Yahoo Lifestyle Lady Gaga is back, and Jennie collaborates with Doechii: What to stream this week
This week, Lady Gaga is back - she's making her big return to pop music with hotly anticipated album Mayhem.
But that's not all the week has in store.
Blackpink star Jennie's debut solo album is coming out, R-Patz's new film Mickey-17 hits the big screen, Split Fiction is being released, and Meghan's delayed TV show is here at last.
Read on for this week's biggest releases...
Abracadabra! As if by magic, Lady Gaga appeared
By Mark Savage, Music correspondent
It's been a hot minute since we've seen Lady Gaga in full pop mode - but her seventh album Mayhem promises a full return to the brash electro-pop sounds of The Fame Monster and Born This Way.
According to Gaga, we have her fiancé Michael Polansky to thank for this rebirth. "He was like, 'Babe, I love you. You need to make pop music'," she told Vogue last year.
The early signs are encouraging. Abracadabra is the distilled essence of Gaga, crammed with nonsense words and speaker-rattling synth bass. Die With A Smile, her 1970s-styled duet with Bruno Mars, is her biggest hit since Shallow.
In the videos, she's playing multiple versions of herself, suggesting the album is both a celebration and a reckoning with her past.
Speaking to the LA Times, Gaga added that the album "leaps around genre in a way that's almost corrupt… And it ends with love."
Fans who heard the record at a listening party in New York last week were ecstatic, calling Mayhem "a culmination of all her eras". The rest of us have to wait until Friday to find out what Gaga has to say on the tantalisingly-titled song Perfect Celebrity.
BBC News has an exclusive interview with Gaga on the same day, where we'll dive into the meaning of the album and how love has changed her life.
Blackpink's Jennie is going solo
By Mark Savage, Music correspondent
It's a good time to be a Blackpink fan. The South Korean girlband have just announced their comeback tour - complete with two nights at London's Wembley Stadium. But before that, all four members are busy releasing solo projects.
Rosé's APT was one of the defining hits of late 2024, while Lisa's barnstorming Alter Ego album coincides with her role in the latest series of White Lotus. Jisoo - the band's quietest member - is starring in the Korean zombie romance (don't ask) Newtopia, and recently released the bubblegum pop EP, Amortage.
Jennie's album is last to arrive. It's called Ruby, after her middle name, hinting at the difficulty she faced in establishing a musical identity outside of Blackpink, where she's considered the "face" of the band, as well as its lead singer.
"I struggled a lot in the beginning," she recently told Billboard. "A few months, I would say, was just me throwing myself out there, walking into rooms filled with new people. I just had to keep knocking on the door, like, 'Is this it?', 'Is this it?'"
The sound she landed on isn't going to scare off Blackpink's existing fanbase, but it's more personal, more sensual, more expansive than the band's armour-plated K-Pop sound.
Lead single, Mantra, is a cheeky riff on the "independent woman" genre, that incorporates her love of burgers and pyjamas over a Miami Bass beat. More recently, she released the love-em-and-leave-em anthem Love Hangover, whose video is an absolute riot.
The rest of the album contains collaborations with Childish Gambino, Dua Lipa, Kali Uchis and rapper-of-the-moment Doechii.
The real question, though, is whether all this creative freedom will seep into Blackpink's new music when it arrives this spring?
R-Patz and Bong Joon Ho join forces
British heartthrob R-Patz (aka Robert Pattinson) is starring in dark sci-fi film Mickey 17, which is released in UK cinemas this Friday.
It tells the story of a financially destitute man who signs up to be an "expendable" crew member on a dangerous mission to colonise an ice world.
Of course, anything R-Patz does draws in a loyal audience of primarily young female fans (and I say this as a huge Twilight fan).
But for film buffs, perhaps more interesting is the fact this is Bong Joon Ho's first film since his Oscar-winning black comedy Parasite.
Parasite, which came out in 2019, is considered by many to be one of the greatest best picture winners of this century so far, and there has been huge anticipation to see how Bong could possibly follow it up.
When I met him at the premiere, he told me the film's message was a simple one. "Whether it's the future, or going into outer space, humans must live genuinely human lives," he said.
Who needs the Oscars anyway?
By Tom Richardson, Newsbeat reporter
Someone who probably won't be watching the Oscars this weekend is film director turned video game auteur Josef Fares.
His colourful 2017 rant against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's annual bash – which we can't repeat on a family friendly news website - is the stuff of legend.
Luckily for him, his mantelpiece is looking pretty full after his 2021 release, It Takes Two, snagged a clutch of the games industry's biggest awards.
The follow-up from his studio Hazelight, Split Fiction (out on Thursday for PS5, Xbox and PC) employs the same split-screen co-operative gameplay of its predecessor, this time casting players as two authors transported to fictional worlds they've created.
It's a style of game that can cause arguments to erupt on the sofa, but they probably won't be as fiery as one of Fares' speeches.
Meghan's delayed TV show arrives at last
The Duchess of Sussex's new Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, was due to drop in January - but was postponed due to the LA wildfires.
On Tuesday, it will finally hit our screens.
In the trailer, Meghan was seen baking cakes, slicing veggies and harvesting honey. It was the picture of domestic bliss.
And everyone had an opinion on it. Thousands of column inches were dedicated to analysing every single detail of every frame.
So what will the series itself bring? I'm personally interested in how much Prince Harry appears. And might we get a rare glimpse of their two children, Archie and Lilibet, too?
It's an eight-part series, so there will be plenty to chew over - for fans and detractors alike.
Other highlights this week...
Sabrina Carpenter's tour starts in Dublin on Monday
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book Dream Count is published on Tuesday
Just One Look drops on Netflix on Wednesday
The Lathums' album, Matter Does Not Define, drops on Friday
The Wiggles' album, Wiggle Up, Giddy Up, also drops on Friday
