UK singer to headline fest – ‘Concert surprise’

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LOS ANGELES, March 19, (Agencies): Adele will headline this year’s Glastonbury Festival, the singer announced at a London concert Friday night.

“Don’t tell anyone I told you”, she said during a performance at the O2 Arena. “I think it’s a secret.”

But it’s no longer a secret, as reps for the festival confirmed the news via Twitter just after the singer belted out the news to the arena.

The “When We Were Young” singer will be headlining the Pyramid Stage, the show’s most prestigious venue, on June 25. This will be the first time Adele has performed at the music festival.

But this isn’t the first time the singer has revealed a mid-concert surprise. Just two days ago, the 27-year-old emotionally opened up to her fans during her concert that her 3-year old son, Angelo, was watching her perform.

Beautiful

On another night, as she sang “Make You Feel My Love”, she spotted a marriage proposal in the crowd and interrupted her song to point out that a couple had just gotten engaged. She then invited them onstage and thanked them for “the most beautiful thing” she’s ever witnessed at her shows.

The “25” singer will be concluding her eight-night residency at London’s O2 Arena on April 5.

The Glastonbury Festival runs June 22-26 in Somerset, England. The US leg of her tour begins July 5 in St Paul.

Pop star Taylor Swift made a surprise appearance at a Nashville, Tennessee, children’s hospital to help “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest open a broadcast studio for patients.

Swift on Friday met with children at Monroe Carell Jr Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center following the ribbon cutting on the new Seacrest Studio built at the hospital.

She told the crowd that she visited one of the now 10 studios that Seacrest’s foundation had built at children’s hospitals across the country and wanted to be involved when he opened the latest one in Music City.

“What I saw when I went there was an opportunity for the kids to find excitement and to express their creativity and to learn about what it is to create content, whether you would like to make your own radio show or whether you want to record,” Swift said. “It was so exciting to see the excitement that it brought to this one hospital.”

It wasn’t the first time that Swift made a surprise visit to a children’s hospital: She previously visited others, including Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. She said she has visited the children at the Nashville facility before and the studio gives the city’s many singers and songwriters a place to reach all the children at the hospital.

“Can you imagine the artists and the songwriters and the entertainers who are going to be stopping by the hospital?” she said.

The fully functioning studio lets children learn how to record, do interviews, broadcast to the rooms in the hospital and play songs.

Seacrest said he hears back from patients all over the country who have felt inspired by the studios.

“I get the coolest letters and emails from parents and kids talking about how they want to be a tech engineer or they want to be a deejay or they really want to be in music in some capacity,” Seacrest said. “And this gives them a chance to technically learn how to do all of it too.”

Radiohead pledged Friday to put in place extra measures to prevent scalping after tickets for the arthouse rockers’ upcoming tour quickly sold out.

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke commiserated with fans over social media after tickets to the 13-date tour of major arenas sold out in minutes.

The band warned that venues would scrutinize many tickets at the door, ejecting people without identification that matches the listed names.

“Strict rules are in place to try and reduce online touting, but inevitably some will find their way onto secondary ticketing sites at inflated prices,” the band said in a statement.

“We hope you understand the need to put such measures in place to give more fans a chance to get to the shows,” it said.

Tickets to Radiohead’s shows at Madison Square Garden in New York were already fetching into the thousands of dollars on resale sites, far above list prices.

Radiohead is playing its 13 shows on the tour in only six cities — Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City and Paris. The band will also play at eight festivals around the world.

Ticket scalping has long alarmed musicians and fans, but with few easy solutions to curb the inflated prices.

Prince has been among the most aggressive in addressing the scourge by announcing shows at the last minute and, most recently, not issuing physical tickets at all, instead keeping names at the door.

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