Entertainment
Taylor Swift’s love of the color orange sets social media branding ablaze
Taylor Swift‘s upcoming album release and her love of all things orange isn’t lost on her fans — or brands that are seeking a ride on what has become an enormous economic tailwind.
On Wednesday after Swift went on the “New Heights” podcast co-hosted by her boyfriend, NFL football star Travis Kelce, to announce the imminent release of her 12th studio album “The Life of a Showgirl,” major companies went into marketing overdrive.
Numerous corporations, from United Airlines to Olive Garden, began posting orange hued memes on their own social media accounts soon after the new album was announced. Shake Shack, FedEx, Buffalo Wild Wings, Cinnabon, Walmart and Netflix did, too.
That is because Swift appeared onstage wearing orange numerous times toward the end of her Eras Tour and she discussed her feelings about the color on the Wednesday podcast.
“It feels like energetically how my life has felt,” the 14-time Grammy winner tells co-host Jason Kelce.
Lewis Joly / AP
Many, it seemed, saw value in tying their brand to Swift.
More than a dozen NHL teams followed with posts on social media acknowledging Swift’s new album, both north and south of the Canadian border.
Even X got in on the action, declaring that it had a new profile pic: a glittery orange X. The post has garnered 5.5 million views so far.
Google is using its search engine to celebrate the October release of Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl.” Users search for “Taylor Swift,” are greeted with a stream of orange digital confetti, along with a flaming orange heart and the phrase, “And, baby, that’s show business for you.”
Swift’s tour appearances have become economic events. The singer’s Eras Tour two years ago was the first such tour to cross the billion-dollar mark, according to Pollstar’s 2023 year-end charts. Cities and their surrounding areas registered a sizeable economic boost after Swift appeared, with thousands of fans making the pilgrimage and spending money at hotels, restaurants and elsewhere.
Swift also mentioned during the Wednesday podcast that she had Lasik eye surgery. In response, the X account for LASIK.com wasted no time promoting the fortuitous namedrop. The post currently has more than 389,000 views and 15,000 likes.
About 500,000 Americans undergo Lasik every year, CBS News recently reported. And while the American Refractive Surgery Council says the complication rate is less than 1%, side effects are not uncommon and should not be taken lightly by those considering the procedure.
Swift’s two-hour chat with the Kelces’ marks the singer’s first ever podcast interview, a milestone moment for the medium.
By Thursday afternoon, Wednesday night’s talk had already been seen more than 11.7 million times on YouTube. Clips distributed on Instagram, TikTok, X and elsewhere have received more than 400 million views, and the episode was also available for streaming on audio platforms.
It has further to go to be a record-setter, though. The most-watched podcast episode ever on YouTube, and likely the most-consumed podcast ever, is by a company called Thmanyah, a Saudi Arabian Arabic podcast network and independent journalism platform, according to its website. The video has racked up 144 million views in two years.
Swift, who infrequently gives interviews to journalists, revealed key information about her upcoming album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” and talked about her relationships with Travis Kelce and her family, and her joy of gaining full control of her past work — a yearslong quest.
Entertainment
Anne Hathaway shares major news about ‘Princess Diaries 3’
Anne Hathaway is ready to wear her crown again as Queen Mia of Genovia.
The Oscar-winning actress has given a major update on Princess Diaries 3 in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, confirming that a new installment is actively in the works 22 years after Princess Diaries 2.
“One hundred percent, we’re constantly working on it,” she said, revealing that development briefly took a backseat while filming The Devil Wears Prada 2 — another of Hathaway’s highly-anticipated sequels, which hits theatres on May 1.
“[Devil Wears Prada 2] cropped up unexpectedly and took over the space,” Hathaway explained, adding that it became impossible to focus on both projects at once. But now, the plan is clearer.
“The intention is to make Princess Diaries hopefully next,” she declared, noting that the film “is not greenlit or confirmed yet.”
Still, the demand is undeniable. But Hathaway acknowledged that “everybody wants it,” she and her TDWP costar Meryl Streep emphasised that “you’ve got to wait for the right script.”
The original Princess Diaries released in 2001 introduces Mia Thermopolis, a regular teenager who discovers she’s heir to a kingdom — a role that turned Hathaway into a household name.
Looking back at the film, Hathaway tearfully told People magazine, “This is the role that changed my life. And I’m standing with Julie Andrews, which is just insane.”
Entertainment
Donnie Wahlberg shares emotional moments with “Boston Blue” cast after show was renewed
Entertainment
Nasa unveils new space telescope to probe mysteries of ‘dark energy’
Nasa unveiled a new telescope on Tuesday to scan vast swathes of the universe for planets outside our solar system and probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
The Roman space telescope is expected to discover tens of thousands of planets, possibly offering clarity about how many could be out there.
“Roman will give the Earth a new atlas of the universe,” Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman told a news conference at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, where the telescope went on display.
The 12-metre (39-feet), silvery contraption with massive solar panels will be transported to Florida ahead of a launch into space aboard a SpaceX rocket planned for September at the earliest.
Roman, which took more than $4 billion and over a decade to build, is named after astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, nicknamed the “Mother of Hubble” for her role in developing the landmark space telescope.
Thirty-six years after Hubble launched into space, revolutionising astronomical observations, Nasa hopes Roman will help to shed light on questions that remain unresolved.
Boasting a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s, the telescope will sweep across vast regions of space from its position 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth.
The telescope will send 11 terabytes of data a day down to Earth, said Mark Melton, a systems engineer at Goddard Space Flight Centre.
“In the first year, we’ll have sent down more data than Hubble will have for its entire life,” he told AFP.
The telescope’s wide-angle lens will allow Nasa to conduct a census of the objects that make up our universe, said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate.
“Roman will discover tens of thousands of new planets outside our solar system. It will reveal billions of galaxies, thousands of supernovae and tens of billions of stars,” she said.
This wealth of information will enable Nasa to tease out areas of interest that can then be investigated by complementary telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
Study the invisible
But Roman will also study the invisible — dark matter and dark energy, whose origins remain unknown but which are thought to constitute 95% of our universe.
Dark matter is believed to be the glue that holds galaxies together, while dark energy pulls them apart by making the universe expand faster and faster over time.
Thanks to its infrared vision, the telescope will be able to observe light emitted by celestial bodies billions of years ago, effectively looking back in time to hopefully discover more about the two phenomena.
Complementing the work of Europe’s Euclid space telescope and the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, Roman will probe “how the dark matter structures itself throughout cosmic time” and “calculate how fast galaxies are moving away from us,” Darryl Seligman, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University, told AFP.
These discoveries could fundamentally change our understanding of the structure of our universe, said astrophysicist Julie McEnery, who led the Roman project.
“If Roman wins a Nobel Prize at some point, it’s probably for something we haven’t even thought about or questioned yet,” said Melton.
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