List of All Articles with Tag 'brit'

Taylor Swift's re-recorded 2014 album 1989 has dropped just in time for diehard fans to enjoy a weekend filled with nostalgia. The album marks an era when the star transitioned from country to pop muic, and saw her bag a Grammy for Album of the Year. Alongside her impressive spanning career in the limelight, comes trash talk. More specifically, years of misogynistic "slut shaming" surrounding Swift's dating history. Subsequently, Swift took a break from dating for two and a half years – which meant she naturally spent more time with her female friends. From doing so, baseless online rumours were birthed about her sexuality. Now, in a letter written for the re-release of the album, Swift shared her inspiration behind writing 1989, and in doing so, thanked fans for not leaning into claims online. "The voices that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman? I wanted to silence them," the star wrote. "You see – in the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming – the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of boy-crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt." Swift continued: "It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era." She went on to say that she assumed she "could fix this" by changing her behaviour. "I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships," she explained. "If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that – right? I would learn later on that people could and people would." Swift went on to thank fans who didn't buy into spiralling rumours online and who "knew that maybe a girl who surrounds herself with female friends in adulthood is making up for a lack of them in childhood." How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

1989 (Taylor's Version) is finally here, and fans are reliving the 2014 album like it's the first time again. It was Taylor Swift's first proper jump into pop music, and the new and improved version features five tracks from the vault. However, despite the first album being erased from history for Swifties, the singer's excitement for its release during her promo interviews were arguably some of fans' favourite moments, including appearances on the likes of The View, Ryan Seacrest, and a Victoria's Secret Fashion Show performance. Click here to sign up for our newsletters.

Taylor Swift has released her long-awaited re-recording of her 2014 hit album '1989.' The new release is Swift's fourth re-recorded album, following on from 'Fearless (Taylor's Version),' 'Red (Taylor's Version), and 'Speak Now (Taylor's Version). Swift's purpose in re-recording her back catalogue is so that she can own the copyright to all of the new recordings. This '1989' era marked a swift shift in music genre from country to pop for the singer, a risk that ultimately paid off as '1989' propelled Swift further into mainstream stardom and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2015. From the feel-good 'Shake It Off' to the anthemic tracks of 'Blank Space,' 'Out of the Woods' and 'Style' to the heartful and cathartic notes of 'This Love' and 'Clean,' Swift explores every avenue of pop. A journey that continues with the five 'From the Vault' tracks with 'Slut!', 'Say Don't Go,' 'Now That We Don't Talk,' 'Suburban Legends,' and 'Is It Over Now?' Now, indy100 is here to listen to '1989 (Taylor's Version) along with you, with commentary on every song as well as fun facts about the album. Welcome to New York October 27, 14:12 Taylor Swift performs at New Year's Eve 2015 at Times Square on December 31, 2014 in New York City. The opening track 'Welcome To New York' gave listeners a glimpse into Swift’s new pop sound with the electronic pop synths kicking things off. Not only does it reflect a change in music genre but also Swift’s literal move from Nashville to New York almost a decade ago as she shared how she fell in love with the city. "I approached moving there with such wide-eyed optimism and sort of saw it [New York] as a place of endless potential and possibilities,” Swift told Good Morning America about the song at the time. “You can kind of hear that reflected in this music and this first song especially." While the lyrics “And you can want who you want/ Boys and boys and girls and girls,” have been interpreted as Swift supporting the LGBT+ community, before she was vocal about her political views. The re-recorded version stays true to the original track with little tweaks to the production as Swift sings with a mature voice.

