Britney Spears attends the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 28, 2016 in New York City.
Jamie McCarthy/GIBritney Spears has been sharing snippets of her recent Maui vacation on Instagram over the past few weeks, and the latest clip has the star flaunting a yellow plaid bikini.
In the short video, the pop princess is seen strutting in the sand and playing in the ocean waves, as scenes of a tiger also walking along a beach weave into the clip. The tropical vacation memory is soundtracked by Cardi B‘s 2017 breakthrough single “Bodak Yellow.”
“Lioness,” the singer’s fiancé Sam Asghari commented along with a lion emoji.
Throughout January, Spears shared more videos and photos from her trip. In one video, the 40-year-old singer is seen relaxing on a balcony in the same yellow bikini while enjoying the sunshine. The camera then pans out over the picturesque location and shows the palm trees, white sand and the Pacific Ocean. Though Spears appears to be enjoying her vacation, she admitted in the caption of her post that she thinks she’s battling a “small bug.”
“The only thing that is similar to this feeling is when I was pregnant…it’s the nausea that is the worst, ” the singer explained. “It’s like I can’t wake up so I go to the gym trying to wake my system up !!! It’s like clock work…I break my first sweat then I go to the bathroom and throw up…it’s absolutely horrible but then I stay at the gym because I don’t want to go home and lay sick in bed.”
The pop star added that despite the sickness she feels better when she dances and gushed, “Maui is absolutely pure magic…Thank you dear Jesus for this magical place.”
NEWS
R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe has given a live debut to a new solo song ‘The Rest Of Ever’ on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert – watch below.
The legendary singer has been working on his first full solo album for several years and while he has said in recent weeks that it has taken “longer than I wanted”, he has said he is now adding the finishing touches to the record, and has said it should be out in 2026.
On Thursday (April 23), Stipe appeared on Colbert to play the never-before-heard song ‘The Rest Of Ever’, alongside the house band Louis Cato and The Great Big Joy Machine.
The mature, contemplative track sounds like a slower-tempo version of an outtake from R.E.M.’s ‘Monster’, with Stipe earnestly addressing a loved one, embracing the deep huskiness of his current vocal register.
Watch the performance here:
Also on the show, Stipe attempted to describe the sound of his new album. “One of the songs is the sound of a tree hearing itself for the first time,” he said. “It’s this confusing situation. My friend recorded a tree in my backyard in Georgia and played it back to itself, and so it sounds like Daft Punk, but I’m putting a sea shanty [in the song].”
Colbert then asked which sea shanty it was, to which Stipe said, “It’s the most familiar that everyone knows,” before breaking into ‘Drunken Sailor’.
“The tree has not responded yet,” Stipe added. “We’re gonna let his people get back to my people and see what happens.”
Speaking about the album’s delay in March, Stipe said: “Covid didn’t help, but I’m finishing it. When the band split, I just needed a break. I took five years but I got pulled back into music. It’s been a struggle. That’s the main thing. I want it to be great, but I’ve got the pressure of having been in R.E.M. and it’s a high bar, because I want this to be as good as that, and that’s near impossible.”
Previous Stipe solo releases include the 2019 single ‘Your Capricious Soul’ and ‘Drive To The Ocean’ the following year. He also released ‘No Time For Love Like Now’ with Aaron Dessner’s Big Red Machine in 2020.
Last month, he also joined forces with Andrew Watt, Josh Klinghoffer and Travis Barker to share the new theme song for the show Rooster.
By all accounts, Stipe remains on good terms with his former R.E.M. bandmates – guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry – and they appeared together in summer 2024 when they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The band split amicably in 2011, while Berry had left the group during the height of their commercial success in 1997. However, at the ceremony, the quartet gave a surprise acoustic performance of their 1991 classic ‘Losing My Religion’. That marked the first time the four played live together since their 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
Last month, Stipe joined Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy at one of their ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ 40th anniversary tour shows in Brooklyn. They played versions of R.E.M.’s ‘These Days’ and ‘The Great Beyond’. A year ago, he also sang ‘Pretty Persuasion’ with them.
Stipe has also been clarifying lyrics from ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ on Bluesky, revealing that many fans have been getting some of the lines wrong for decades.
