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Taylor Swift did it again. She had a series of shows in Melbourne last weekend, and there, she announced “The Bolter,” a bonus track for The Tortured Poets Department. She performed the first of her concerts at Sydney’s Accor Stadium today (February 23) and at opening night, she revealed news of “The Albatross,” another new Tortured Poets bonus track.

Naturally, one of the first things fans wondered about is what the song is about.

What Is Taylor Swift’s “The Albatross” About?

Based on the song’s title and elements of Swift’s life and history, fans are coming up with theories about the lyrics’ thematic elements.

The Swifties at Merriam-Webster came through with some information, tweeting two definitions of the word: “albatross | noun. a: something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety. b: something that greatly hinders accomplishment : ENCUMBRANCE.”

Those were connections made by a lot of Swiftie tweets, with some pointing out how Swift’s fame might be the albatross she’s referring to. Some have connected the song title with the “Am I allowed to cry?” text Swift shared on Instagram to accompany the song news. One theorized, “‘am I allowed to cry?’ Hits so hard especially with the albatross being the name of the file. The albatross is probably about how fame is always the constant problem in all her relationships which stops her from having a normal life. But she can’t complain because this is the life she always wanted so she can’t cry or express any negative emotions about it even if it’s the albatross in her life. And the constant dehumanisation of her just because of her status she can’t cry she can’t feel sad or angry. To the point she doesn’t know If she is allowed to express any type of negative emotions fearing it might come out as ungrateful.”

Some others looked more into the behaviors of the albatross bird, like how it nests on remote islands and mates for life.

Check out some more reactions below.

Another weekend in Australia, another new song announcement. Taylor Swift had a run of shows in Melbourne last weekend, and while there, she announced “The Bolter,” a bonus track for The Tortured Poets Department. Now, Swift played her first show at Sydney’s Accor Stadium today (February 23) and delivered news of another new bonus track: “The Albatross.”

Shortly after sharing the news on stage, she posted the alternate album cover on Instagram along with a poetic line that reads, “Am I allowed to cry?” The new edition of The Tortured Poets Department featuring “The Albatross” is now available for pre-order on Swift’s website.

Swift also recently reflected on her weekend in Melbourne, sharing photos from the shows and writing, “Melbourne, what do I even say to you after over 288,000 of you came and danced with us in the last 3 nights ??! That was unforgettable. You were on another LEVEL. Thank you for the memories. I’ll revisit the ones from this weekend often.”

Meanwhile, Travis Kelce couldn’t make it to the Melbourne shows, but he was on hand in Sydney. Kelce and Swift visited the Sydney Zoo yesterday, and naturally, he was in the audience for today’s performance.

The Tortured Poets Department is out 4/19 via Republic. Find more information here.

Lil Durk is back with some heat. Tonight (February 23), the Chicago rapper has begun rolling out a new project, sharing his new single, “Old Days.”

On the new single, Durk looks back on his tumultuous journey, which has shaped him into who he is today.

“I miss the old days, the old ways, my history iconic / I was takin’ so many pills, I was so high, I really abused it,” he recalls on one of the song’s verses. Now, in a better place in terms of both his mental and physical health, he finds himself wanting peace, but fears the idea may now be a pipe dream. “I wish I could stop the war, I really wanna live in peace / I wish I could stop the war, but it’s too late for them to speak.”

2024 is gearing up to be a big year for Durk. Earlier this month, Durk won his first Grammy for Best Melodic Rap Performance for his J. Cole collaboration, “All My Life.” He also joined Cole and Drake for their It’s All A Blur — Big As The What? Tour. While celebrating these huge milestones, Durk has been teasing his next project, Love Songs 4 The Streets 3.

You can see the “Old Days” video above.

We are just weeks away from Justin Timberlake‘s new album, Everything I Thought It Was. And during the rollout, the pop hitmaker has been pulling out all the stops. Over the past few weeks, Timberlake has performed two free pop-up shows, performed as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and shared new songs by way of live performances. Tonight (February 23), Timberlake has shared “Drown,” the latest taste of Everything I Thought It Was.

The new single shows a vulnerable side of Timberlake, as he details feelings of betrayal by a lover.

“You left me alone out in the dark with all of your demons / Got caught up in the tide of all the tears you cried / Yeah, you know I was blinded by my heart, sinking from the start / Should’ve never followed you this far, now I’m in the deep end / And you let me drown / You didn’t even try to save me,” he sings on the song’s chorus.

While the past few years have placed Timberlake in a controversial light, Timberlake seems to be telling his side of the story through music. Though it’s unclear who the song is about, Timberlake’s ability to tell a story through a pop ballad hasn’t dwindled.

You can listen to “Drown” above.

Everything I Thought It Was is out 3/15 via RCA. Find more information here.

Some students choose to live at home while they go to college to save money on living expenses, but that’s generally only an option for families who live in college towns or cities with large universities where a student can easily commute.

For University of British Columbia student Tim Chen, that “easy commute” is more than 400 miles each way.

Twice a week, Chen hops on a flight from his home city of Calgary, flies a little more than an hour to Vancouver to attend his classes, then flies back home the same night. And though it’s hard to believe, this routine actually saves him approximately $1,000 a month.