Bella Hadid has issued a heartbreaking statement online amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, saying that Palestine "cannot afford our silence". The 27-year-old model asked her 60.5 million followers to "forgive" her for her silence, after receiving "hundreds of death threats daily" when her phone number was leaked, leaving her family feeling in danger. "I can not be silenced any longer," she wrote. "Fear is not an option. The people and children of Palestine, especially in Gaza, cannot afford our silence. We are not brave - they are." Speaking about the aftermath of the airstrikes in Gaza, Hadid said her "heart is bleeding with pain from the trauma I am seeing unfold, as well as the generational trauma of my Palestinian blood." The model, of Dutch and Palestinian descent, continued: "I mourn with all the mothers who have lost children and the children who cry alone, all the lost fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunties, friends that will never again walk this earth." She went on to highlight her own family's history, with her father and grandparents being "expelled" from their homes in Palestine just nine days after his birth. This happened the same year as the Nakba in 1948, which saw over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs flee and be expelled from their homes. Before the Nakba, the UN noted that Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. The result of the war forced more than half of the Palestinian population to be displaced. The UN General Assembly called for refugee "return, property restitution and compensation," however 75 years later, despite countless UN resolutions, "the rights of the Palestinians continue to be denied." In the Instagram post, Hadid candidly shared: "My family witnessed 75 years of violence against Palestinian people - most notably, brutal settler invasions which led to the destruction of entire communities, murder in cold blood and the forcible removal of families from their homes. The practice of settlements on Palestinian land still continues to this day. The pain of that is unimaginable." Ultimately, Hadid called for "humanity and compassion" and for people to "keep pressure on our leaders, wherever we are." "I stand with humanity, knowing that peace and safety belong to us all," she concluded. Thousands flocked to the post to praise the model for using her platform to raise awareness, with her mother Yolanda Hadid writing: "Brave, honest and from the heart, I love you." Another wrote: "I love you. You said it so perfectly. Free our people." A third added: "One of the first major celebs to speak out against Genocide. You will be remembered in history, thank you." How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Britney Spears has put her music career on pause to lead a slower life.

Friends is full of celebrity appearances but forJean-Claude Van Damme, he described how "ashamed" he is of his acting skills for his "strange" episode on the popular show. In the 1996 episode, called 'The One After the Super Bowl: Part 2,' the Belgian martial artist and actor played himself in the sitcom where Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courteney Cox) both fancied him which led the besties to fight over him after they spotted the "Muscles from Brussels" shooting a movie in the Big Apple. The fight between Rachel and Monica occurs when Monica doesn't have the confidence to shoot her shot with Van Damme so Rachel does it for her - only for Van Damme to be interested in Rachel. Twenty-seven years on, Van Damme is highly critical of his performance. “My acting is so bad. I look so like a ham. Like, ‘Hey, girls.’ […] It’s like, I’m ashamed of myself," the 63-year-old told The New York Post. “So then I was on the set, and those girls, they go and they kiss me and they kiss me on the lips. I didn’t know what to do, how to do … It was strange. They were very nice.” While Van Damme may not be a fan of the episode, viewers at the time certainly were as it became the most-watched episode in the history of Friends with 52.9 million viewers watching after the Super Bowl. Despite the success of the show, Van Damme didn't know much about Friends before appearing as a guest star. “I didn’t know much about the show. So when I go to the show, I see those two beautiful girls and they say this is the hottest show right now in the world. So I was very glad,” Van Damme said. “And my agent said, ‘You have to do an episode with them. So you’re going to play this guy.'” Overall, the actor described the experiences as a "good memory" and also praised Aniston and Cox. “They [Aniston and Cox] were very open because they did the show every day. So for them, I enter into a place where everything is working like a very well-trained mechanic engine,” he continued. “It was amazing.” How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

It's been a whirlwind week for Britney Spears and her fans, who have proudly completed her new memoir The Woman in Me within hours. The highly anticipated autobiography made waves across social media from the moment it was published on 24 October, with shocking revelations from start to finish. Some of which inevitably include Justin Timblerlake. And now he's made a notable move online. The pair dated from 1999 to 2002, before Timblerlake ended the relationship over text while Spears was working on her 'Overprotected' music video. Spears also gave the real heartbreaking meaning behind her hit 'Everytime,' in which she said she fell pregnant by the former NSYNC star. "I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated," she wrote. "But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young." Spears resorted to getting an abortion, adding: "I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father." Now, Timberlake has turned off his Instagram comments, assumingly to avoid backlash after being criticised on X/Twitter following some of Spears' candid claims. According to the Daily Telegraph, Timberlake isn’t "too happy" with the autobiography, telling an insider he's "not okay with it" and it purely from her point of view. "Justin is not at all happy about what has come out in this book,” the source reportedly claimed. "Doing this book has given Britney life, and she really doesn’t care who is offended by anything in it because it is what happened. She was there and lived through it. No one can say anything. She has got this all out of her and is moving on now." How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Amina Noor is the first person to be convicted of assisting a non-UK person to perform FGM.

