The mystery ex-boyfriend behind Adele’s heartbreaking hit songs has finally been revealed, according to a celebrity magazine.

Heat magazine has today claimed to unveil the previously unknown ex-love as Alex Sturrock, a 31-year-old photographer who has worked for The Guardian and Vice magazine among others.

Despite rumours that Adele and Sturrock dated in secret in 2008 and 2009, Adele has stayed mum on the identity of her ex.

Read more here (via The Telegraph)

What happens when you strap an old soccer shin guard to your dog’s H-harness and use it as camera rig?

This was an idea posited by Capetonian filmmaker Dave Meinert when brainstorming video concepts for his friend Johnny Neon, a local musician who needed a new music video for his single ‘Hearts’. The result was this – a documentary-style music video filmed almost entirely by a dog called Lemon.
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An English teacher has quit school for a hip-hop career after beating one of his students in a rap battle.

A clip of Mark Grist’s victory over 17-year-old MC Blizzard has been watched by more than 1.5 million people on YouTube. Now, Mr Grist, 30, of Peterborough, is to swap Shakespeare and Chaucer for Snoop Dog and Dr Dre.
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It must be the most infuriating addition to any cultural performance for artist and audience alike – the ambience-shattering drone of a ringing cellphone.

But rather than storm off after an audience member’s ringing phone interrupted his intricate solo performance, Slovakian violinist Lukáš Kmit’s delivered this ingenious comeback that has since gone viral on YouTube. Watch it here:

The Backstreet Boys may Want It that Way,but China’s ministry of culture most certainly does not.

Read the rest of this article here. (via The Mail and Guardian)

If you have seen Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, you will know they are the next big thing. As they tour the festivals of Europe, Sarah Morrison meets them in Paris.

Likened to Arcade Fire and The Polyphonic Spree, Ebert’s ensemble of musical minstrels first made it mainstream in 2009, appearing on David Letterman’s chat show in the US with their aptly titled first album, Up from Below.

Read the full story here (via The Independent)

As newer, more modern words such as “sexting,” “retweet” and “cyberbullying” became part of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED) last week, some older, lesser known words had to be taken out to make room for the new ones.

Some of these words include “brabble” (a paltry, noisy quarrel) and “growlery” (a private room or a den), but a word of fairly recent memory has also been given a one-way trip to the Oxford chopping board: the cassette tape.

Read the full story here.

Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, described his group’s music in a 1990 interview as “hard-core, bone-crunching, mayhem psychedelic sex-funk from heaven.”

The band has now been together for nearly 30 years, and will release its 10th studio album, I’m With You, this week.

Read the full story here (via NPR)

Where did the terms retro-nuevo and skronk originate? Or hip-hop?

Michaelangelo Matos runs through an exhaustive catalogue of music’s phrasemakers and trendsetters.

Read the full list here (via The Guardian)

Friends and family pay tribute in Rolling Stone’s 2001 obituary.

One late Saturday afternoon, just two weeks before her death, twenty-two-year-old Aaliyah walked from a black Mercedes-Benz to a small
helicopter for a short flight from New Jersey to East Hampton, New York.

Read the rest of this article here (via Rolling Stone)

Kurt Cobain loved Abba, wasn’t from Seattle and didn’t invent grunge.

Everett True, the man who pushed the singer’s wheelchair on stage for his last UK show, sets the record straight.

Read the rest of this article here (via The Guardian)

Research in Motion (RIM) has formally announced its BlackBerry Messenger Music service, which will be made commercially available later this year.

The service is currently in a closed beta trial, starting in Canada, the US and the UK.

Read the full story here. (via ITWeb)

Pop star Miley Cyrus’ version of the hit Nirvana track Smells Like Teen Spirit has been named the worst cover ever in a new magazine poll.

 
Rolling Stone readers voted the teenager’s live rendition of the grunge anthem the worst of the worst – ahead of Madonna’s take on American Pie and Limp Bizkit’s cover of The Who’s Behind Blue Eyes.

Read the rest of this article here (via Hindustan Times)

In perhaps the most welcome instance of worlds colliding, Paul McCartney has written music for a ballet, and the date of this happy marriage has finally been set.

The former Beatle is releasing the album recording for “Ocean’s Kingdom” with Hear Music/Telarc in the U.S. on Oct. 4 and with Decca label in the UK on Oct. 3. Decca is notorious for rejecting The Beatles back in 1962, telling them that “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in showbusiness.”

Read the rest of this article here (via the Huffington Post)

Spoek Mathambo’s thousands of followers on Twitter, the micro- blogging site, were naturally excited that the musician had been featured in London’s Guardian newspaper.

Mathambo wasn’t — he was clearly affronted at being identified as the king of kwaito.

Read the Guardian article here.

A form John Lennon filled out months before he was shot dead in which he described his occupation as “hazardus” (sic) is being sold at auction.

Lennon completed the form — a sample airline embarkation card for Japan that was supposed to be used before filling in the real document — with childish and teasing answers.

Read the rest of this article here (via Mail & Guardian)

It was a rock ’n’ roll shot heard ’round the world: the quasi-accusatory snarl of Elvis Presley growling, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.”

For “Hound Dog” alone, Jerry Leiber, who died on Monday at 78, will always be remembered in the annals of rock ’n’ roll as a revolutionary catalyst. Years before the term “generation gap” was coined, “Hound Dog” drew the line between the new and the old.

Read the rest of this article here (via The New York Times)

Cape Town – Ard Matthews has maintained that he was in fact over-prepared when he bungled the national anthem on TV, for which he was not paid.

“I don’t know if I’d be as angry (as some people have been),” he told Channel24, “but I get why people are so upset.”

Read the rest of this article here (via Channel24)

In the new issue of Rolling Stone the Red Hot Chili Peppers talk about the turmoil they went through after guitarist John Frusciante quit the band in 2009.

“I was afraid,” bassist Flea told Rolling Stone Senior Writer David Fricke ahead of the band’s first album in 15 years without Frusciante, I’m With You (out August 30th).

Read the rest of the article here. (via Rolling Stone.)

Tony Bennett will pay tribute to Amy Winehouse at this Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards.

The performance, which will take place in Los Angeles this weekend, will be preceded by video footage from the pair’s March recording session, while it’s expected Adele and Lady Gaga, who both paid respects to Winehouse following her untimely death, will join Bennett on stage. Both are already scheduled to perform at the VMAs.

Read the rest of this article here (via NME)