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meals-on-wheels-tales · 2 months ago

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Behind the Scenes of La Qchara’s Brick and Mortar and Mobile Food Truck

What was originally a simple coffee shop in Melrose, Massachusetts is now both brick and mortar and an on the go food truck. Owners Lorenzo and Emily Tenreiro of La Qchara explain their journey through restaurant hospitality.

Emily Tenreiro (left) and her husband Lorenzo Tenreiro (right) at the Crane Estate in Ipswich Ma featuring their sister store Tahpas 529.

This couple had a shared love for bonding with others through food. They had started out with a tight budget and decided to open a small cafe in Melrose, Massachusetts called Coffee Tea and Me.

“A couple years in, we had an opportunity to open up a second location, which was where the La Qchara concept came from. In Spanish La Qchara means ‘A large spoon, used for eating.’ We wanted to offer the general public some of the food that we cook in our own house, hence using a large spoon,” said owner Emily Tenreiro. “We wanted to capture going back to my husband's roots from Venezuela. We offer a lot of his mothers recipes, and items that are traditional from Venezuela and South America in general.”

The signature logo of La Qchara resembles the love for food and eating healthy, hearty meals. Each location has its signature spoon wall (bottom) which captures the values held within.

Stack of beautiful menus filled with amazing homemade meals cooked with all fresh ingredients and made with love.

In 2020, La Qchara’s mobility began to be in route. The Covid-19 pandemic was surprisingly a great opportunity for the couple.

“There was a school during the pandemic that opened up a unit to feed people out of the mobile unit because they decided they were going to renovate their cafeteria due to no student use,” Tenreiro said. “After they were done with the mobile unit, we inquired about it, it was for sale, and we bought it. We are now serving our awesome tacos, burritos, arepas, and rice bowls on the go.”

Photo of the food truck during an event, which shows the food table and unique color combinations that embrace the cuisines being served.

La Qchara famous venezuelan eggs benedict which substitutes the traditional english muffin with a homemade corn arepa and chorizo.

This amazing opportunity has brought La Qchara huge success out of a depressing time period in everyone's lives. This couple was able to bring long lasting memories and joy on the go to their strong customer base. The food truck serves large events, parties, graduations, food festivals, taco tuesday at a local dispensary, and MIT open space in Cambridge, Ma.

La Qchara restaurant opens its door with welcoming arms. This brick and mortar restaurant encapsules Central and South American cuisine. They offer gluten free and vegetarian options of coffee, smoothies, puddings, tacos, arepas, burritos, and many more.

La Qchara’s dining room inside of the Beverly, Massachusetts location on Cabot street.

Emily and Lorenzo share great pride around their employees. “They are passionate, energetic, and knowledgeable about the menu and the culture we share. They are there to break down the menu to customers and teach them about each item” said the couple.

Two beautifully welcoming employees ready to answer any questions. These bars offer a long range of drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. This restaurant also offers partnerships with Endicott College as a chance for students to use their off campus flex dollars to enjoy their delicious cuisines.

The majority of the hospitality business is positive, but there are downsides to owning a food truck. Tenreiro discusses the logistical challenges that running a truck has.

“The downfalls are things that people don’t always understand, " she said. “Our truck has a propane tank, it has to be refilled. There is a generator if the place you're at doesn’t have electricity, you rely on your generator. If your generator goes, you have to know what to do to fix it.”

When asked about what her advice would be to someone who is interested in starting their own food truck journey, she simply stated, “The best thing to do is find a niche, in which you can separate yourself from the other food trucks.” She goes on to emphasize the importance of trial and error with the truck surrounding the customization of the equipment, location of everything in the truck, and building your brand based on your own values. Tenreiro sighed, “We initially had a fryer on our truck and we quickly realized that was a terrible idea. Driving with the hot oil is a recipe for disaster.”

She takes a lot of consideration into the practicality of the truck, the safety of herself and her employees, and disposing of the resources used.

Resourcing La Qchara’s food truck is easier than most. The advantage of having a brick and mortar location comes in help as Tenreiro and her team prep and heat the food for events in the kitchen of their stores. She said, “Our truck is only a holding and serving unit.” The truck has its own steam table which its only purpose is to hold and keep food warm until served.

The food truck has grasped all of the strong values the couple wanted the public to perceive them as. “Food trucks generally have a very happy vibe, because where you end up going is usually a celebration” she said. La Qchara’s website shares some of their core values, “We believe that healthy, hearty food is the key to a happier life and from the first bite, you’ll understand why.” Providing healthy, hearty food on wheels has empowered the couple in many ways.

Homemade coffee and chia seed pudding for breakfast (top) and for lunch or dinner, homemade tacos (bottom).

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lionunion · 1 year ago

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A Comprehensive Guide to Real Estate Investment Mexico, Pampanga

When considering the top real estate investment locations, a deep understanding of the city’s intrinsic attributes and market trends is essential. Mexico, Pampanga, known for its rich cultural heritage, agricultural backbone, and strategic location, is rapidly becoming a focal point for real estate investors and aspiring homeowners. Dive into this detailed guide to uncover Mexico’s essence: its vibrant real estate market, leading properties, shopping hubs, academic centers, transportation links, healthcare institutions, and recreational venues. This guide is your compass for insightful real estate choices in Mexico, Pampanga.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Mexico, Pampanga

Real Estate Market Overview in Mexico

Highlights of Hot-Selling Properties

Shopping Malls

Education

Transportation

Medical Facilities

Leisure Destinations

1. Introduction to Mexico, Pampanga

Geographic Location: Mexico is a historically rich municipality located in the heart of Pampanga, a province renowned for its culinary delights and festivals.

Barangays: Comprising 43 barangays, Mexico offers a variety of living environments, reflecting its diverse culture and history.

Land Area: Covering an area of 117.41 km², Mexico provides a blend of urban conveniences and pastoral beauty.

Population: Serving as home to over 154,000 individuals, Mexico is a hive of activity and tradition.

Economic Overview: Historically an agricultural hub, Mexico has diversified its economy to include commerce, tourism, and manufacturing.

Featured Industries: Agriculture remains at the heart of Mexico’s economy, supplemented by growing commercial and service sectors.

Infrastructure Development: Mexico boasts well-maintained roads and is easily accessible due to its proximity to key highways and expressways.

2. Real Estate Market Overview in Mexico

As the municipality continues to evolve, there’s an uptick in searches for “lot for sale in Mexico, Pampanga” and “house and lot for sale in Mexico.” From opulent estates to cozy townhouses, Mexico’s property scene caters to varied preferences and budgets.

3. Highlights of Hot-Selling Properties

The Ridge: A harmonious blend of nature and luxury.

Amaia Scapes Pampanga: Affordability meets modern design.

Beverly Place: Experience premier living in the heart of Mexico.

Ajoya Pampanga: A community where tradition and modernity converge.

Camella Sorrento: Embrace serene living in a vibrant community.

4. Shopping Malls

From local markets to modern shopping centers, Mexico offers diverse shopping experiences. Residents and visitors can explore a range of products from local crafts to international brands.

5. Education

Mexico takes pride in its educational institutions, with schools and colleges providing quality learning experiences, ensuring a bright future for its youth.

6. Transportation

Mexico’s efficient transportation system, including jeepneys and tricycles, ensures smooth mobility. Its strategic location near major expressways further enhances connectivity.

7. Medical Facilities

Healthcare in Mexico is top-notch, with several hospitals and clinics ensuring the well-being of its residents.

8. Leisure Destinations

From cultural festivals to recreational parks, Mexico offers a plethora of activities for relaxation and leisure.

In conclusion, Mexico, Pampanga is a blend of tradition and progress, making it an enticing choice for real estate ventures. Whether you’re a first-time buyer or a seasoned investor, Mexico’s property landscape beckons with diverse opportunities.

Source: Lionunion Real Estate

#lionunion

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muridiola · 1 year ago

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Greenwood joins Getafe

United academy prodigy Mason Greenwood officially donned the Getafe blue jersey as he held up his number 12 jersey as he posed for photos next to the team crest and greeted fans. "Hello Getafe fans, I'm Mason. I'm very happy to be here and can't wait to start playing," he said.

Greenwood left Manchester United at the buzzer a few minutes before the summer transfer window closed and went on loan to Getafe in La Liga. Millions of fans still hope that he can return to Old Trafford in the future, but CAB토토 analyzes the possibility of this happening. Even if he can prove himself in the Iberian Peninsula, it will be difficult for him to put on the Manchester United jersey robe.

Earlier this summer, a proposal was made to sign Greenwood from Manchester United during a strategy meeting of transfer staff in the Saudi Arabian Professional League. Soon, the issue was rejected, and they decided that bringing in the talented 21-year-old forward would do more harm than good.

Although Greenwood is no longer charged by the Crown Prosecution Service, he is legally a free man. Greenwood has always denied all of these allegations. But his moral taint can never be washed away, and the Manchester United youth forward himself has not denied that he has made mistakes. In the photos, videos and audio of Greenwood's alleged domestic violence exposed on social media, a man believed to be Greenwood can be heard yelling to the victim, "Pick up your leg." The woman refused, but the man angrily shouted, " I don’t care what you kid wants.”

Seven months after the charges were dropped, Greenwood is still not playing professionally, illustrating the difficulty of his return to football. Now, although he can only join the relegation team Getafe, he can at least play in the Spanish top league, where he can play against La Liga duo Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Following a six-month internal investigation, United chief executive Richard Arnold initially felt Greenwood could be reinstated with the intention of returning him to the first team, with extensive plans in place. But as the "Sports Network" reported, Manchester United later saw the strong opposition from the outside world, changed its attitude, and decided to abandon Greenwood completely.

Arnold made it clear: Due to Manchester United's worldwide attention, it will be too challenging for Greenwood to rebuild his career. He also suggested that there are polarizing views on Greenwood's potential return, which would jeopardize the unity within the club.

