Fashion Lady

Lady Gaga's third studio album, released in 2013. Featured the hits "Applause" and "Do What U Want". Gaga collaborated with longtime partners Paul "DJ White Shadow" Blair and RedOne and new partners Zedd and Madeon. The lyrical themes revolve around her personal views of fame, love, sex, feminism, self-empowerment, overcoming addiction, and reactions to media scrutiny; references include Greek and Roman mythology, and classic jazz and electronic musician Sun Ra. Artpop also features guest vocals from T.I., Too Short, Twista, and R. Kelly.

A flamboyantly blood-spattered samurai revenge picture with a twist: the implacable seeker of retribution is a slender female (Meiko Kaji) with a flawless ivory complexion and a dead-center killer stare. Born in prison, Snowblood is raised by a martial priest and trained to fulfill a single purpose: tracking down, and dismembering (or bisecting), the four cackling fiends who killed her father and persecuted her mother to an early grave. Adapted from another manga comic book written by Kasuo Koike, whose most famous work became the legendary Lone Wolf and Cub film series, this 1973 programmer stays close to its pulp-paper roots: images from the comics are deployed in a couple of montage sequences, and the story is divided into four chapters drawn from the monthly manga installments. Stalwart leading man Toshio Kurasawa plays a crusading journalist who writes a series of Japanese dime novels based on Snowblood's exploits, and manages to flush out a couple of the evildoers in the process.

The debut album Black Acid Soul from Lady Blackbird is one of the standouts for 2021. It's instant and within a minute you are hooked. Rough Trade Shops loves this album. Think Nina Simone, Hot Buttered Soul-era Isaac Hayes, Billie Holiday and Chaka Khan. Gilles Peterson called her "the Grace Jones of Jazz".