#Central Music Awards

[prnanayarquah]

Heritage Promotions inks a partnership deal with Dubai based BLACKS TO THE WORLD

New Post has been published on https://plugzafrica.com/heritage-promotions-inks-a-partnership-deal-with-dubai-based-blacks-to-the-world/

Heritage Promotions inks a partnership deal with Dubai based BLACKS TO THE WORLD

We are happy to announce that, Heritage Event Promotions, the organizers of the annual Central Music Awards has reached a business partnership agreement with BLACKS TO THE WORLD, a Ghanaian event house based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

This partnership agreement seeks to provide a collaborative atmosphere between the two event houses to team up and organize mega events in the central region, Ghana, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Details of the agreement:

1. A business opportunity for musicians from the central region in Ghana to secure performance contracts at major events in the United Arab Emirates.

2. Certifies Heritage Event Promotions as an official partnered organizer of the annual African Showbiz Awards, UAE in Dubai.

3. Offer creatives from the central region an opportunity to promote their musical content in the Middle East and the entire Asian continent.

The partnership agreement between Blacks To The World and HERITAGE EVENTS PROMOTIONS was signed on Monday, January 15, 2024, in Dubai, UAE.

Blacks To The World is an accredited Ghanaian event house based in Dubai with proven track records allowing them to operate and organize commercial events in the United Arab Emirates.

CEO of Heritage Promotions, Mr Francis Spio with the current Central Music Awards ” Artiste of the Year” Koby Symple in Dubai

Some events put together by our partners are; African Showbiz Awards, UAE, All black party with Kweku Flick, Ladies Dark Room with Sista Afia, Connect and Chill with Kojo Nkansah Lilwin, and Afro Vibes Concert which featured King Promise, Jose Camelion and Dancegod Lloyd.

The event and music business meeting held in Dubai saw in attendance Mr Francis Spio CEO, of Heritage Promotions, Koby Symple, 2023 Central Music Awards – Artiste of the Year, Mr. Bright Kofi Safo, CEO, of Blacks To The World, and Mr Ernest Boadi, Artiste Manager and Social Media Coordinator, Blacks To The World.

Signed Bismark Botchwey Deputy Communications Executive

[kaknewsdotcom]

2023 CM Awards: Kwesi Taadi Takes Home the Title - Photos

Promising Ghanaian singer, songwriter, and recording artiste Kwesi Taadi known outside the music world as Henry Baidoo emerged as a winner in the SONGWRITER OF THE YEAR category at the recently concluded 12th Edition Of The First, Biggest, and Best Regional Award Scheme In Ghana “CENTRAL MUSIC AWARDS”.  Central Music Awards’s sole motive is to recognize, honor and award deserving musicians from…

[aacehypez]

Official Launch & Nominees Unveiling For Central Music Awards 2023 Slated For Saturday, September 30 at Fays Lounge, Cape Coast.

Official Launch & Nominees Unveiling For Central Music Awards 2023 Slated For Saturday, September 30 at Fays Lounge, Cape Coast.

Official Launch & Nominees Unveiling For Central Music Awards 2023 Slated For Saturday, September 30 at Fays Lounge, Cape Coast. Heritage Event Promotions, the organisers of the annual Central Music Awards have announced the official launch and nominees unveiling for the 12th edition of the Central Music Awards. This year’s launch and official unveiling of nominees is scheduled for Saturday, 30th…

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Video: Acclaimed Inuk Artist Elisapie Shares a Gorgeous Adaptation OF Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time"

New Video: Acclaimed Inuk Artist Elisapie Shares a Gorgeous Adaptation OF Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" @Elisapie @bonsound @bonsoundpromo @girlieaction @delkin03 @CyndiALauper

Acclaimed Montréal-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and activist Elisapie Issac (best known as the mononymic Elisapie) was born and raised in Salluit, a small village in Nunavik, Québec’s northernmost region. In this extremely remote community, accessible only by plane, Issac was raised by an extended, yet slightly dysfunctional adoptive family. Growing up in Salliut, she lived through…

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Soggy Bottom Boys - I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow 2000

"I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" is a traditional American folk song first recorded by Dick Burnett, a partially blind fiddler from Kentucky. The song was originally titles "Farewell Song" when printed in a Richard Burnett songbook in 1913. Burnett recorded the song in 1927 but this version was unreleased and the master recording destroyed. The first commercially released record was by Emry Arthur in 1928, and which gave the song its current title.

It's been covered plenty of times during the years with lyrical tweaks, but the biggest impact worldwide happened with the release of the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, where it plays a central role in the plot, earning the three runaway protagonists public recognition as the Soggy Bottom Boys. The song had lead vocals by Dan Tyminski, who also was the vocalist on Avicii's 2013 hit "Hey Brother". "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" received a CMA Award for "Single of the Year" in 2001 and a Grammy for "Best Country Collaboration with Vocals" in 2002, and also named Song of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2001. It earned a total of 70,4% total yes votes here.

If you love great movies with amazing music, please do check this one out! :D <3

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Quarterfinals, Match 2

expand to see all propaganda received! (wall of text warning oh my god this is a severe cautionary message)

Lauryn Hill:

"she paved the way and was hot as fuck the whole time"

"Girl c'mon. Look at her. You're gonna try and tell me that isn't the most beautiful and attractive person alive? Okay. You're lying but okay."

"if u freaks don't give ms. lauryn hill the respect she deserves..."

"actually one of the prettiest women ever I'm such a lesbian for her. like irl I'm already a lesbian but she is helping"

Damon Albarn:

"Don’t think Damon should be here? Why don’t you get your head checked by a jumbo jet? Maybe you’ll feel heavy metal and calm down."

"If Damon is in the “some guy” category, he’s the heavenly and heartbreaking version. Damon is the sort of significant stranger I’d see on the train out of Colchester but could never speak to, just a face seen in passing yet too radiant to be real. I’d fall in love for an hour and carry the ache for a month."

