Horan brings soft breakup ballad – S. Africa’s Clegg begins last int’l tour
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NEW YORK, Sept 17, (Agencies): One Direction’s Niall Horan on Friday released a soft breakup ballad with echoes of the heartthrob boy band as he announced his debut solo album.
Horan announced on social media that his album “Flicker” will come out on Oct 20 followed by a tour in 2018 of the United States and Canada.
The 24-year-old Irish singer marked the announcement by releasing a track off the album entitled “Too Much to Ask,” a piano-led ballad in which Horan, his voice turning soulful, mourns the end of a relationship.
The song is produced by Greg Kurstin, the increasingly in-demand musician best known for co-writing Adele’s smash hit “Hello.”
Kurstin also worked with Horan on the first track off “Flicker,” the acoustic guitar ballad “This Town.”
Horan’s soft touch is more consistent with One Direction than the solo music of his two most successful bandmates.
Zayn Malik cast away One Direction’s squeaky-clean image to go for a sensual, urban vibe, while Harry Styles surprised critics with an album that sounded influenced by 1970s David Bowie.
One Direction, formed when the five young men auditioned for the British reality show “The X Factor,” turned into one of the best-selling bands of the decade, packing arenas worldwide with screaming teenage girls.
The band went on an indefinite hiatus after an album at the end of 2015 while stopping short of calling it quits.
South African musician Johnny Clegg defied the country’s apartheid-era racial barriers, celebrated its new democracy under Nelson Mandela and took his Zulu-infused music around the world. Now after treatment for pancreatic cancer, he is launching a last international tour that he calls “The Final Journey.”
Clegg said he feels “fit and strong” as he begins the tour showcasing his blend of Western and African musical styles.
The British-born singer, whose multi-racial bands during white minority rule in South Africa drew a staunch foreign following, has already played some South African shows and plans stops in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia in the coming months. He performed in London last month and has a Sept. 20 show in Dubai.
Dealing
“These shows are hard for me,” he told journalists at a Johannesburg hotel. “I’m dealing with another, parallel world that I live in with my diagnosis.”
Clegg, 64, also spoke about the Zulu music and dancing that he learned as a teenager, when he hung out with a Zulu cleaner and street musician called Charlie Mzila.
Clegg recalled playing music in his early days on rooftops and later in packed venues, “the idea of crossover” that inspired diverse music with the bands Juluka and Savuka and the apartheid-era censorship that restricted where he could perform and sometimes led to his arrest.
Toward the end of his hour-long remarks, he spoke starkly about the disease that he was diagnosed with in 2015 and is now in remission. Grueling treatment has included two six-month sessions of chemotherapy and an operation to remove the cancer.
“I don’t have a duodenum and half my stomach. I don’t have a bile duct, I don’t have a gall bladder and half my pancreas. It’s all been reconfigured,” said Clegg, who has divided his final tour into legs to allow for rest periods between shows.
“I don’t know how long I’ve got. We all know that it’s all going to end badly at one point,” he said. Though he added: “I feel fit and strong and I’m dancing and I’m singing.”
One of Clegg’s best-known songs is “Asimbonanga,” which means “We’ve never seen him” in Zulu. It refers to South Africans during apartheid, when images of then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela were banned.
Cardi B, who has quickly emerged as one of the top women in rap, recently tied established stars Kendrick Lamar and DJ Khaled in the BET Hip Hop Awards nominations.
A former stripper from New York with hard-driving rhymes, the 24-year-old Cardi B has neared the top of the mainstream US chart with her debut single “Bodak Yellow,” which came out in June.
The singer, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, is up in nine categories at the BET Hip Hop Awards, the most closely watched prizes dedicated exclusively to the genre.
Industry players plus selected fans who submitted applications will determine winners of the awards, which will take place Oct 6 in Miami and be broadcast four days later on BET, or Black Entertainment Television.
Kendrick Lamar and DJ Khaled are also each nominated in nine categories including the key Album of the Year.
Lamar, 30, enjoys wide critical acclaim. He led the Grammys, the music industry’s highest profile awards, after his album “To Pimp a Butterfly” and last month dominated the MTV Video Music Awards amid the success of his latest work, “DAMN.”
The 41-year-old DJ Khaled, who is a Miami native, made his name as a producer before more recently finding success on his own — boosted by celebrity cameos on the tracks and an active social media presence.
Rap mogul Jay-Z and fast-rising Chicago star Chance the Rapper are tied for second place with five nominations each.
Jay-Z is nominated for Album of the Year for “4:44,” an introspective return to music in which he apologetically acknowledges infidelity to his wife Beyonce and supports his mother as she comes out as lesbian.
Two acts from Atlanta are also up for Album of the Year — Future, the prolific rapper who made history in March by hitting number one in back-to-back weeks with different albums, and rap trio Migos.
Also in the running is J. Cole for “4 Your Eyez Only,” a 10-track reflection on racial and economic inequality that charts the life of a character named James.
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