How does that math work? Well, each round trip flight costs around $150, so twice a week puts him at $1,200 a month for flights. Meanwhile, according to CTV, rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in Vancouver is around $2,100 (though according to reporting in the Vancouver Sun, the average 1-bedroom apartment has actually hit a whopping $3,000 a month). Chen had actually been living in Vancouver previously, but gave up his rental when he went on vacation. When he returned, the price on the place he’d been renting had gone up to $2,500.

“I thought, why don’t I just stay at Calgary and then just fly here, it’s like a one-hour flight, that’s like the same as taking a bus,” he told CTV.

Chen lives with his parents in Calgary and only pays a small amount for utilities, so despite the cost of flights, commuting by plane is ultimately far cheaper than living in Vancouver.

Plus, imagine how many frequent flier miles he’s racking up.

— (@)

Chen is not the first student to commute to college by commercial airplane. An engineering student who was accepted to a one-year master’s program at University of California, Berkeley, flew to school from Los Angeles, where he had an affordable place to live and where he planned to return when his program was finished. Once he crunched the numbers, he realized it would actually save him money to commute by plane to the Bay area and take the train from the airport to campus three times a week rather than live in Berkeley.

In all, that student spent $5592.66 over the 10 months it took him to complete his program, which was less than what he would have paid for just two months living in Berkeley.

We’re living in some strange economic times, where people are having to get creative about where and how they live. Some people have discovered that unconventional lifestyles, such as living on a cruise ship, in vacation rentals or at an all-inclusive resort can be less expensive—or just as expensive—as traditional rent or mortgage payments (plus relevant living expenses). And now that more people are able to work remotely—one of the few positives to come out of the pandemic—such alternatives are more doable than ever.

Of course, the “time is money”consideration is real, and the hassle of going to the airport twice a week in the morning and evening like Tim Chen does might not be worth it for some people. But with rent prices nearly 30% higher than they were before the pandemic, more people are in need of creative solutions to cost-of-living conundrums.

Even if that means living at home and hopping a flight to school several hundred miles awaay.

Being in the service industry can be hard. People have to spend long hours on their feet, deal with repetitive movements that can create pain and sometimes interact with not so nice customers. When you rely on tips for survival on top of everything else, it can feel like a bit of a gut punch when someone decides not to leave you one despite how good your service was.

One customer must’ve realized the disappointment that can occur after not receiving a tip when serving tables because he went out of his way to give one. In a post shared on Reddit, a customer revealed in a letter that he realized he took the wrong receipt after leaving. Instead of taking the blank one, he took the merchant’s copy which holds the tip amount and his signature.

The error was discovered when he was checking his bank account and saw the amount taken off of his card was not the amount he expected. That’s when he decided to check the receipt from that day and saw the error.

Instead of just brushing it off and moving on, the man wrote out a note explaining what happened with a sincere apology along with a $20 cash tip and delivered it to the restaurant.

The note read, “When I checked my bank statement Tuesday (1/2) I noticed that the pending withdrawal tied to my and my wife’s lunches did not appear to be correct. Relying on memory (never a good thing) I had in mind that the scheduled withdrawal should have been larger. I pulled my receipts and discovered that I had inadvertently retained the signed merchant’s copy of my VISA receipts when I left your restaurant Saturday (12/30) afternoon. As a result, while the food was fully paid, the tip which I had intended to leave for our server, Hope C, was not relayed back to VISA. I can only trust that Hope will forgive my blunder. Please find the enclosed her tip in cash. That was no way for either of us to end 2023. Here’s to a fresh start.”

Ted, the forgetful patron ended the note with an apology to the manager and the server. After the photo went viral on the social media platform, commenters told their own stories of people going out of their way to make things right.

One commenter writes, “Been about 30 years or so but my grandfather would take me on trips in the summer to visit relatives. We were driving to Florida and we stopped to get gas. We leave and drive 50 or 60 miles. My grandpa pulls over and says I never paid for the gas. We turned around and drove all the way back to pay for the gas.”

Another says, “I once forgot to pay for my dry cleaning when I picked it up. I went back the next day to give them the cash and they said ‘You came back!’ the second I walked in. I was very surprised that this wouldn’t be the default behavior of everyone.”

The Reddit thread shows that there are still good people in the world that will go out of their way to correct a mistake or make someone’s day.

Tony Trapani and his wife were married for 50 years despite the heartache of being unable to have children. “She wanted children,” Trapani told Fox 17. “She couldn’t have any. She tried and tried.” Even though they endured the pain of infertility, Tony’s love for his wife never wavered and he cherished every moment they spent together.

After his wife passed away when Tony was 81 years old, he undertook the heartbreaking task of sorting out all of her belongings. That’s when he stumbled upon a carefully concealed letter in a filing cabinet hidden for over half a century.

The letter was addressed to Tony and dated March 1959, but this was the first time he had seen it. His wife must have opened it, read it and hid it from him. The letter came from Shirley Childress, a woman Tony had once been close with before his marriage. She reached out, reminiscing about their past and revealing a secret that would change Tony’s world forever.