Manchester United has not terminated Greenwood's contract. This contract has less than two years left and his weekly salary is 75,000 pounds. The club has publicly promised to help Greenwood restart his career and continue to support his personal life. What the club said is true. Manchester United is responsible for paying for the English teenager's monthly villa rent of 8,000 pounds in Getafe, as well as the round-the-clock Spanish translation service.

Greenwood lives in the "La Finca" high-end community where superstars such as Beckham, Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo and Bale have lived in the past. It is known as the "Spanish Beverly Hills" and is a wealthy community with huge properties. The mansions, luxury golf courses and shopping malls are under tight security and closely monitored by dozens of cameras. And more importantly, it is only a 20-minute drive from Getafe's training ground.

The "Sun" stated that Greenwood can also choose the "La Moraleja" community, which is where Varane and Modric live.

Manchester United only announced the sale of Greenwood on August 21, which was only about 10 days before the end of the summer window for most leagues. The transfer department was very busy at the same time, and Manchester United's director of football John Murtaugh and the club's director of negotiations Matt Hargreaves had a lot to do, including the signing of Evans, Altai Baindier, Reguilon and Amrabat, while for sale or lease Dean Henderson, Brandon Williams, Teden Mengie, Noam Emeran, Mark Jurado, Charlie McNeil, Logan Pye and Alvaro Fernandez.

Fortunately, Murtaugh has been one of the Manchester United executives who support giving Greenwood another chance. He is Greenwood's "uncle" and has known his father Andrew for many years. Therefore, Murtaugh is very concerned about Greenwood's next step and is personally responsible for his transfer.

Greenwood's road to Saudi Arabia for gold mining was blocked from the beginning. Saudi Arabia is developing a women's football league. They have applied to host the Women's Asian Cup, so they are very concerned about women's rights. This in itself makes Greenwood's possibility of joining very low. For the same reason, the Saudis did not attempt to sign acquitted ex-Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy, who has officially moved to Ligue 1 side Lorient.

In addition, Greenwood and Cristiano Ronaldo, the flagship figure of Saudi Arabia's sixth league in the world, did not have a good relationship when they played together at Manchester United, so they are even more unpopular. Former Liverpool captain Gerrard has publicly stated that rumors of a transfer between his Saudi club Dammam and Greenwood are fake news.

With the lessons learned from the blocked transfer to Saudi Arabia, Manchester United became more cautious and low-key when looking for Greenwood's next home in European football, keeping relevant information strictly confidential. Murtaugh fears that if rumors come to light before a deal is done, a potential move could find itself the focus of a media storm in the UK and social media, in the same way United did earlier this month.

According to the report of Athletic.com, in the last moments of the summer window, agents from all over the continent contacted many clubs, claiming that they could arrange the loan of Greenwood from Manchester United, but these clubs are not completely clear whether these agents are actually authorized by Manchester United.

The sporting director of a Spanish club has revealed that as many as 20 agents have contacted him, claiming to help him sign Greenwood. As for Manchester United officials, they refused to comment on which agents really represent their club. According to analysis, one of Manchester United's motivations for promoting Greenwood through an intermediary agency may be to help other clubs provide a "safe haven". Once they get into disputes, they can confidently say that they have contacted Manchester United.

After the charges were dropped at the beginning of the year, Greenwood's popular destination was considered to be Italy, including Atlanta, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus and Roma. However, Serie A has also focused on cooperating with women's rights protection organizations in recent years. Some Italian club employees said that if the team signs Greenwood, they will consider resigning or going on strike.

In the last few weeks of the summer window, agents contacted various clubs. Brentford of the Premier League directly refused to accept Greenwood, although their leading striker Toni was suspended; the Bundesliga also said no to Greenwood. Borussia Dortmund, Serie A Roma and AC Milan have also distanced themselves from him.

Another challenge Greenwood faces is that French and Spanish leagues have restrictions on the number of non-EU players that can be registered. After the UK leaves the EU in 2016, English players will be considered non-EU players. Ligue 1 teams can only have a maximum of four non-EU players, while La Liga can register five non-EU players, but each game can only have three players in the matchday squad.

Although Serie A teams have a registration cap of only two non-EU players, a ruling that came into force in July this year means that Swiss and British players are still considered EU players. This was also the first time Greenwood was considered possible to move to Italy. one of the reasons.

Manchester United and Greenwood waited until the last moment of the summer window, because there is not much time left at this time, and some clubs may become more impulsive and panic. The tight time brings challenges, but it also brings opportunities. With September 1, the deadline for most European leagues, talks increased around Greenwood, with simultaneous talks with various interested parties.

For example, Lazio, a Serie A team participating in the Champions League this season, is reported to have even exchanged legal documents with Manchester United and the Blue Eagles regarding Greenwood's transfer. However, the Italian transfer window closed at 19:00 local time, 4 hours earlier than the Premier League. The two sides ultimately failed to reach a final agreement in time. Italian media have different opinions on the reasons why the transfer fell through. The mainstream view is that coach Sarri is worried about Greenwood's controversy and his status, because since January 2022, Greenwood has not only not played a game, but has not even been able to train normally. Couldn't attend.

Spain's transfer deadline is the same as that of England, both at 23 o'clock in the middle of the night, which leaves room for negotiations for Getafe. The team had hoped to sell 26-year-old striker Enes Unal to Benfica this summer, get cash and buy. However, the Turkish striker's anterior cruciate ligament injury led to the failure of the transfer, and the transfer budget of this small club is even more limited.

United have agreed to take no loan fee, no commitment to buy out Greenwood and just €1m (£858,000) in wages. In the coming year, Manchester United will bear at least £50,000 of Greenwood's £75,000 weekly salary. This means that Getafe can get a striker who was once valued at 50 million pounds for basically no money, and they decided to take risks and bring in under pressure. Getafe didn't even ask to see United's internal investigation files, insisting that the law had cleared the player of all charges.

The British "Daily Mail" commented that the most unloved club in La Liga, they may think that negative attention is also a good thing. The team officially announced Greenwood's arrival at 22:58 last Friday night. The official statement received more than 30 million views. This is a protagonist treatment that the team has never enjoyed in the past. His English official website originally had only a few hundred fans, but after signing Greenwood, it has now increased to nearly 25,000.

Getafe, of course, were not immune to criticism, with Spain's main charity, the Anna Bella Foundation, lashing out at them for setting a horribly bad example. "Getafe executives should not have hired Greenwood, they should immediately reverse their decision. There is no reason for a public-facing organization like Getafe to take a neutral stance on violence against women, you have to take a moral responsibility. "

But this level of resistance is obviously not the same as the scale of his comeback at Manchester United. If Manchester United decides to reactivate Greenwood, the reaction from the outside world will be like a 17-level typhoon. In contrast, Getafe is only facing a breeze.

Getafe, on the outskirts of Madrid, is a safe place to live, with a low crime rate and a lower cost of living than the Spanish capital. It's quieter there compared to Madrid and their 16,500-capacity Alfonso Perez stadium is rarely filled, so that would give Greenwood a backdrop against which to fight in lesser attention A good stage to prove yourself again.

But Greenwood also faces challenges. He has to leave the greenhouse of the giants and get used to the life and style of play of mid-lower teams that he has never experienced in the past. Statistics show that Getafe averaged only 35% of the ball possession rate last season and fouled more than 20 times. Greenwood may need to learn to be more disciplined, something he has lacked in the past.

A spokesman for Getafe confirmed that the loan agreement also includes a break clause that can be triggered in the January winter transfer window if both parties are not satisfied with the progress of the transfer. This is standard practice on many loan deals and does not mean United plan to recall him mid-season. Even if Greenwood's condition returns to normal. Manchester United insisted on their previous position that the club does not believe that Greenwood can represent the club again, because that would once again put the club in the center of the British media and social media attention storm. Greenwood's No. 11 jersey has been assigned to new aid Hoylund, indicating that he has no place in the team.

But Greenwood will definitely return to Old Trafford after the end of his loan next summer. At that time, Manchester United has one year left on his contract and retains the option to extend it for another year. United will hope that Greenwood is in good form, which will ensure his resale value. Manchester United will pay Greenwood more than 10 million pounds in wages after his accident, and the club at least hopes to earn back this money.

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wherewhereare · 2 years ago

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BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. — In February 2015, Gwen Stefani joined Maroon 5 onstage at the Grammys to perform the ballad “My Heart Is Open.” After the awards, she got Mexican food with the band’s singer, Adam Levine, a fellow coach on the NBC reality-singing competition “The Voice.” For a pop superstar of two decades, it was a relatively normal night. But when she woke up the next morning, “My life was literally blown up into my face,” she said.

For 10 weeks, those closest to her had known the secret that ultimately ended her 13-year marriage to Gavin Rossdale, the singer of the band Bush. Ms. Stefani won’t discuss the details, partly to protect her children, but said: ��If I could, I would just tell you everything, and you would just be in shock. It’s a really good, juicy story.” (The tabloids say Mr. Rossdale was having a several-years-long affair with a nanny caring for the couple’s three sons.)

Ms. Stefani, 46, was reeling. “I’m gonna die,” she said, recalling her emotional state. “I am dead, actually. How do I save myself? What am I going to do? How do I not go down like this?”

Sitting at the long marble table in an office in her sprawling home here, dressed in a sheer white blouse and shiny red stilettos, Ms. Stefani laid out the answer: She plunged herself into her first love, songwriting. “I have to make music out of this. That’s what God wants for me,” she remembers thinking.

The result is “This Is What the Truth Feels Like” (Interscope), her first solo album in a decade, which will be released on Friday, March 18.