"Damon sets the standard for me. I think he’s the most fascinating man alive. What I find attractive in Damon is not just his gorgeous bone structure and boyish charm, but how wholly he’s committed himself to music. Damon is an artist who walked the walk: in one of his roughest years with some of his rawest songwriting, he said he was no longer excited by anything except the creative process. He was disillusioned with the celebrity of it all, with his relationships suffering for it, and only wanted to make art: nothing more, nothing less. He would go on to compose film scores, write operas and stage musicals, produce other artists’ records, form collectives to fulfill his passion for world music, and create some of the most globally successful music of his career in a completely innovative format that placed him as the phantom behind the characters. Whenever one band takes a break, he makes a solo record or puts together a supergroup to stay busy. He’s uniquely collaborative and still writes personal letters inviting artists to record with him, and yet can function as a one-man show, acting as a multi-instrumentalist, a singer-songwriter and a producer. He’s been a constant voice of bringing British music to the world *and* bringing world music into Britain. Sure, he’s won Brit Awards and a Grammy among others, but he also has a Guinness World Record and was named an Officer of the British Empire for his services to music; his long work with Africa Express earned him respect even from peers who’d previously dismissed him, and his commitment to support his Malian collaborators in the face of violence earned him the title of Local King in Mali. There is so much talent in the world, but there is truly no one else with a career that looks like Damon Albarn’s. Damon is far more than just a prettyboy to look nice on a magazine cover, but looks are the ultimate point of this tournament, so make no mistake: he was terribly, terribly pretty. You watch him performing in the 90s, you sift through photoshoots and interviews and documentaries, and it feels *cruel* how beautiful he was. If his talent was god-given, so was his face. To put a bow on this thesis: I don’t know if Gorillaz and Damon’s musical universe would be the experimental, globe-trotting, boundary-pushing community affair it is if Blur hadn’t become such a central figure in Britpop and if Damon had not been made such a media spectacle, and I don’t know if Damon would have been that spectacle if he wasn’t so ungodly pretty. The domino effect is that Damon’s cherubic face launched a thousand multimedia art school projects for decades to come."

"I wish I was basically any bloke in the 90s so I could tongue Damon Albarn down. Damon will see a man and ask “is anyone gonna kiss that?” and not wait for a response."

"I have a pillow with his face on it. I sleep with it every night 😊"

"“I’m more homosexual than Brett Anderson, always have been. As far as bisexuality goes, I’ve had a taste of that particular fruit, or have been tasted you might say…” is just the rawest most Shakespearean statement ever"

"he is the ultimate Pretty Boy ™. his glorious golden locks, his electric blue eyes. he is if Princess Diana was a Britpop Dude. he is the Regina George of Britpop. he is if Aphrodite took male form. Zeus would come down to earth to fuck him if he knew. he is a caffeinated orange cat let loose. he is deranged. he is unhinged. you never know what will come out of his mouth. he had sexual tension with every single man who knew him. he pulled justine fucking frischmann. his aura knows no bounds. he is a siren. he is a weird guy. but being so gorgeous stunning ethereal didn't stop him from also being one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation"

"THE MAIN BLUR"

"literally where do i even begin. i could write entire essays on this man. a good place to start would be the beetlebum music video, i suppose. i'll never forget the first time i watched that music video. something in me changed, my brain chemistry was altered, my life was never the same, i view the world a lot differently now. and a lot of the viewing i'm doing is of pictures of damon albarn's face because of boy do i have a lot of those saved. every time i try to look for a photo of something on my phone i can't find it because there's so much damon. okay that's maybe an exaggeration but this man has the most unfathomable beauty ever. his eyes? HIS EYES. god dammit i love his eyes i want to stare at them until the end of time like nothing else exists. i'm so normal about this man (lying) and while i'm usually very shameless about my interests i'm actually incredibly glad this propaganda is anonymous because otherwise. yeah. but the world deserves to see damon albarn's beauty and also hear his fantastic voice because what the fuck. his voice is literally the most gorgeous sound ever produced like bro sounds like that and expects me not to fall in love? i want this man to sing his silly songs and talk absolute nonsense to me until the sun eventually blows out and the world ends. cmon damon girlies let's demolish this tournament i know there are a lot of you."

"He’s beautiful. He’s a little rat. He’s a sweetheart. He’s a dickhead. He’s a musical genius. He’s a dumb bitch. He’s a jock. He’s a weirdo. He’s real. He’s an illusion. He’s everything. He’s just Damon."

"DAMON DAMON DAMON where do I begin oh jeez I've hyperfixated on this man for a solid 4 years and still going strong. Damon makes me wish that British people are real. That says A LOT. This man created a whole ass ANIMATED BAND WITH A SHIT TON OF LORE as a SIDE HUSTLE??? Not to mention, what other man has collaborated with Stevie Nicks, MF DOOM, Del the Funky Homosapien, Snoop Dogg, AND Beck?! People, we're literally in the presence of a god. And he's STILL GOING. Anyways, TL;DR, damon is so so so neat and cool and he should definitely win this competition. Thank you."

"Okay 90s Damon is The Perfect Boy yes yes, but the people who parrot the Daily Mail and say "he's ugly now" will never understand. I would still suck every drop from him on his deathbed."

"Vote for whoever you want to. But Damon is so pretty."

"i did not spend hours admiring this beautiful man's face on pinterest just to see him lose."

"Damon Albarn just brings me joy. When I'm watching him perform, following along as the camera lingers on and adores his pretty face, I get butterflies like I'm 15 again. It's nice to still feel that totally unguarded giddiness sometimes."

"God let the intrusive thoughts win making Damon. What if he's a beautiful blond twink with eyes like saucers and dick to his knees, he reads Herman Hesse and plays footie and is insufferable about both, he'll be the most prolific musician of his generation and write operas and seminal albums in 5 different genres and also he's gonna be the dumbest bitch alive? He'll also be kinda bi, but only kinda. And send."

"when i found out about his existence, my life was changed forever. i wish i could use him like the hannah montana boot milk pillow and chuck him at the wall so he makes a loud thud"

"Think of the drama and anon fights it'll cause if Damon wins it all! And think of how quiet it'll get after Damon's out. You'll miss him when he's gone, like memories of a noisy house years after it's grown silent. Choose Damon, and keep the messy train chugging."

"Even the Gallagher brothers have the hots for him."

"Kiss kiss I love him also you can't vote for any of the Seattle men they're literally copy and paste it's not fair. We need Brit representation"

"I want to take care of him, I want to provide for him. I need to gauge his baby blue puppy dog orbs out to I can clean them with wood varnish, paint shades of Pantone 320 C in his eyes, spray eau de parfume by dior in them and sew it back into his eyes like that scene in Toy Story 2."

