Canadian musician Nell Smith, who collaborated with the Flaming Lips, has died at age 17. 

Simon Raymonde, a co-founder of the report label Bella Union, confirmed her dying Monday on Instagram. 

“We’re all shocked and devastated to listen to of the sudden and tragic passing of our artist and pricey buddy Nell Smith, over the weekend in British Columbia,” Raymonde wrote. “Nell was simply 17 and was making ready for the discharge of her first solo report in early 2025 on Bella Union, made in Brighton with Penelope Isles’ Jack and Lily Wolter.”

Smith got here into the highlight with the discharge of “The place the Viaduct Looms,” an album of Nick Cave tune covers recorded with the Flaming Lips in 2021. 

The label didn’t disclose a reason for dying. The Flaming Lips mentioned at a live performance Sunday in Portland, Oregon, that she died in a automobile accident. 

“We’ve got a really unhappy announcement to make tonight,” band chief Wayne Coyne mentioned, in response to video shared on social media. “We’ve got a Canadian buddy, her title is Nell, and we recorded an incredible album together with her three years in the past. … We obtained some very unhappy messages at the moment that she was killed in a automobile accident final night time, and we’re reminded as soon as once more of the ability of music and the way encouraging it may be to be round folks that you just love.” 

Smith’s household confirmed her dying in a press release shared on her Instagram web page. 

“It pains us a lot to say that our feisty, gifted, distinctive, lovely daughter was cruelly taken from us on Saturday night time. We’re reeling from the information and don’t know what to do or say,” it mentioned.

“She had a lot extra to expertise and to present this world however we’re grateful that she obtained to expertise so very a lot in her 17 years. She has left an indelible mark on the phrase and an unfillable chasm in our hearts.”

“Maintain your children further tight tonight and for now please depart us to work via issues. We’ll shout after we want you. Jude, Rachel, Jed and Ike,” the assertion concluded.

Canadian musician Nell Smith, identified for her collaborations with US rock band The Flaming Lips, has died aged 17.

Her demise was confirmed by Simon Raymonde, the previous bassist for the Cocteau Twins and co-founder of her document label Bella Union, on Instagram.

Whereas he didn’t affirm her explanation for demise, The Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne stated throughout a present in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday that she died in a automotive accident.

Sharing footage of Nell, together with time spent together with her youthful brother, with Coyne and writing songs in Canada, Raymonde wrote: “We’re all shocked and devastated to listen to of the sudden and tragic passing of our artist and pricey good friend Nell Smith, over the weekend in British Columbia.

“Nell was simply 17 and was making ready for the discharge of her first solo document in early 2025 on Bella Union, made in Brighton with Penelope Isles’ Jack and Lily Wolter.

“Her first launch was an album of covers of Nick Cave songs recorded with fellow Bella Union artistes The Flaming Lips again in 2021 entitled, “The place The Viaduct Looms”.

“Whereas all of us attempt to come to phrases with the terrible information, and out of respect to Nell’s grieving household, we’re unable to make any additional feedback at the moment. The Bella Union Household.”

Susie Cave, clothier and spouse of musician Nick Cave commented on his submit, writing: “My coronary heart is damaged for stunning Nell and her household.”

Cave’s 15-year-old son, Arthur, died in an unintended fall in 2015.

Abruptly The whole lot Has Modified

Talking on stage on Sunday, Coyne stated the band had “acquired some very unhappy messages” telling them that Nell “was killed in a automotive accident final evening”.

He went on to say: “We’re reminded as soon as once more of the facility of music and the way encouraging it may be to be round folks that you just love,” earlier than asking the gang to assist sing Abruptly The whole lot Has Modified.

Smith had been planning to launch her debut album, that includes her personal authentic songs, subsequent 12 months.

On a Kickstarter web page that had raised over CA$17,000 (£13,000) to place the album collectively, Smith described herself as “a musician from the UK however I reside in Canada today”.

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She stated she hoped the discharge of the document and the next tour would assist fund her “actual dream”, which she stated was to go to music faculty within the UK.

The web page additionally had a photograph of her with The Flaming Lips frontman Coyne and Smith working in a McDonald’s drive-through to boost cash to document her songs.

Born in New Jersey in 1933, Houston was the youngest of eight youngsters. She started singing at a younger age after she shaped a gospel group along with her siblings.

Within the Nineteen Sixties, she shaped the R&B group the Candy Inspirations, which sang backup for large names like Otis Redding, Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick. In addition they carried out on Van Morrison’s hit tune Brown Eyed Woman.

After discovering success with the Candy Inspirations, Houston launched into a solo profession, the place she sang with artists together with Chaka Khan, Jimi Hendrix, Beyonce, Paul Simon, and her late daughter Whitney Houston, who died in 2012 at age 48.