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Ms. Stefani performing with No Doubt in 2000.CreditRobert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images

The album’s 12 tracks are more direct and less whimsical than her previous two pop records. There are fiery songs about secrets and infidelity (the swaggering “Red Flag” and “Naughty,” delivered in Ms. Stefani’s speak-sung pseudo-rap) and ballads that capture the rawness of a long relationship’s premature end (“Used to Love You”). And thanks to Ms. Stefani’s budding romance with her “Voice” co-star, the country singer Blake Shelton — which began after news of her split with Mr. Rossdale broke last August — more than half of the tracks are about discovering the spark of a new love. The songs aren’t as dancey as much current pop; they retain the bouncy, synth-driven sound of Ms. Stefani’s earlier work. In a field dominated by young starlets, she’s made a grown-up pop album, confessional and sleek, without the oddball “B-A-N-A-N-A-S” flourishes of her past hits.

As Ms. Stefani began writing, she said she didn’t worry about potential sales, what it means to be a 46-year-old pop singer in a youth-dominated field, or pleasing her record company.

She talked to a new contact at her label, Aaron Bay-Schuck, and felt a glimmer of hope. (“I was like, wow, this guy, I think he might actually get me.”) And then she started sessions with the team that became her “Truth” squad, including the songwriter Justin Tranter and later his frequent partner Julia Michaels, who together had written high-profile tracks for Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber.

Ms. Stefani’s directions were clear: She wanted to capture her history — if it didn’t happen in real life, it wasn’t going on the album. And the floodgates opened.

“Being in that room and being creative, it was the only place that felt good — I was like, I love the smell of this room,” she recalled. (Ms. Michaels said there were a lot of laughter and tears during the sessions, which Ms. Stefani attended in her signature look: “The red lip and big nails and the jewelry.”) Songwriting had saved her before, Ms. Stefani said. She described herself as having been a “passive girl,” an unremarkable teenager, until she uncovered her talent. “It’s almost like one of those movies where they discover they have magic,” she said. “When I was able to first write a song, that’s when I found my whole self.”

Ms. Stefani’s label, however, had reservations about the highly personal music she was churning out. On a phone call that felt like “five people punching me in the stomach,” she said she was told: “We support you, you should put out an artistic record, and don’t go for radio. It’s over for you, basically.”

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Ms. Stefani with Pharrell Williams on “The Voice” in 2014.CreditTrae Patton/NBC

John Janick, the chairman and chief executive of Interscope Geffen A&M, said he “absolutely” remembers the uncomfortable call — because he was the one who had to make it. “I said, ‘I’m not sure you have the song that’s going to really connect with people,’” he recalled. “And two days later, she sent us ‘Used to Love You.’”

The label immediately got in touch to say, “You have a hit,” Ms. Stefani said, noting with some glee that it was the most personal song she’d attempted to write. “That’s never happened in my entire career.” (The song wound up peaking at No. 52 on the Billboard Hot 100. A second single, “Make Me Like You,” for which Ms. Stefani created an intricately choreographed live video during a commercial break on this year’s Grammys in a multi-million-dollar partnership with Target, is at No. 54 and climbing.)

After a few weeks in the studio, Ms. Stefani returned to her other job on “The Voice,” burdened with knowing her marital issues had not yet become public. “I’m not a secret girl,” she explained. “I tell everybody when my period is coming.”

But she soon learned that Mr. Shelton, whom she refers to as “one of my co-workers,” was also in the throes of a personal crisis. He “had been going through literally the exact same thing in literally the exact same time frame,” she said. Her friendship with him blossomed.

Her collaborators noticed a change instantly. “We had anger, we had sadness, we had flirtation, we had sexy, and now we’re madly in love,” Mr. Tranter said. Ms. Stefani described the shift with one of her frequently used terms — “crazy!” — and added, “Never in my wildest, craziest dreams would I ever have seen this coming.”

Ms. Stefani, unguarded and reflective, spoke quickly in torrents of words, pausing only to sip tea from a cup that, like most of her décor, was black and white. She thought back to her childhood in Anaheim, Calif., where she presumed she’d one day lead a happy family like the one her parents had built. “I literally was so sheltered and naïve, and that’s a lot why I think I got myself into so much trouble, in a way,” she said. She lamented that because of her split from Mr. Rossdale, she now has her sons 50 percent of the time. “It’s like, the most unjust, unbelievable system,” she said, adding that the “blessing” in it was she had time to heal and write. Atop her work table sat a book of photos from her youngest son’s first year, two pairs of sunglasses, her journal and a tin of Dr. Martens Wonder Balsam.

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Ms. Stefani with Gavin Rossdale in 2002.CreditKevin Winter/ImageDirect, via Getty Images

No Doubt, the band she co-founded in 1987, had already sold more than 20 million albums worldwide when it took its first break following its 2001 LP, “Rock Steady.” Her first thought: “dance record.” The result was “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.,” a 2004 album of wacky, hip-hop-inflected songs that blended her fascination with Japanese fashion and ’80s synth pop. Pharrell Williams, now a longtime friend, collaborated on its signature hit, “Hollaback Girl.”

“Gwen is a true heroine, whose creativity represents all the young female rebels at heart,” Mr. Williams said in an email.

She got pregnant with her first son, Kingston, before embarking on her first solo tour and returned to the studio to make a follow-up album, “The Sweet Escape,” when he was just eight weeks old. The cycle almost immediately repeated itself: a worldwide tour and a pregnancy, with her second child, Zuma. Her growing empire now included fashion and fragrances.

And she wasn’t done yet. No Doubt had been awaiting her return, so she hit the road with a toddler and a nursing baby and completely exhausted herself. “I felt quite trapped on so many levels, because when you have that much success you feel like you owe everybody,” she said. “Everybody depends on you.”

Sessions for the band’s first album in 11 years, “Push and Shove,” followed, and Ms. Stefani wasn’t brimming with ideas. The LP failed to take off commercially, and when the band returned to the studio — this time with collaborators including Sia, Greg Kurstin and Mr. Williams — Ms. Stefani got pregnant for a third time. “That’s when I started to really find my faith again,” she said. “It’s like a miracle, at my age.”

Weeks after giving birth to Apollo, the offer to become a coach on “The Voice” arrived, and Ms. Stefani found herself relishing her new role as mentor. “I needed so badly to do something different, and I needed so badly to be in a different role, a giving role.” Freshly inspired, she felt the urge to make music and mulled a solo album. “I started to think, well, I’ll just curate a record, and I’ll do it like every other pop girl does.”

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Ms. Stefani with Blake Shelton at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party last month.

Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times

This was the first time Ms. Stefani had dipped a toe into the new pop economy, where ace songwriters for hire shop tracks from artist to artist. “Every song that people would write for me felt like me 12 years ago, me 10 years ago. And lyrically they could never touch my heart, ever.” She recorded a full album, but decided to shelve it once sessions for “Truth” took off.

Considering how much the pop landscape has changed in a decade, Ms. Stefani is incredulous about her ability to continue recording. “I don’t even understand how I could possibly have had this long a career, or a career at all,” she said. “And that anyone cares, and that I’m relevant or anything, it just blows my mind.”

Mr. Tranter said Ms. Stefani’s sweetness and humility aren’t put-on. “At first I thought she was just being polite,” he said. “And then I was like, oh, she actually doesn’t realize the lives that she’s changed. She has no clue.” Describing Ms. Stefani’s appeal as “that amazing combination of extreme fabulousness and extreme honesty,” he noted the 1995 No Doubt album “Tragic Kingdom” “defined one whole era of music, and then she did it again as a solo artist, which is very rare.”

Mr. Janick said the longevity of Ms. Stefani’s career is one reason the label is confident in her new album’s viability. “Obviously there’s a lot of people that have grown up with Gwen over the years. Her being on ‘The Voice,’ what she does in fashion, she’s all over all the magazines. You can say it’s a grown-up pop record, but I feel like it touches on all different things that people can relate to of all different ages and sexes.”

Ms. Stefani, who sometimes reminds herself “Wow, I did do that! I wrote those songs!” to boost her own confidence, said singing about being happy is “so fresh” to her. “I needed something new to happen. And not just in my career, in my life. Something had to change.

“I’m not going to say I’m not still picking up the pieces and every day isn’t a challenge,” she said. “I’m still in shock. But it’s an awesome time.”

G March 2016

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/arts/music/gwen-stefani-truth-feels-like.html

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igglemouse · 3 years ago

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Episode 5 ~ Royals

With little to do and a sudden eagerness to see Luna’s surprise I let her lead and she led me right to a house. A big empty farm house that she had said was for sale and had been for a couple of years now. While this wasn’t as good as a topless Luna it was probably the next best thing and the price? Affordable, for me at least.

Luna: You’ll have to buy the furniture and everything but-

Julius: No, this is amazing!

She’s right, I’ll be close to broke buying this but with all that farm space off to the side I imagine I can...we can, make a lot of simoleons farming this land. The very thought excited me!

Luna saw the excitement running through me, which put a smile on her face as well.

Luna: I don’t know why but I remember this place...

Julius: Remember?

Luna tilted her head, seemingly confused at something, then nodded.

Luna: Yes, I don’t know...my memory is all foggy sometimes...but, I certainly remember this place! I guess I’ve always wanted it!

Julius: Oh...

Well, I don’t know if it’s a good thing if she’s remembering things but at least it’s just a house. I don’t think it’s something to worry about right now. Besides, even if she were to remember she was once Beverly Downs would she deny the natural chemistry we have now? I don’t think so!

Julius: Well, let’s look around a little!