"Seeing as simply filling the page with ‘Damon’ written 10000000 times isn’t going to cut it 😅 may I admit/submit: I DO have him tattooed on my being (no descriptive, is this anon?); he’s inspired somewhat unhinged late night/early morning fandom conversations in which I’ve served as ‘parish’ priest hearing confessions from all manner of folk about what they’d like to do to him/receive from him; sadly I lost an essay where I detailed why the letters that make up his name suit him so well, and described him as the hot caramel sauce to Graham’s cool vanilla ice cream. He’s a faerie princess with a nose that makes people weep and a voice that feels like the warmest home and he gives amazing hugs. He loves trains and chickens and his tuxedo cat. He’s annoying and sweet and somewhat unhinged and his music saves people and all this is on top of that fantastic dick. He’s a dream yet very real and we’re fucking blessed to be on earth at the same time as him, amen"

"Damon Albarn was a beautiful, beautiful boy. The world saw that, regardless of if every individual reading this has the same taste in men; it felt like a truth of the universe at the time. They don't make celebrities that angelic in face and erratic in personality anymore."

"I need to touch his eyebrows, nose and prostate just one time JUST ONE TIME COME ON"

[surra-de-bunda]

Debbie Allen photographed by Anthony Barboza (1983). Allen was first introduced as Lydia Grant in the film Fame (1980). Although her role in the film was relatively small, Lydia became a central figure in the television adaptation, which ran from 1982 to 1987. During the opening montage of each episode, Grant told her students: "You've got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying ... in sweat." Allen was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Actress four times during the show's run. She is the only actress to have appeared in all three screen incarnations of Fame, playing Lydia Grant in both the 1980 film and 1982 television series and playing the school principal in the 2009 remake. Allen was also lead choreographer for the film and television series, winning two Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography and one Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. She became the first Black woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series—Musical or Comedy.

[prnanayarquah]

Central Music Awards 23 "Artiste of the Year" Koby Symple secures sponsored trip to Dubai

New Post has been published on https://plugzafrica.com/central-music-awards-23-artiste-of-the-year-koby-symple-secures-sponsored-trip-to-dubai/

Central Music Awards 23 "Artiste of the Year" Koby Symple secures sponsored trip to Dubai

Heritage Promotions, the organizers of the annual Central Music Awards, have fulfilled their promise to Koby Symple, the winner of the Artiste of the Year Category at the Central Music Awards 2023.

The reigning Artiste of the Year, Koby Symple, has secured his sponsored trip to Dubai. He will be attending a Music & Event Summit, Music Business Meetings, and shooting an official music video for his evergreen song titled “Straight Win” from his “Dear Mr Symple EP”.

This is about Heritage Promotions’ sponsorship package for the winner of the 2023 Central Music Awards Artiste of the Year category, as announced during the big night on Saturday, November 25th, 2023.

This package is proudly sponsored by EN.AR Limited, the official sponsor for the Central Music Awards 2023, with a special endorsement from Chairman Kwaku Etuaful, the Chief Executive Director of the Company.

Source: Bismark Botchwey Deputy Communications Executive | Heritage Promotions

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

Today, on August 24th, 1975 – Queen Story!

Queen starts recording ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at Rockfield studio’s in Galles.

🔸THE DAY QUEEN BEGAN RECORDING THEIR MASTERPIECE, ‘BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY’

- Ultimate Classic Rock, August 24, 2015

by Eduardo Rivadavia

If you were to write a history of the recording studio and, specifically, its usefulness as a laboratory for musicians' most ambitious creations, then an entire chapter might well be devoted to "Bohemian Rhapsody." The members of Queen began recording the song on Aug. 24, 1975, redefining the known limits of popular music in the process.

Suffice to say that, whatever Chuck Berry had in mind when he asked Beethoven to roll over, "Bohemian Rhapsody"'s jaw-dropping pastiche of rock and opera sure wasn't it. But then, Queen's flamboyant and unpredictable brand of art rock had been simultaneously stumping and amazing all those who'd heard it well before "Bohemian Rhapsody" came along. It continually morphed over the first three albums of the group's career, until 1974's Sheer Heart Attack started connecting all the dots.

During the first months of 1975, Queen toured the U.S. as headliners for the first time (alternately supported by Styx and Kansas), making their first trip to Japan (where they received a Beatlemania-type reception), and, in singer Freddie Mercury's case, receiving the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for his work on "Killer Queen."

All of these accomplishments no doubt boosted the band's confidence (and courage) as they started working on new material, both in unison and individually, for the album they would soon name A Night at the Opera. This was to be produced by their engineer Roy Thomas Baker, and it's safe to say neither band nor producer could have guessed what Mercury had up his sleeve as he started cobbling together both new ideas and spare song parts he'd been lugging around for years in the privacy of his Kensington apartment.

According to Baker, in an interview with Sound on Sound, his first inkling of what was in store only came when he visited Queen's singer at his home, and Mercury first played him "Bohemian Rhapsody"'s initial ballad section, concluding it by casually quipping, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Mercury, Taylor and the other members of Queen -- guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor -- then entered the studio following three weeks of rehearsal to help bring Freddie's madcap magnum opus to life.

Together, the foursome and their studio hands spent as much time arranging, re-arranging, adding, subtracting, and adding some more to "Bohemian Rhapsody"'s bulk as most bands of the time spent on entire albums. In the end, Mercury's central ballad wound up preceded by one of Queen's patented, multi-tracked a capella choirs and was followed by a tasteful solo from May, a minute-long opera section, then a heavy metal instrumental passage and finally a reprise of the core melody, fading gently back into wherever it came from.

All these years later, it's the song's operatic climax that remains its most stunning, almost superhuman, accomplishment, as it required them to clock as 10-to-12 hour days over a three-week period. They reportedly needed nearly 200 vocal overdubs in order to flesh out an entire choir. And then, when they were finally done, their label EMI was, to put it mildly, quite unimpressed.

Although, to be fair, the suits' reasons were typically business-oriented, as "Bohemian Rhapsody's" edged close to the six-minute mark, well beyond the limit favored by commercial radio. Instead, the label suggested they release Deacon's excellent "You're My Best Friend" as first single from A Night at the Opera, but Queen wouldn't hear of it, and it only took a moment for the immediate support of DJs across Britain to prove EMI wrong.