Houston gained a Grammy Award for her conventional soul gospel album Face to Face in 1997, and once more the next 12 months for her album He Leadeth Me.

She additionally wrote three books, together with one commemorating her daughter, referred to as Remembering Whitney: A Mom’s Story of Life, Loss and The Evening The Music Stopped.

On the age of 80, Houston sang as soon as once more with Aretha Franklin throughout her efficiency on The Late Present with David Letterman, the place they carried out a canopy of Adele’s Rolling within the Deep.

Her daughter-in-law, Pat, stated that Houston’s “greater than seven-decade profession in music and leisure will stay on the forefront of our hearts”.

She added that the household is “blessed and grateful that God allowed her to spend so a few years with us”.

“Might she relaxation in peace, alongside her daughter, Whitney and granddaughter Bobbi Kristina and different cherished members of the family.”

The profession of the American singer Cissy Houston, who has died aged 91, exemplified the important power underlying a lot fashionable common music: the shut relationship between African-American sacred and secular idioms, particularly the affect seeping from Black gospel music, with its deep emotional roots and eruptions of ecstatic fervour, into the material of R&B, soul and pop.

Houston spent 30 years because the “minister of music” on the New Hope Baptist Church in her native Newark, New Jersey. However she additionally sang, usually together with her nieces Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick, on lots of the nice pop hits of the Nineteen Sixties and 70s, from the Drifters’ On Broadway via Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Lady, Aretha Franklin’s (You Make Me Really feel Like a) Pure Lady, Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man and Paul Simon’s Mom and Little one Reunion to David Bowie’s Younger People.

As a founder member of a vocal group generally known as the Candy Inspirations, she toured and recorded with Elvis Presley. After leaving the group in 1970 to lift her household, she pursued a solo profession, recording albums and showing in New York night time golf equipment, which reached its peak with two Grammy awards for her conventional gospel albums Face to Face in 1997 and He Leadeth Me the next 12 months.

She additionally turned generally known as the mom of the singer Whitney Houston, whose monumental worldwide success, following her look within the 1992 movie The Bodyguard, attracted consideration to a non-public life that included a turbulent marriage to the singer Bobby Brown and issues with drug dependancy.

Whitney, who had begun her singing profession below her mom’s tutelage within the New Hope choir, was discovered useless within the bathtub of a Beverly Hills lodge in 2012, aged 48. Three years later Whitney’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, a singer and actuality TV persona, died after being found in related circumstances, aged 22.

Cissy Houston was born Emily Drinkard, the eighth and final little one of Delia Mae (nee McCaskill) and Nitcholas “Nitch” Drinkard, natives of Georgia who moved to New Jersey within the Nineteen Twenties. Delia died when Cissy – a childhood nickname that caught – was eight, adopted 10 years later by her husband. Cissy went to stay together with her married older sister, Lee Warrick, whose kids included Dionne and Dee Dee, each solely a handful of years youthful than their aunt.

Just about from infancy Cissy and her brothers and sisters had been inspired by their dad and mom to sing in church. They shaped a vocal group, into which Cissy was enrolled when she was 5. “I used to get so mad,” she advised Rolling Stone journal in 1978. “We’d be out taking part in within the solar with the opposite children and my older sister, Marie, would make us are available in for rehearsal.”

The Drinkard Singers achieved nationwide renown, ultimately showing at Carnegie Corridor and the Newport Folks competition. In 1954 Cissy took cost of the New Hope choir, which elevated from 15 to 60 voices throughout her years in cost.

A primary marriage in 1955 to Freddie Garland introduced her a son, Gary, however led to divorce. In 1964 she married John Houston, a military veteran who turned her supervisor and with whom she had two kids, Michael and Whitney.

By the point the second marriage introduced her a change of surname, she was working repeatedly as a backing singer on pop recording periods, in demand for her three-octave vary. With the 2 Warrick sisters (who would alter their spelling to Warwick) and a pal, Doris Troy, she shaped a unit that was quickly busy in New York studios offering backing vocals on hits by Solomon Burke, Chuck Jackson and plenty of others.

When all three of her colleagues left to pursue solo careers, she changed them with Estelle Brown, Sylvia Shemwell and Myrna Smith. Amongst their common employers was the Atlantic Information producer Jerry Wexler, who recruited them for periods with Franklin, with Cissy offering the coloratura soprano prospers featured on Franklin’s Ain’t No Manner in 1968. Wexler additionally gave them their identify, which shaped the title of their most profitable single, Candy Inspiration, a prime 20 hit when launched on Atlantic in 1967.