Index - Next

#season 1 #the sims 4 #the sims #sims legacy #iggleverse legacy #sims 4 legacy #my sims #generation 1 #julius tourneau #beverly downs #luna tourneau

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fcklondon · 2 years ago

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(—) ★ spotted!! london eaton on the cover of this week’s most recent tabloid! many say that the 36 # year old looks like adrianna lima, but i don’t really see it. while the socialite/model/businesswoman/reality star is known for being sociable my inside sources say that they have a tendency to be secretive i swear, every time i think of them, i hear do ya think i'm sexy- paris hilton { she/her / cisfemale } - penned by laiceeee again.

london eaton was known as one of the biggest heiresses in the world, most famously for eaton hotels, one of the fanciest hotel branches in the world. but not only that, her father, richard eaton is the charman and cofounder of eastwood & eaton, a huge real estate brokerage based in beverly hills. london has never had to worry for a single second of her life about money. everything she wanted was right at her fingertips.

london had modelled on and off all throughout her childhood and teen years. as she became older, it became far more clear that she was a party girl, and was even dubbed ‘new york’s leading it girl’ in 2001. however london’s media ateention shot up after her release of a sex tape in 2003. she made it with her ex boyfriend who decided to market and profit off the video, earning millions in sales. at first london had been mortified, and filed a law suit. one she one and earned 400k in compensation. but after a while, london decided. to stop being embarrassed by this scandal and instead harbor the energy into making a bigger career for herself, after all she’d never had more media attention before.

three weeks after the video, london teamed up with one of her closest friends and created a reality show called a simpler life. and although many told her that her sex tape scandal would ruin her and alienate ratings and cause no one to ever watch, the rating sky rocketed and the show was a huge success. and not too long after she was approached by multiple modelling agencies to shoot a huge worldwide campaign.

soon london’s life was booked up. she had perfume lines, came out with a nightclub franchise, and was guest starred in multiple big star shows and films. after a while, it became clear that london was growing apart from her close friend she did a simpler life with and decided to call it quits. although not without thousands and thousands of media articles speculating what had happened with that friendship.

in all this time, her partying had never settled down. she was still very much a top party girl. always seen out at clubs and getting into trouble. this lifestyle was what eventually led to her arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol. she was only meant to do 45 days but it was reduced to 23- after all even the american justice system could be easily bought if you were rich enough.

although london seemed to have the perfect life, no one knew the dark horrors that were happening behind closed doors. when she was still a teen, her parents sent her to the troubled teen industry. one that had her fake kidnapped in the middle of the night, heavily medicated, sleep deprived and she faced a lot of abuse. one that took her a long time to speak out on. she ended up speaking out on it in 2020, becoming one of the lead voices in an effort to shut it down. even to this day she still has nightmares that haunt her over everything that happened in that place.

eventually london settled down, didn’t lead such an insane lifestyle anymore, although she still wouldn’t say no to a good party. she likes to be a voice now for the younger generation, showing that the dumb, ditzy 20 year old they saw on the screens before was a character. although parts were true, she held more intelligence than anyone could have ever known. after all she marketed herself so well, earned millions just to party and invented the first ever selfie.

wanted connections

THE NICOLE RICHE TO HER PARIS HILTON- her bestest of best friends for so long until it all turned sour and they had an on again/off again feud. she screened london’s sex tape at a party and london was betrayed and hurt beyond belief.

HER FIRST ENGAGEMENT- they were young, dumb and thought they wanted to be together forever. however they were only together for a year. it wasn’t anything serious that broke them up and they still remained really good friends.

HER SECOND ENGAGEMENT- he was a young heir to her heiress, however they soon realised that they were only really doing it because their parents approved and they had no real intention of ever living happily ever after.

HER THIRD ENGAGEMENT- she cheated on him and broke his heart, but really what did he expect dating such a wild party girl? she also refused to give the ring back.

HER FOURTH ENGAGMENT- and possibly her most heartbreaking one. the father to her daughter evangeline, who’s now four. she thought it was a whirlwind romance one that she’d finally found her happily ever after. only to wake up one morning and see that he was gone, left on the table was a letter saying he couldn’t do this anymore. she was heartbroken and alone with a baby.

ANY PARTY FRIENDS- this girl would’ve met a lot of people on the party scene

INDUSTRY FRIENDS- from other reality shows or who could’ve appeared on her reality shows

ANY EXES- that didn’t end in an engagement whoops.

CURRENT HOOK UPS- the woman has needs

#hillzhqsintro

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jmlistings · 3 months ago

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Foreclosed 2 BR at Avida Towers Makati West

Foreclosed 2BR Avida Towers Makati West! 63 sqm, 1st floor, amazing amenities! Act fast, this won't last! #JMListings

📍 Unit P, First Floor, Tower 1, Avida Towers Makati West, Malugay St., corner Yakal and Lumbayao Sts., Brgy. San Antonio, Makati City Property Features TYPE: Residential Condominium📐 Floor: 63.63 sq.m🛌 2 Bedrooms, 🛀 1 Bathroom✅ 1st Floor✅ AS IS WHERE IS BasisYear Turnover: 2018 FEATURES and AMENITIES Clubhouse • Swimming Pool • Children’s Play Area • Indoor Gym • Garden Units • Main Lobby •…

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swallow-wind · 2 years ago

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With money less tight the logical next step for Al was to somehow invest in the wine trade. Along with his new best friend from the Beverly Hills Wine Merchant he set about finding a venture that would enable him, now at the peak of his popularity, to mix business and pleasure.

Dennis Overstreet [Al's friend and wine shop owner] - "Al now had money in his pocket and we set about finding something fun to do. Luke [Al's manager] of course was involved too and was out tracking down antique furniture and the like. Now I put together a small select group of investors that included the rock group Boston and Keith Richard from the Rolling Stones along with Al and myself and we set out to buy a vineyard! Now there was a guy called Charles See, of See's Candies, who had this vine along with about 200 acres. On the property was this amazing house along with what amounted to a menagerie. He'd collected all of these species of wild birds and the whole place was just amazing. The actual price tag was around $2.5 million, which in those days was a lot of money, but which when split between all of us really wasn't such a risk considering what we were getting!"

One day Dennis, Al and Luke flew up from LA to see the estate, which Napa Valley in Northern California.

Dennis Overstreet - "We drove into the estate through these huge ornamental gates and had a personal meeting with the owner. He shows us around and is going on about his collection of birds which he is clearly very proud of when Al turns around and in his own idiosyncratic way says 'Well I don't really like birds you know but if we're going to own this property we'd better grind some peppercorns for them as soon as we can.' The owner stopped dead in his tracks and gave Luke and I this amazing mystified look as if to say 'Just who exactly is this lunatic I've got looking around my property?'"

The sale to Dennis' esoteric band of musicians never went through.

- That time Al Stewart & co. almost bought a vineyard, as told by Neville Judd in Al Stewart: The True Life Adventures of a Folk Rock Troubadour

#Al references this during his Zoom interview in 2020!#al stewart #keith richards #boston

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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MEET THE PRESS

August 3, 1969

You are clued into the frank and tough talk to come by the way Lucille Ball swipes away with her handkerchief at the flies threatening the hors d’oeuvres The kerchief almost snaps like a wet towel.

The scene is the pool patio of her home on Beverly Hills’ Roxbury Drive and a cocktail party is in progress for visiting television editors.

Lucy has just emerged from the main house. She wears a powder blue double-breasted slack suit and saucer-sized sun glasses. In the blazing sun her orange hair has the color intensity of hot coals.

She has counted heads. Husband-producer Gary Morton is there. So are Desi Arnaz IV her son, and Lucy her daughter. And her TV side-kick Gale Gordon with his wife. Plus a half-dozen of her staff and CBS emissaries. There have been introductions all round to the newspaper types. It is time, she announces, to talk and she waves everybody into the big and comfortable pool house. A table has been positioned so that she can sit there presiding as she used to do at the stockholders’ meetings of the old Desilu Studios.

Almost immediately some wag fields her the question: “Lucy do you run the show?” She flashes him that big innocent TV look of hers. A staff member jumps up “Let’s all answer that one for her” There is a resounding “YES” from family-and-cast. Everybody laughs uproariously.

Very few questions are required to prime the pump. Lucy, it seems, has some matters of personal irritation on her mind and as far as she is concerned they come tumbling out without any prodding from her would-be interrogators.

First of all, she asks rhetorically, what’s all this business about whether she would retire? “I never said I wanted to quit or retire. There was a time when I was willing to quit but nobody asked me. Now I’ve set a date when I’ll retire”

A lot of ears perk up Somebody asks slyly — when? She’s waiting for that. Her answer is smilingly emphatic: “When I drop dead in my tracks.”

She turns then without anybody’s questioning to the matter of her longevity in television. This is her 18th year on the tube and it used to be talked about that she traded her popularity to CBS in return for its buying other shows produced by her company. This evokes an almost visible jet of steam out of the top of her carrot locks. “I never at any time sold any of the 20 shows our company produced on the basis of my returning each season. I’ve said that literally hundreds of times and nobody believed it.”

She went on to make it clear that she also dislikes the “big business” image which has adhered to her over the years. “I never like to talk about big money. I make my deal and that’s all. It’s been mostly a matter of legal procedures.”

As the star wades into these fiscal subjects your eye roams over the assemblage. Young Desi in tennis togs impassively studies the smoke curling up from a cigarette. Young Lucy clutches her hands around her knees and stares intently at her mother. Husband Gary sitting on a ledge at the back of the room swings his legs and smiles.

There has been no mention of Desi the elder the former husband Lucy’s co-performer and co-founder of Desilu Studios (now sold). Earlier this writer had chatted briefly with young Desi. He said he saw his father off and on and spends his summers as a rule at the father’s beach home at Delmar, south of Los Angeles.

The youngster asked if I knew his grandfather Dr. Desiderio Arnaz who lives in Coral Gables. (1)

But back to Lucy She’s telling us how many years it took to realize that as Lucille Ball she had attained V.I.P. status.

She reviews the years she spent trying to make it in show business, first on the stage, then as a model, and finally in the movies. Much of the time she says she stagnated. Until television came along.

“I never had any sense of importance. I was very pliable always willing to do what I was told It wasn’t until one day I saw in print somewhere some actress described as a ‘Lucille Ball type’ that I knew suddenly I was somebody and a part of the business.”

From there on the interview jumps from subject to subject.

I ask her whatever happened to the project Dean Martin’s producer Greg Garrison had for starring Martin, her, and Jackie Gleason in a revival of the musical “Guys and Dolls.” (2)

“I never said I would do it. Garrison kept publicizing it, but he never cleared it with me. I do still want to do ‘Diamond Jim’ with Jackie It’s just a matter of finding the time.” (3)

A lady editor wants to know how Lucy keeps her sinuous figure.

