NEW YORK — Taylor Swift’s new song for the Disney and Pixar’s forthcoming “Toy Story 5” film is here. On Friday, Swift released “I Knew It, I Knew You,” a bit of a return to country music for the performer who first made a name for herself in the Nashville music scene before taking over the world.

Here’s everything you need to know about “I Knew It, I Knew You.”

Taylor Swift goes country ... again

Swift doesn’t sing with a familiar twang on “I Knew It, I Knew You,” but no matter — the song features some elements inextricable from the country genre: Live instrumentation, plucky banjo and harmonica that opens the track.

Most view Swift’s last official foray into the country music genre to be 2012’s “Red,” though the album is much more of a crossover experiment. It would be more astute to label “Speak Now” as her last true-blue, full-length, country music release — and that was more than 15 years ago.

Additionally: “I Knew It, I Knew You” is also Swift’s first original material since “The Life of a Showgirl” was released in October.

The song is also co-produced by Jack Antonoff, her former, frequent collaborator. Swift started working with Antonoff on 2014’s “1989” through 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department.”

Notably, the pair started their long collaboration after Swift’s country era, perhaps with the rare exception of “Betty” from her 2020 “Folklore” album.

“Writing this song felt like a musical departure and coming home at the same time. Creating something for Jessie was a new challenge and also felt like second nature all at once,” Swift wrote on social media Friday, referencing the beloved cowgirl character. “And being a ‘Toy Story’ kid from the age of 5 til now… is an adventure I plan to be on, to infinity and beyond.”

Bad Bunny kicks off European leg of tour in #Barcelona. Hundreds of Bad Bunny fans braved long queues and the heat of Barcelona on Friday as the Puerto Rican superstar kicks off the 29-concert European leg of his world tour.

Bad Bunny devotees, some holding umbrellas to guard against the sun, lined up outside the Spanish city’s Olympic stadium hours ahead of the show on Friday night to try to secure a spot close to the stage.

“We’ve been here for two hours waiting, but really, how long have we been waiting for Bad Bunny here in Catalonia, in Barcelona?” journalist Adria Capdevila, 22, told AFP.

“We don’t know if we’ll ever get to see him again... since it might be the last time, you live it with maximum energy, maximum enthusiasm,” he said.

Bad Bunny’s world tour began last year with a 31-concert residency in San Juan in support of his latest album, “Debi Tirar Mas Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”), which blends traditional Puerto Rican music with reggaeton and trap.

The European tour includes two nights in Barcelona and two in Lisbon before moving to Madrid for 10 concerts at Atletico Madrid’s Metropolitano Stadium.

The tour will then continue through Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Sweden, Poland and Italy before concluding in Brussels on July 22.

The Oscar-winner said women have to band together, with the number of women and girl leads in top-grossing movies down 10 per cent in a year to 37 per cent, according to the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

“It’s not endemic just to the film industry, it’s global,” she said at the Cannes Film Festival, after getting a Women In Motion award.

“There’s not representation in the media, there’s not representation in higher education. There are lots of places where we don’t have the representation we deserve,” the actor added.

The fall comes after a study earlier this year by the same university found only nine of the 100 biggest U.S. movies last year were directed by women.

“How do you change that? You do it slowly, steadily, speaking up, using your privilege, hiring more, talking about alliances,” Moore said.

“I feel like women are each other’s greatest allies, and that’s the secret sauce.”

Moore, 65, said progress has been made, saying “I can remember being on a set not too long ago where the only women were me and the third AC (assistant camera),” who takes care of the focus on the camera.

“I said (to her), ‘Look around the room. We’re the only ones here.’”

Moore, who won her Oscar for “Still Alice” in 2015, and has four other nominations, said she gives gratuitously violent or shocking films a wide berth.

“When things are rough globally.... I don’t like someone being murdered. I don’t like explosions and guns. I don’t like histrionics. I don’t like things that raise the stakes without real feeling underneath... I don’t want to watch it.”

#Rolling Stones announce July 10 release of new album ‘Foreign Tongues’.

The band’s 25th studio album will come less than three years after its last release, “Hackney Diamonds”, which topped the charts in more than a dozen countries and earned some critical acclaim.

“Hackney Diamonds” was the band’s first album in 18 years.

The Stones announced the release date of “Foreign Tongues” online on Tuesday, while dropping a new single, “In The Stars”.

