Jason Derulo took the witness stand in a federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles Thursday and denied claims he stiffed guitarist-producer Matthew Spatola out of writing credit and royalties on his chart-topping hit “Savage Love.” “Mr. Spatola created nothing on ‘Savage Love,’” Derulo said, asserting that he hired Spatola only as a session musician for…
Ilana Glazer wanted to know if anyone was stoned. A few hands went up during a recent standup set in Stamford, Conn. She then admitted she didn’t smoke as much pot as she used to, and welcomed the light boos. With “Broad City,” Glazer taught a generation of young people it was OK to mess…
biography Homesick for a World Unknown by Miriam Horn In her engaging, lyrical book, Horn tells the story of the famed naturalist George Schaller, who went to the Belgian Congo in 1959 to study mountain gorillas. (He would go on to work with other animals, including Brazilian jaguars, Indian tigers and Serengeti lions.) Schaller, Horn…
Nick Cave has shared his thoughts on Russell Brand‘s new book about his conversion to Christianity. Brand said in 2024 that he was getting baptised in 2024 “to leave the past behind” and the ceremony took place in May of that year, with Bear Grylls – who is also a devout Christian – present. Notably,…
Georg Baselitz was a living thread of history and his death robs us of the truth he knew when we need it more than ever. He was one of the only two people I have spoken to for whom Nazi Germany was a living memory: Baselitz was born in 1938, making him far too young…
SMALL TOWN GIRLS: A Writer’s Memoir, By Jayne Anne Phillips Most fiction writers have given so much of their own experiences to their characters that, after long careers, they are rarely inspired to become late-life autobiographers. Over the years, however, many are likely to have published a variety of nonfiction pieces — personal essays, talks,…
As cellist of the Nash Ensemble and the Emerson Quartet, Paul Watkins has immersed himself in almost all the chamber music Beethoven wrote. Now he brings those years of experience to his first recording of the cello sonatas. He approached the pianist Alessio Bax for this project after hearing him play the Moonlight Sonata, and…
Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir documenting her seven years working at Facebook opens, unexpectedly, with a shark attack. The New Zealander was 13 years old and swimming in the sea when the shark bit her torso and shook her from side to side. She lived to tell the tale, but her near-death experience awakened in her a desire…
W hen Niall Horan left his house in Los Angeles on a recent Sunday afternoon, there were a few hundred people in line at Olive and James Cafe Tea, a quaint coffee shop on Melrose Avenue. By the time he pulled up, the queue stretched around the block. There isn’t a matcha or tiramisu latte…
Luke Kennard, writer This is a really good year for new fiction. I don’t think anyone writes about contemporary Englishness as astutely, mercilessly and affectionately as Claire Powell, and her latest novel, All In, puts her perfectly observed characters in the pressure cooker of an all-inclusive holiday. It’s a kind of meta-beach read, and I…
