Our digital ecosystem thrives on division in everything from politics to pop. Devoted fanbases are one result - ready to unleash hell on haters

Being a geriatric millennial means I was born too late to take advantage of cheap house prices and too early to become an influencer. I was, however, born at the perfect time to be a fan. The late 90s were the halcyon days of teenage fan culture: technology was advanced enough to let you connect with other devotees through online discussion forums and pour your heart into fan sites (I had a GeoCities site devoted to the grunge band Bush). But it also wasn’t easy to spend unhealthy amounts of time obsessing online: dial-up connections meant regularly getting booted off the internet so your parents could use the phone.

Now, of course, there’s nothing preventing people spending every waking minute cultivating unhealthy parasocial relationships. Superstars like Taylor Swift have armies of fans that span the globe, ready to unleash hell on haters. Earlier this year, for example, Paste magazine published a (negative) review of Taylor Swift’s album The Tortured Poet’s Department without a byline, to keep the writer safe. The outlet explained that “in 2019 when Paste reviewed Lover, the writer was sent threats of violence”.

Country-pop singer and noted equine enthusiast tells BBC of plans ahead of her ‘legend’ slot on Sunday

Shania Twain has said she hopes to ride on horseback to her set at Glastonbury on Sunday.

The US country-pop star light-heartedly told BBC Breakfast on Wednesday: “I love horses. I love all animals. I’m going to go see if there’s a horse around I can borrow – maybe I could go riding, that would be awesome.”

We’re already drowning in US pop culture. Surely there’s a case for giving our homegrown talent a chance to compete

• Elijah is a DJ and writer specialising in Black British culture and electronic music

It’s been five years since Stormzy headlined Glastonbury, a defining moment in Black British music history. But if you listen to stations like Capital Xtra, Kiss and BBC Radio 1Xtra, they still centre American hip-hop and R&B – a staggering amount of it from the early 2000s – such as 50 Cent, Ja Rule and Chris Brown. It’s particularly vexing that BBC Radio 1Xtra, which uses “Amplifying Black music and culture” as its tagline, still doesn’t prioritise Black British artists in its daytime programming. Homegrown music is reserved for the night-time slots, when fewer people are listening. Why are we paying for a station that doesn’t focus on representing our music?

It’s no secret that the publicly funded station faces heavy competition from commercial rival Capital Xtra, but the answer can’t be to copy its tired formula of “hits” all day and night. Last week I listened to 1Xtra and Capital Xtra, and they both played Joe Budden’s Pump It Up, a US rap hit from 2003, within minutes of each other in the middle of the afternoon. It’s as if our airwaves are frozen in time, with no benefit to our artists or ecosystem.

With the BBC livestreaming globally for the first time, and an especially rich lineup of Black artists, 2024’s festival champions a broad remit – but plays it safe with Coldplay

Whether seen as too male, too white, too traditional or not traditional enough, complaints about the Glastonbury lineup have become something of a national pastime. But as it opens its gates for 2024’s edition, the festival can lay claim to one of the most diverse and globe-straddling bills in the British festival calendar this year.

For the first time there are two women among the three Pyramid stage headliners. On Friday Dua Lipa is expected to bring lavish production and thrilling choreography to her relatively small but hits-packed discography, making her the most dance-focused headliner since Basement Jaxx in 2005. On Sunday the American singer SZA becomes the first Black woman, and first R&B artist, to headline the Pyramid since Beyoncé in 2011. The Sunday teatime “legend” slot will also be held by a woman: Shania Twain.

She has topped the charts and been called the world’s sexiest woman, while also being stricken with anxiety. She discusses Paul Cattermole, therapy and finding her strength

In 2001, at the height of their fame, S Club 7’s reputation as squeaky clean, child-friendly pop puppets went up in weed smoke. Apparently bored with promoting their future wedding-disco staple Don’t Stop Movin’, the UK band’s three male members – Paul Cattermole, Bradley McIntosh and Jon Lee – were arrested in Covent Garden in London for sharing a joint. The briefest moment of rebellion saw the band rechristened “Spliff Club 7” by the tabloids, while the BBC – which aired S Club’s various spin-off TV shows on which the band would debut shiny, multi-platinum hits such as Bring It All Back, S Club Party and Reach – distanced itself from the controversy. A mooted endorsement deal with cereal brand Sugar Puffs was immediately nixed.

Twenty-three years later and Rachel Stevens, who, like band members Jo O’Meara, Hannah Spearritt and Tina Barrett, wasn’t present during the still-quite-PG-13 drugs bust (for which the three men received a caution), can just about laugh about it. “It’s so funny,” she says. “I mean, it wasn’t funny at the time. We were marketed to a young audience, and we really felt that responsibility. That’s a lot on teenagers who are making mistakes, and we did it publicly.” Did she ever partake? Silence.

The 13-member band, whose sales last year were only beaten by Taylor Swift, perform both as a full ensemble and in smaller units

While household names including Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Shania Twain abound on the Glastonbury roster this year, one of the biggest acts on the festival’s main Pyramid Stage might not be so well known in the UK.

But sales of the South Korean boyband Seventeen – which has 13 members – last year surpassed those of every other pop act worldwide bar Taylor Swift.