A video posted on its Instagram channel showed singer Mick Jagger and fellow founding bandmate Keith Richards, who are both 82, with 78-year-old bass guitarist Ronnie Wood working in a recording studio.

The album will feature appearances from former Beatles bass player Paul McCartney and The Cure frontman Robert Smith.

Jagger, Richards and Wood were all set to attend an album launch event later Tuesday in New York.

Speculation had been mounting that they were poised to unveil a new record after they last month mysteriously released a new limited edition single on vinyl only, under the band name The Cockroaches.

The name is an alias they have used in the past to play secret shows.

The track, “Rough And Twisted”, was sold at selected record stores only, in the UK for exactly £10.07 (US$13.64) -- prompting fans to predict the album would appear on July 10. #Music

#Shakira to follow Madonna and Lady Gaga in giving a huge free concert on Copacabana Beach.

The performance follows similar shows by Madonna in 2024 and Lady Gaga last year -- also attended by huge crowds that danced on the sprawling sands. For Shakira, it’s part of her " Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran," or “Women No Longer Cry,” world tour, named after her 2024 album.

The Latina pop star said in an interview with Brazil’s TV Globo that she expects the Copacabana concert to be the biggest of her career.

“For me it’s a dream. I always dreamed of singing on this beach, because I think it’s a magical place,” she said in Portuguese, adding that she learned the language before English.
One of the first places where Shakira became successful

When she first performed in Brazil in the 1990s, she established an amazing connection with the Brazilian public, according to Felipe Maia, an ethnomusicologist pursuing a doctoral degree on popular music and digital technologies at Paris Nanterre University.

That success in Brazil “has a lot to do with the fact that she comes from Colombia, a country whose culture has many similarities with Brazil,” Maia said, adding that Saturday’s performance “crowns the relationship she has had with Brazil for a very long time.”

Erica Monteiro, a 38-year-old accountant, said she has listened to Shakira since childhood.

“For me she represents the strength of our Latino community,” Monteiro said ahead of the concert. “We’re treated as if we were inferior but in fact we have much more strength.”

By Saturday morning, crowds had started piling onto the beach to nab a good spot for the show. Street vendors sold sweetcorn and other Brazilian snacks, bottled water and caipirinhas, the popular Brazilian cocktail -- but also toilet paper, deodorant and even bags of sand for concert goers to stand on to get a better view of the stage set up opposite Copacabana Palace, a historic luxury hotel.

Street vendor Simone Paula da Cunha arrived on the beach on Friday evening, hoping to sell all the beer and water bottles she had bought ahead of the show -- and make about $100 in all.

Despite her evident fatigue, da Cunha was excited at the prospect of seeing Shakira live. “I remember her from when she still had black hair,” she said. “I’m a huge fan of hers.”

DJs were slated to start performing on the beach in the late afternoon. Shakira’s set is scheduled for 9:45 p.m. local time and is expected to last around two hours. After the performance, another DJ will take to the stage -- a new addition to keep the crowds entertained and help with an orderly exit, according to city officials.
An effort to boost the city’s post-Carnival economy

The free concerts are part of City Hall’s attempt to boost economic activity after Carnival and New Years’ Eve festivities and before the monthlong Saint John’s Day celebrations in June.

“For us, parties are serious business. Because parties generate jobs, income, development, and identity for the city,” Rio Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere said on Wednesday as he presented the city’s operational plan for the event. “Our investment in this show will give us a financial return 40 times greater,” he said.

Shakira’s performance could generate around 777 million reais (around US$155 million), according to a study by City Hall and Riotur, the municipality’s tourism company, thanks to the influx of tourists and cash spent in restaurants, hotels and shops.

More tourists headed to Rio in the month of May in the years with shows -- 2024 and 2025 -- compared to 2023, according to City Hall data. In 2024, the growth was 34.2 per cent on May 1, just ahead of the concerts, compared to the previous year. In 2025, the increase was 90.5 per cent compared to 2023.

Ahead of Shakira’s performance, Airbnb said in an April 22 statement that it was seeing an increase in guests expected to travel from different parts of Brazil, Latin America and even European capitals such as Paris and London.

Wanderson Andrade, a 30-year old architect, said he flew in especially for the show from the city of Goiana in central Brazil on Saturday and will fly back the following day.

“I tried to get tickets to see her in Brazil last year but I didn’t succeed,” said Andrade, who’s first-ever tattoo is a wolf in honor of Shakira. “Today is a dream come true.”