“I don’t particularly like food. I’m not very fond of meat, for example, except in the morning.”

Which brings a snort of disgust from her husband. “Can you imagine what it’s like to have to watch her eating corned beef or hamburger at 6 o’clock in the morning?”

The questions now go to the children. What are Desi’s plans? Does he want to make acting his future? “I want to be an actor for awhile but I don’t think I ever want to be one certain thing.”

Young Lucy, who, at 18, is two years older than her brother, is more sure of her future “I’ll go to college for awhile but I like acting. I’ll stay at it if I can.”

Would she somebody asks join the campus protest and carry a sign? Only if it says ‘wet paint’ quips she.

Lucy now introduces her cast veteran, Gale Gordon. He pays her extravagant compliments and talks a bit about his radio and early television days.

The interview’s late arrival is venerable George Marshall, who is now the show’s director. Lucy introduces him as “our sexy senior citizen.” Marshall goes back to the dawn of movies and is filled with fascinating anecdotes about his years in the business. (4)

The conversation turns to TV’s talk shows. Somebody suggests to Lucy that she would be a highly likely guest for Merv Griffin’s new show starting on CBS Aug 18. (5)

Lucy's answer comes lancing back “That’s what you think. I don’t like him.” Which rocks everybody back. Why not? “Because he doesn’t know how to interview. He’s rude to his guests and he monopolizes the conversation.”

She doesn’t wait for the next question. “I’m wild about Dick Cavett (on ABC) I think he’s great And I told Bill Paley (board chairman of CBS) he should have him on our network. But Bill said ABC got him first and we’re out of luck.” (6)

Everybody is suddenly distracted by three teen-age girl fans leaning over a fence way up front. They’re begging to be allowed on the grounds. Morton jogs forward to shoo them away.

“This happens all the time,” says Lucy. “My God they used to picnic right in front of the house until our police department stopped them. Jimmy Stewart, who lives up the street, finally told me how to keep them away. Turn on the lawn sprinklers.”

Morton returns and takes everybody for a tour of their luxurious but very lived-in home. Lucy tells us a funny story about how Jack and Mary Benny had once been their next door neighbors sold their home then asked her to try to mediate a re-sale of the place back to them. Then we take our leave.

# # # FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) Dr. Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y Alberni II (1894-1973) was a Cuban politician and the father of Desi Arnaz. He graduated from the Southern College of Pharmacy in 1913 in Atlanta, Georgia. Desiderio Arnaz II was the youngest mayor of Santiago de Cuba (1923–32). When president Machado was overthrown in August 1933, Arnaz was arrested and jailed. Six months later, he was allowed to go into exile. He married Dolores "Lolita" de Acha y de Socias in 1916 and had one son, Desiderio "Desi" Arnaz III. He later had a daughter, Connie Arnaz (1932), with Anne M. Wilson, whom he married in 1941.

(2) Guys & Dolls was a 1950 stage musical by Frank Loesser, based on the stories by Damon Runyon starring Robert Alda, who appeared on several episodes of “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy”. It was filmed by MGM in 1955. During that time, Lucy and Desi were also under contract to MGM, so they prevailed upon “I Love Lucy” to insert a clip from the film into “Lucy and the Dummy” (ILL S5;E3). After its initial airing on October 17, 1955, the clip was removed from the film print, and for legal reasons, has never been restored. It is unclear whether Garrison’s project with Martin, Ball, and Gleason would have been a film revival, or a stage production. Whatever it was to be, Lucy wanted to have no part of it, perhaps remembering the rigors of performing on stage in Wildcat (1960). During her film career, Ball was in two films based on Damon Runyon material, The Big Street (1942), a film she claimed as her favorite, and Sorrowful Jones (1949). She also did a radio version of Runyon’s “Tight Shoes” in 1942. Ball and Gleason would have been cast as Miss Adelaide and Nathan Detroit, while Dean Martin would have played Sky Masterson, the romantic lead. Those roles were played by Vivian Blaine, Frank Sinatra, and Marlon Brando in the film. Obviously, the project never came to be.

(3) “Diamond Jim” was a project that Lucy dearly wanted to make with Gleason. He would play Diamond Jim Brady (1856-1917) to her Lillian Russell. Ball even went so far as to have a script written to further grab Gleason’s attention. Despite their best intentions, Gleason and Ball’s schedules never allowed for enough time to make the film.

(4) George Marshall (1891-1975) had directed Lucille Ball in Valley of the Sun (1942) and Fancy Pants (1950). He was considered an expert at location shooting, so when “Here’s Lucy” wanted to spend the first four episodes of Season 2 on location, Marshall was hired as director. He stayed on for seven more episodes of the sitcom before bowing out.

(5) Despite Lucille Ball’s rather harsh public assessment of Merv Griffin (1925-2007) at this August 1969 press party, Ball appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show” four times between 1971 and 1980! During her first appearance, the aforementioned George Marshall was also a guest!

(6) Lucille did seem to enjoy doing the talking to Dick Cavett, although she only got to do his chat show once, on March 7, 1974, in conjunction with her press tour for Mame.

#Lucille Ball #1969 #Press Party #Dick Cavett #Merv Griffin #TV #Here's Lucy #Gary Morton #Lucie Arnaz #Desi Arnaz Jr.#Guys and Dolls #George Marshall #Jack E. Anderson

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tswiftdaily · 5 years ago

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In the 2010s, she went from country superstar to pop titan and broke records with chart-topping albums and blockbuster tours. Now Swift is using her industry clout to fight for artists’ rights and foster the musical community she wished she had coming up.

One evening in late-October, before she performed at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift’s dressing room became -- as it often does -- an impromptu summit of music’s biggest names. Swift was there to take part in the American Cancer Society’s annual We Can Survive concert alongside Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Camila Cabello and others, and a few of the artists on the lineup came by to visit.

Eilish, along with her mother and her brother/collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, popped in to say hello -- the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.

“Two dudes walked in -- I didn’t know which one was him,” recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. “It’s really smart! Because he’s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn’t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.” She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.

Swift, who will celebrate her 30th birthday on Dec. 13, has been impossibly famous for nearly half of her lifetime. She was 16 when she released her self-titled debut album in 2006, and 20 when her second album, Fearless, won the Grammy Award for album of the year in 2010, making her the youngest artist to ever receive the honor. As the decade comes to a close, Swift is one of the most accomplished musical acts of all time: 37.3 million albums sold, according to Nielsen Music; 95 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 (including five No. 1s); 23 Billboard Music Awards; 12 Country Music Association Awards; 10 Grammys; and five world tours.

She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift’s crossover from country to pop -- hinted at on 2012’s Red and fully embraced on 2014’s 1989 -- reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift’s top 20 hit “End Game,” from 2017’s reputation, which featured Ed Sheeran and Future.)

Swift’s new album, Lover, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation -- which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift’s public clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West -- as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. “The skies were opening up in my life,” says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.

She recorded Lover after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. “This is a year where I have to be there for my family -- there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,” says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the Lover heart-wrencher “Soon You’ll Get Better.”

Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it’s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that it was her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “bullying” her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to “earn” back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a “length of time” -- 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)

Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year -- starting next November, when she says she’s contractually able to -- in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary -- claims Big Machine characterized as “false information” in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to “all possibilities” in finding a “resolution,” and Billboard sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun’s acquisition.

However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists’ rights -- and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview, “There should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists -- and make them nonrecoupable against those artists’ earnings.

During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come -- and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. “New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise -- but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,” she says, “but it’s because someone has to be.”

While watching some of your performances this year -- like Saturday Night Live and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert -- I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say.

That’s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I’ve spent a lot of time recalibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way -- on your Tumblr page.

Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around -- they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.

It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue -- like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.

Did you have someone like that to reach out to?

Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music. Faith Hill was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop -- we all have each other’s numbers and text each other -- but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.

Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now?

God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it’s just two women’s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one’s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that’s great. No one’s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.

At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally?

From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas.

The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.

You’ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation tour’s success was. What did it represent?

That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn’t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, “I understand it now. I fully get it now.” There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?

That seems especially true of your last three albums or so.

“Shake It Off” is nothing like the rest of 1989. It’s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don’t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you’ve figured out what I’ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in -- if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don’t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.

The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about?

Yeah, and I’m always trying to learn. I’m learning from everyone. I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, “That’s really cool.” You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the Cats movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!” And I’m like, “You are it! You are it!” Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote “the kids are doing” and roll your eyes. You have to learn.

Have you explored TikTok at all?

I only see them when they’re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they’re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, “Any way we can do that is good.”

How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists.

I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.

You’ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently -- staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals.

We have a long way to go. I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about recalibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers.

We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, “Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?” I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, “This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal -- not as a renegotiation ploy -- and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.” God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me.

Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.

Do you know how long that rerecording process will take?

I don’t know! But it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.

Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time?

Oh, God -- I wouldn’t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but … I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.

#taylor swift #interview #billboard #women in music #woman of the decade

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gavinrutherforda · 3 years ago

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years ago

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Billboard Woman of the Decade Taylor Swift: 'I Do Want My Music to Live On'

By: Jason Lipshutz for Billboard Magazine Date: December 14th issue

One evening in late October, before she performed at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift’s dressing room became - as it often does - an impromptu summit of music’s biggest names. Swift was there to take part in the American Cancer Society’s annual We Can Survive concert alongside Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Camila Cabello and others, and a few of the artists on the lineup came by to visit.

Eilish, along with her mother and her brother/collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, popped in to say hello - the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.

“Two dudes walked in - I didn’t know which one was him,” recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. “It’s really smart! Because he’s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn’t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.” She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.

