Song tips

ONBOARD THE AMAKRISTINA -- The tears came early on the AmaKristina, on Day 1 of the inaugural Soulful Epicurean Experience cruise, AmaWaterways' first Black heritage river cruise itinerary.

Just as sports obsessives will travel to Paris this summer for the Olympics, pop music lovers with a penchant for camp will travel to Malmö for the Eurovision Song Contest.

New Yorkers know how to brave the cold. Five inches of snow? Twenty-mile-per-hour winds? The challenges are met with a shrug, a grimace and an extra layer. Here, life keeps moving no matter the weather. I try to remember this as I’m standing before Forbes Travel Guide’s Four-Star The Spa by Equinox Hotels’ cryotherapy chamber, but find, faced with three minutes in a negative 150-degree chamber, my mask of Manhattan blasé is slipping.

Myth distorts any city’s musical history, and in Manchester myth looms as large as the new Co-op Live, a £365m, 23,500-capacity mega-venue that opens today and will soon be staging big-name acts, including Take That. So, for every occasion a music fan mentions the hit-making boy band or, for that matter, 10cc or the Hollies, a thousand more bark back: Joy Division, the Fall, Happy Mondays. Not that 10cc were a small Manc band, but they peaked before punk and a wall went up at the end of the 1970s that relegated all that had passed prior to 4 June 1976 – the night the Sex Pistols performed at the Lesser Free Trade Hall – to prehistory, as in dinosaurs, fossils, folk musicians. New hagiographies about music impresario Tony Wilson (1950-2007) are no doubt at the printers as I write. But how about we spend half an hour mooching round the Rainy City aboard the free buses and trams in search of the underplayed, surprising and tangential – with a few Gen X/6 Music standards for when we’re stuck at the lights.

A celebration of an artist's life in the purest sense, Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is the definitive swan song of the beloved Oscar and Grammy winning Japanese pianist who said that the film “was conceived as a way to record my performances - while I was still able to perform - in a way that is worth preserving for the future.” And Opus is just that. Created by a team that included Ryuichi Sakamoto, his son Neo Sora as director, his wife Norika Sora as a producer and longtime collaborator Jeremy Thomas as executive producer, the film is a beautiful, moving testament to the late maestro’s life and work. It is a concert film that is so intimately and expertly shot with extraordinary closeups on the composer’s face and hands and with such incredible sound that viewers will feel they are in the studio on the stage with Sakamoto.

Don’t be surprised, upon opening the door to Aladdin’s Times Square Palace Suite at Hilton New York Times Square, to suddenly find yourself humming the show’s hit song, “A Whole New World.” You may be smack in the middle of one of the most bustling streets on the planet but you’ll feel like you’ve entered a peaceful and luxurious oasis far, far away from it all.

Oceania's newest ship, the Oceania Vista, will sail its first world cruise in 2026, roundtrip out of Miami.

Iceland blows away concerns. Its small population isn't worried about isolation or continuous winter darkness, instead focusing on its glowing passion for music and all things cultural.

Tech is invaluable for travel directions, reviews and reservations, but it can also help us better navigate and connect with the spaces we move through in niche ways. That might mean finding the quietest cities, small titbits of interesting local history, or songs and books that were written about the areas we're passing through—all of which help to enrich our travel experience.

Music soundtracks our travels, kills time and distracts, entertainingly. In Berlin, which has more than 300 train stations and where you can see everything panoramically from the overhead S-Bahn, a well-loaded smartphone or MP3 player turns a journey into a film with a score.

While mostly known for directing and writing films such as ‘ Orlando ,’ filmmaker Sally Potter’s other talents have shined in many projects, including stepping in front of the camera and acting (and dancing) in ‘ The Tango Lesson ’ as well as composing the scores for many of her films. Now with her debut album ‘ Pink Bikini ’ Potter sings songs she composed about her teenage years in the 1960s with themes of growing sexuality and the fear of nuclear war. I spoke with Potter about he inspiration for making the album, the differences in songwriting and filmmaking and the wines she would love to drink — if she only could.

Sunset descends like a dream in Kenya’s Lamu archipelago: Each evening, the channel separating the islands of Manda and Lamu is anointed in a hazy veil of golden light as dhows pirouette in the water, triangle sails billowing overhead. I gazed out over a carousel of boats from my perch on the deck of Taqwa, delighting in the snatches of American hip-hop, Afrobeats, and Bollywood bangers emanating from them as they passed by. At some point, Taqwa sailed in tandem with a smaller vessel boasting the best playlist on the water. As we floated together companionably, a romantic Swahili tune filled the air—and for a moment, the weather, landscape, and music came together in a sublime alchemy that left me breathless.

Imagine the darkest time of year in Sweden, when the sun never climbs above the horizon in the northernmost part of the country, and in Stockholm, the capital, there’s a scant six hours of daylight. Every day is shorter and gloomier than the last until the nadir — the darkest day of the year — when a young woman appears dressed in a white gown with a blazing crown of candles on her head, singing a familiar song and spreading warmth and light on a frigid winter morning.

There have been songs written about La Seine, movies set alongside her quays, and masterpieces painted about her. While the Seine is definitely Paris’s favorite river, there is its lesser-known, black-sheep sibling: the Bièvre River.

You don’t need to put on a tuxedo to try Fraser & Thompson whiskey but it wouldn’t be out of place either. Grammy-award winning singer Michael Bublé teamed up with Master Distiller and Blender Paul Cirka to create this ‘North America’ whiskey named in tribute to two rivers in Canada where Bublé spent time with his beloved grandfather growing up. I spoke with Bublé about this special relationship, the challenge of selling whiskey after selling 75 millions albums and how he almost became a snack for some polar bears.

After almost 30 years together, 24 million records sold and one billion song streams, frontman Gavin Rossdale and his band Bush have released ‘ Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023 .’ In addition to a passion for cooking and his own clothing line , Rossdale has taken on the issue of gun violence in America by playing a series of shows to benefit Artists For Action — including a combined concert with Sheryl Crow, Billie Eilish and Peter Gabriel. I met with Rossdale at Double Chicken Please in New York where we discussed what drew him to this issue, his favorite drinks and why you may want him on your jury if you’re in serious trouble.

Consider these strategies for keeping them occupied and engaged during the ride.

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On this episode of The Last Resort, host Christina Jelski talks to Linda Sergeant, founder of Far and Away Luxury Destinations, an affiliate of In The Know Experiences, about her recent visit to the Kisawa Sanctuary on Mozambique's Benguerra Island.

A Grammy-nominated singer was nearly booted from a Delta Air Lines flight after continuously attempting to sing her newly released song.

I’m a U2 fan. So when tickets went on sale on April 27 at a new, not-yet-open dome-shaped Las Vegas entertainment facility called The Sphere, I went to the Ticketmaster Web site. I ended up with four seats for the Irish band’s October 27th show. Tickets in the near-nosebleed 400 section were a reasonable $140, including Ticketmaster’s notorious fees.