Author: Rap Hooks

UPDATE: And another one! On Friday evening (Oct. 3), Spotify announced that Taylor Swift has another new streaming record under her belt. “The Life of a Record-Breaker,” a Spotify Instagram caption reads. “On October 3rd, 2025, Taylor Swift’s ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ became the most-streamed song in a single day in Spotify history.

PREVIOUSLY: The news is sweet like “Honey.” Just hours after Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on Friday (Oct. 3), the highly anticipated set is already kicking down records.

Spotify announced about 11 hours after the album’s release that it has already broken the record for most streamed album in a single day so far in 2025. The record was most recently held by Playboi Carti’s Music, which nabbed the honor upon its March 14 release.

It’s no surprise one record has already fallen. As Good Morning America reported from Spotify’s Life of a Showgirl pop-up experience in New York City Friday morning, there were 1.2 million users on the platform who were streaming the new album exactly at that moment.

Shortly after the release of The Life of a Showgirl, Swift shared a message with her fans about her latest album. “I can’t tell you how proud I am to share this with you, an album that just feels so right,” she wrote in part in an Instagram post. “If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain…”

The pop superstar first announced the 12-track project on now-fiancé Travis Kelce and brother Jason Kelce’s podcast, New Heights, in August. Swift has also said that the album, which is filled with what she described as “bangers,” was worked on in Sweden with producers Max Martin and Shellback during her career-spanning, record-breaking Eras Tour, which became the highest grossing tour of all time when it wrapped in December.

See Spotify’s announcement of Swift’s latest achievement:

In the flurry of afterparties that happened around Portola 2025, Neil Frances‘ was a standout, especially to Neil Frances themselves.

“Frankly some DJ sets are just way better than others” the duo tell Billboard. “The audience makes it special, and the audience was so up for it at our Portola afterparty at Public Works.” The show happened Sept. 20, following their set at the festival itself earlier that day.

Sharing the bill with both Caribou and Caribou’s Daphni alter-ego, the night extended Neil Frances’ Club NF series, which find the Los Angeles-based alt-pop duo focusing on the clubbier elements of their longstanding project. The pair ––Australian-born Jordan Feller and SoCal native Marc Gilfry — are using Club NF as a vehicle to revisit their catalogue, along with tracks they love, and make their own club-centric interpretations of them.

Many of these edits, along with a laundry list of deep cuts and club classics like Armand Van Helden’s era-defining 1996 remix of Tori Amos’ “Professional Widow,” are embedded within Neil Frances’ Sept. 20 Portola afterparty set at Public Works, a joyful 96-minute affair you can listen to exclusively below.

“All of our best friends were there, and Marc and I actually took some time to prepare for the set, which is pretty rare tbh,” Feller says. “We should do it more. I remember fleeting moments so thankfully we decided to record this one.”

Neil Frances is carrying on down the road with Club NF into the fall, with a set this weekend in Oklahoma City and upcoming shows in Austin, Tex., New York City’s We Belong Here event in Central Park and three shows throughout Mexico.

On the eve of his sentencing, Sean “Diddy” Combs told a federal judge Thursday (Oct. 2) that he is a new man after realizing that he was “broken to my core” and wondering at times if he was better off dead.

Combs, 55, wrote in a letter to Judge Arun Subramanian that with his mind clear of drugs and alcohol after a year in jail, he can see how rotten he had become before his September 2024 arrest in a case that led to his conviction on two prostitution-related counts. His sentencing hearing is set to begin Friday morning.

“Over the past year there have been so many times that I wanted to give up. There have been some days I thought I would be better off dead. The old me died in jail and a new version of me was reborn. Prison will change you or kill you — I choose to live,” he said.

A jury in July acquitted Combs on sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges, meaning he won’t face a life sentence. The prostitution-related counts each carry a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison.

Combs’ lawyers say he should go free this month, arguing his year behind bars has been enough of a penalty, while prosecutors want at least 11 years in prison.

Combs wrote that the last two years have been the hardest of his life, “and I have no one to blame for my current reality and situation but myself.”

“In my life, I have made many mistakes, but I am no longer running from them,” he wrote. “I am so sorry for the hurt that I caused, but I understand that the mere words ‘I’m sorry’ will never be good enough as these words alone cannot erase the pain from the past.”

Combs apologized for hitting, kicking and dragging then-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 — an attack captured on security camera footage shown to jurors repeatedly during his two-month trial.

“The scene and images of me assaulting Cassie play over and over in my head daily,” Combs wrote. “I literally lost my mind. I was dead wrong for putting my hands on the woman that I loved. I’m sorry for that and always will be.”

Combs also apologized to a woman who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” saying that “after hearing her testimony, I realized that I hurt her. For this I am deeply sorry.”

Combs wrote that “the remorse, the sorrow, the regret, the disappointment, the shame” from his behavior has made it “so hard for me to forgive myself.”

“It is like a deep wound that leaves an ugly scar,” he said. “I lost my way. I got lost in my journey. Lost in the drugs and the excess. My downfall was rooted in my selfishness.”

In jail, Combs said, he has been reading, writing, working out and teaching a six-week course to other inmates, “Free Game with Diddy,” imparting his business wisdom, as well as lessons learned from his mistakes and failures.

He is also involved in therapy, he said, to deal with his past drug abuse and anger issues. He is sober for the first time in 25 years and is committed to working “to ensure that I never make the same mistakes again,” he wrote.

Combs told Subramanian that he was asking for mercy, not only for himself but for his seven children and his 84-year-old mother, for whom he had been the primary caregiver. While locked up, he said, he missed proms and graduations and critical parts of his 2-year-old daughter’s development.