Singer Britney Spears has revealed why she posts so many nude pictures on Instagram, giving an understandable explanation in her memoir. The 41-year-old pop icon recently released a tell-all book, titled The Woman in Me, detailing shocking new revelations about her life and opening up about headline-making moments like shaving off her hair in 2007 and her break up with Justin Timberlake. Since Spears’ 13-year-long conservatorship ended in November 2021, she has regained control over how own life as well as her social media accounts and regularly posts pictures of herself in underwear or wearing nothing at all. While the posts sometimes baffle fans, she explained why she does it in her memoir, writing that she gets “joy” from being in control over her own body and image. She wrote: “I know that a lot of people don’t understand why I love taking pictures of myself naked or in new dresses. “But I think if they’d been photographed by other people thousands of times, prodded and posed for other people’s approval, they’d understand that I get a lot of joy from posting the way I feel sexy and taking my own picture.” It is not the first time Spears has addressed the nudity on her social media page. In 2021, the singer captioned a topless post, writing: “Before I show you more pics of my body … I want you to understand my thoughts on exposing my skin!!!!” She continued: “In my opinion, it’s quite twisted the immediate response of when any woman is hot and they want to shed a layer … no … I’m not talking in a strip club or a performance … just on a practical scale of being in your car and realising you’re wearing a stupid long sleeve shirt in the summer!!!! “The immediate reaction to any woman who does this after shedding a layer is DAMN I FEEL BETTER … therefore you think you look better!!!” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Taylor Lautner has revealed all of the inconveniences of being married to someone also called Taylor Lautner. His wife, formerly Taylor Dorne, took the actor's name when they got married, however, despite its humorous nature, it's actually a bit of a pain. Speaking on the Good Guys podcast, he revealed: "TSA, airport, they'll be like which one of you is Taylor? And we're like 'both of us', and they're like 'which one of you is Taylor Lautner?', also both of us!" "They're like 'ehh this seems fishy', we're gonna send you to security." Click here to sign up for our newsletters.

Goldie Hawn has claimed that she had a truly unique experience when she was in her 20s, having supposedly been ‘touched on the face’ by aliens. The actress has long been a believer in UFOs and she spoke about them in a new interview with the Apple Fitness+ audio feature Time to Walk. Hawn claims the incident took place when she was working as a dancer when she was in her early 20s in California. “That was a time when, you know, there was a lot of UFO sightings," she said. "I remember this so clearly: I went outside my door, and I sat on the little ledge, and I looked up at the dark sky. And I saw all these stars. And all I could think of was, 'How far does this go? How little are we? Are we the only planet in the whole wide universe that has life on it?'" Hawn then recounted how she called out to any UFOs that were listening, saying: "I know you're out there, I know we're not alone, and I would like to meet you one day." Four months later, according to Hawn, she was working at another job in California when she took a nap in a friend’s car. There she heard a “high-pitched sound in my ear” and saw three "triangular-shaped heads”. She said: "They were silver in color, slash for a mouth, tiny little nose, no ears. They were pointing at me, pointing at me in the car as if they were discussing me like I was a subject. And they were droning.” The actress then said they "touched me, and it felt like the finger of God. It was the most benevolent, loving feeling. This was powerful. It was filled with light”. Reflecting on the experience, she said: "We can never ever lose our wonder. It's just no fun. It's really an important aspect of being an adventurer, where nothing is impossible." So, there you have it. Are you convinced by the existence of UFOs too? Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

John Cena has shared a new TikTok video of himself signing autographs for fans - and he's such a pro he no longer needs to even look at the paper. In the clip, the WWE star has an assistant moving each image after he's signed it so he can get through more in one go, however, despite his speed, he can look straight into the camera while he does it. "Why is that pen moving on its own", one user joked in the comments. Click here to sign up for our newsletters.