Director Adam Shankman and drag queen actors explain putting a brilliantly madcap twist on Airplane! style parody

Drag queens are never more striking than when they’re set against an everyday background. “Kristen Stewart is a buoy … ” the Laotian American beauty Jujubee muttered spacily to herself in the hallway of Bleecker Street Media’s New York office, reading out the tag-line of a framed poster for the 2024 sci-fi/romance Love Me. The former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant and star of the new disaster-comedy Stop! That! Train! was lingering outside an office cubicle in a structured blazer and fishnets as an attentive PR took her order for lunch. By that point she’d been in full wardrobe and make-up all day fielding press, including a mid-morning stop with her castmates at NBC’s Today with Jenna & Sheinelle.

I’d heard Jujubee and her co-star Ginger Minj before I saw them, laughing like glamorous hyenas from another room. When they made an entrance, they did so in coordinated cheetah print looks, greeting me with the kind of mega-watt smiles that told me I was now their audience. I was impressed by how “on” they were, but could imagine it was taxing to keep up. How had the whirlwind of press been for them? “It’s been a lot of work but it doesn’t feel like it,” Ginger admitted. “The tour has absolutely mimicked the making of the movie.” “We have to schedule our sleep,” Jujubee added as she slowly began to peel off some cumbersome press-on nails. “But I’m so high on life and all of us have been able to stay in the moment, and live in this stormaganza of press.” They immediately started cackling again.

There’s nostalgia to the New York/London duo’s lo-fi laptop sound, but their second album pushes them into vivid, weirder new territory

From Hudson valley, New York, and London
Recommended if you like the Books, Leila, Worldpeace DMT
Up next Rumspringa released 29 May

Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan recorded their first ever track as Ear on an iPhone in the Bard College library. That song, Nerves, pits their murmuring voices against weightless strings and barely perceptible drums. Just as it seems poised to float away altogether, the track is suddenly overtaken by a blaring bass synth that cleaves the first act’s aching plea into an emotionally fraught, black-lit banger.

Madison Square Garden, New York City

The British artist’s brilliantly ambitious first arena show is a breathtaking showcase of her artistic range, with pole dancing, vogue battles and sword fighting

From time to time, photographs from FKA twigs’ stint as a backup dancer make the rounds on social media. In the early days, when her name recognition was secondary to the likes of Jessie J and Peter Andre, Tahliah Barnett would take to the stage and use her body and talent in service of someone else’s vision. The drama of being visible yet never being fully seen would become an important subtext to her work. Misrecognition from a lover, by the public, from the internet, provided powerful emotional stakes to her songwriting, which she complemented with ultra-tactile music that teased and staggered payoffs that went further than any expected beat.

The most definite proof that she has become an undeniable star in her own right comes tonight, when she tears the house down on her first ever arena date at Madison Square Garden. “Did you truly see me?” the singer whispers from bed in the show opener, Mirrored Heart. The immediate, roaring response is at funny odds with her lament that follows: “No, not this time.” If anything, the evening proves again and again just how intensely she and her audience seem to recognize one another. For one thing, the crowd is styled in her image, in fulfillment of her wish from Home With You to “see a hero like me in a sci-fi”. From blocks away, you can follow the stream of make-do Rick Owens looks and be certain that you are headed toward FKA twigs’ location. Inside the arena, it feels like New York is doing its best approximation of a Berlin nightclub: an orgy of black tank-tops, Lucite pleaser heels and constellations of facial piercings that must be a nightmare for the people running the metal detectors.