Sam Richards 

Bieber and Beyoncé at Coachella – plus the rest of today’s breaking pop culture news

Yes, we're here again with another day's worth of new tracks, trailers, gifs, gossip and various distractions from the daily grind. Coming up today: all the tittle tattle from Coachella and the MTV Movie Awards, plus some stuff that's not just about famous people self-justifying their celebrity status…
  
  

Better the devil you Knowles: Beyoncé and Solange at Coachella.
Better the devil you Knowles: Beyoncé and Solange at Coachella. Photograph: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Coachella Photograph: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Coachella

That's yer lot

Thanks for joining me today.

Time to head for home and the comfort of the flickering screen. On telly tonight, you can find stuff about bees, reverends, crime hotspots, apologetic criminals and a sweet little costume drama called Game Of Thrones.

There's also the dramatic-sounding Restaurant Wars: The Battle For Manchester. Read what out own Filipa Jodelka had to say about that here.

Instead, if you just fancy wrapping yourself in a little cosmic disco cocoon, Prins Thomas's new album is streaming here.

We're back tomorrow, and every day, forever. Get used to it. Byee.

So fresh! So clean!

Here's Catherine Gough, who's been scouring Tumblr in search of clever pop cultural memes. And by jove, she's found one.

"Today's afternoon art high comes in the form of French artist David Redon's hip-hop/vintage ad remix memes. Andre 3000 and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton stand atop a giant soap in a swimming pool, whilst fifties pin-ups splash around below, cheerfully encouraging the Outkast boys to believe that "lots of lather to make you lovelier!" There's also Missy Elliot in a hazy 1950s picnic scenario, serenely offering a jolly "All N My Grill!" hot and spicy burger from behind an open car boot, Cypress Hill's headache remedy and Pharrell's toothpaste."

Updated

We don't want your kind in here

So our favourite taboo-busting scuzz rockers Fat White Family have been apparently been banned from supporting Franz Ferdinand at Somerset House this summer. According to the powers that be, FWF are "unsuitable to play at the venue and do not fit in with the ethos of the event". Which, if true, is certainly a good way of making the Somerset House Summer Series sound even more blandly bourgeois than it already is. (Other featured 2014 artists: Clean Bandit, Kodaline, Bastille, Sam Smith).

Fat White Family have responded eloquently, citing one-time bad boy of art Édouard Manet, whose paintings now hang in Somerset House's Courtauld Gallery. Still, there must be some pride to be gained from the blackballing. Who gets banned from anything these days?

Wonder if this is what the organisers deemed "unsuitable"?

New music alert

Something for everyone here.

First off, Disclosure are rush-releasing a new single tomorrow, in collaboration with Liverpool producer Friend Within. It's called The Mechanism and maintains the high standard of their Settle material.

Continuing the Liverpudlian theme, Echo & The Bunnymen are back with a couple of new tracks that recall their mid-80s pomp. I can't embed them but you can listen to Holy Moses here and Lovers On The Run here.

On a hip-hop tip, here's resurgent rapper TI, jumping on Wiz Khalifa's We Dem Boyz.

And finally, for the rockers: scorching 1969 live versions of Led Zeppelin's Good Times Bad Times and Communication Breakdown, from a forthcoming rerelease of their debut album.

And the award for most superfluous celebrity backslap goes to…

I don't really understand the point of the MTV Movie Awards, but it gave a chance for Zac Efron to take his shirt off (again), for Mark Wahlberg to swear a lot and for Conan O'Brien to record a sketch featuring the most celebrity cameos ever, or something. The video isn't available to view in this country, but maybe count that as a blessing.

However, several movie studios took the opportunity to air their new blockbuster trailers, and Ben Travers has the roundup here.

A song of Iceland and fire

Look! Elemental Icelandic warblers Sigur Ros make a guest appearance in tonight's episode of Game Of Thrones, performing the Lannisters' eerie theme song, The Rains Of Castamere.

Hopefully I'm not going to get lynched by the spoiler police for revealing that King Joffrey bottles them off after about 30 seconds. Perhaps he preferred The National's version:

I didn't realise this, but The Rains Of Castamere – being a song that mythologises Tywin Lannister's annihilation of a rival clan in years gone by – is played by the band at Season 3's "red wedding" as a signal for Lord Frey's men to turn on the Starks.

I was invited to a Game Of Thrones wedding recently. I drunk so much wine, I got completely slaughtered.

More Coachella goodies

Lorde's full set:

Haim's full set:

Queens Of The Stone Age's full set:

And Aaron Paul's latest photobomb:

“It takes a minnow to catch a barracuda, a barracuda to catch a shark”

The last film Philip Seymour Hoffman completed before he died was A Most Wanted Man – a spy thriller based on a John Le Carré novel, directed by Control's Anton Corbijn and also starring Willem Defoe and Rachel McAdams. The Guardian's Xan Brooks was cautious with the praise when he reviewed it at Sundance but this trailer is selling it to me. It looks like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy meets Homeland (before it went bonkers).

Rey of light

Lana Del Rey's just shared her comeback single, West Coast. It starts off in fairly standard, breathy Del Rey territory but pulls off a pretty audacious tempo change for the chorus. Best thing she's done since Video Games?

Cameo wars

Coachella is the festival where American celebrities go to be photographed in tiny shorts. It's always sunny, so people go on about it like it's the promised land. But any festival where you can't buy cider in jugs or enjoy a DJ set from Top Buzz or SL2 gets the thumbs down from me. However, Coachella is usually a good barometer of what's hot and what's not in the world of blog-friendly indie and hip-hop.

This year, the must-have accessory for any middle-of-the-bill performer was a cameo from a more famous artist.

Solange had her big sis Beyoncé:

Chance The Rapper had Justin Bieber:

Nas had Jay Z and P Diddy:

Girl Talk had Busta Rhymes and Juicy J:

Arcade fire had Debbie Harry:

Pharrell had Gwen Stefani and Snoop:

And Muse covered Nirvana:

However, according to our woman on the ground, Rebecca Nicholson, Outkast were blown off-course by the desert winds and Pharrell had to sing through a sandstorm. A sandstorm? Give me good old English mud any day.

The more you ignore him, the closer he gets

Happy Monday, everybody. Particularly if you're a Morrissey fan. Not that Morrissey fans ever get particular happy. But there is solace, presumably, in the news that Lord Moan is back with a new album in July. It's called World Peace Is None Of Your Business, and the track titles are deliciously Morrissey-esque:

1 WORLD PEACE IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS (4:21)
2 NEAL CASSADY DROPS DEAD (4:02)
3 ISTANBUL (4:40)
4 I'M NOT A MAN (7:50)
5 EARTH IS THE LONELIEST PLANET (3:38)
6 STAIRCASE AT THE UNIVERSITY (5:30)
7 THE BULLFIGHTER DIES (2:05)
8 KISS ME A LOT (4:03)
9 SMILER WITH KNIFE (5:13)
10 KICK THE BRIDE DOWN THE AISLE (5:18)
11 MOUNTJOY (5:08)
12 OBOE CONCERTO (4:07)

Let's hope for something along these lines, rather than the grey plod of recent Moz albums:

 

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