Shazamed track in a day worldwide, on April 9th.  Drake was named as the most Shazamed artist of the year,  J Balvin was the second most popularly searched artist.

Top 10 Most Shazamed Songs

1. “Solo”, Clean Bandit Feat. Demi Lovato
2. “X”, Nicky Jam & J Balvin
3. “One Kiss”, Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa
4. “In My Mind”, Dynoro & Gigi D’agostina
5. “Perfect”, Ed Sheehan
6. “Leave a Light On”, Tom Walker
7. “Girls Like You”, Maroon 5 Feat. Cardi B
8. “Friends”, Marshmallow & Anne-Marie
9. “Flames”, David Guetta & Sia
10. “I Like It”, Cardi B & Bad Bunny & J Balvin

Most Shazamed Songs by Genre

Country: “You Make It Easy”, Jason Aldean

Pop: “Perfect”, Ed Sheehan

Dance: “Solo”, Clean Bandit Feat. Demi Lovato

Hip-Hop: “I Like It”, Cardi B & Bad Bunny & J Balvin

Rock/Alt: “Feel It Still”, Portugal. The Man

K-Pop: “FAKE LOVE”, BTS

Latino: “X”, Nicky Jam & J Balvin

R&B: “Love Lies”, Khalid & Normani

She explained in the statement that she had swollen vocal chords and was “very, very sick”, and had even been examined by an ear, nose and throat doctor to determine the seriousness of her illness. After consulting with them, she concluded that pushing herself to perform could injure her vocal chords, causing her to cancel the rest of the tour.

Her statement went on to apologise specifically to fans “that [had] travelled hours to be [there] by plane or car” as well as to fans that received “tickets for their birthday, holiday or any other special occasion.” She reiterated that she wouldn’t ever cancel a show unless she “absolutely had to”, and made it clear that she shared fans’ inevitable frustration.

The London date of her tour has been moved to June the 25th, and all tickets for the former date are still valid. The singer is scheduled to perform in Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle upon Tyne and Manchester in the coming weeks, but as of yet hasn’t confirmed those shows will be affected as well.

The former Disney star wrote on the social media site: “So excited for 2017. Taking a break from music and the spotlight.. I am not meant for this business and the media.” Demi then explained her decision further in response to a tweet from a fan, writing: “Dunno. It doesn’t feel worth it anymore. I’d rather do charity work tbh.”

The announcement came just hours after the release of an interview in which she slammed Taylor Swift and her squad for ‘tearing down’ Katy Perry. She told Glamour Magazine “I think that having a song and a video about tearing Katy Perry down, that’s not women’s empowerment.”

The ‘Confident’ singer also claimed that Taylor Swift only used women with perfect bodies in her ‘Bad Blood’ video which includes Cara Delevingne, Ellie Goulding, Gigi Hadid and Karlie Kloss, in an interview with Yahoo!. Afterwards, she tweeted: “I get asked questions. I answer them. Sue me. Also don’t forget that words can be taken out of context when doing interviews.. still not apologising for saying what everyone wants to say”.

Demi is currently on tour with Nick Jonas, on the Future Now tour, and is touring the likes of the Americas and Asia.

Demi and Nick have three concerts in Mexico later this month, and will then perform in São Paulo and on a Caribbean cruise in December. The duo will finish up their tour at the beginning of February with a performance in Dubai.

The American pop star has been slammed with a hefty lawsuit after her song Stars has been criticised for containing “material taken from the original Sleigh Bells song “Infinity Guitars”  without proper credit. This comes from a statement found in documents gathered by Digital Music News.

Sleigh Bells are an American noise-pop duo formed in 2008 from New York. The songs Infinity Guitar comes from their debut album Treats, which was released back in 2010.

The claim was originally stated last year by Sleigh Bells on Twitter, when they posted:

“@ddlovato Demi Lovato flattered you guys sampled Infinity Guitars & Riot Rhythm for “Stars” but we were not contacted. Gotta clear those.”

However, Demetria Lovato’s producers denied the accusations, telling Rolling Stone, “We did not use any samples in Demi Lovato’s song,” adding “Demi was also not involved with the production.”

The song Stars appeared as a bonus track on her fifth album Confident. Confident debuted at at number one in Canada, while reaching the top 10 in fifteen other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States.

Nothing was resolved and now a year on, Krauss and Miller have launched legal proceedings against Lovato, Falk, Yacoub, and Universal Music Group.

The lawsuit names Lovato, UMG Recordings and producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub as defendants. It states that: “A comparison of the two songs reveals that, at the very least, the combination of the hand claps and bass drum, structured as 3 quarter beats and a rest, with the bass drum providing a counter-rhythm to the hand claps, is at least substantially similar in both works,” states the complaint. “This infringing material repeats throughout the Defendants’ song.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the complaint also alleges that “signal decay and other sonic signatures” reveals “virtually identical content” and “transcend the realm of coincidence.”

The lawsuit also states that Sleigh Bells have “suffered actual damages including lost profits, lost opportunities, and loss of goodwill,” going on to say that they are asking for $150,000 “per infringement” along with a “permanent injunction prohibiting the reproduction, distribution, sale, public performance or other use or exploitation of “Infinity Guitars” by defendants.”

Demi Lovato released Confident in October 2015 and is currently on a North American tour to promote the album.

This isn’t the first time Lovato has been called out on controversy within the media. Earlier this year the former Disney star commented on an Instagram ‘meme’ that compared Ariana Grande and Mariah Carey, sparking a barrage of fan wars between the stars. She also posted a video with her mother stating that those competing in Rio this year would contract the Zika virus, which also sparked debate.

Lovato is yet to comment on the claims. The full complaint can be found here. The videos of Stars and Infinity Guitars have been posted below for readers to compare.