Faulkner

That’s so sad. Saw this in the replies. They did share a bond and have been through so many tragedies.

Sad confirmation.

Look at CLB’s full-on grey hair and beard in the intro/outro. He’s letting it all hang out in quarantine.

And it feels like that “one thread” becomes more trivial with each passing season. Are they really spending this much time dissecting nonsense? I suppose those “threads“ are just fronts for deeper conflicts, but they never really get to the heart of it, and it’s rinse-wash-repeat.

Ha!

From Mumbai 🇮🇳

Wow.

She’s a gifted singer but she’s often clueless as to how to use it. Her oversinging eventually just became a joke, and then she was better known as a behind-the-scenes bitch who got into fights with P!nk and Mary J. Blige. I do hear “Fighter” a lot in the wild, but people are suckers for a pump-up song. Stripped was just such a grab bag of styles. She also tried to hone in on the Latin pop market too.

I think the Hot 100 alone is a dubious way of measuring the success of artists, considering how much the rules have changed over the years and how artists game the systems in place to land hits. I always go back to “Don’t Speak” being one of the biggest songs of 1996, and it didn’t even chart on the Hot 100 because it wasn’t released as a physical single. I do think it’s interesting how relatively forgotten that era of Xtina is, for all its successes. You do see its impact on Ariana Grande and a few years back with Demi Lovato and Jessie J.

I don’t think he’s saying it’s special in terms of pop history. Just that she had more and bigger chart successes than her peers of that era, which might surprise people who are more familiar with the hits of Britney, BSB, and *NSYNC. As big as they were, you’d think they’d all have five or six No. 1s. (Crazy that “I Want It That Way” or “Toxic” never topped the charts. Those were as ubiquitous as they come.)

So tragic.

From Miami 🇺🇸

Just saw his son tested positive too:

This is Elyse’s husband by the way. No wonder Ramona was so touchy-feely.

Dorinda keeps on referring to Elyse’s history with men, as if she has some scandals. I read that her first husband (and father of her 26-year-old daughter) was a Wall Street mogul who was convicted of insider trading and later acted as an informant to the FBI before they divorced. Then she dated a hedge fund manager and decided to buy an apartment with him. (I’m seeing she said it was a gift from him.) They split before the deal closed. He died in a skiing accident, and his name was still on the apartment, leading to his kids to try to force her out of the property. She launched a suit against his estate, which was dismissed, but she’s still living in that apartment.

From Charlotte, North Carolina 🇺🇸