Lady V Radio Host

20/05/2025

Freddie Mercury said to Mary Austin in his will: “If things had been different you would have been my wife, and this would have been yours anyway.”
Mary met Mercury in 1970 when she was a 19-year-old art student and they moved in together before he was famous. Although their relationship ended when Freddie came to terms with his sexuality, their friendship never did. “Our love affair ended in tears, but a deep bond grew out of it, and that’s something nobody can take away from us,” said Freddie. “It’s unreachable. All my lovers ask why they can’t replace her, but it’s simply impossible.”
And after his death in 1991 he left her 50% of his future earnings. A further 25% went to his parents and 25% to his sister.
Miss Austin's share increased to 75% after the death of Mercury's parents. He had also left her his 28-room $37 million West London mansion, as well as the bulk of his $17 million fortune - including his art collection and Louis XV furniture.
Finally, and most remarkably, Mary was entrusted with Mercury's ashes after he was cremated and she is said to have secretly spread them in a location that she will never reveal...so Freddy's final resting place will be a secret forever.
There's something poetic about that.
Love isn't inherently romantic, gender-specific, or sexual. True Love is agnostic and independent of any of these things.
What Mary and Freddie had was such a love. They were friends first, then lovers, and eventually bonding as soul mates operating as friends. Friendship *is* love and their friendship was cemented in that shared love, heartache, trust, experiences, and an untouchably deep affection for one another transcending the material plane.
Beautiful, right? It's all any of us could ever hope to have.
❤

26/04/2025

Prince was already a bold and enigmatic artist, but everything changed in 1984 when he released the album "Purple Rain" with his band The Revolution. The project began as a daring multimedia experiment: a feature film and an album that would blur the lines between rock stardom and cinematic storytelling. Warner Bros. was hesitant about letting him star in his own movie, but Prince insisted that the soundtrack would be undeniable. He delivered on that promise with "Purple Rain", a record that exploded into one of the most iconic albums of the 1980s.

Recorded in a blend of studio sessions and live performances, including the unforgettable title track recorded at Minneapolis’ First Avenue nightclub, "Purple Rain" fused elements of rock, R&B, gospel, and funk with a theatrical edge that hadn’t been seen in pop music before. The album was a full-band effort, with The Revolution playing a critical role in shaping the sound. Wendy Melvoin, just 19 at the time and newly added to the band, played guitar on the title track, marking her live debut with Prince during that First Avenue show in August 1983. That night, Prince introduced several new tracks that would define his career.

The single "When Doves Cry" was groundbreaking. Released without a bassline, a decision that left even some of Prince’s engineers puzzled, it challenged all norms of radio pop production. Prince recorded every instrument on the track himself, layering vocals over the stark instrumentation. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for five weeks. It quickly became clear that this album wasn’t following anyone’s rules but Prince’s.

With nine songs, the album shifted sonic gears repeatedly. "Let’s Go Crazy" opened the album with an electric sermon that exploded into a guitar-heavy jam. "I Would Die 4 U" and "Baby I’m a Star" brought the energy of a gospel revival inside a futuristic nightclub. And the final track, "Purple Rain", was a nearly nine-minute epic that started as a ballad and soared into an emotional guitar solo that left audiences speechless. The song became a concert staple, often closing Prince’s shows with lighters raised and voices trembling.

When the "Purple Rain" film premiered in July 1984, it was a surprise box office success, earning over $70 million. While some critics focused on Prince’s acting inexperience, the electrifying concert footage and raw emotion on screen made the movie unforgettable. What made the film work was its reflection of the album’s emotional arc, struggle, pain, faith, and eventual triumph. The movie didn’t feel like a promotion for the album. Instead, the album and the film functioned like two sides of the same personal statement from Prince.

The commercial impact was staggering. "Purple Rain" topped the Billboard 200 for 24 consecutive weeks and went on to sell more than 25 million copies worldwide. It earned Prince two Grammy Awards and an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. The soundtrack wasn’t only dominating charts; it was shifting musical culture.