Released in the U.K. on Oct. 31, 1975, "Bohemian Rhapsody" would be No. 1 by Christmas and then hold the spot for nine weeks. Its commercial fortunes were undoubtedly helped by the pioneering music video shot by Queen to stand in for them on Top of the Pops while they were already back on tour by the time they were invited to appear. Meanwhile, their single was also on its way to No. 1 in Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Belgium, earning Top 10 honors in multiple other countries and peaking at No. 9 in America, where it eventually became a million-seller.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" stands as one of the best-selling songs in rock history, prone to repeat visits to global charts anytime it is revived for a movie, commercial or other event, and frankly unique as nothing since has come close to matching its sheer heights of excess, bravura, and, oh yeah, inspiration.

(Source ↘️ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/queen-bohemian-rhapsody/)

📸 Pic: 1975 - Recording 'A Night At The Opera' album with co- producer Roy Thomas Baker

[aacehypez]

Central Music Awards 2022 Winners

Central Music Awards 2022 Winners The official list of winners at the 11th edition of Central Music Awards 2022. The annually organized award scheme is aimed at recognizing and awarding hardworking and deserving musicians in the region. This year’s edition took place at the Glitz Hotel on Saturday, 26th November 2022 with patrons from all over the region. Here is the full list of winners… BEST…

[brian-in-finance]

Instagram

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WHAT THE STARS ARE SAYING

Check out why so many famed actors use Backstage

Trusted since 1960

Founded in 1960, Backstage has a storied history of serving the entertainment industry. For over 60 years Backstage has served as a casting resource and news source for actors, performers, directors, producers, agents, and casting directors.

Over that time, Backstage Magazine has also appeared on numerous TV shows, such as “Mad Men,” “Entourage,” “Glee,” “Oprah,” NBC's “Today” show, Comedy Central's “@Midnight”, NY1's “On Stage,” and “Saturday Night Live,” as well as multiple mentions on shows like “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” “Girls,” and appearances in films such as “13 Going on 30,” the Farrelly brothers' “Stuck on You” and Spike Lee's “Girl 6,” and even a mention in Woody Allen's short-story collection “Mere Anarchy” and Augusten Burroughs' novel “Sellevision” – and Backstage has received accolades from multiple Academy Award-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning actors and directors. (Plus, the hit musical “The Last Five Years” even includes Backstage in its lyrics: “Here's a headshot guy and a new Backstage / Where you're right for something on every page.”)

CAITRÍONA BALFE

ACTRESS

"I still get Backstage emails 'cause I still subscribe to Backstage. [Backstage is) kind of the Bible in the beginning, which is amazing. Samuel French and Backstage go hand in hand, you know? You go there for your plays when you're in classes, and then you get your Backstage."

Backstage 1

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Brian’s Note: The following story originally appeared in April 2015. Most recent update is December 2020.

The Gorgeous Determination of Caitríona Balfe

Caitríona Balfe is on the move. That's been true most of her adult life— especially the 10 years she was modeling for Victoria's Secret, Dolce & Gabbana, and others—but as she sits on the rooftop patio of a West Hollywood hotel in mid-March, she mentions that she's pulling up stakes from Los Angeles.

"It just feels silly to have an empty place for 10 months until I figure out what I'm doing with my life," the Irish-born actor says. "I've rented the same place for the last four years and now I have to give it up." Her apartment is being razed to put in condos, but her departure from L.A. is extra poignant considering this is the city where Balfe journeyed when she decided to put aside that successful modeling career and focus on the vocation she'd always wanted: acting.

Photo: Luc-Richard Elie

"I've moved so much since I was 18," she says. "I mean, l've lived so many places. New York, I lived in for almost eight years [while modeling], and that's been the longest of anywhere since I left Ireland. But L.A. is where I came and said, 'OK, this is what I wanna do with my life.' "

She refuses to think of her move as a permanent one, though. "I'll be back," she declares, "but it feels really sad. My little apartment, it's got so many memories."

Balfe's sadness is no doubt mitigated by the fact that part of her need to move is due to the precipitous rise in her fortunes. She'll soon be flying to Scotland to shoot the second season of "Outlander," which returns to Starz April 4 to conclude Season 1.

When last we saw Balfe's Claire, the resourceful British nurse who comes home after World War |I only to be inexplicably teleported into the 18th-century Highlands, she was half-naked with a knife to her breast. Don't worry: Claire will get out of that scrape, but more perils await-to say nothing of the emerging multi-era romantic triangle developing between her, the Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), and her 20th-century husband, Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies), who wonders where she's gone.

Based on the much-beloved Diana Gabaldon novels and developed for television by "Battlestar Galactica" rebooter Ronald D. Moore, "Outlander" is an ostensibly lush period-piece-within-a-period-piece drama that's consistently richer and thornier than its romance-novel trappings suggest. And much of the credit goes to Balfe, who had managed small parts in films such as “Super 8” and “Now You See Me” before landing the central role in this adaptation.

In person, Balfe is far less imposing than the steely Claire, who has to weather the dangers of being a woman in sexist, violent Scotland in the 1740s. Cast late in the preproduction of “Outlander”—Moore has mentioned in interviews how hard it was to find the right Claire—she didn’t have time to consider what the role would do to her life. “I’m so bad on social media," she confesses on this warm afternoon, nestled underneath a cabana. "I had set up an account on Twitter maybe a year or so before I got this job and had, I thought, a lot of followers — 250 or something, and most of them are my friends. Within about a month or two, it was thousands of people — and my phone, I didn't know how to turn off the alerts, so it was just going all the time. That was the beginning of the awareness."

Growing up in the small Irish community of Monaghan, Balfe had considered acting from an early age. ("I was devastated that I wasn't a child actor," she says, smiling. But after traveling to Dublin to study theater, she changed course once she received an offer to model. It wasn't a secret passion of hers, but who turns down a trip to Paris? "My parents felt that I should finish college," Balfe recalls, "but l'm slightly headstrong, so l took their advice and I completely ignored it."

