The Infinity Song artist is embracing uncertainty as she launches her solo career, while challenging the assumptions placed on Black women in music

“I’m trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be, but at the same time enjoying the fact that there’s nowhere I’m supposed to be.” This admission might seem like the beginning of an existential crisis, but it’s a welcome, liminal space for the rising singer and songwriter Momo Boyd. Between her recently released debut EP, a second EP in the works, and two tours, the 27-year-old is being pulled in many directions. But she’s also enjoying the emotionally ambiguous position she’s currently in – it’s what characterizes much of her work.

Boyd, who’s a part of Infinity Song, a pop rock sibling quintet that debuted in 2015, confesses that she’s nervous about striking out on her own as a solo artist. The demands are high: Her debut Miss Michigan tour just finished its US leg this past August and she will continue on throughout Europe in the fall, with a stop in London in November. She said that in comparison to Infinity Song’s sound, which can be characterized by guitar-driven melodies full of romanticism. “I’m doing my own thing and it’s a bit folksy, emotional and personal.” One might expect that Boyd being both a solo artist and an ensemble group member means that she runs the risk of producing indistinguishable bodies of work. But her moodier sound could not be more different from the family band’s more optimistic tunes. Nevertheless, the young singer is quick to say that the balance between the two lanes has been “pretty easy”.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London
Even though Beyoncé rumours prove unfounded, there are plenty of guests, from Idris Elba to Lauryn Hill – but this show doesn’t need cameos to lift it

Jay-Z’s first solo tour in nine years bills itself as a celebration: it marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, Reasonable Doubt. But it feels less concerned with nostalgic reverie than a show of strength in the present day. Hip-hop is a genre predicated on constant forward motion, in which careers tend to burn brightly, then dim as the music moves on. Jay-Z may not be the only fiftysomething rapper out on a career retrospective tour in 2026, but he is, unequivocally, the only one who’s capable of doing it at this level: packing out the biggest stadiums in the world nearly a decade after he last released an album, his standing impressively undiminished by a retreat into semi-retirement.

Moreover, he’s doing it in considerable style. The show’s musical approach can clearly trace its origins back to 2001, the year Jay-Z solved the problem of how on earth a rapper was supposed to appear on MTV Unplugged by eschewing hip-hop’s standard DJ-and-backing-tapes approach and employing a live band: the Roots were apparently astonished to be asked, but the end result was pretty jaw-dropping. Back in May, his first solo gig in five years essentially recreated it – he headlined the Roots’ annual Picnic festival with Questlove and co in tow once more – but the Jay-Z 30 tour supersizes it, featuring not just a 10-piece band, but an 18-piece string section. The resulting sound can, very occasionally, feel a little de trop – the squealing metal guitar solo appended to Can I Live definitely seems surplus to requirements – but for the most part, it works extraordinarily well, amping up the cinematic sweep of Empire State of Mind and the lush 70s-soul inflections of Izzo (H.O.V.A), adding a thunderous heft to Public Service Announcement and 99 Problems. It also serves to underline Jay-Z’s technical skill: a lesser rapper would be swallowed up by the density of the sound, but the precision of his delivery consistently cuts through.

Lily Tomlin, Beyoncé, Céline Dion and Oprah Winfrey are among those remembering the queen of country after she died aged 80

• Alexis Petridis on Dolly Parton’s peerless career that turned country music cliches inside out

• Dolly Parton – a life in pictures

• Dolly Parton celebrated by kd lang, Peggy Seeger, Annie Lennox and more

Tributes have poured in for Dolly Parton, the country singer, songwriter and actor, after her death aged 80.

News of her death was shared by her nephew on social media. “Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus,” he said.

As the Colombian pop supremo prepares to perform at Sunday’s final, we rate her greatest work, including gossipy takedowns and lycanthropic lyrics

Of Shakira’s World Cup anthems, it’s the joyfully ludicrous Waka Waka from the 2010 tournament in South Africa that bangs hardest. Featuring Afro-fusion band Freshlyground, the Colombian superstar redraws preened football superstars such as Ronaldo et al as soldiers on a frontline.

Yankee Stadium, New York City

The rapper celebrates 30 years of his classic debut album Reasonable Doubt with eye-popping visuals and special guests in a love letter to hip-hop culture

The beauty of watching Jay-Z live is more than just watching him calmly spit bars that effortlessly prove why his career has been this long and brilliant; it’s also the complex but lovely feeling of watching an audience (and the artist himself) relive the past. It’s almost unfathomable that 30 years ago, Jay-Z was starting out as a relatively unknown rapper from Brooklyn chronicling his life as a hustler. Quite possibly the greatest pure MC of all-time – encompassing flow, patience, humor, live ability and his taste as an auteur – Jay built a career on restrained tales of wide-eyed dreams and braggadocious stanzas about financial gain.

