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One for the History Books IN SO MANY WAYS, 2024 WAS AN UNPRECEDENTED YEAR It was a year of firsts. At the Oscars there were 32 first-time winners, including Robert Downey Jr. and Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Taylor Swift became the first artist with four Album of the Year Grammys. For the first time, breaking was an Olympic event. (Instant armchair experts weighed in on the kangaroo hops of Australian breakdancer Raygun, making her a viral sensation if not a medalist.) Also in Paris Simone Biles became the most decorated Olympic gymnast ever, while first-time host Snoop Dogg proved a delightful companion to viewers. Not all historic firsts commemorated achievements. In the U.K., where the royal family has been largely private about health matters, both King Charles and Princess Kate…
“Why y’all acting like you don’t know this song?” chided Miley Cyrus to a Grammys audience that took the nudge and joined her celebration. She had just beaten out Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and others to win her first Grammy (for Best Pop Solo Performance) and was now—with legs and fringe and strut recalling Tina Turner—singing her self-empowerment anthem “Flowers.” The song, which has been streamed more than 2.7 billion times, went on to win Record of the Year. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and this is my first time actually being taken seriously at the Grammys?” she marveled with some edge in W magazine. “If we want to talk stats and numbers, then where the f--- was I? This is not about arrogance. I am proud of…
There were signs. In the documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told, an addendum to This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, the musical film that very public Jennifer Lopez released in February, her more private husband, Ben Affleck, calls them “two people with different kinds of approaches trying to learn to compromise.” Twenty years after they called off their 2004 engagement, Lopez filed for divorce on Aug. 20, the second anniversary of their big blowout celebration in Georgia. (They’d quietly wed in Vegas in July 2022.) Lopez, 55, and Affleck, 52, had been living apart since April, neither one in the $60.8 million L.A. mansion they’d bought together in 2023, though reunited occasionally for family events with their kids, Lopez’s 13-year-old twins with her ex-husband Marc Anthony,…
Emma Stone won for Poor Things, as did awards season favorite Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers. But the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony was largely a rematch of the Barbenheimer weekend of July 2023, when Barbie proved she was Kenough to beat Oppenheimer at the box office. At the March 10 event, however, the biopic about the father of the atomic bomb earned seven wins, while Barbie, which also had a Best Picture nod, did not get nominations for director Greta Gerwig or star Margot Robbie. (Proving, some said, the meta-pink-feminist comedy’s whole point.) Two of Oppenheimer’s statues went to lead Cillian Murphy and Supporting Actor Robert Downey Jr. “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy—in that order,” said Downey, who beat out Barbie’s Ryan Gosling. (But…
Where was Kate? The Princess of Wales was scarcely seen in the early part of 2024 following a planned abdominal surgery in January. When she didn’t return to royal duties for weeks, Internet theories proliferated, fueled in early March by a U.K. Mother’s Day portrait with her children that appeared to have been digitally manipulated. (News agencies pulled it, and Kate apologized for the “minor adjustments.”) Then came word that left those who had joked about the photo and her absence feeling shamed: Kate announced in a March 22 video (above) that she had cancer. She and William had had to adjust to the “shock,” she said, and to take time to explain to children George, 11, Charlotte, 9, and Louis, 6, “in a way that is appropriate for them,…
“This ain’t a country album. This is a Beyoncé album,” said the woman herself just before the March 29 release of Cowboy Carter. “And I am proud to share it with y’all!” Her 12th collection featured a distinct twang, duets with legends including Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, and a horse and Stetson on the cover. Along with its first radio hit, “Texas Hold ’Em,” Cowboy made the Houston native the first Black woman to top Billboard’s Country album and single charts. It soon hit more than a billion Spotify streams and by year’s end had 11 Grammy nominations. So it was a surprise to some that the effort earned no Country Music Award nods. “I feel like those songs were everywhere,” said Kelly Clarkson. But Beyoncé said, when she…
