PEOPLE
NEW YORK — Michael Stipe is promoting a 25th anniversary package of the R.E.M. album “Monster” while excited by the response to the first single he's released since the band's 2011 retirement.
He made the single, “Your Capricious Soul,” available first on his website last month with proceeds going to the environmental group Extinction Rebellion. He held it back from streaming services for a month, a quiet protest against monopolistic behavior, but it's there now.
The song's throbbing electronic pulse and percussion mark a clean musical break from the guitar-based rock of R.E.M.
Stipe, now 59, would generally write lyrics to R.E.M. songs with music composed by bandmates Peter Buck, Mike Mills and, until he left the band in 1997.
NEW YORK — The venerated Times Square concert venue The Town Hall has created a new award to honor arts and activism, a prize to be named after Lena Horne.The Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact will recognize those who “promote awareness and create social change.” The inaugural winner will be honored in February. The recipient will receive a $100,000 donation to be directed to a charity of their choice.The prize's advisory board includes Horne's daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, as well as Harry Belafonte, Billy Porter, Judy Collins, Deesha Dyer, Roxane Gay, Bob Santelli, Bruce Cohen and Jose Antonio Vargas.Horne's repertoire of hit songs includes “Stormy Weather” and the album “Porgy and Bess.” She won a special Tony for her one-woman play, “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.” She worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws and spoke at the March on Washington in 1963.
“The Crown,” the popular, award-winning period drama returns for its third season with a whole new look starting Sunday on Netflix.Olivia Coleman replaces Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II, and the story moves ahead in time.The queen and her family struggle to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing Britain.From cold-war paranoia, through the jet-set and the space age — the exuberance of the 1960s and the long hangover of the 1970s — Elizabeth and the Royals must adapt to a new, more liberated, more turbulent world.The fresh cast includes Helena Bonham Carter, Tobias Menzies, Josh O'Connor and Erin Doherty.