His 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, was the start of that career, and on Friday night, I’m at New York City’s Yankee Stadium as Jay-Z performs the album’s tracks in order, front to back, making it impossible to forget its legacy in a visually stunning show that splits the difference between close connection and grand spectacle. At times, with a wide, movie-like screen backing Jay that shows funerals of presidents, footage of Mike Tyson, or his wife, Beyoncé, cutting his hair at the ballpark, the show feels influenced by previous tours like Watch the Throne mixed with the street romance of the 2002 movie Paid in Full. Yet the care and attention to detail ensures that the 50,000-capacity venue feels intimate, for the folks who heard the album and felt seen through its songs of regret and paranoia.

Gigs by Gallagher brothers, Coldplay, Lana Del Rey and Beyonce gives £11bn boost to the economy

Big name artists including Oasis with their highly anticipated reunion tour, Coldplay and Beyoncé helped to attract a record number of fans to travel to watch live music last year, helped by a surge in overseas visitors at UK gigs.

A report from the industry body UK Music estimated that 24.7 million “music tourists” attended concerts and festivals last year, up 4.8% on 2024, leading to an unprecedented £11.2bn of spending across the UK economy.

What’s it like to catch a gig so great it goes down in history? Our writers relive incredible performances by everyone from Amy Winehouse at the North Sea jazz festival to Kanye West at Glastonbury

Talking Heads, the Rock Garden, London, 13 May 1977

Morning Dew (Donk) reportedly conceived for Beyoncé’s second album B’Day, which will be reissued for its 20th anniversary in September

She popularised the shock drop in 2013 with the surprise release of her self-titled album. And on Saturday, Beyoncé did it again, dropping a new song out of the blue.

The singer released the new track, titled Morning Dew (Donk), on the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Reports say the track was initially intended for her second album, B’Day, released in 2006.

Hip-hop producer behind Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode and Drake’s Nonstop has been found dead at home during a police welfare check

The Grammy-nominated producer Tay Keith, who worked with Drake, Travis Scott and Beyoncé, has been found dead at his apartment in Nashville, Tennessee aged 29.

Keith, whose real name was Brytavious Chambers, was discovered at home after police conducted a welfare check on Thursday afternoon.

Kelvin Evans pleads guilty to stealing hard drives and laptops from a car before singer’s Atlanta tour dates in 2025

A man arrested for stealing hard drives containing unreleased Beyoncé music has pleaded guilty in an Atlanta court on Tuesday.

Kelvin Evans was arrested by the Atlanta police department in September in connection to a July 2025 car robbery where two suitcases containing Beyoncé music and tour plans were stolen from a rental car.

Opening of ‘the dressed body’ show inspires Beyoncé, Kardashians and Skepta, as others pay tribute to fashion moments in art history

• Met Gala 2026 red carpet: the best looks in pictures

Two assets the modern 1% love to show off are their designer wardrobes … and their expensive bodies. The Met Gala opening of an exhibition about “the dressed body” presented an opportunity to do both, and it proved irresistible. The evening raised a record-breaking $42m (£31m) for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the lead sponsors Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos thought to have contributed $10m, and individual guests writing cheques for up to $1m in order to make the Anna Wintour-approved final cut.

The official dress code was “Fashion Is Art”. But the golden rule in fashion, as in life, is that those with the gold make the rules, and this elite crowd bent Wintour’s diktat according to their will. The red carpet was divided between looks that paid tribute to famous fashion moments in art history, and others that celebrated the body itself as a very modern masterpiece.

Event chairs Nicole Kidman, Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour have guests dress to the theme ‘Fashion is art’ at the event controversially funded by new honorary chairs Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos

Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams co-chair annual New York event alongside Anna Wintour; Bezos sponsorship has sparked criticism

• Why the Bezos-backed Met Gala is so controversial

Chloe Malle has been working at Vogue for 15 years, but tonight is her first as head of editorial content. Earlier this week she described her style as if “Katharine Hepburn was a librarian”. We’re sure the late actor would approve of this pretty egg-yolk dress with its delicate cap sleeves.

And we have our first actual art reference – from Lauren Sánchez Bezos no less. Her dress – by Schiaparelli designer Daniel Roseberry – is a homage to Madame X, the John Singer Sargent painting of socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau from 1884. Causing a scandal at the time for its raunchy nature because the original had one of the straps slipping off, Roseberry and Sánchez Bezos missed a trick there. A real art snob version of the dress would include this detail.

