Blackpink’s Lisa Returns to Her Rap Roots on Solo Single ‘SaWaDiKa’

The rapper-singer is ushering a new era ahead of her Press Play EP, which arrives on Oct. 23

Lisa for ‘SaWaDiKa’

Lisa is saying “hello” to her new chapter. The rapper-singer has released her new supercharged single “SaWaDiKa,” which is a Thai greeting for “hello.”

The track finds Lisa returning to her rap roots, as she spits bars with the sharp prowess she’s known for. “I’m that bitch on your TV/In my Ferrari, indigo/La Lalisa, la diva,” she raps over sputtering drums. Produced by Thom Bridges, who has worked with Katseye and John Summit among other artists, and songwriting duo Ojivolta, the track is a thumping first look into Lisa’s forthcoming EP, Press Play, which arrives on Oct. 23 via LLOUD Co./RCA Records.

Along with the song, Lisa has also shared a show-stopping music video. In it, she rocks a handful of stunning looks, including a red, cut-out leather bodysuit and boxing shorts with “SaWaDiKa” in rhinestone letters across the waist. The visual was shot in Lisa’s native Bangkok, Thailand, and directed by Bang Jae Yeob, a Korean director known for his work on K-pop videos. Throughout the video, Lisa commands each shot as she walks through a handful of iconic locations in Bangkok.

“SaWaDiKa” is Lisa’s first solo single of 2026. In May, the rapper-singer released “Goals” alongside Anitta and Rema for the Official FIFA World Cup 2026 Album. The song comes after Lisa announced her upcoming documentary Always Lalisa, which premieres worldwide on Oct. 12.

It’s bound to be a busy year for the Blackpink member. In the fall, Lisa will kick off her Viva La Lisa Residency in Las Vegas, where she will perform at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace on Nov. 13, Nov. 14, Nov. 27, and Nov. 28.

Three years ago, Mary Austin – Freddie Mercury‘s closeset friend who inherited the Queen singer’s home and most of his worldly possessions – made the difficult decision to finally part with the collection via auction. The items were breathtaking, including the handwritten lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Killer Queen,” “Stone Cold Crazy,” and “We Are The Champions,” in addition to his stage costumes, piano, and even the front door to his house. Not a single item was left unsold, and it grossed £39.9 million.

The items are now in the hands of private collectors, but the general public can experience it thanks to Austin’s recently released book A Life in Lyrics: The Official Creative Legacy of Freddie Mercury. It contains detailed photographs of the key items from the collection, and traces the story of Austin’s incredible friendship with Mercury. In this exclusive excerpt, Austin discusses her decision to part with everything, and the process of combing through the home and finding the treasures Mercury left behind.When Freddie died in 1991, he left me his cherished home, Garden Lodge, in Kensington, west London.

Garden Lodge was not to be a museum, he’d said, though it was filled with enough artefacts, antiques and works of art to warrant one. And while the idea of living among Freddie’s possessions felt almost overwhelming at first, I realized in time that he’d left me a memory box filled with love and joy. It was a source of great comfort as I grieved the loss of a man I loved very much. His sanctuary became mine. But time passes, and three decades on, I knew I had to decide how to steer what Freddie had left me into the future. The question was how.

It wasn’t an easy decision. But in the end, the answer was simple. Love.

Love had always been the thread that bound everything at Garden Lodge together. Freddie had loved the house itself and everything he’d filled it with, just as I had when he passed it all on to me. Almost everything in the house was antique; each piece carried a history of its own, the years at Garden Lodge forming just one chapter in a much longer story. I began to feel that sharing his collection with others would allow that thread to continue – it was time for his treasures to journey onwards.

After much thought, I decided to hold an auction. I felt Freddie himself would have liked the idea. I’d seen first-hand the joy he had got over the years from hunting down the perfect piece of art, porcelain or furniture for his home. There were dozens of auction catalogues still in the house, some with his handwritten notes about pieces he was interested in buying, or the prices they had sold for.

And so, over several months in 2022, myself and my two sons, Richard and Jamie, embarked on a journey of wonder and discovery, unpacking spaces that I had hardly touched in all my years living there. Investigating the loft, for instance, was like finding a door to a secret world. It was filled with the packing trunks we had used when Freddie moved into the house. Nestled beneath the rafters, they’d been slowly obscured by boxes of Christmas decorations and other belongings our family had accumulated over the decades we’d lived at Garden Lodge. I had a general sense of what the trunks contained, but I’d never looked inside them. Everyday life had a habit of getting in the way, and I was not ready to stir up memories I knew would be painful.