Over the next decade, she lived in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, her modeling inexperience hardly a detriment. "You'd be amazed how little information or training goes into it," she says. "When I first arrived in Paris, I was told to take a bus to the office. I left my suitcase — I barely spoke any French — and someone took me across the street, helped me buy a Carte Orange. They printed out five addresses that I had to go to that day, and then they sent me off." She still remembers at 18 riding the subway alongside 16-year-old aspiring Russian models, who knew no French or English, homesick and sobbing their eyes out. "That was just the way it was," says Balfe. "You become pretty tough. When I went to Japan, it was similar: They would drive you to their castings, but the minute you got a job, it would be like, 'Here's an address, here's a map. Good luck.' They don't have signposts in English in Japan, so the map and the address are not always very helpful."

Hear Balfe recount her early misadventures in modeling and you can't help but think of Claire, who's equally thrown to the wolves once she arrives in the 18th century amid people wary of the English in general and assertive women in particular. "Honestly, l've been in so many situations in my life where you just are completely displaced," Balfe says. “You have to adapt very quickly and figure it out. I definitely think that informs Claire a lot. It helped me understand her."

Did moving to Paris at such a young age teach Balfe that she can cope in any circumstance? "I think I didn't really realize that until many years later," she replies. "I have a great knack of not thinking about things and just going for it. You learn the hard way sometimes that you're able to get through, but sometimes it's quite tough when you're in a situation where you don't know anyone and you're trying to find your way around cities. But if an opportunity presents itself and it seems like a good idea, l'm just like, 'OK, let's do it, then I'll figure it out.'”

The decision to reconnect with her acting ambitions was conducted just as boldly. Ready to quit modeling, she moved to Los Angeles because a writer she was dating lived there. He was the only person she knew, but she had read a Vanity Fair interview with Amy Adams in which she said she trained with Warner Loughlin. "I could walk to that place from my ex-boyfriend's house," she says, "so l was like, 'Well, I'm gonna go there because I can't really drive. I started from scratch. I didn't have any managers, I didn't know any agents, I hadn't acted in almost a decade." But she just kept taking classes, moving from Loughlin to the studios of Sanford Meisner and Judith Weston. "I think when I first got here, I had a nice little air of delusion: 'It's gonna work out,'" she says with a laugh. “You just don't know how."

And then came "Outlander." By email, Moore admits that he didn't know Balfe's work until her audition tape came unsolicited to his office from her agent. Once she was chosen for Claire, he made it clear how demanding the job would be. “I told her in our first meeting that this was going to be an even bigger responsibility and workload than the normal TV lead," he writes. "Because the story was being told from Claire's point of view, Cait was going to be in every scene, every day for months, which is an extraordinary amount of work, far beyond what most actors are ever asked to do."

Moore's warning didn't faze Balfe. Writes Moore, "After she met with the president of Starz... and it was clear that she was going to land the role, I walked her to the elevator and just before the doors closed on her, I said 'Your life is about to change forever,' and she gave me a grin that was both thrilled and slightly nervous. I never saw her hesitate after that."

She's never hesitated before. As Balfe prepares to say goodbye to L.A. (for now, she thinks back to her early days in the city, trying to convince casting directors that she was more than just a model. "I went on many, many, many, many auditions that were Hot Girl No. 2 — you wanna shoot yourself," she says, laughing. "But, you know, I'm very lucky that l was even getting those auditions in the beginning. And it toughens you up. At least for me, to have that fuel to prove people wrong—it definitely spurs me on and makes me wanna work harder." Then she smiles conspiratorially. "And shove it to them."

Backstage 2

Remember… I told her in our first meeting that this was going to be an even bigger responsibility and workload than the normal TV lead. — Ronald D Moore

[theholmwoodfoundation]

THE HOLMWOOD FOUNDATION PILOT EPISODE CAST/CREW - PART ONE

REBECCA ROOT - MADDIE TOWNSEND/MINA HARKER

Rebecca trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Theatre credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the National Theatre (UK and Ireland tour); Rathmines Road for Fishamble at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin; Trans Scripts at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Bear / The Proposal at the Young Vic; and Hamlet at the Gielgud Theatre and Athens International Festival. TV, Film and Video Game credits include Monsieur Spade, This Is Christmas, Irvine Welsh’s Crime, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Heartstopper, Annika, The Rising, Sex Education, The Gallery, The Queen’s Gambit, Finding Alice, Creation Stories, Last Christmas, The Sisters Brothers, Colette, The Danish Girl, Flack, The Romanoffs, Moominvalley, Hank Zipzer, Boy Meets Girl, Doctors, Casualty, The Detectives, and Keeping Up Appearances.  Radio credits include Clare In The Community, Life Lines, The Hotel, and 1977 for BBC Radio 4. Guest appearances include Woman’s Hour, Front Row, Loose Ends, Saturday Live, and A Good Read.  She plays Tania Bell in the award-winning Doctor Who: Stranded audio dramas. Rebecca has also recorded numerous documentary narrations, audiobooks, and voice-overs. Rebecca is also a voice and speech coach, holding the MA in Voice Studies from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

SEAN CARLSEN - JEREMY LARKIN/ JONATHAN HARKER

Born in South Wales, Seán trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. He has worked extensively in audio drama, television, theatre and film.  Seán is perhaps best known to Doctor Who fans as Narvin in the Doctor Who audio series Gallifrey and has appeared on TV in Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion and Torchwood. Recent TV credits include Mudtown (BBCiplayer/S4C), Dal y Mellt (Netflix), His Dark Materials (BBC1), All Creatures Great and Small (Channel 5), A Mother's Love (Channel 4) and Series 5 of Stella (Sky1).  Films include supporting leads in Boudica - Rise of the Warrior Queen, cult horror The Cleansing,  the lead in Forgotten Journeys and John Sheedy’s forthcoming film ‘Never Never Never’