She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift’s crossover from country to pop - hinted at on 2012’s Red and fully embraced on 2014’s 1989 - reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift’s top 20 hit “End Game,” from 2017’s reputation, which featured Ed Sheeran and Future.)

Swift’s new album, Lover, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation - which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift’s public clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West - as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. “The skies were opening up in my life,” says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.

She recorded Lover after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. “This is a year where I have to be there for my family - there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,” says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the Lover heart-wrencher “Soon You’ll Get Better.”

Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it’s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that it was her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “bullying” her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to “earn” back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a “length of time” - 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)

Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year, starting next November, when she says she’s contractually able to - in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary - claims Big Machine characterized as “false information” in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to “all possibilities” in finding a “resolution,” and Billboard sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun’s acquisition.

However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists’ rights, and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview, “There should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists - and make them non-recoupable against those artists’ earnings.

During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come - and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. “New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise - but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,” she says, “but it’s because someone has to be.”

While watching some of your performances this year - like SNL and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert - I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say. That’s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I’ve spent a lot of time re-calibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way - on your Tumblr page. Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around - they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.

You’ve spoken in recent interviews about the general expectations you’ve faced, using phrases like “They’ve wanted to see this” and “They hated me for this.” Who is “they”? Is it social media or disparaging think pieces or... It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue - like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.

Did you have someone like that to reach out to? Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music. Faith Hill was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop - we all have each other’s numbers and text each other - but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.

Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now? God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it’s just two women’s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one’s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that’s great. No one’s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.

At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas. The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.

You’ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation tour’s success was. What did it represent? That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn’t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, “I understand it now. I fully get it now.” There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?

That seems especially true of your last three albums or so. “Shake It Off” is nothing like the rest of 1989. It’s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don’t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you’ve figured out what I’ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in - if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don’t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.

The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about? Yeah, and I’m always trying to learn. I’m learning from everyone. I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, “That’s really cool.” You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the Cats movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!” And I’m like, “You are it! You are it!” Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote “the kids are doing” and roll your eyes. You have to learn.

Have you explored TikTok at all? I only see them when they’re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they’re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, “Any way we can do that is good.”

How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists. I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.

You’ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently - staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals. We have a long way to go. I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about re-calibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers. We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, “Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?” I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, “This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal - not as a renegotiation ploy - and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.” God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me. Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.

Do you know how long that rerecording process will take? I don’t know! But it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.

Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time? Oh, God - I wouldn’t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but... I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.

Taylor Swift Discusses 'The Man' & 'It's Nice To Have a Friend' In Cover Story Outtakes

Billboard // by Jason Lipshutz // December 12th 2019

During her cover story interview for Billboard’s Women In Music issue, Taylor Swift discussed several aspects of her mega-selling seventh studio album Lover, including its creation after a personal “recalibrating” period, her stripped-down performances of its songs and her plans to showcase the full-length live with her Lover Fest shows next year. In two moments from the extended conversation that did not make the print story, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade also touched upon two of the album’s highlights, which double as a pair of the more interesting songs in her discography: “The Man” and “It’s Nice To Have A Friend.”

“The Man” imagines how Swift’s experience as a person, artist and figure within the music industry would have been different had she been a man, highlighting how much harder women have to work in order to succeed (“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can / Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” she sings in the chorus). The song has become a fan favorite since the release of Lover, and Swift recently opened a career-spanning medley with the song at the 2019 American Music Awards.

When asked about “The Man,” Swift pointed out specific double standards that exist in everyday life and explained why she wanted to turn that frustration into a pop single. Read Swift’s full thoughts on “The Man” below:

“It was a song that I wrote from my personal experience, but also from a general experience that I’ve heard from women in all parts of our industry. And I think that, the more we can talk about it in a song like that, the better off we’ll be in a place to call it out when it’s happening. So many of these things are ingrained in even women, these perceptions, and it’s really about re-training your own brain to be less critical of women when we are not criticizing men for the same things. So many things that men do, you know, can be phoned-in that cannot be phoned-in for us. We have to really — God, we have to curate and cater everything, but we have to make it look like an accident. Because if we make a mistake, that’s our fault, but if we strategize so that we won’t make a mistake, we’re calculating.

“There is a bit of a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t thing happening in music, and that’s why when I can, like, sit and talk and be like ‘Yeah, this sucks for me too,’ that feels good. When I go online and hear the stories of my fans talking about their experience in the working world, or even at school — the more we talk about it, the better off we’ll be. And I wanted to make it catchy for a reason — so that it would get stuck in people’s heads, [so] they would end up with a song about gender inequality stuck in their heads. And for me, that’s a good day.”

Meanwhile, the penultimate song on Lover, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend,” sounds unlike anything in Swift’s catalog thanks to its elliptical structure, lullaby-like tone and incorporation of steel drums and brass. When asked about the song, Swift talked about experimenting with her songwriting, as well as capturing a different angle of the emotional themes at the heart of Lover. Read Swift’s full thoughts on “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” below:

“It was fun to write a song that was just verses, because my whole body and soul wants to make a chorus — every time I sit down to write a song, I’m like, ‘Okay, chorus time, let’s get the chorus done.’ But with that song, it was more of like a poem, and a story and a vibe and a feeling of... I love metaphors that kind of have more than one meaning, and I think I loved the idea that, on an album called Lover, we all want love, we all want to find somebody to see our sights with and hear things with and experience things with.

“But at the end of the day we’ve been searching for that since we were kids! When you had a friend when you were nine years old, and that friend was all you talked about, and you wanted to have sleepovers and you wanted to walk down the street together and sit there drawing pictures together or be silent together, or be talking all night. We’re just looking for that, but endless sparks, as adults.”

Read the full Taylor Swift cover story here, and click here for more info on Billboard’s 2019 Women In Music event, during which Swift will be presented with the first-ever Woman of the Decade award.

[link to this tweet]

Was there ever a part of you that was like, “Oh shit, I like this darker vibe, let’s go even further down that path?” I really Loved Reputation because it felt like a rock opera, or a musical, doing it live. Doing that stadium show was so fun because it was so theatrical and so exciting to perform that, because it’s really cathartic! But I have to follow whatever direction my life is going in emotionally... The skies were opening up in my life. That’s what happened. But in a way that felt like a pink sky, a pink and purple sky, after a storm, and now it looks even more beautiful because it looked so stormy before. And that’s just like, I couldn't stop writing. I’ve never had an album with 18 songs on it before, and a lot of what I do is based on intuition. So, you know, I try not to overthink it. Who knows, there may be another dark album. I plan on doing lots of experimentation over the course of my career. Who knows? But it was a blast, I really loved it.

I mean, look, a Taylor Swift screamo album? I’ll be first in line. I’m so happy to hear that, because I think you might be the only one. Ha! I have a terrible scream. It’s obnoxious.

Why Taylor Swift's Lover Fest Will Be Her Next Big Step

Billboard // by Jason Lipshutz // December 11th 2019 - [Excerpt]

On why she chose to put together Lover fest: “I haven’t really done festivals in years - not since I was a teenager. That’s something that [the fans] don’t expect from me, so that’s why I wanted to do it. I want to challenge myself with new things and at the same time keep giving my fans something to connect to.”

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cocastyle · 5 years ago

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The In-Between Chapter 5

Stranger Things x It Crossover

with some Bill Denbrough x reader

Word Count - 4,949

Warning - Cursing (if some people don’t like that kind of stuff), feels because it’s finally time for the reunion😭💕

A/N- wow two chapters in one weekend, I’m on a roll🤩 so this chapter is pretty much going to be heavily focused on Y/N reuniting with the Party and explaining all that is going on, so no action packed scenes in this chapter lol. anyways, it’s the part of the series everyone has been looking forward to so yay!!! I really hope you guys like this!

if you would like to be added to the tag list, let me know!

T H E I N - B E T W E E N

Intro The Losers’ Club The Party Prolouge 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Epilogue

"L/N, still don't know how to stay out of trouble I see."

"Harrington, still don't know how to drive I see."

Steve feigned a look of hurt, but the corners of his mouth twitched up a little more as he looked at the girl. A screech broke the two apart as they turned to see that the demogorgon was starting to get up.

Steve's eyes widened and he looked at Y/N and the group before gesturing towards the back. "Get your asses in the car!" he yelled. "Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"

The Losers all snapped out of their shock and began to run towards the car. Bill went towards Y/N and helped her up before brushing her hair behind her ear and whispering, "Are you okay?" She nodded and he took her hand before the two quickly crawled into the car, neither of them noticing the look on Steve's face after having seen Y/N, the girl who was practically his sister, holding hands with a boy he didn't even know.

Steve didn't snap out of his surprise until the door was shut and Y/N yelled, "Go!"

It was then that he put the car into reverse and quickly began to drive backwards down the street while the demogorgon chased after them. Steve quickly reversed into a driveway before pulling out and skidding down the street.

Y/N didn't know what had her doing it, but she found herself staring back at the house and the demogorgon. To her surprise, the demogorgon had stopped short, not passing the boundary of the house as it remained in the street much like Pennywise had done when they saw It yesterday. It was only when they were turning off the road that she noticed the demogorgon walk back into the house and she furrowed her eyebrows, confused as to why it just gave up.

"What the fucking hell was that?" Richie cried out causing Y/N to look at the boy with a smirk, her thoughts long forgotten.

"Believe me now, Tozier?" she asked, her voice raised and in a taunting tone just like his had been yesterday.

Richie made a face at her while a gasp of surprise left Steve's mouth. "What the hell. That kid looks just like Mike!" Steve exclaimed.

Richie's nose scrunched up in confusion. "How the fuck do you know Mike? And why would you think we look alike you dumbass?" Richie muttered.

"Different Mike, Richie," Y/N sighed. "It's that kid I told you the first day I met you that you looked like."

"Still don't believe you," Richie rolled his eyes.

Y/N chuckled softly, her small laugh and the usual arguing that goes on between Y/N and Richie easing the tension that had fallen among the group after that near death experience.