“Dear Tony, I bet you are surprised to hear from me after so many years. I was just thinking about you tonight like so many other nights. But I thought I would write you and find out how you are,” the letter reads. “Tony, please don’t be angry or surprised to hear this. I have a little boy. He is five-years- old now – grey eyes and beautiful black hair. What I am trying to say Tony is he is your son.”

“Please, Tony if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, please come and see him,” Shirley wrote in the letter. “Every day he asks me where is his daddy and believe me Tony I can’t even answer him anymore. If would be forever grateful to you if you would just see him. … I’ll close now hoping and praying you will answer. P.S. His name is Samuel Duane.”

Now, Tony faced the fact that he had a son that would be around 60 years old and he set out to find him. For over a year, Trapani’s sister tried to track down the mysterious Samuel Duane Childress, until she finally contacted his wife, Donna.

Tony and Samuel met in January 2015 and he felt like a new dad. After meeting his father, Samuel said his mother told him she sent the letter, but Tony never responded. “Why my wife didn’t tell me,” said Trapani. “I don’t know. She wanted children. She couldn’t have any. She tried and tried.”

“I always asked my mom, I said, ‘Well what does he look like?” Samuel said. “She said, ‘Well, go look in the mirror.”

Tony Trapani, 81, meets his son for the first time after finding a hidden letter from 1959. https://t.co/iNSKVMjnjv

— (@)

The two met and caught up on a lifetime of memories with the understanding that they could never change the past. “Just to know him now is so important to me. It’s going to fill that void,” Samuel said. But just to be sure, Tony took a paternity test to ensure they were father and son.

The test came back negative, revealing that Tony was not the father. The news upset Tony and Samuel, but they still had a unique bond. They shared a relationship with Samuel’s mother and both have been on an incredibly wild ride after Tony found the mysterious letter.

“They’re keeping that bond,” Donna said. “That paper doesn’t mean anything to him. That bond has been made—and we’re going to move on from here.”

Cole Bennett continues to make good on his promise to drop a video for every song on the Lyrical Lemonade compilation album, All Is Yellow. Today (February 22), the prolific video director has shared the video for the album’s opening track, “Fly Away,” which features Sheck Wes, Ski Mask The Slump God, and JID.

In the song’s accompanying video, Ski Mask emerges from Lyrical Lemonade’s signature yellow curtain, sitting upon a yellow throne as he delivers his scorching verse.

The video then cuts to JID, who shines bright in a dark room, putting his lyrical ability and his star power on full display. The rappers are all seen in black suits and yellow ties throughout the visual.

In an interview with Paste, Bennett shared that for the All Is Yellow album, he wanted to tie the videos together using the yellow curtains and accessories.

“It’s gotten to the point where the audience’s eye has now been trained to see a black suit and a yellow tie, without any context beyond that, and know exactly what it means,” said Bennett. “And that’s super exciting to me, to be able to drive home a theme that far.”

You can see the video for “Fly Away” above.

The NBA regular season resumed on Thursday after a week-long hiatus built around All-Star Weekend. While the majority of the league’s personnel had several days off, Kevin Durant was busy for at least part of the break, representing the Phoenix Suns as a member of the Western Conference All-Star team in Indianapolis. Following what was hopefully at least a small respite for Durant and other All-Stars, the Suns took on the Dallas Mavericks in a highly intriguing road game in front of a national television audience on the first night of the second half.

Before tip-off actually happened, however, Durant was involved in a notable interaction with a pair of Mavericks fans in Dallas. In short, one of the fans called Durant a “b*tch,” and the 35-year-old former MVP did not take kindly to that.

As you can see in the pair of videos, Durant was at least relatively cordial with the fans and ultimately stopped security personnel from removing them from the premises. It was also remarkable to see the change in tone from the couple as soon as Durant turned around to acknowledge what was said in the first place.

In particular, the fan saying “I host a podcast about sports,” as if that was going to mean anything here, is ridiculous. Alas, Durant is more than willing to mix it up with fans during the game and, this time, he didn’t have to wait until the game was actually happening because a fan was completely out of line before the opening tip.

Selena Gomez has another bop on her hands. Today (February 22), she shared her steamy new single, “Love On.”

Over a groovy, bouncy beat, Gomez teases a lover, letting him know that while things are heating up, there’s more to come, as she is about to turn her love on. The song itself feels like a luxury, as she details the fantasies of all the places they can get wild.

“Why are we conversing over this steak tartare / When we could be somewhere other than here / Making out in the back of a car / Or in the back of a bar / Or we could make a memoir,” she sings on one of the song’s verses.

The song’s accompanying video matches the audio’s opulent energy, as Gomez is seen enjoying dinner at a hotel in Paris, surrounded by couples embracing and making out.

“Love On” is expected to appear on Gomez’s upcoming fourth studio album (which will be her third under Interscope). Additionally, Gomez is hard at work filming the fourth season of Only Murders In The Building, and recently signed on to a reboot of her breakthrough series, Wizards Of Waverly Place.

You can see the sexy video for “Love On” above.