Singer, who hasn’t performed onstage since 2020 as a result of her health, brought down the house with a breathtaking take on an Edith Piaf classic

The casual sports fans of the world endured four hours of rambling, chaotic, rainy pomp and circumstance along the Seine on Friday evening for one reason: to possibly see Céline Dion return to the stage. The 56-year-old French Canadian singer has not performed in over four years, owing to a rare, incurable neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome . Despite struggling with uncontrollable muscle spasms extreme enough to break ribs, Dion, a true-blue born performer, promised to one day return. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she said in her recent documentary I Am: Céline Dion . “And I won’t stop. I won’t stop.”

On a soggy Friday night in Paris, at the tail end of the Olympic opening ceremonies, Dion did more than just return – she triumphed. Bedecked in silver sparkles, accompanied by a rain-soaked piano on the steps of the Eiffel Tower, she not only sang Edith Piaf’s Hymne A L’Amour – which, truly, would have been more than enough – but performed it with the gusto of someone who, by her own admission, longs to resume touring more than her fans. If you have seen the documentary, then you know it is nearly impossible to fathom the amount of medicine and therapy, on top of bottomless grit and determination, required for Dion to retake the stage, let alone be the capstone performance at France’s Olympics, let alone do it well , with palpable, distinctive vocal power and without seeming to miss a note. She is, as pop singer Kelly Clarkson put it on the American NBC broadcast, a “vocal athlete”.

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Singer, who cancelled tour dates as a result of stiff person syndrome, makes comeback with Edith Piaf rendition

Céline Dion made a triumphant return to the stage at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

The star, who has been diagnosed with the neurological disorder stiff person syndrome , sang Edith Piaf’s Hymne A L’Amour at the Eiffel Tower for a global audience of millions, her first live on-stage performance since early 2020.

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Irish singer’s brother speaks of shock at ‘hideous’ figure which ‘looked nothing like her’

Dublin’s wax museum is withdrawing a figure of Sinéad O’Connor amid criticism from her family and members of the public that it looked “nothing like her”.

Many reacted with shock when the waxwork figure was unveiled on Thursday.

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The Americans are reigning Olympic champions but still needed funds in the run-up to Paris. Then a hip-hop veteran came in to save the day

The United States women’s water polo team will launch their bid for an unprecedented fourth straight Olympic gold medal on Saturday with an unlikely benefactor in their corner. Flavor Flav, the 65-year-old founding member of Public Enemy, has stolen the show around town in his role as the team’s official hype man.

“This is quite an experience for me right now, you know, because the only time I’ve ever seen the Olympics was on TV,” said Flav, who spent Thursday hugging and high-fiving everyone in sight at the Team USA house in the historic Palais Brongniart. “You know what I’m saying? But I always wanted to see what it felt like being there.”

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The British musician’s new album is everywhere, but it took her 15 years to go from Myspace to the White House

As someone who existed outside the mainstream for much of her early career, Charli xcx has come a long way. The British popstar who was first noticed via her Myspace page is not only responsible for the meme of the summer , she’s even become an influential factor in the turbulent presidential elections across the Atlantic.

“Can’t believe Charli xcx is successfully doing foreign intervention in a US election as an album marketing tactic,” one fan posted on X after Kamala Harris’s campaign fully embraced the singer’s endorsement .

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Music is stored in different parts of the brain than other memories, experts say, and potentially for longer. For choristers in the Good Life Chorus, communal singing offers benefits beyond memory

Leigh Scully looks to her husband, and asks: “Have you been enjoying singing, darling?”

“Music. Music. Music. I love it,” Peter Scully says, with a smile and a drumbeat between each word.

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Rapper working in Paris for US TV network which is hoping to energise its coverage after criticism during Tokyo Games

When the rapper Snoop Dogg was asked how he had prepared for his new role as a primetime Olympics correspondent for the US TV network NBC during the Paris Games, he responded with characteristic swagger. “My preparation for primetime is being me,” he said. “Google me. Look me up, dog.”

As the Paris 2024 Olympics officially open on Friday, the one-time pimp turned rapper has taken the city of light by storm after being chosen to carry the Olympic torch through its final stages in Saint-Denis to mark the beginning of the 33rd Games.

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Marvel, DC and others try everything from standalone films to sequels stuffed with stars. But could genre experimentation be the trick that keeps the action going – and audiences watching?

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“The superhero movie is dead.” “Actually, cinema is dead! (And superhero flops are to blame).” “Can Deadpool save Marvel?” “Can James Gunn save DC?” “Can anyone save us from our own conjecture?!” Those are just some of the increasingly, hyperventilatingly high-stakes headlines that have accompanied each dud superhero release of the last few years (and there have been plenty).

No need to panic, though – these films are unlikely to ever go away. But they do need to go somewhere. And Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine, out now and predicted to have the biggest opening weekend in history for an R-rated movie, has left me wondering where.

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The success of Manchester’s Outbreak festival shows the appetite for the genre isn’t just healthy, it’s on the rise. Its organisers discuss the scene’s evolution, its fragility, and its (very loud) future

At the end of June this year thousands of people – from Scotland to Bulgaria, Chile to Singapore – gathered in an industrial estate in Manchester to boot each other in the head. That wasn’t the express purpose, of course, but a common side-effect of attending Outbreak, the hardcore punk festival that has become a flagship event for a genre experiencing an unprecedented moment of mainstream visibility.

Bursting out of the American suburbs in the late 1970s, hardcore was a response to the punk and new wave invasion that had dominated the years prior. Early bands such as Black Flag, Bad Brains and Dead Kennedys distilled the rawness of punk and pushed it to extremes, pioneering a do-it-yourself ethos, and a fast, frantic sound that became the definitive sonic kickback to a decade of Reaganomics and rising conservatism. Though the sound of hardcore has evolved over the decades, spawning various subgenres (screamo, queercore, powerviolence) and acting as the jumping-off point for many of the pop-punk and emo bands that defined the 2000s, that grassroots philosophy has been unwavering. It’s there in the origins of Outbreak, too.

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