Slowly and carefully, we unpacked, catalogued and stored everything; until, one morning in early 2023, representatives from Sotheby’s – the London auction house based on New Bond Street, Mayfair, known for handling art, jewellery and important private collections – visited Garden Lodge. We had begun exploring what a sale might involve the year before, and this was their first time seeing Freddie’s collection in person.

Once they had left, the house fell quiet again, and my youngest son Jamie and I found ourselves in the sitting room of Garden Lodge. It is a particularly beautiful room. The house, with its distinctive brick exterior, was extensively renovated in 1908 for painter Cecil Rea and his artist wife, Constance Halford; huge windows overlooking the garden were added to the sitting room to create a light-filled studio. Freddie had also used that room creatively; it was where he often composed. His Yamaha grand piano stood where it always had, tucked against a wall about ten feet away from the windows, to protect it from sun-bleaching.

Courtesy of Mary Austin ca.rollingstone.com

We stood there, talking over the visit and how Sotheby’s had been particularly taken with a selection of Freddie’s lyrics. Jamie glanced around the room and said, ‘Can you think of anywhere we haven’t looked?’

Our attention went to the piano stool. Made of lacquered satinwood, with a seat upholstered in black-and-gold silk, it had been a favourite of Freddie’s for many years.

‘Have you looked in there?’ I asked.

Opening the lid, Jamie lifted out old childhood piano books to reveal a cavity divided into two neatly packed sections – Freddie was always meticulous. On one side were cassette tapes, the kind Freddie had used to record himself when he was writing, while the other half contained notebooks of lyrics, a black binder and a copy of a book called Chopin’s Musical Style, Chopin being a composer Freddie greatly admired. Within the binder we discovered lyrics and compositions written on loose sheets of British Midland Timesavers paper (the same paper he had used for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’), including those for ‘We Are the Champions’ and ‘Somebody to Love’.

Carefully lifting everything out, Jamie found a final, ring-bound, yellow notebook, the sort you can buy in any stationery store, resting on the bottom of the compartment. Opening it, we found it contained the words for ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. More than fifty years on from our first meeting, Freddie still had the capacity to surprise – and delight.

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The auction of Freddie’s collection, in September 2023, was everything that we, as a family, together with the remarkable team at Sotheby’s, had hoped for: a celebration of Freddie’s life and work. Titled Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own, a pre-sales exhibition at Sotheby’s transformed the galleries into a celebration of his life, drawing more than 140,000 visitors.

Meanwhile, the sales themselves were comprised of six meticulously curated auctions, each achieving a rare ‘white-glove’ result, with every one of the 1,406 lots sold. Spanning art, jewellery, furniture, porcelain and costume, the collection expressed so many facets of Freddie’s layered, fascinating self, with many pieces finding new homes with collectors and fans across the world.

Among the lots were gifts from Elton John. When Queen were managed by John Reid, Freddie had become friendly with Elton, who was also managed by John. Elton and Freddie saw a lot of one another socially, and their friendship continued even after John’s time as Queen’s manager came to an end. They shared a love for gift-giving and exchanged many thoughtful pieces over the years. Elton’s gifts to Freddie included artworks, an onyx and gold bracelet, a Cartier ring and, later, Lalique vases. These were never grand for their own sake – they were personal and chosen with great care – and Freddie treasured them because they came from affection, not obligation.

Elton remained close to Freddie until the end. He came to see Freddie during his final months and still arrived with gifts, just as he always had. When the time came and those items were sold at auction, I donated the proceeds to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. It felt like a way of honouring the kindness between them and returning those gifts, in another form, to something that mattered deeply to Freddie.

Even more personal and illuminating than the antiques and collectibles were the lyrics, notes and musical workings we had found. They mattered so deeply to Freddie that we wanted to share them with his audience. In doing so, we hope to offer a clearer sense of the dedication and discipline behind the music, and of the painstaking work that went into bringing each song to life. That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of this book.