Whereas citing her kids, Cissy continued to file and make occasional appearances. Though she made a number of solo albums for a wide range of labels and producers, she was by no means capable of match the solo successes within the pop charts of the Warwick sisters or Troy. However when Burt Bacharach recorded his personal variations of a few of his best hits in 1971, he selected her to sing One Much less Bell to Reply, Mexican Divorce and All Sorts of Individuals. In 1976 she was featured in Gospel Fuse, a gospel opera composed by Carman Moore and carried out with the San Francisco Symphony orchestra, carried out by Seiji Ozawa.

On the 1989 album Whitney, which might promote greater than 20m copies around the globe, she joined her daughter for a duet on I Know Him So Effectively, from the musical Chess. In 1992 she and Jackson have been reunited for a tremendous R&B album titled I’ll Take Care of You. By the point she achieved her Grammy gospel successes, secular music was occupying much less of her time, though in 2006 she, Whitney and Dionne Warwick recorded a music referred to as Household First for the Hollywood rom-com Daddy’s Little Women.

In 1998 she revealed her autobiography, How Candy the Sound. Fifteen years later, in Remembering Whitney, she advised the harrowing story of her lengthy however unavailing wrestle to assist her daughter overcome her numerous issues.

Each her marriages led to divorce. She is survived by her two sons, six grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren.

It’s not usually we see portraits of our childhood misery. When households introduced out cameras within the late 60s, it was normally to seize smiling faces on particular events, similar to Christmas and birthdays. However right here I used to be, 18 months outdated, in two pages of a yellowing nationwide newspaper, dated January 1969.

The primary, underneath the headline “Endure little youngsters”, confirmed me in tears as I seemed away from the digital camera into the space as if I used to be searching for somebody. Within the second, I used to be inconsolable once more, wanting up and nonetheless ready for a grownup to select me up and luxury me. That one got here with the phrases: “Be grateful that little woman isn’t yours. She so simply could possibly be!”

The photographs had been a part of a nationwide marketing campaign for the Psychological Well being Belief, to focus on the affect of psychological sickness on youngsters. I used to be too younger to recollect these footage being taken. On the time, my father, Kim, was a flamboyant inventive director in London, beginning his personal advert company. So possibly I used to be simply probably the most handy alternative as a mannequin for his new marketing campaign.

Though I had been dimly conscious of the images rising up, I hadn’t seen them for years. Now, in 2011, they had been being handed again to me by a relative as a part of a pile of childhood mementoes my grandmother had stored of me.

Wanting on the footage at residence, I felt shocked after which uneasy. By now I had two younger youngsters, aged six and 9, and the photographs took on a really completely different which means.

After all, I knew that toddlers cry. However now I questioned how lengthy I had been left underneath the studio lights to get sufficient photographs of me wanting sufficiently distressed. Past that, I felt offended on the lack of belief I noticed within the eyes of my toddler self – and which I nonetheless recognised.

My father died in 1997 after an extended losing sickness, polymyositis. So, though I assume he was within the studio with the photographer, he’s not round to provide me any extra solutions. And the images date again to a painful interval in my mom’s life, so I’ve discovered it troublesome to press her on the small print.

However these footage felt like greater than transient snapshots from my youth. The lack of hope in my eyes nonetheless felt acquainted. For one factor, my mother and father’ unstable marriage had been punctuated by rows and separations from the second I used to be born. All through childhood, I witnessed explosive arguments that left me feeling scared and powerless. Typically the adults had been too caught up in their very own chaos to note.

When my mother and father lastly went their separate methods and divorced after I was 10, I misplaced the one stability I had recognized: my residence and faculty mates. My father moved to Australia and my mom to the US. For 2 years I lived together with her and her new accomplice, whereas shuttling to Melbourne and Sydney throughout faculty holidays. Then I agreed with my mom that boarding faculty was the best choice for me.

So, one of many classes I discovered early was that it wasn’t protected to really feel joyful and safe as a result of one thing exterior my management would come alongside and smash it. I grew up into an grownup who was consistently scanning the atmosphere and anticipating unhealthy issues to occur.

Even on my wedding ceremony day in 1999, as a substitute of feeling pleasure, I felt distant, dissociated and numb on what was purported to be one of many happiest moments of my life. At celebrations, events or Christmas, I felt as if I used to be on the surface, like I used to be wanting in from the opposite facet of frosted glass. My husband, Anthony, and I went on to have two beautiful daughters. However even when life was going properly for me, joyful household moments felt “cringy”.

Once I delved deeper, I realised I might additionally hear the voice of an invisible unhealthy fairy on my shoulder whispering: “In the event you really feel joyful now, there’ll be a value to pay later.”

That modified after I wrote a guide known as Feeling ‘Blah’?, which analyses why pleasure is tougher to search out within the fashionable world. I attempted out somatic remedy, which seems on the approach our nervous techniques are wired once we are younger youngsters and the way this may create bodily sensations of apprehension in our our bodies that persist even in maturity.