Y/N looked around at her friends and furrowed her eyebrows before looking over at Steve, "Where's everyone else?"

Steve glanced at her from the rear view mirror before saying, "What? No 'Hello, Steve. How are you? Thanks for saving my life.' I haven't seen you in two years and the first thing you ask is where the others are?"

Y/N rolled her eyes at the boy, knowing that he was just messing with her. "Hello, Harrington. How have you been? Thank the Lord for your awful driving skills or I would be a demogorgon's dinner right about now," she muttered sarcastically.

Steve made a small face at her and she laughed as she looked at the boy. She couldn't wait for them to get to her house so she could give him a hug. She had missed him a hell of a lot that was for sure.

"I've been doing just wonderful," Steve replied, a cheeky grin on his face. "As for your question, the others are all back at your house. We snuck into the basement because we weren't quite sure if your parents know about the whole situation or not. When you didn't show up, the kids sent me out to go find you."

"So they're here? You're all here?" Y/N asked, her voice just above a whisper as her eyes flickered with excitement.

Steve smiled at the girl and nodded his head. "We're all here, squirt. Drove seventeen fucking hours just to see you," he told her thoughtfully making her smile.

"I hate to break this moment up," Richie began only to have Eddie scoff and say, "No, you don't." Richie shot him a glare before looking to Steve and asking, "But who the fuck are you?"

Steve furrowed his eyebrows and looked at the boy through the mirror. "I could ask you the same thing, Trashmouth. You're the one in my car," he retorted, not knowing that he had used one of Richie's nicknames without even knowing him.

Richie frowned, but Y/N kicked him lightly to gain his attention. "This, Rich, is the one and only Steve Harrington. He's practically my brother so don't scare him off, okay?" Y/N asked.

"Steve," Y/N called out. "These are all of my friends. We've got Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh, Stanley Uris, and Bill Denbrough. We have another friend Mike Hanlon, but he-"

Y/N trailed off and Steve instantly knew what she was talking about, remembering part of what Dustin had been rambling about during the whole seventeen hour drive. Not wanting her to feel like she had to explain, Steve glanced at the kids through his rear view mirror and nodded at them in greeting before his eyes landed on Bill who he noticed was holding Y/N's hand.

"Just your friends?" Steve questioned, his eyes narrowing as he looked to Bill who gave him an awkward and nervous smile.

Y/N nodded her head in response. "Just friends," she assured him despite the ache in her heart from having to say that. The car got really quiet at that as the Losers looked between Y/N and Bill who had let go of each other's hands and were looking away from each other.

Richie let out a gasp that made the others all look at him. "We left our bikes," he groaned as his head fell into his hands.

This small comment instantly eased the tension in the car and Y/N let out a small laugh as she shook her head and leaned back against the window of Steve's car. She looked to the rear view mirror and watched as Steve glanced back at her before giving her a smile.

It was in that moment that she realized that her friends were all about to meet. It was weird to even think about, but all Y/N could hope for was that everything went okay. Cause if her friends didn't like each other. . .well, she didn't know what she would do.

So with those thoughts rushing through her head, Y/N took in a deep breath and let her eyes fall shut. She needed a moment to enjoy the calm before the storm as they turned down her street.

Cause waiting only a few houses away in her basement were Eleven, Wheeler, Max, Lucas, Dustin, and Will and in the car with her and Steve were Bill, Richie, Eddie, Stan, Ben, and Beverly. In less than five minutes her two worlds were going to collide.

The Party and the Losers' Club were about to meet.

- - -

Once they had reached her house, Y/N had Steve park on the other side of the street and in front of a house that was for sale so that way in case her parents got home, they wouldn't think twice upon seeing the car.

The moment Steve parked the car, Y/N was practically jumping out. Steve barely had time to even put his feet on the ground before the girl hugged him with such force that he went stumbling back.

Steve had to quickly use his hand to steady himself before he looked down to see that Y/N was shaking as she hugged him, tears sliding down her face as her hands curled into fists around his shirt. The boy smiled before wrapping his arms around her, his eyes pricking with tears as he realized he was finally getting to hug Y/N after two whole years without her.

The Losers clambered out of the car before glancing over at the small reunion going on. They didn't know why it felt like their stomachs had just dropped, but the way Y/N hugged the boy made them feel weird like they couldn't quite place what was wrong. They just knew that Y/N had never hugged any of them like that or even looked that happy to see them.

The two stood there hugging for a moment longer before Y/N pulled away and looked up at Steve. "I missed you," she whispered, still looking at him in disbelief and enough love that it made Steve's heart swell.

The older boy smiled and quickly wiped her tears away before sending a wink at her. "I missed you too, squirt," he whispered before ruffling her hair, earning a laugh to escape her lips.

She then grabbed onto Steve's hand before dragging him towards the house. "Come on!" she exclaimed, excitement coursing through her body as she realized her friends were only a few feet away.

The Losers watched Steve and Y/N make their way towards her house and frowned. "Did she just forget about us?" Stan asked confused, noticing that Y/N hadn't even looked their way since getting out of the car.

"What are we? Chopped liver?" Richie muttered with a roll of his eyes as he crossed his arms.

"Guys, come on. These are Y/N's friends who she hasn't seen in two years. Cut her some slack," Beverly said before shaking her head at the others and running after Steve and Y/N.

The others stood there for a moment before their eyes slowly flickered over to Bill who was standing their in shock. He noticed his friends stares and quickly gave them a small forced smile. "Bev is right. Besides, you all know how much Y/N cares about us. She wouldn't just push us aside like that," Bill assured them.

The others nodded, hanging their heads slightly in a guilty way for having accused Y/N of forgetting them. "Come on," Bill told them before he ran after the three, the others all following right behind.

By the time the Losers had caught up with Y/N and Steve, the basement door was open and Y/N was just blankly staring at the stairs. She couldn't process what was happening.

Were her friends really down those stairs? How much had they changed? Would they not like her as much once they saw how much she had changed in the past two years? What if they didn't like her friends? What if they didn't approve of Bill or Richie or Eddie or Stan or Beverly or Ben or even Mike when they got him back? How would she be able to deal with that?

"Stop," a voice called from behind her causing Y/N and Steve to glance back to see the Losers all staring at their friend.

"You're thinking too much," Eddie pointed out.

"They still love you," Beverly assured her.

"And you're fucking amazing so what is there to worry about?" Richie asked.

Steve glanced between the group and Y/N before noticing the way her shoulders relaxed and a smile appeared on her face.

Bill locked eyes with the girl and gave her a small nod. "Go see your friends," he told her, a smile on his face as he knew how much she had missed her friends from Hawkins.

Y/N grinned at him and the rest of the group before looking down at the stairs and beginning to make her descent. It was like all she could hear was her own heart beating in her ears as she made her way down the stairs, but it suddenly disappeared as soon as she reached the bottom.

She looked up and her eyes were wide as she watched the Party all stop talking and turn to look at the stairs. Their eyes widened slightly at the sight of her and the group all stared in silence for a minute, none of them moving because of how afraid they were that this wasn't real.

Eleven was the first to break the silence as she let out a small sob and bolted up from where she had been sitting on the ground next to Wheeler. Before Y/N could process what was happening, Eleven had wrapped her arms around the girl, soft sobs of relief escaping her lips.

Eleven's warm and loving hold on her was enough to make the girl break and Y/N let out a sob of relief as she instantly hugged Eleven back. No words were exchanged as the two girls hugged and Max had to pull Eleven away just so that she could take her turn in hugging Y/N.

Everyone in the Party had started to cry as they finally got to to see Y/N again. Two years was an awfully long time and only getting to talk to her every once in a while over the radio did not help with the long distance.

"Woah, it's my turn!" Lucas exclaimed as he gently pushed Max away.

"Hey! I only just started to hug her!" Max complained.

"Yeah? Well I was friends with Y/N first so when I say it's my turn, then it's my turn," Lucas argued before turning to the girl who had been his first friend. The two were both already crying but they let out a breathy laugh before hugging each other tightly.

"Fuck, I missed you guys," Y/N said as she pulled away from Lucas and went to the next closest person which was Dustin. "Dustin, thank you so much for getting everyone down here."

"Of course. We promised each other that if either of us ever needed anything we would be there, didn't we?" Dustin asked as he gave the girl a big squeeze before smiling widely at her as he struggled to wipe his own tears of joy away.

As soon as Dustin let her go, Will had launched himself at the girl causing Y/N to grin and yell out in excitement, "Will!" She hugged the boy back with just as much enthusiasm.

Will chuckled and the two pulled away and laughed slightly at how much the other was crying. Y/N reached out and wiped the boy's tears away while he did the same for her. The two then sent each other smiles before Y/N turned to the last person in the group who she hadn't hugged yet.

Wheeler stood with his hands in his pocket, tears falling down his face as he tried to suppress the huge grin that was begging to be let out. "L/N," he greeted making Y/N chuckle.

"Wheeler," Y/N greeted as she nodded at the boy.

Wheeler couldn't hold his grin back any longer and he let out a laugh as tears streamed down his face. He held his arms out and the two teens met halfway as they hugged each other.

"Holy shit! You've grown so much!" Y/N exclaimed as she pulled away to look at her friend in surprise. "What have they been feeding you?"

Wheeler chuckled and nudged the girl playfully. "Very funny," he told her.

Y/N smiled before taking a step back and looking at all of her friends. "Shit, I'm going to start crying again. I've missed you guys so much, like you don't understand," she said as she reached out and hugged Eleven again, the others all joining in so that it was a huge group hug.

By this point, Steve and the Losers had all made it to the bottom of the stairs. Steve watched the little reunion with a smile on his face while the Losers all blinked in surprise at finally getting to see the kids Y/N had been talking about for so long.

That was until Richie noticed that the boy that was hugging Y/N looked really familiar.

Richie let out a loud gasp before yelling out, "What the fuck! That kid looks like me! Why does that kid look like me?"

