Koko, London
From scorned lovers to campfire heartbreak and outlaw vengeance, the charmingly tipsy singer takes the crowd on a JD-swigging journey through the Old West

It’s hard to think of an artist whose fortunes changed as abruptly as Shaboozey’s did last year. Featured on two tracks on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter (which he only found out on the album’s release), he became the poster boy of a revolution in country music overnight – one disrupting Nashville with Black cowboy aesthetics and trap and hip-hop mashups. The release of A Bar Song (Tipsy) just two weeks later was impeccable timing: it became a viral sensation, eventually tying Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road for the longest-running Billboard Hot 100 No 1.

It is curious, then, that Shaboozey finds himself performing at the 1,500-capacity Koko. Though sold out, the venue seems minuscule compared to the scale of his radio and chart domination. But it’s an appropriate choice – unencumbered by the recurrent pressure on early-career artists to pack out oversized venues and maximise returns. The vibe is intimate, focused on the close chemistry with his three-piece band, who blow the roof off with some thunderously loud peaks.

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Lynette Linton, outgoing creative director of Bush Theatre, hopes production will lead to people getting more support

Part of the creative team behind a new play about the impact of dementia on a Black British family hope it can provoke a conversation about the disease, which disproportionately affects Black Britons.

Miss Myrtle’s Garden is part of Lynette Linton’s final season at the Bush Theatre in London, and the artistic director said the “beautiful and heart-wrenching” production was an important opportunity to discuss the havoc dementia causes.

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Many famous names threatened to leave the first time, but as the president chips away at more liberties, plenty are plotting their escape

The first time that Donald Trump ran for president, plenty of people talked about leaving the United States if he won . Some were at least halfway joking; some were engaging in hyperbolic tough talk – jokes soured and bluffs unexpectedly called by Trump’s chilling 2016 victory. But even those with the means to hastily relocate mostly stayed put as the shock gradually wore off and plenty of high-profile celebrities lent their voices to protesting against the administration’s various policies (or, doing the celebrity version: making fun of administration oddballs through shaky impressions on the Saturday Night Live cold open). The message was clear: we aren’t actually going anywhere; we’re staying and fighting (or just trying to get through the day). Maybe some people still thought about leaving the country – I know a few who sincerely looked into Canada and Italy based on those countries’ particular rules. But after a global pandemic hit in 2020, there were other concerns involved with shifting residency anyway. Besides, later that year Trump himself was shown the door.

But that door was left cracked open, and with the second coming of Trump, there’s been a change. Courtney Love is seeking UK citizenship. Married couple Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi have already moved to the UK and recently put their final remaining US property up for sale, indicating the move’s permanence. Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes and their two children moved to London last summer – the same city where America Ferrara has been seen looking at schools, portending a possible move for the firmly outspoken actor. Rosie O’Donnell explicitly cited concern for her nonbinary child as her reason for heading to Ireland and seeking citizenship there. (Texas native Eva Longoria now resides in Spain and Mexico, though she insisted last autumn that the relocation was not political.)

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The author’s suite of essays, originally conceived for broadcast, don’t always translate well for the page

Julian Barnes’s latest book comprises five micro-essays, originally commissioned for a radio series a decade ago and repackaged here. The publisher spies an opportunity, perhaps, for something like a manifesto on open-mindedness, with Barnes’s musings the vehicle. Not unreasonable: as the author of 14 novels, winner of the Booker, he knows a thing or two about the power of language: “I believe deeply in words, in their ability to represent thought, define truth, and create beauty. I’m equally aware that words are constantly used for the opposite purposes: to obfuscate truth, misrepresent thought, lie, slander, and provoke hatred.”

It follows from this recognition that a clever person ought to be able to rethink old convictions in light of new evidence and life experience – to see one’s misperceptions for what they are and change one’s mind. Call it the virtue of the volte-face. But the broadcast conceit doesn’t translate well on the page, leaving the author exposed. In a chapter extolling the benefits of rereading, he tells us that after a lifetime of despising EM Forster’s prissiness , he eventually came around to him. Belatedly, a subversive and “delightfully unpatriotic” writer was discovered. Forster was funny to boot. Barnes quotes a line from Where Angels Fear to Tread as evidence: “‘Everyone to his taste!’ said Harriet, who always delivered a platitude as if it was an epigram.” But he opens himself up to the same charge with phrases such as: “what a grown-up novelist Forster is”. Or again: “The pleasure of being proved wrong can be a genuine pleasure.”

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Self-taught animator Jiaozi brings his sublime artistry to this pageant of Chinese mythology that has stormed the box office

Currently the highest grossing animated film ever , this Chinese box-office obliterator is being touted as the long-awaited crossover point for the country’s mainstream industry. Forget the adulterated, Communist party-sponsored attempts at blockbusters of the past, self-taught animator Jiaozi’s film is an utterly self-assured pageant of Chinese mythology that, with head-spinning visuals, is a fine technical advertisement for what the country is capable of, in this case on a comparatively small $80m budget. Even if, with its hectic flurry, there’s still room for improvement dramatically.

Demonic tyke Ne Zha (voiced by Lü Yanting) and do-gooder squire Ao Bing (Han Mo) – born from two halves of the same celestial pearl – are rebuilding their physical forms through the power of a sacred lotus. But they’re interrupted when their town Chentang Pass is invaded by razor-sideburned demon Shen Gongbao (Yang Wei), colluding with a gaggle of exiled dragons. One of them is Ao Bing’s father, who should be embarrassed to find that interrupting the lotus ritual apparently dooms his son. So Ne Zha, with Ao Bing squatting his body, must make for Yuxu Palace to ask ovoid-headed immortal Master Wuliang (Wang Deshun) for help.

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As Guardian writers continue to share their go-to comfort films, we asked for your picks, which range from a ghostly sports drama to a Hitchcock thriller

My parents’ favorite, too. So much so they allowed me to watch it on a school night. I loved the arch dialogue (Deborah Kerr), especially the request for “pink champagne” that I used for years to torture my younger sister whenever she wanted to know what I was doing. Why, drinking pink champagne, of course! It’s on Netflix again so am enjoying it for the umpteenth time in all its glorious technicolor. Deepavali70

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The V&A has announced the winners of the 2025 V&A Parasol Foundation prize for women in photography, the third iteration of the museum’s open call prize, which identifies, supports and champions the talent of global female photographers.

The four winners will each receive a bursary of £2,000 and will exhibit their work in a group show at the Copeland Gallery, London, as part of the Peckham 24 festival, from 16-25 May 2025.

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London’s property market is the villain in this wry gothic novel for generation rent

To a certain extent, all rented properties are haunted. The spectres of previous tenants lurk in the bedside tables and slogan mugs they left behind; their fag smoke lingers in the carpets; the post they failed to redirect piles up in the hall. Neighbours, too, can feel like phantoms: we might rarely see them, but we hear their footsteps and their music, inhale their cooking smells, or simply somehow sense their recently departed presences on the communal stairs. As for landlords: they’re probably the biggest ghouls of all.

In light of all this, it’s perhaps surprising that we haven’t seen more housing crisis ghost stories, or, as Róisín Lanigan’s debut has been billed, a “gothic novel for generation rent”. I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is the story of Áine and Elliot, who have just moved into a rental together in a gentrified area of London. It’s a flat that, ominously, no one else seemed to want. They are both keen to enter a more adult stage of life, but something about the place unnerves Áine from the very start.

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From nuclear power plants to Aids protests, the photographer has spent half a century capturing her activist community

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