Eléonore Hughes, The Associated Press

Rap lyrics were used to send a man to death row in Texas. The tactic is more common than you think.

The Michael Jackson biopic is a drama both onscreen and off. If there was one place the new Michael Jackson biopic was sure to be warmly received, it was Gary, Indiana.

The pop superstar grew up there with his famous siblings. Their home in the city, referenced in the 1989 The #Jacksons track “2300 Jackson Street,” is now a tourist attraction. And on one night last week, the city’s only high school was the venue for a homecoming for members of the Jackson family, who trekked there for a screening of the new film “Michael,” about its most famous former resident and starring his nephew, Jaafar.

Several of Michael Jackson’s brothers, the singer’s eldest son Prince and one of the film’s producers Graham King attended, in addition to the film’s star.

The city’s mayor, Eddie D. Melton, moderated a panel during which they discussed the making of the film and the Jackson family legacy — but not all of it.

“I don’t think there’s a need to address the actual allegations,” Melton told CNN by phone the day after the event, referring to Jackson’s alleged sexual predation.

The accusations surrounding child molestation and sexual abuse that Jackson faced in life and after his death have long divided his admirers. The movie is set to be similarly polarizing. As sure as his defenders will laud the new film, others will take issue with its approach to a complicated legacy.

Singer D4vd charged with first-degree murder in connection with teen found dead in his Tesla

#Kanye West concert in Poland will be cancelled, newspaper reports. The decision by Slaski stadium in the western city of Chorzow, reported by Wyborcza newspaper on its website, comes just over a week after Britain blocked the 48-year-old from traveling to the country to headline a festival.

There was no immediate comment from the rapper, now known as Ye, who in January apologized for his behavior, which he attributed to untreated bipolar disorder, and renounced past expressions of admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Maren Wade says in the trademark infringement lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in California that the glittery branding of Swift’s 2025 album comes too close to the aesthetic of her own “Confessions of a Showgirl.” That was the name of a column she wrote on backstage Sin City life in the Las Vegas Weekly starting in 2014, which she turned into a live show that she took on a national tour.

“Both share the same structure, the same dominant phrase, and the same overall commercial impression,” the lawsuit says. “Both are used in overlapping markets and are directed at the same consumers.”

Wade is described as a “singer, songwriter, comedian, and writer” in the lawsuit filed under her legal name, Maren Flagg, and her “Showgirl” brand encompasses performances, writing and digital media.

“The Life of a Showgirl,” the stadium-packing superstar’s 12th studio album, released in October, sold 4 million copies in its first week. Its cover features her in Las Vegas cabaret garb, submerged in water with her current favorite color scheme of orange and mint green. On Tuesday, the morning after the lawsuit was filed, Swift dropped the newest video for the album for the album’s track “Elizabeth Taylor,” featuring archival footage of the Hollywood luminary who died in 2011.

Wade appeared to embrace Swift’s use of the showgirl image initially, sharing Instagram posts that used Swift’s music, hashtags related to the album, and the mint green color scheme. But Wade’s social media presence has gone silent in recent months.

Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are the company that manages Swift’s trademarks, her record label and its merchandising arm.

The lawsuit says the album, its promotion and the products surrounding it caused “textbook reverse confusion: a junior user’s overwhelming commercial presence drowns out the senior user’s mark, until consumers begin to assume that the original is the imitation. What Plaintiff had built over twelve years, Defendants threatened to swallow in weeks.”

A representative for Swift declined comment on the lawsuit.

Wade and her attorney say that the existence and trademark of “Confessions of a Showgirl” would not have escaped the notice of Swift’s team.

The lawsuit says the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declined to grant a trademark registration to “Life of a Showgirl” over potential confusion with the existing trademark.

“Defendants were therefore placed on actual notice that their chosen designation was likely to be confused with a mark that already belonged to someone,” the lawsuit says. “They continued using it anyway.”

A letter issued by the office in early March says the application was suspended due to potential confusion with another pending trademark filed earlier, for “Showgirl,” by a third party and pertaining to perfume. It also cited a “Likelihood of Confusion Refusal” based on the existing “Confessions” trademark.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction permanently barring Swift and her companies from using the “Life of a Showgirl” name and imagery, and monetary damages to be determined at trial, including profits attributable to the use of the brand.

Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press