SAM CLEMENS - ARTHUR JONES

Samuel Clemens trained at the Drama Centre London and is an award-winning director with over twenty years’ experience. Samuel has recently written and directed his debut feature film ‘The Waterhouse’ with Take The Shot Films & Featuristic Films and represented by Raven Banner Entertainment, which is due for release this coming year.  In addition, he has directed fourteen short films, winning awards all over the world including shorts ‘Surgery (multi-award winning), A Bad Day To Propose (Straight 8 winner 2021), Say No & Dress Rehearsal’. Samuel also directs critically acclaimed number one UK stage tours and fringe shows (Rose Theatre Kingston, Swansea Grand, Eastbourne, Yvonne Arnaud, Waterloo East Theatre) and commercials include clients JD Sports, Shell and Space NK. Samuel is also a regular producer and director for Big Finish Productions & Anderson Entertainment. He has cast, directed, produced and post supervised numerous productions of ‘Doctor Who – (BBC), The Avengers (Studio Canal), Thunderbirds, Stingray (Anderson Entertainment), Callan, Missy, Gallifrey’& Shilling & Sixpence Investigate’ and many more. Samuel has directed world class talent such as, Sir Roger Moore, Ben Miles, Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Alex Kingston, Frank Skinner, Rita Ora, Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley, Rufus Hound, David Warner, Celia Imrie, Samuel West, Youssef Kerkour, Sophie Aldred, Ian McNiece, Colin Baker, Olivia Poulet, Stephen Wight, Jade Anouka, Mimi Ndwendi, Michelle Gomez, Peter Davidson, Paul O’Grady and many more. Samuel is one of the founding members and directors at Take The Shot Films Ltd and is Head of Artistic Creation and Direction. Lastly, Samuel is a regular tutor at The London Film Academy, The Giles Foreman Centre for Acting & The Rose Youth Theatre and is a member of The Directors Guild UK. As for upcoming projects, Sam is currently in pre-production on his next feature film “On The Edge of Darkness”, which is based on his dad’s stage play “Strictly Murder”.

ATTILA PUSKAS - DRACULA

Attila Puskás is a native Hungarian Voice Actor born in Transylvania – Romania, so Romanian is in his bag of tricks too, but most of his work is done in English, in a Transatlantic Eastern European Accent, but is quite capable of Hungarian, Romanian and International Eastern European accents, plus Standard American. His voice range is Adult to Middle Aged (30-40+) due to his deep voice. Vocal styles can range from authoritive, brooding to calming and reassuring and much more. He’s most experienced in character work, like Animations and Games, but his skills encompass Commercials to Narration as well. He’s received training through classes and workshops, pushing him to the next level to achieve higher standards. Now on a journey to perfect these skills and put them to good use!

PART TWO: HERE

PART THREE: HERE

[mariacallous]

Classical music lovers can debate for hours over which Mozart melody has made the biggest impact. Maybe the first movement of the “Jupiter” symphony, perhaps the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute, or what about the “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” serenade? Those who know the great 18th-century Austrian composer only through the movies have an easier time of it—the sound they’ll remember best may not be music after all but the whinnying, immature, and disobedient laugh heard throughout Milos Forman’s masterpiece Amadeus.

Amadeus, commonly accepted to mean “beloved by God,” was not technically part of Mozart’s name. (He was baptized as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, with Theophilus having a similar translation.) After his death, however, the moniker stuck as a way to venerate him. It’s perfect for the title of this movie, in which rival composer Antonio Salieri allows his jealousy over Mozart’s genius to build into a personal war against God. But expanding on some fudged truth is also in keeping with the spirit of the entire project, as the movie’s central conflict is almost entirely made up. (Even better, then, that the original trailer featured the tagline “Everything you’ve heard is true.”)

Based on a Tony-winning play by Peter Shaffer (inspired by a short 1830 play written by Alexander Pushkin, itself inspired by gossip that Salieri was somehow to blame for Mozart’s early death), Amadeus is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. As such, a new 4K restoration is screening in specialty theaters across North America in advance of a new Blu-ray release. This, plus an eventual availability on streaming, is the first time the version that people originally saw back in 1984 will be available in years. (More on that in a bit.) An upcoming British television miniseries based on Shaffer’s play is in production currently, but we’re skeptical it will have the same magic.

The film’s story is told in flashback, with an old, institutionalized Salieri (played by F. Murray Abraham) “confessing” how he murdered Mozart (Tom Hulce). We are then witness to how Salieri, court composer to Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), has his world turned upside down when Mozart bursts onto the scene. His musical instincts are on a level no mortal can comprehend and clearly, Salieri feels, handed down directly from above. But while Mozart’s work is divine, his demeanor is coarse and bratty, which turns Salieri’s understandable envy into an existential rage.

As the winner of eight Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, and best actor for Abraham’s Salieri, Amadeus’s legacy is secure, but any excuse to get more people to see this perfect film is a good one. I can personally report that not one, not two, but three millennial friends of mine came to this movie kind of dragging their feet, watching it only out of an obligation to check every Oscar winner off their list. Each one of them was blown away with just how funny and poignant and entertaining it was.

“I thought this would be boring, not bitchy!” one pal beamed after a recent screening I hosted with Paul Zaentz at New York’s Paris Theater. That energetic spark is evident in the script but catches fire in the movie thanks to its director. Forman’s resumé is one of the best from the 20th century, but Amadeus is something special, not just because it is about a maverick artist who has to do things his way (a recurring theme in both Forman’s life and work) but because the expatriate who fled communist-era Czechoslovakia to follow his calling was able to shoot the movie in Prague and Kromeriz. As Mozart cackled in the face of propriety, so Forman was able to poke his thumb in the eyes of those who had previously censored him.

Forman was born in the town of Caslav in 1932. Both of his parents died in Nazi concentration camps. He attended a school for war orphans where he befriended future filmmaker Ivan Passer and playwright-turned-politician Vaclav Havel. He began working on documentary crews and eventually made short films of his own that blended fact and fiction, getting better material from non-actors than trained professionals. His first feature, Black Peter (1964), focused on a timid teenager, and its follow-up, Loves of a Blonde (1965), was a similarly naturalistic look at awkward romance. Its deadpan, somewhat bleak style ran counter to the splashy films coming out of Italy and France at the time. Both films are early entries to what became known as the Czech New Wave, leading to Forman’s first bona fide masterpiece, The Firemen’s Ball (1967).

While The Firemen’s Ball—Forman’s first film in color—was understood to be a grand metaphor for the inefficiency of the political system at the time, one doesn’t have to know a damn thing about Eastern Bloc history to respect it as an iconoclastic farce not dissimilar from something like South Park. It was immediately banned in Czechoslovakia, but it and Loves of a Blonde were both nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars.