Freddie, as anyone familiar with his music will know, always insisted that his lyrics were about nothing in particular. He wanted them to remain open, allowing listeners to find their own meanings. Yet he was constantly writing, revising and drafting, and I’ve long felt that this process was a form of catharsis for him. Looking through the lyrics now, memories are inevitably sparked, and while I have always respected Freddie’s privacy, and will continue to do so, I hope to offer some context and a few insights into the man I knew, in celebration of his creative work. The one who sat at the piano and composed, who worked tirelessly to hone his craft, who got up in the night to scribble lyrics into notebooks; the man who envisioned Queen and carried that ambition even while working on a stall in Kensington Market, and who poured the same creative drive into everything he touched, from these lyrics to costumes, videos and the home he created around himself.

The world knew him as Freddie Mercury. But for me, the person captured within the pages of his lyrics, doodles and notes is Freddie Bulsara. This is the man I knew. And in sharing his work more widely, my hope is to honour a person who stood so humanely, and captivatingly, among us. To celebrate the magnificent creativity that was the core of Freddie.

Excerpted from the book A Life in Lyrics. Copyright © 2026 by Mary Austin. From Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by Permission

This story was first pubished by Rolling Stone.

Will Oasis hit the road next summer? That is potentially in the cards according to Noel Gallagher.

The musician added to the rumors that there is a 2027 Oasis tour in the works during an appearance on talkSPORT’s Drive. When host Andy Goldstein asked about the tour rumors, Gallagher first downplayed the possibility, joking, “It’s Liam, isn’t it? He’s not into it. He’s not into Oasis anymore.”

Goldstein replied that he heard Gallagher’s brother and bandmate recently quit social media. “Well, then there must be something happening,” Gallagher responded. “Well, let’s put it this way: there’s no football tournament on next year, so we’ve got to do something in the summer, right?”

Oasis have not officially confirmed a return to the road. However, there have been numerous reports that the band is planning another big tour, which could include a return to U.K. venue Knebworth. In 1996, Oasis famously played there to 250,000 people across two nights and some have speculated they will attempt to recapture the magic.

Last month, Liam responded to reports that Oasis would headline Glastonbury in 2027. “It’s not happening so all you croc wearing flag waving shit cunts can calm the fuck down,” he told fans on social media.

Oasis spent much of 2025 on the road performing their highly-anticipated reunion tour. Throughout the run, the musicians dropped a few hints that they were planning to return. In September, when the band wrapped their London shows, Gallagher issued a slew of thank yous, ending with one for the fans. “Most of all, I wanna thank you lot for keeping the faith and putting this band back on the map,” he said, adding a few moments later: “See you next year!”

Oasis will release a new documentary, Don’t Look Back in Anger, in IMAX theaters on Sept. 11 before the film arrives on Hulu and Disney+ later this year. It was created by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight and directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace.

“The Oasis world tour united generations, cultures and countries and spoke to a broken world about reconciliation,” Knight said in a statement. “Don’t Look Back In Anger is not only your ticket to the show – it’s a backstage pass and a seat at the table when Liam and Noel sit down together for the first time in 15 years and tell it how it is and how it was.”

Katy Perry performs during the FIFA World Cup 2026 at Los Angeles Stadium in June

Katy Perry reflected on her public breakup from Orlando Bloom and growing relationship with Justin Trudeau in a new interview. The singer told People that she credits her Lifetimes Tour for connecting her to the former Canadian prime minister.

Perry explained that “last year was really hard,” however the tour gave her the opportunity to find a new sense of self. “I learned how to step back into my purpose,” she said. “And I got the greatest gift from this tour: I got to meet the love of my life.”

She added of the tour, which kicked off in April 2025, “A lot of people said I couldn’t do it and gave me a lot of flak — and I did it. Some people are like, ‘Cringe, cringe, cringe.’ But I’m living my fucking life to the fullest!”

The Lifetimes Tour was a few months underway when Perry and Bloom, her fiancé at the time, announced their split. Perry recalled being in Australia when the news came out last July. “It was probably the hardest time,” she said. “My friends were all hanging out back home. I was crying and just feeling far away. But then my angels went to work. They really showed up.”

Perry and Trudeau were first spotted together later that month. “I got to meet Justin on tour, and then things shifted,” she told People. She said she made a list of things she wanted to manifest, including “true love.” “I think that’s where we’re at,” she said, adding that she believes things happen for a reason.

