Thank God I’m a pop star!
Alex Rodriguez.
Ben Affleck
is following the boyfriend of his ex Jennifer Lopez by cutting carbs and sugar.
He said: “I just did the A-Rod 10-day challenge. It’s not easy. At the end of the 10 days I had like three bagels.”
FORMER X Factor champ Leona Lewis jumped at the chance to act as Amber Hall in gritty cop drama The Oath.
Leona gushed: “Acting kind of went on the back burner when I started to do my music and that side started to take off. But it’s always something that I really wanted to get into.”
TROUBADOUR Hozier owes his pop career to his youth.
The Irish star, whose big breakthrough was Take Me To Church, admits being a choirboy forged his distinctive sound.
Vying for No1 with new album, Wasteland, Baby! Hozier said: “I sang in choirs because I was forced into them as a kid and then you get a taste for being part of a harmony and holding a line within a harmony, there’s something really nice about singing inside a choir and being locked in with people.
“I sang in all sorts of different choirs, and then in Anuna, which does all sorts of ancient music and world music, and that influenced my love of harmony.”
Hozier has become a renowned songwriter but refuses to follow Ed Sheeran’s path and write hits with other people.
He explained: “It would be hard to sit in a writers’ room with three pop writers.
“I write alone and if I do write with people it’s off and it’s always: ‘That’s too wordy or too clever.’ For me, playing around with my ideas is easier to do on my own.” Instead he prefers to write about society’s dark underbelly, like his hero Tom Waits.
He said: “I loved his lyrics, I loved the imagery of them. He used to populate the songs with mad characters, they’ve got names and stuff, as he’s naming characters in the songs he just made a very vivid and crooked little world. With my song In A Week it was like what’s the most gruesome imagery that you can actually put into a song but can you make it romantic and can you make it a love song? Tom Waits would refer to that as bad news from a pretty mouth, and I really, really like that.”
publishing contract with EMI states he can never retire. It specifies that he must “remain actively involved in writing, recording and producing” songs and albums.
And it states that “at no time will you seek to retire as a songwriter, recording artist or producer or take any extended hiatus”.