Charity says it has ‘breathing space’ after donation, as Liverpool food bank network also receives ‘incredible gift’

Taylor Swift has a convoy of at least 50 trucks for her Eras tour, and now her donations to food banks in every UK city in which she performs have enabled one charity to use a lorry of its own.

Thanks to a discreet donation by Swift – the largest donation by an individual that Cardiff Foodbank has ever received – the charity says it has the “breathing space” to try something different.

Co-founded by Binzer in 1995, the Los Angeles band had a global hit with their 2000 single Butterfly

Seth Binzer, the lead singer of Los Angeles rap-rock band Crazy Town – who had a US No 1 hit with Butterfly in 2001 – has died aged 49. The LA medical examiner certified that his death took place on 24 June 2024 but gave no cause.

Binzer, also known as Shifty Shellshock, founded Crazy Town in 1995 alongside Bret Mazur. The band released their debut album, The Gift of the Game, in 1999.

We would like to hear about the best album you have heard this year so far and why

The Guardian’s music writers are compiling their favourite albums of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

Have you listened to a new album that has had you hooked? Or one you’d recommend? Tell us your nomination and why you like it below.

Shani Gonzales of Warner Chappell says that although people are ‘having fun’ with creating AI songs, ‘what happens when someone tries to sell it?’

Arriving in London in the teeth of the pandemic to take a top music industry job, Shani Gonzales had few opportunities to immerse herself in British culture, with venues shut and parties off the table. The New Yorker instead turned to TV for her education, bingeing on The Crown, Downton Abbey and – a more left-field choice – Naked Attraction.

“I was trying to get as much of a cross-section as possible!” says Gonzales, who heads the UK arm of music publishing giant Warner Chappell. “Music is culture, taste, environment – it felt daunting not being able to leave the house and meet artists in a role like this.”

The multi-talented musicians were held back in their home country where even certain instruments were off limits – but they’re ready to take centre stage at Worthy Farm

Walking into an industrial estate in Peckham, I can hear impassioned cries coming out of a rehearsal space located here. Soaring vocals are punctuated by the gentle strum of a thumb piano along with bells that are strapped to the shaking ankles of Pendo and Leah Zawose, who make up the Zawose Queens. It’s their first time playing this music outside Tanzania – and if that wasn’t enough of a culture shock, some of their first-ever UK gigs will be a trio of sets at Glastonbury this weekend.

“We don’t really have any idea about Glastonbury or what it will be like,” says Pendo, via Aziza Ongala who is the band’s manager and acting as a translator. “But I’m told it’s a big deal. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to grasp how big of an experience it is until we actually do it but we’re very excited.”

Exclusive: Organisation that collects and distributes royalties in UK says it will ‘vigorously defend’ lawsuit which alleges preferential treatment for major songwriters

A group of songwriters, including Jim and William Reid from the Jesus and Mary Chain and King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, are suing UK body PRS for Music over how it handles royalties from live performances, accusing it of levying high administration costs for smaller songwriters while giving preferential treatment to already successful stars.

PRS has a near monopoly in the UK, acting as an intermediary between companies that play music (such as radio stations and shops as well as live events) and those who write it: companies sign licences, and PRS distributes the proceeds to songwriters.

In an interview the actor blamed cultural climate on casting issues as well as reflecting on his relationship with Madonna

Sean Penn says it would be currently impossible for him to play the part of a gay man, as he did in the 2008 film Milk, blaming a “timid and artless” current creative climate.

Penn was speaking to the New York Times about his earlier career, and responded to a question asking him if he would now be able to play Harvey Milk, the role for which Penn won a best actor Oscar. Saying that Milk “was the last time I had a good time [on a film set]”, Penn added: “It could not happen in a time like this. It’s a time of tremendous overreach. It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.”

She’s the subject of a new documentary, has just announced her farewell tour, and is about to play Glastonbury. The singer and songwriter discusses Trump, resilience and why she hated being pitted against Madonna

Once you’ve had a feature-length documentary made about you, it’s surely time to accept you’ve reached legendary status? Cyndi Lauper laughs. “My dogs don’t think so,” she says, to the sound of barking. Then, to her dogs: “You gotta stop, guys!”

Lauper is the subject of Let the Canary Sing, a new film by Alison Ellwood. It follows Lauper from her difficult childhood with an abusive stepfather, through the New York music scene and early bands, to the release of feminist anthem Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and beyond. There are clashes with music execs who don’t understand Lauper’s art school sensibility and want her to compete with Madonna, and she survives a career downturn. More recently, Lauper has become a campaigner, and the writer of award-winning musicals.

Enlarge / Michael Jackson in concert, 1986. Sony Music owns a large portion of publishing rights to Jackson's music. (credit: Getty Images)

Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records have sued AI music-synthesis companies Udio and Suno for allegedly committing mass copyright infringement by using recordings owned by the labels to train music-generating AI models, reports Reuters. Udio and Suno can generate novel song recordings based on text-based descriptions of music (i.e., "a dubstep song about Linus Torvalds").

The lawsuits, filed in federal courts in New York and Massachusetts, claim that the AI companies' use of copyrighted material to train their systems could lead to AI-generated music that directly competes with and potentially devalues the work of human artists.

Like other generative AI models, both Udio and Suno (which we covered separately in April) rely on a broad selection of existing human-created artworks that teach a neural network the relationship between words in a written prompt and styles of music. The record labels correctly note that these companies have been deliberately vague about the sources of their training data.

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