Fashion’s Oscars - aka the Met Gala - arrives this Monday. But before we see this year’s outfits, our writers revisit the looks that still spark debate, delight and the occasional meme

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The first Monday in May is fast approaching, which means the next iteration of the Met Gala – the biggest night in fashion – is on its way.

While we eagerly wait to see what co-chairs including Beyoncé (her first Met in a decade) wear, how Anna Wintour handles honorary chairs Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez on the steps (the couple have provided most of the funding for the gala and its exhibition), and how much impact the anti-Bezos protesters have, we thought it would be fun to hit pause on predictions and instead indulge in some Met Gala nostalgia.

While the reach from costuming a superstar can be ‘astronomical’, the designers who have done so say material rewards can be harder to predict

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A bikini made from tangled strands of diamantes drapes down the torso of Colombian superstar Shakira. She is singing from a floating pink bubble in the sky. It is the opening frame of the film clip for her 2024 single Puntería, which has amassed more than 78m views on YouTube.

Given the renown of the queen of Latin music, the scene’s Australian links are not immediately apparent. But the ornate bodysuit was a custom design by University of Technology Sydney graduate Caroline Reznik and handmade in her inner Sydney studio.

A costume designed by Caroline Reznik for Doja Cat’s music video for Streets

To celebrate the release of the film Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, in which a fashion designer creates a comeback dress for a pop star, we weigh up the best performative looks

“Dressed like a fabulously turned-out carrion crow,” is how our reviewer described the gothic, avian-like get-up PJ Harvey wore to perform her journalistic and theatrical ninth album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, in Brixton, south London, in 2016. The dress was the work of Harvey’s longtime friend, the Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester, and epitomises the more dramatic stage looks – melodramatic but pared-back – that Harvey turned to for her later, darker albums. As she said of the clothes: “For me, it’s about the ability to meet the world. And it is a second skin, isn’t it? It’s protection, as well. It’s a very big part of clothing, the feeling of protection, particularly in Ann’s clothes.” Who would have thought that someone who earlier in their career took to the stage in Spice Girls co-ords and hot-pink catsuits would wind up in such serious Belgian high-fashion? Ellie Violet Bramley

When it comes to scandal, seeing is believing – which is why these images caused such a stir

Words can tell a story, but it’s pictures that will make you believe in it. Such is the power of a photograph; the ability to strip away illusions, to illuminate something hidden, and sometimes force us to accept unpalatable truths. When it comes to scandal, seeing is believing – occasionally even to the point that a picture changes the course of history.

How might life have been different for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had he not been photographed clutching the midriff of the 17-year-old girl he would later claim he had never met? Without this haunting triptych of the former prince, the late Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein’s fixer, Ghislaine Maxwell, hovering in the background, there would have been nothing physical to connect the then prince with a trafficking victim. Though for years Andrew’s friends insisted that the photograph must have been doctored, buried within the Epstein files recently released by the US Department of Justice is a note from Maxwell that appears to confirm it is real.

Ahead of the release of her new film You, Me & Tuscany, the singer and actor will be taking your questions on everything from working with Beyoncé to The Little Mermaid backlash

You’ll probably know Halle Bailey best for two things: her role as Ariel in Disney’s 2023 live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, and appearing in the visual album for Lemonade by Beyoncé, who she also supported on tour as part of musical sister duo Chloe x Halle. The pair first found an audience on YouTube, and have since been nominated for five Grammys.

Bailey was only 19 when she was cast in The Little Mermaid, thanks due what director Rob Marshall described as her “otherworldly sensibility”. Of course the internet quickly found something to complain about, with much of the backlash going beyond the absence of cartoony bright red hair. “I expected it, honestly,” she told the Guardian. “We’re all human beings, so of course it’s going to hurt or sting a little bit, especially remarks like those.”

This month, Ella Langley and Megan Moroney became the first pair of women in country music to top both the US albums and singles charts

Country radio still has a gender parity problem. That hasn’t stopped Ella Langley and Megan Moroney from achieving historic success. Last week, Langley and Moroney became the first two women in country music ever to top the all-genre Billboard 200 and Hot 100 charts simultaneously. Langley’s Choosin’ Texas unseated Taylor Swift’s Opalite to claim its second non-consecutive week atop the singles chart, while Moroney’s album Cloud 9 reached number one thanks to Target exclusive physical editions and strong streaming numbers.

“These aren’t flukes or one-off viral hits,” said Leslie Fram, co-founder and CEO of FEMco, a Nashville-based consulting collective. “Megan Moroney built her base through relentless touring and social buzz. Ella Langley’s incredible song has real staying power and even non-country crossover appeal.