The Party all let go of Y/N, allowing for her to turn around and see that Richie and the rest of the Losers were all looking at Wheeler in surprise. Wheeler let out a small gasp of surprise as he looked at Richie, his eyebrows furrowing slightly.

Richie stormed down the stairs before stopping only inches away from Wheeler while everyone else just stared at the scene with wide eyes. "Who the hell are you? And why do you look like me? I know everyone wants to fucking be me but I didn't think anyone would take it this literal," Richie frowned, pissed at the prospect of someone looking just like him.

"Maybe it's one of those doppelgänger things," Max explained in a quiet voice as she looked between the two boys in surprise.

"No, this is a fucking prank. It has to be," Richie said, not believing a word anyone was telling him.

Wheeler frowned and snapped out of his shock before looking to Y/N. "Y/N, who is this guy?" he asked confused.

Y/N smiled and walked over before wrapping an arm around Beverly and Richie's shoulders. "Guys," Y/N said. "These are my friends." The grin on her face was unlike any other as she began to introduce her friends.

"We've got Eddie Kaspbrak," Y/N said as she pointed to the boy who gave them a small wave. "Ben Hanscom." Said boy smiled and nodded in greeting. "Stan the man Uris." Stan rolled his eyes at the girl but couldn't help the smile on his face as he waved at the Party. "Then we've got the one and only Beverly Marsh." Beverly mock saluted the group making the two girls giggle before Y/N turned to Richie. "This," she said as she ruffled the boy's hair earning a groan of complaint, "is Richie Tozier."

"And last but not least," Y/N grinned as she let go of Richie and Beverly to walk over to Bill. She stood behind the boy and put her hands on his arms as she peaked her smiling face out from behind his shoulder. "We've got Bill Denbrough."

Bill smiled down at her making the girl look up at him with a bright smile, the look on the teens' faces making Steve and all of the boy members of the Party frown and cross their arms protectively while Max and Eleven let out small squeals and gripped onto each other's arms.

The teens didn't even realize they were staring at each other for a while before Steve suddenly coughed awkwardly, breaking the two apart. Y/N sent a sharp glare in Steve's direction while he merely held his hands up in surrender as he tried to act innocent.

Y/N rolled her eyes and turned her attention to the Losers as she walked over to the Party. "Okay, Losers, listen up. These are the people you have heard me talk nonstop about, so please be nice, okay?" she asked. "I'm talking to you, Richie."

Richie feigned shock while Y/N rolled her eyes at the boy. She didn't wait for a response as she pointed towards Steve, "You've already had the pleasure of meeting Harrington over there. Sorry he had to be the first one you met."

Steve feigned a look of shock while Y/N ignored him and moved on. She may have been a little mad at him for breaking her and Bill apart, but she wasn't about to voice her feelings.

"This is Lucas Sinclair. He's been my best friend since we met back in the first grade," Y/N explained as Lucas nodded at the Losers. "Then we've got Dustin Henderson, the little shit that gives me a run for my money when it comes to science things." Dustin chuckled and waved at the group.

"Next we've got Mike Wheeler who, despite being a dumbass over half the time, is probably one of the best people you will ever get the chance to meet," Y/N said as Wheeler rolled his eyes and nudged the girl. "Then we've got Will Byers. He's an amazing artist and probably one of the best to ever play D&D," Y/N told them as she hugged Will from the side, the boy instantly hugging her back.

"D&D?" Richie questioned causing the Party and Y/N to gasp.

"Richard Tozier! I'm disappointed in you," Y/N frowned. "We've talked about Dungeons and Dragons before you dumbass."

"Oh, that game. Sorry, L/N. You know I'm more of an arcade type of person," Richie pointed out.

Y/N shook her head at the boy before moving onto the next person who was Max. "This stunner is Max Mayfield. She moved to Hawkins a little bit before I left and can beat anyone in a skateboarding race," Y/N said.

"And finally we've got the lovely Jane Hopper, but everyone calls her Eleven," Y/N told the Losers as she wrapped an arm around the girl and gave her a hug.

"It's n-n-nice to finally m-m-meet you guys," Bill said as he smiled at the Party. He knew how much these people meant to Y/N, so that meant that they automatically meant a lot to him to. The Party smiled back, but their eyes flickered over to Richie once they noticed him walking over.

Y/N should've known what Richie was going to say before he said it, but she didn't know why she hadn't realized what he was doing as he walked up to Max and Eleven. "L/N, you didn't tell me you had two smoking hot babes for best friends," Richie said as he winked at the two girls and smirked.

Y/N rolled her eyes before stepping out in front of the two girls and pushing Richie away. "I know Eddie and Stan are pretty hot, aren't they?" she asked making Richie frown while Eddie and Stan snickered. "Don't even think about it, Trashmouth. They're-"

"Taken," Wheeler announced as he went over to Eleven's side and protectively wrapped an arm around her waist.

"They're taken," Lucas declared again just to prove a point as his arm wrapped around Max's shoulders.

Both boys were sending Richie death glares while their girlfriends rolled their eyes at the boys. Richie held his hands up in surrender but that didn't stop him from winking at the two girls and saying, "Well, whenever you decide you want a real man, I-"

"They will make sure not to come to you," Y/N cut him off making the Losers all chuckle while Eddie rolled his eyes at Richie and shoved him behind him in an attempt to make the boy shut the hell up.

"Now that introductions are out of the way, just what the hell is going on?" Steve questioned as he stood at the front of the group with his hands on his hips.

"Yeah, why did you need us to drive all the way here?" Dustin asked.

Lucas glanced at Y/N and said, "What they said. What the hell is going on? Y/N, didn't your parents move you away from Hawkins to stay out of trouble?"

"You would think," Y/N chuckled nervously as she ran a hand through her hair in frustration. A deep feeling of guilt suddenly washed over her as she realized that for a moment she had pretty much forgotten about Mike and the whole Upside Down and It situation.

The Losers all gave her small nods that told her to go ahead and she took in a deep breath before beginning to tell the Party everything. She started with the night she took out the trash and went all the way until what had happened only a half an hour before.

The whole time, the Party remained blank face, none of them knowing how to respond to the news that the Upside Down was back or that a clown was terrorizing people.

"I'm sorry," Wheeler muttered as he shook his head. "Did you say clown?"

"I'm obviously the more superior one seeing as I wasn't dumb as fuck to not understand a single word she was saying," Richie muttered to Eddie making Wheeler glare at him.

"I'm sorry. What did you just say?" Wheeler asked, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Richie.

"I called you dumb as fuck," Richie said again, a smug smirk on his face.

Wheeler went to take a step forward, but Eleven was quick to grab his arm and pull him back, her hand soothingly running up and down his arm as she looked to Y/N. "I don't understand," she said.

Y/N sent her a small sympathetic smile before saying, "Okay, let me give the simpler version. Basically, our friend Mike Hanlon has been taken into the Upside Down by not only demogorgons, but a being that presents itself as a clown. The clown named Pennywise or It goes around terrorizing people and eating children. I called you guys down here because we need both groups.

"You," Y/N began as she gestured towards the Party, "know about the Upside Down and have fought it multiple times."

"They," Y/N said as she pointed to the Losers, "have fought It before and know how to handle him."

"If we combine both groups and what we know, we should, theoretically, be able to stop both It and the Upside Down while also saving Mike," Y/N explained.

"Demogorgons and a place called the Upside Down? Why does this sound more believable than It?" Stan muttered with a groan.

“I'm sorry, but there is literally no way this is true," Lucas muttered as he shook his head. "A demon clown? Do you hear yourself right now, Y/N?"

"Come on, Lucas," Y/N pleaded before she looked to the whole Party. "Guys, I wouldn't lie about something like this and you know it. My friend is trapped down there and we have no way of knowing of he is even alive or not without you guys. I need you guys to trust me on this one, okay? Please, it's all I ask."

The Party all softened at her words, the teens beginning to put their full trust into the girl. The only one that looked hesitant was Steve who was looking to the ground as he rubbed his neck. Y/N looked to the boy and whispered, "Steve."

Steve let his head lift up slightly, his eyes flickering over to the girl who was standing there almost hopelessly. He knew the Upside Down part was true because of the demogorgon, but a demon clown? There was no way. But then he saw the fright in the girl's eyes and it wasn't fright over the creatures terrorizing them. No, it was fright for her friend.

For a moment he was reminded of the other times he had seen that look like when Will had been taken or Eleven had to close the gate or even when they had been trapped in the Russian Lab together and he had forced her to leave him behind.

It was the same look that told him everything he needed to know. Y/N was right— she wouldn't lie about something like this. She needed them to believe her. She needed him to believe her and as her best friend and honorary brother, it was his job to believe her.

"This is ridiculous," Steve pointed out, his eyes not leaving Y/N's as he looked at her.

"Oh, it's real," she assured him, the tone of her voice making everyone in the room gulp slightly at those words. "Way more real than you or I could ever imagine."

There was a beat of silence as Y/N let her eyes flicker over all of her friends. She already knew the Losers believed her, especially after they had been there with her since the beginning. The only ones she had to convince were the Party and Steve and she really hoped she had been able to do just that.

"This is crazy. Like batshit crazy, but I believe you and I'm in," Lucas announced making Y/N smile.

"Me too," Will said as he nodded at the girl. "They'll never be gone, not really. It's just a matter of time before they come back again. So right now, we need to stop them while we still can."

"I'm in," Wheeler announced while Richie mockingly mimicked him from beside Eddie who elbowed him in the gut.

“Same here," Eleven and Max said at the same time before high fiving each other for speaking in unison.

Y/N looked to Dustin who sighed before giving her a smile. "You know I believe you. I always do," he told her.

Y/N smiled before letting her eyes flicker over to Steve once again, the last but most important person she needed to believe her. "Steve?" Y/N questioned, her eyes hopeful as she looked to him. Steve stared at the girl for a moment before sighing and letting a grin appear on his face.

"You're lucky I brought the bat."

* * *

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