Forman was in France raising funds for his next project during the Soviet invasion of Prague in August 1968. He was fired from his Czech production company and ended up emigrating to the United States. His first Hollywood film was the 1971 counterculture farce Taking Off (in which square, bourgeois parents try to get groovy with their kids, to embarrassing effect), which led to one of the most influential movies of the 1970s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

After the anti-authoritarian Cuckoo’s Nest—which won five Oscars, including best picture, best director, best actor for Jack Nicholson, and best actress for Louise Fletcher—came his adaptations of the musical Hair (1979) and E.L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime (1981). With that all under his belt and his hands on the rights to Schaffer’s hot play Amadeus, Forman went back to Prague in triumph.

Amadeus is set mostly in Vienna; still, Prague, which was generally left intact after World War II, certainly looks good on camera. And Prague was also an important city for Mozart. He made two lengthy visits there and found a very welcoming audience. Indeed, he wrote Don Giovanni with the intention of premiering the opera in Prague, which he did at the Estates Theatre in 1787. And it was at the Estates Theatre where Forman filmed many of the movie’s best scenes—ones of Mozart conducting opera, filmed with the alacrity and exuberance normally reserved for an action-adventure sequence. (The use of pyrotechnics in the Don Giovanni scenes caused a lot of worry on set, what with the old theater’s interior being mostly wood.)

Shooting a Hollywood movie behind the Iron Curtain naturally had some hardships. (Fruit and fresh vegetables, rarities at the time, needed to be trucked in from West Germany.) Given Forman’s background, the eyes of the state were on them. During that recent New York screening, Zaentz, who worked as a production coordinator on the project and is also the nephew of film producer Saul Zaentz, said secret police were essentially hands-off, except for one time. During off-hours, some members of the crew would hang out and watch VHS tapes of Hollywood movies and were unaware that some of those titles had been banned. The company was soon requested to keep to only approved films.

Perhaps more poignant was when they were shooting on the Fourth of July during one of the opera scenes. The Czech crew surprised Forman and the actors during one take. Expecting to hear the music of Mozart play back from a PA system, some well-wishers instead cued up “The Star-Spangled Banner” while others unfurled an enormous American flag. Everyone stood up and sang along, except, according to Forman, the 30 or so secret police who had been dispersed among the extras.

One can easily read the moment as a victory for Forman. Alas, Mozart’s fate was a little different. Though no one knows for sure why he died at the young age of 35—other than the fact that every case of the sniffles had graver implications back in 1791—the movie shows how Mozart’s queasiness with authority shaped him as a hand-to-mouth freelancer and how his lack of a permanent position and persistent money woes were bad for his health. After Amadeus, Forman continued to make movies about troubled-yet-visionary mavericks: Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon (1999), Francisco Goya in Goya’s Ghosts (2006), and, um, Larry Flynt in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996).

As for the Salieri yarn? There’s no historical evidence to suggest that the two composers weren’t just colleagues. (It’s true that Mozart did have a paranoid streak and maybe did think that “the Italians” at court had it in for him.) Salieri certainly did not live in chastity out of some pledge to God in exchange for musical inspiration. Indeed, he had eight children. He was also plenty famous at the time of his death and, later in life, was a tutor to Mozart’s youngest son. Nevertheless, no one should let reality get in the way of watching this incredible movie.

This 40th anniversary rerelease is especially exciting for old-school Amadeus-heads as it restores the 160-minute theatrical cut. All one can find out there now is the “director’s cut,” which is 20 minutes longer. As Zaentz explained to me, that version came out in 2002 during the first DVD wave, when home-video distributors were loading up packages with deleted scenes. Rather than have isolated bonus chapters, Forman decided to just release the longer version instead, though never really considered it the definitive cut. However, over time it became the only version in circulation.

While the longer version has a few splendid moments (some backstage zings with Christine Ebersole as Caterina Cavalieri), it also contains one scene that I am happy to see once again excised. In it, Salieri goes a wee bit too far and humiliates Mozart’s wife, Constanze (Elizabeth Berridge). It’s important for Salieri to be a scheming twerp but also someone who still holds your sympathy. The controversial scene only found in the director’s cut pushes him too far into the role of villain.

So sometimes edits are important! It is said that Mozart never revised, that he took dictation from God. As with so much else about the man, the truth is a little different.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Daft Punk - Around the World 1997

"Around the World" is a song by French electronic music duo Daft Punk. It was released in April 1997 as the second single from their debut studio album, Homework. The song became a major club hit globally and reached number one on the dance charts in Canada, Spain, the UK, and the US. It also peaked at number one in Iceland and Italy. The song's lyrics solely consist of the words "around the world", repeated on loop for a total of 144 times (80 on the radio edit). In October 2011, NME placed it at number 21 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years". "Around the World" was featured in one episode of first season of MTV animated series Daria. It was also used in the video games Dance Central 3, NBA 2K13 and the trailers for Ubisoft E3 2007 Rayman Raving Rabbids 2.

Michel Gondry's music video for the song features five groups of characters on a platform representing a vinyl record: four robots walking around in a circle; four tall athletes wearing tracksuits with small prosthetic heads walking up and down stairs; four women dressed like synchronized swimmers moving up and down another set of stairs; four skeletons dancing in the center of the platform; and four mummies dancing in time with the song's drum pattern. This is meant to be a visual representation of the song; each group of characters represents a different instrument. According to Gondry's notes, the robots represent the singing voice; the physicality and small-minded rapidity of the athletes symbolizes the ascending/descending bass guitar; the femininity of the disco girls represents the high-pitched keyboard; the skeletons dance to the guitar line; and the mummies represent the drum machine.

"Around the World" was Gondry's first attempt at bringing organized dancing to his music videos. "I was sick to see choreography being mistreated in videos like filler with fast cutting and fast editing, really shallow. I don't think choreography should be shot in close-ups." The sequence, initially developed by Gondry, was further expanded and streamlined by choreographer Blanca Li.

The music video won Best Dance Video at the International Dance Music Awards, and was nominated for Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Video Awards, and nominated for International Viewer's Choice - MTV Europe at the MTV Video Music Awards. The song was nominated for Best Dance Recording at the Grammy Awards.

"Around the World" received a total of 81,7% yes votes!

