Lady Gaga has described working with Tony Bennett as “life in a time warp,” saying the pair took on “magical power” when they sang together, giving old music “new life” as a duo.
Despite nearly 60 years between them, Gaga and Bennett collaborated together on several projects, including his final album.
Image: Bennett performs with Lady Gaga
In a lengthy post on Instagram, shared with a picture of the singers hugging one another, Gaga wrote: “I will miss my friend forever. I will miss singing with him, recording with him, talking with him, being on stage together.
“With Tony, I got to live my life in a time warp. Tony and I had this magical power.
“We transported ourselves to another era, modernised the music together, and gave it all new life as a singing duo. But it wasn’t an act.
“Our relationship was very real. Sure, he taught me about music, about showbiz life, but he also showed me how to keep my spirits high and my head screwed on straight. ‘Straight ahead’, he’d say.
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“He was an optimist, he believed in quality work and quality life. Plus, there was the gratitude…Tony was always grateful.”
In 2014, when Bennett was 88, he broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a number one album on the US Billboard 200 chart for his duet project with Gaga – Cheek To Cheek.
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Three years earlier, he had topped the charts with Duets II, which also featured Gaga, as well as the last studio recording of Amy Winehouse.
Bennett’s final album in 2021, titled Love For Sale, featured duets with Gaga on the title track, Night And Day and other Cole Porter songs, and won him his last Grammy award.
Bennett retired from performing in 2021 after revealing he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016.
Gaga said: “I’ve been grieving the loss of Tony for a long time. We had a very long and powerful goodbye.
“Though there were five decades between us, he was my friend.
“My real true friend. Our age difference didn’t matter – in fact, it gave us each something neither of us had with most people. We were from two different stages in life entirely – inspired.
“Losing Tony to Alzheimer’s has been painful but it was also really beautiful. An era of memory loss is such a sacred time in a person’s life. There’s such a feeling of vulnerability and a desire to preserve dignity.
“All I wanted was for Tony to remember how much I loved him and how grateful I was to have him in my life.
“But, as that faded slowly I knew deep down he was sharing with me the most vulnerable moment in his life that he could – being willing to sing with me when his nature was changing so deeply.
“I’ll never forget this experience. I’ll never forget Tony Bennett.”
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It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
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Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
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Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.