The 69-year-old singer and William “Willie” Wilkerson hope to marry later this year in Miami, with the wedding expected to take place on a beach with a private party afterwards on board a yacht.

The pair became engaged over the Christmas holidays, according to news agency AP.

“We’re looking at June or July for our date, and no I’m not pregnant, LOL!,” Franklin said in a statement.

PRS for Music accepted that payments to many Welsh language musicians had declined. Mark Lawrence, the director of membership, said: “Rates paid for radio station play and also for use in businesses around the country are reviewed constantly, based on audience, reach and sampling work our teams do.”

The basic rate for a song on Radio Cymru is 59p a minutes, and 95p on Radio Wales. An additional element for plays in businesses takes the payments up to about £5.75 for Radio Cymru but almost £150 for Radio Wales. The basic rate on Radio 2 is about £22 a minute.

It’s because no fucker listens to them.

As is right and proper of course.

When Bruce Springsteen first met Paul McCartney, he couldn’t keep himself from saying, “Mr. McCartney, I have to tell you that you and your career have always been an inspiration to me in my music. I’m embarrassed to tell you that, though, because it sounds so corny.”

McCartney replied, “Don’t worry about it. I once said the same thing to Phil Everly.”

Bit difficult not to support it really: military family, Devon born, brother is out there running the logistics for them, cousin is pumping the oil over the mountains to them, sister is a choirmistress pulling together very similar groups (although not on TV).

And what is this X-Factor of which people speak?

Compare and contrast with this version of the old standard (well, standard….everyone changes the lyrics)

“Unfortunately, we at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.”

David Bowie says yes to futuristic musical based on his hits

Bowie’s space-age fantasies will be used for the first time in showcase London performance next year

So, in a business sense, like Mamma Mia or We Will Rock You. Get those old songs up on a West End stage, take the royalties and run.

Although it’s not quite that. He’s granted permission for a one off charity gig….which might, if it’s all lovely, then turn into a longer running production.

The hmmm bit comes from the Bowie Bonds.

Back in 1997, Bowie securitised the future revenues (royalties etc) on his classic songs into a bond issue which was then bought by Prudential. The bonds had a slightly rocky valuation life….the fall in recorded music sales meant they lost rating and value, then the rise of iTunes etc seems to have revived them.

My immediate reaction was that he’s licencing the songs to see whether greater income can be generated from them in order to pay off (or maybe refinance etc) those bonds.

But the bonds were supposed to mature in 2009. So maybe not: anyone know what is the actual status of those Bowie bonds?

It could be mildly interesting this: the first musical to be driven by having to repay a bond issue.

Just to give a guide, a seriously successful musical, one that had two or three casts around the world, could indeed make serious inroads into at least the financing costs, if not the capital, of a $55 million bond issue.

….is not handsome. His voice is not of a particularly pleasant timbre. He refuses to project a phony aura of likeablility, and is likely incapable of projecting a real one. He’s strange and prickly and inscrutable. It’s likely that all of the members of the band he’s playing with are more musically cultivated than he is. Some might be better singers. Hell, the audience probably has dozens of people with more musical chops than he has. He only brings one unusual thing to the table. No one knows what that one thing is; they only recognize it when they encounter it.

Record-breaking star Adele is to undergo surgery in a bid to cure the throat problems which have threatened to wreck her voice forever.

So I don’t listen to much pop music bit it’s been impossible not to listen to some of this. And my immediate reaction (OK, well, after the “my, that’s a bit catchy, isn’t it?”) was that she’s straining her voice.

She’s simply never been taught to sing.

Sure, obviously, she can hit a note, write a song and all that, but the technique is all wrong and you can hear that in her voice.

What slightly worries is that if a middle aged not good musician can hear it, why couldn’t all the people around her?

There are those who disagree with my diagnosis, this is true:

The singer herself recently told the Sun that her problems were caused not by her vocal technique but by talking too much. “I damage my voice offstage, not onstage,” she said. “Onstage I am fine as apparently I am technically great, but when I talk I damage my voice big time. I have got screwed into giving up smoking.

Not convinced but then that’s the middle aged not good musician harrumphing about the young people of today for you.

Every time I hear it I think that I really ought to know what it is but I don’t: and I’d rather like to find it without the chatting over the top of it.

Ah, never mind, found it.

It’s Count Basie version of Hang on Sloopy

Perhaps we shouldn’t forget that us roughly 1 billion rich world people are living higher on the hog than any group of human beings ever has done, that the last 30 years has seen the greatest reduction in poverty that our species has ever experienced, that the IPCC predicts, nay insists, that this is going to continue for at least the next century.

A wonderful world indeed.

Can music lovers enjoy Wagner’s art in spite of his anti-Semitism?

No.

Nothing to do with the anti-semitism mind, it’s the “music”. Appalling, dreary stuff. No one who loved music could ernjoy it: Wagner is something to be endured.

“I actually don’t like music that much,” Phil Collins admits at the Glenfiddich Mojo Awards. “I don’t really listen to music.

One of the campaign group members said: “That was totally over the top. He threatened to hit me.”

It’s what bouncers do with unruly members of the crowd mate.

Talking to Pat Gilbert in Mojo a couple of months back – an early warning shot in a publicity blitzkrieg of mounting and ultimately horrific intensity – the star of Jeeves & Wooster and House imagined Britain’s critical elite dipping their quills in venom in anticipation of his forthcoming celebration of the unique capacity of the sufferings of black Americans to alleviate the midlife crisis of the white British millionaire. Sorry, I mean his album of New Orleans blues standards.

Anyone actually wanting some interesting blues rather than this milksop version would be better off with early ZZ Top.

Yes, of course, there’s huge amounts of better blues out there but even early ZZ Top is better. And as for New Orleans, try Dr. John.

And they came to be as synonymous with the much-loved chart show as cigar-chomping Jimmy Savile and the pounding Led Zeppelin theme tune.

Ah, no, the theme tune wasn’t Led Zep. It was a reworking of a reworking. CCS had reworked it, then it was done again each week for the show.

Both CCS and the ToTP orchestra were roughly the collection of all the decent session musicians in London at the time. Alexis Korner, Alan Parker, Herbie Flowers…..not sure if it actually happened but it’s possible that, for example, Herbie was playing on the theme tune, then in the orchestra, while also being a member of T-Rex on the stage and (well, unfortunately not, for he’d left T-Rex by this point) also being the writer and producer of the Clive Dunn song that kept T-Rex off the No 1 spot.

For, it wasn’t actually the records that were played, but recreations of them by that ToTP orchestra, or specially recorded versions:

Initially acts performing on the show mimed to the commercially released record, but in July 1966 — just after the show had been moved to London — and after discussions with the Musicians’ Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands’ attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted — as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. The TOTP Orchestra, led by Johnny Pearson augmented the tracks when necessary.

Union rules, don’tcha just lov’em?

The guitarist in this now writes songs for Beyonce.

Unbelievable: not everyone from the Forest of Dean is an as thick as pigshit inbred then?

During one visit to Tork’s Laurel Canyon mansion, singer Jackson Browne later recalled: “Jimi Hendrix was up there jamming with Buddy Miles in the pool house, and Peter’s girlfriend was playing the drums, naked.”

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can say I didn’t sing.

Words to live by whatever your lack of talent.