“As I write you this letter, I am scared to death. Scared to spend another second away from my mother and my children,” Combs wrote. “I no longer care about the money or the fame. There is nothing more important to me than my family.”

He said the conditions of his detention at a Brooklyn federal jail are “inhumane,” writing that he is locked in a room with 25 other inmates, with no windows, no clean air, a broken washing machine and water that they boil before drinking.

Combs vowed to never commit a crime again, telling the judge that since he has been in jail he’s gone through a “spiritual reset.”

Rather than make an example out of him with a lengthy sentence, Combs implored Subramanian to “make me an example of what a person can do if afforded a second chance.”

“If you allow me to go home to my family, I promise I will not let you down and I will make you proud,” he wrote.

George Michael‘s “Father Figure” is reimagined by Taylor Swift on The Life of a Showgirl‘s fourth track, a new song that shares a title and incorporates an interpolation of Michael’s original that became a hit in 1988.

The late Michaels’ estate issued a statement on Swift’s recording on Thursday (Oct. 2), hours before the official release of Showgirl.

“We were delighted when Taylor Swift and her team approached us earlier this year about incorporating an interpolation of George Michael’s classic song ‘Father Figure’ into a brand new song of the same title to be featured on her forthcoming album,” George Michael Entertainment said in a note posted on Michael’s social media accounts. “When we heard the track we had no hesitation in agreeing to this association between two great artists and we know George would have felt the same. George Michael Entertainment wishes Taylor every success with The Life of a Showgirl and Father Figure.”

Michael’s “Father Figure” held steady for two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988; it was one of four No. 1 smashes from Faith, his 1987 solo debut LP. (The other three No. 1s from Faith: title track “Faith,” “One More Try” and “Monkey.”)

“‘Father Figure’ is just a very specific experience that I wrote about,” Michael, who passed away in 2016, once said of the song’s origin. “I think there’s a definite pattern in people’s lives where they move away from their parents and then they look for that replacement. It’s always talked about in terms of boys kind of being discarded, in terms of their mothers, and then finding a replacement. But you don’t necessarily always hear about that with women, although I’m sure it’s just as much the case, that women in a sense look for a father. Not necessarily a father, but they look for that replacement.”

In 1989, “Father Figure” earned Michael a nomination for a Grammy in the best pop vocal performance category, and parent album Faith won album of the year — and Swift was born.

The year of 1989 would later became the title of Swift’s fifth album — her ’80s pop-influenced, Billboard 200 chart topper from 2014 that, like The Life of a Showgirl, features production by Max Martin and Shellback.

Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, available at midnight ET on Friday, Oct. 3, marks her 12th full-length studio album. “Father Figure” is among 12 tracks on the set, which is led by opener “The Fate of Ophelia.”

Miley Cyrus is looking back on some of the controversies that marked her early career.

In a teaser for an upcoming interview on CBS Sunday Morning, airing Oct. 5, the 32-year-old pop star responded to a question from host Tracy Smith about the backlash she faced from angry moms during her transition from Hannah Montana to a more provocative music career.

“I was the first person to maybe ever be canceled, I guess,” Cyrus says in the clip, shared on CBS Sunday Morning’s Instagram. “I didn’t know until I was older, actually, how brutal it really was.”

Cyrus first rose to fame as the star of Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana, which debuted in March 2006 to a record-breaking 5.4 million viewers — the highest in the network’s history at that time. She was just 13 years old when she played Miley Stewart, a teenager leading a secret double life as a Malibu student by day and a global pop star by night. The show ran until 2011.

After her success on the show, Cyrus made a bold transformation with a more edgy and provocative image, releasing albums like 2010’s Can’t Be Tamed and 2013’s Bangerz, the latter debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Despite the backlash, the “Flowers” singer said she enjoyed the experience, even amid the criticism.

“It was very challenging for other people, but for me it was a good time,” Cyrus says in the teaser. “It looked fun and it was fun. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how harsh…”

She added, “I would never now, being where I am, ever look at someone in their 20s from the view of who I am now,” she said. “But at the time, it was awesome.”

While Cyrus reflected on her experience as an early figure in cancel culture, many of the post’s commenters pointed out that other female pop stars faced similar or even harsher backlash before her.

“I love you Miley forever, but we all know MADONNA was the first and most cancelled person ever in the music industry,” one person wrote. Another said, “Britney Spears would definitely disagree.” A third noted, “First person .. what about Christina Aguilera’s controversy with her song Dirty ? She received so much backlash.”

Cyrus is also expected to discuss her journey to sobriety, her family, and her ninth studio album, Something Beautiful, during the upcoming CBS Sunday Morning interview. The episode will also feature an interview with singer Cat Stevens (now Yusuf), who will talk about his new autobiography, Cat On The Road To Findout.

This isn’t the first time Cyrus has opened up about her turbulent past. Earlier this year, she spoke candidly about the Bangerz era, a time when she shocked audiences with risqué outfits and provocative performances, challenging her previous squeaky-clean image as a Disney Channel star.

“That was the time where I just got hit so hard, and I was so embarrassed,” Cyrus said in June during an interview with Monica Lewinsky on the Reclaiming podcast, referring to the intense criticism.

“There was even a time where my brother and sister didn’t want to go to school, because of how humiliated they were to be related to me,” she continued. “I had a lot of guilt about how hard it would’ve been to be my sibling or my parent, and how embarrassing.”

Check out a teaser of Cyrus’ upcoming interview on CBS Sunday Morning on Instagram below.