Engineer Susan Rogers once described Prince’s drive during that time: “He never slept. We’d be in the studio all night. He wanted everything to be perfect, but more than that, he wanted it to feel alive. That was his goal, not precision, but soul.” That energy bled into every track on "Purple Rain", and listeners could feel it. The album gave voice to pain, to power, to love, and to longing, but it did so without ever sounding conventional.

"Purple Rain" became a global phenomenon not just because it sounded good, but because it meant something personal to the man who made it. Prince never made art to fit in, he made art to tell the truth as he felt it in that moment.

Every time that opening riff plays, it’s not just a song, it’s a world opening up again. And that world still holds everything Prince poured into it.

25/04/2025

25/04/2025

✓ April 23, 1996
29 years ago today, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony released their classic single (Tha Crossroads) from their album [E 1999 Eternal]. The song was dedicated to various family members who passed away as well as the group's mentor Eazy-E. It was certified 2x Platinum and won the Grammy Awards for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 1997.
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24/04/2025

The night was bitter cold, and Cyndi Lauper had wrapped herself in a thrift-store coat too thin for Manhattan’s late 1970s chill. Her hair was already a defiant swirl of pink and platinum, her eyes rimmed with electric blue liner. She stood outside a small New York club with her band Blue Angel, guitars slung and hearts hopeful. They were booked to play, but as soon as the owner laid eyes on them, his face hardened. “We don’t want circus acts here,” he snapped. Then he slammed the door in their faces.

Cyndi sat on the concrete curb, mascara streaking her cheeks, stunned by the blunt rejection. Around her, the city pulsed with neon signs and traffic noise, indifferent to her pain. She pulled her knees to her chest and muttered to herself, “One day I won’t need anyone’s permission to be who I am.” That sentence, born out of humiliation, planted the seed of a fierce self-belief that would later define her career.

Back then, Cyndi was still a waitress, scraping rent money together by working odd jobs. Her voice had already drawn comparisons to Janis Joplin, but she hadn’t caught a break. Blue Angel, the band she fronted with raw energy and theatrical flair, had recorded demo tapes with big dreams of radio play. But the music industry kept steering her toward conformity. “Dress normal,” they said. “Tone it down.” But normal had never interested her.

That night’s rejection shook her, but it also shifted something inside. She began to see that her so-called weirdness was her greatest strength. In an interview years later, she recalled, “If they thought I looked like a circus, maybe that meant I was a show. And maybe people need a show to feel something real.” It wasn’t about fitting in anymore. It became about standing out, on purpose.

In 1980, Blue Angel released a self-titled album through "Polydor Records", but internal tensions and poor management fractured the group soon after. Cyndi wound up broke, with nodules on her vocal cords and no band to fall back on. She took a job retailing vintage clothes and spent nights studying old records, healing her voice. When a music exec from "Portrait Records" heard her sing at a tiny Manhattan venue in 1982, he was floored. He signed her as a solo artist on the spot.

Two years later, she walked onto the set of her first solo music video wearing torn gloves, layers of petticoats, and hair like a firework explosion. The song was “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” That single catapulted her into pop history. Her fearless performance and neon-drenched style turned heads everywhere. Kids copied her clothes. Magazine covers like "Rolling Stone" and "Seventeen" clamored for her image. But beneath the glitter, she carried the memory of that night on the curb like a scar turned badge.

Cyndi once told a crowd at a benefit concert in 1986, “They said I was too weird. But weird gave me wings.” That line drew roars from fans who had felt boxed in by expectations, inspired by her refusal to shrink herself to fit the mold.

Years later, the very club that had once rejected her tried to book her for a high-profile fundraiser. She declined without comment. The owner had changed, but the building still held the echo of that slammed door. She told a friend afterward, “I didn’t need to go back. I already left my mark everywhere else.”

To this day, Cyndi Lauper’s name is synonymous with rebellion wrapped in color. And it all began on a sidewalk outside a club that couldn’t see the magic behind her mismatched clothes and unapologetic voice.

She didn’t change to belong. She became someone worth belonging to.