Once I noticed the somatic therapist, he advised me: “Rationally you understand that you’ve got a accomplice and youngsters who care about you, and it is best to be capable of get pleasure from that. It’s simply that your physique hasn’t obtained the message.”

As I stored researching the guide, I found there was even a reputation for this nervousness about happiness: cherophobia – from the Greek phrases for worry and celebration. Now I’ve been in a position to identify cherophobia, I’ve been in a position to discover as quickly as that jittery feeling begins to set in once more.

As an alternative of resisting or strolling away from good experiences and joyful emotions, I enable them in. That doesn’t imply I don’t nonetheless really feel bodily uncomfortable – and sometimes nonetheless cry – after I have a look at these footage of myself as a toddler. However I’ve stopped being offended with the adults who didn’t decide me as much as consolation me. Now I think about myself because the grownup who goes to cuddle that small youngster – and inform her that every part’s OK.

However his marketing campaign has soared after a robust exhibiting at Tory Get together convention. Cleverly delivered his handle from a lectern, urging the get together to “be extra regular,” to promote its legacy “with a smile” — and to deal with unity over factional infighting. He additionally pressured it was not time for an “apprentice” to steer — a refined dig at his extra inexperienced rivals.

Polling by grassroots Tory bible ConservativeHome, revealed Tuesday, discovered 55 p.c of members agreeing that convention had made them extra prone to vote for him. He’s additionally been boosted by the backing of former management contender Mel Stride.

A celebration loyalist, Cleverly stayed repeatedly in authorities from 2018 whereas the Tories cycled by means of leaders. He’s made nice hay of serving as get together chairman through the 2019 common election, when Boris Johnson battered Labour and bagged an 80-seat majority.

Cleverly’s a clean media operator, however he will be relatively gaffe inclined. He as soon as turned embroiled in a row with an MP over whether or not or not he referred to as the northern England city of Stockton-on-Tees a “sh*thole.” And he made an off-color joke about spiking drinks after asserting a legislation to clampdown on the crime.

Robert Jenrick, the shapeshifter

As soon as dubbed “Robert Generic” for seeming to signify a flavorless model of centrist Toryism, Cleverly has tacked to the appropriate on immigration. He’s in a combat with Badenoch now to make the ultimate two after Tuesday’s vote.

Jenrick voted to remain within the EU within the 2016 Brexit referendum. However he got here to prominence when he co-authored (with Rishi Sunak, no much less) a Instances op-ed endorsing Brexiteer Boris Johnson for chief.

The competition to interchange former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will run till November 2.

Conservative lawmakers in Britain have ejected former Safety Minister Tom Tugendhat from the celebration management contest, leaving three contenders nonetheless operating to steer the celebration after its catastrophic election defeat in July.

Tugendhat garnered 20 votes in a poll of 120 members of parliament, ending final. Former International Secretary James Cleverly topped the poll with 39 votes.

Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick received 31 votes and ex-Enterprise Secretary Kemi Badenoch obtained 30.

One other candidate will likely be kicked out of the race by legislators on Wednesday earlier than tens of 1000’s of celebration members throughout the nation select between the ultimate two.

The end result provides to Cleverly’s momentum within the race. Cleverly, a centrist, picked up assist with a well-received speech ultimately week’s Conservative convention. He urged the fractious celebration to “be extra regular” and argued he had the abilities to defeat the Labour Occasion of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and return the Conservatives to energy on the subsequent election, due by 2029.

Jenrick, a hardliner who requires Britain to make deep cuts to immigration and rip up European human rights legislation, had been thought of the frontrunner for the reason that contest began in July.

Jenrick raised his profile when he give up as an immigration minister below Sunak over what he known as the “fatally flawed” Rwanda plan to ship asylum seekers to the African nation. Then he stated it was not sturdy sufficient.

Badenoch, a former commerce minister, has positioned herself as an outspoken darling of not simply the proper wing of the celebration however of youthful lawmakers, promising to be “one thing totally different”, a difficult voice in what she describes as a damaged authorities system.

Criticised by some but adored by others for her outspoken views on Brexit and on what she calls “identification politics”, Badenoch stated she desires the celebration to return to “genuine Conservatism” and cease “speaking proper, governing left”.

The competition to interchange former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will run till November 2 after Conservative members forged the ultimate ballots for a brand new chief, charged with turning across the fortunes of a celebration decimated within the July 4 elections by Labour.

The celebration’s final contested management choice, in mid-2022, noticed members select Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak. Truss resigned as prime minister after simply 49 days in workplace when her tax-cutting plans rocked the monetary markets and battered the worth of the pound. The celebration then picked Sunak to interchange her.

In July, Sunak led the Conservative Occasion to its worst election end result since 1832. The Conservatives misplaced greater than 200 parliamentary seats, taking their tally right down to 121.