[diceriadelluntore]

Storia Di Musica #340 - INXS, Kick, 1987

La band di oggi, a metà anni '80, era tra le più famose del mondo. Ma credo che anche all'epoca pochissima sapessero che il nucleo centrale di questo gruppo australiano fosse formato da tre fratelli. tutto inizia a Perth, nel 1979: i fratelli Farris, Tim, Andrew e Jon che avevano già un gruppo dal nome, inequivocabile, di The Farris Brothers, aggiungono al nucleo fondativo Kirk Pengilly, Garry Beers e un cantante, amico di liceo di Tim, Michael Hutchens. Si spostano a Sydney, dove cambiano nome in INXS ( da leggere come "In Excess") dove ottengono un contratto con una piccola etichetta indipendente, la Deluxe, con cui pubblicano il primo singolo, Simple Simon. Erano gli anni della pulizia dal rumore del punk, dell'arrivo della elettronica "dolce" e della new wave. È in questo solco che la band si muove, ma si apre in maniera piuttosto originale al funk e a piccoli innesti dance. All'inizio concentrano le energie nella nativa Australia, dove ottengono un buon successo con il loro primo disco, del 1980, intitolato INXS, che si ripete nel 1981 con Underneath The Colours, con la prima hit, una cover di un classico della musica australiana coverizzato, The Loved One, successo del 1966 dei The Loved Ones. Nel 1982 tentano il grande salto. Vanno in Inghilterra, dove li scrittura la WEA e la Atlantic li distribuisce negli Stati Uniti. Shabooh Shoobah del 1982 ha il primo singolo di successo mondiale, Don't Change, e il seguente tour internazionale al seguito di The Kinks e Adam And the Ants li fa conoscere in mezzo mondo. Nel 1984 ancora maggiore successo ottiene The Swing, trascinato dal singolo Original Sin, prodotto da Nile Rodgers. Il successo è sempre crescente: nel 1985 partecipano da Sydney al Live Aid, nel 1986 suonano con i Queen alla Royal Albert Hall, Hutchens addirittura esordisce come attore protagonista in Dogs In Space, film che lo vede interpretare Sam, il frontman avvezzo alla sostanze di una band post punk nel 1978 a Melbourne.

Dopo un tour lunghissimo, e con il management che ne programma uno nuovo in Europa, la band torna in studio. Guidati dal produttore Chris Thomas, uno dei grandi produttori inglesi (a lavoro con The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Roxy Music, Badfinger, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Pulp, The Pretenders) le prime prove avvengono addirittura nella spettacolare Sydney Opera House. Il suono è più maturo, gli innesti da altri generi eclettici, i riff invidiabili e la voce di Hutchens è ormai una garanzia. Thomas però vorrebbe più canzoni, anche in previsione dell'atteso e imminente tour europeo, quindi manda Hutchens e Andrew Farris a Honk Kong, dove i due acquistarono un appartamento. Un giorno, mentre è in attesa di un taxi, a Andrew viene in mente una melodia, proprio mentre il taxi è arrivato. Chiede al tassista di aspettarlo cinque minuti, ma lui sale nel suo appartamento, scrive e registra i demo di una canzone, la riporta sulla cassetta e 45 minuti dopo, nonostante la furiosa cazziata del tassista, la porta a Hutchens che lo aspettava in un bar, e in dieci minuti ne scrive il testo, per quello che sarà il singolo di apertura, e hit mondiale, del nuovo disco.

Kick esce il 19 ottobre del 1987, un mese prima, il 21 Settembre, fu preceduto da quella canzone: Need You Tonight, dal ritmo funky, la voce sensuale di Hutchens e un bellissimo video musicale (che vinse nel 1988 5 MTV Video Music Awards) trascinano il brano in cima alle classifiche (primo negli Stati Uniti e secondo in Gran Bretagna) e proietta il disco e la band in una nuova dimensione. Tutte le canzone sono scritte dal duo Hutchens - Andrew Farris, che mediano tra il suono molto funk dei primi dischi a quello mainstream rock dei primi dischi a distribuzione internazionale. Più che altro, hanno il tocco magico di scrivere canzoni che diventano famose per come rimangono in testa: New Sensation, Devil Inside, Mystify, la toccante Never Tear Us Apart, la ripresa di The Loved One ne fanno un disco di grande qualità e di grande successo, con una serie di ganci musicali memorabile. Il disco venderà milioni di copie e li fa diventare rockstar.

Arriveranno anche al Festival di Sanremo del 1988, però perdono il tocco magico: nonostante tour seguitissimi, in studio perdono la magia e X (1990) e Welcome To Wherever You Are (1992) sono accolti con freddezza e non regalano grandi canzoni. Parallelamente, Hutchens diventa molto più famoso dell'intera band, complice anche la relazione con Paula Yates, giornalista musicale famosa per le sue interviste particolari fatte in programmi come The Tube o The Big Breakfast, dove intervistava gli artisti in un letto e dal 1986 al 1996 moglie di Bob Geldof. Hutchens pensa ad una carriera solista, ma il 22 novembre del 1997 viene trovato morto impiccato in una camera di Hotel in Australia. In un primo momento si scatenano le voci incontrollate di un tragico gioco erotico, in seguito un'inchiesta medico legale, contestata da Yates, accerta che la morte del cantante è suicidio, cosa che non interrompe minimamente il gossip sulla vicenda.

La band, scossa dall'accaduto, sostituirà per un tour celebrativo Hutchens con Terence Trent D'Arby (che fu amante di Paula Yates quando era ancora sposata con Bob Geldof), inaugurando il nuovo stadio Olimpico di Sydney, e nel 2000 alla chiusura dei Giochi Olimpici nella città australiana del 2000. La band continuerà in maniera discontinua anche a suonare dal vivo fino al 2012, ma senza mai arrivare alla qualità di questo disco. Ci sono da raccontare ancora due aneddoti: Hutchens era probabilmente molto simpatico, perchè era amico di tantissimi musicisti. Simon Le Bon dei Duran Duran, scrisse per lui prima della sua morte, Michael, You've Got A Lot To Answer For dall'album Medazzaland del 1997, canzone che Le Bon non è mai riuscita a cantare dal vivo per l'emozione. E Bono dedicò all'amicizia con Hutchens un brano molto famoso, Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of, da All That You Can't Leave Behind del 2000, che immagina un impossibile dialogo tra i due con Bono che cerca di convincere Hutchens a non farlo:

I never thought you were a fool

But darling, look at you

You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight

These tears are going nowhere, baby