“I wouldn’t have stayed in something for nine years if there wasn’t really important things to learn,” she said. “Each relationship is a teacher, right? I had to let it go so I could move forward. I always wanted this epic legendary love, and I was talking to my therapist about it: Everything in my life is epic, but this is kind of the missing puzzle piece — then it showed up.”

She added of Trudeau, who has come to several of her concerts, “He knows the words, he’s supportive, and he’s in awe. It’s super healing.”

Perry’s new concert film, The Lifetimes Tour – Live from Paris, arrived in cinemas yesterday. Directed by Paul Dugdale, the film is comprised of Perry’s Lifetimes Tour at the Accor Arena in Paris, where she hit the stage on Nov. 4 and 5, 2025. The 25-song set was captured with 60 cameras, as the pop star flew around on a butterfly and sang classics like “California Gurls” and “Firework.”

The Lifetimes Tour spanned 91 dates, 23 countries, and five continents, and marked Perry’s first official run in seven years.

Lisa in Always Lalisa

Early last year, Blackpink rapper and singer Lisa stepped into the spotlight on her own with Alter Ego, her debut solo album. She had explored solo projects in smaller endeavors before, like the 2021 EP Lalisa, but a full-length was a much bigger undertaking. Lisa captured the pressure and lessons that came with the experience in the documentary film Always Lalisa, arriving in theaters internationally on Oct. 12.

Directed by Sue Kim, Always Lalisa follows Lisa as she builds her solo career outside of Blackpink while balancing global stardom and personal developments in the public eye. Her journey includes not only music, but fashion, television, and the personal brand she has developed around these different sectors.

“Following Lisa on this transformative and thrilling year has been a true honor and a cinematic gift,” Kim said in a statement last year, when production on the documentary began. “There have been so many moments on her journey that I think will surprise people and give a glimpse into her world that no one’s ever seen before. I’m excited for viewers to watch the film and witness this extraordinary moment in her life.”

“This has been such an incredible year and I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to capture these special moments on film and share the experience with my fans,” Lisa said at the time. “Working with Sue Kim has been such a joy. We’ve been all around the world together and I know this is just the beginning of many more exciting things to come.”

Following the theatrical release of Always Lalisa, the documentary will be made available to stream exclusively on YouTube Premium. Tickets for the IMAX screenings of the film go on sale on Sept. 9.

“LISA’s music resonates with fans across the globe and we hope this film creates that same powerful connection,” said Sony Music Vision President Tom Mackay. “Alongside its theatrical release, we’re thrilled to partner with YouTube Premium to bring this intimate look at her incredible journey directly to audiences around the world, wherever they are.”

Always Lalisa arrives just under two weeks before the release of Press Play, a six-track project featuring the upcoming single “Sawadika,” out Sept. 3. The record will reflect a deeper exploration of the 29-year-old’s Thai roots and lean into a more personal approach to her solo output. Press Play is set for release on Oct. 23. In November, Lisa will make history as the first K-pop artist to stage a Las Vegas residency.

Last month, Lisa celebrated the tenth anniversary of Blackpink in an Instagram post. “Thank you so much to all the Blinks who were there with me throughout these ten years,” she said. “Because of your support, you are the ones who keep me going and I promise to keep working hard to do the same for you. I strive to be a better version of myself to make you guys proud. And to my ride or die members, its been a rollercoaster of a ride but I wouldn’t have it any other way. There will be ups and downs but we are in it together and know that I will always have your back.”

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) is taking its battle over artificial intelligence and copyright to court, announcing today it has filed a lawsuit against AI music company Suno Inc. over its alleged unauthorized use and reproduction of musical works represented by the Canadian performing rights organization.

In a statement Wednesday, SOCAN said it has identified Suno-generated outputs that are identical or similar to songs in its repertoire, notably songs by by artists like Avril Lavigne and Joni Mitchell. The organization says the lawsuit includes a sample of 150 publicly available Suno outputs that it believes infringe the performing rights attached to those works.

According to the release, Suno has built its generative AI platform by training its models on music files readily accessible online without obtaining the necessary permissions or licences. The organization alleges that the resulting technology can generate and publicly stream music that replicates existing compositions, including works represented by SOCAN members.

The lawsuit focuses on Suno's activities in Canada, alleging that making the platform available to Canadian users, generating outputs that replicate songs in SOCAN's repertoire and streaming those outputs constitutes infringement of performing rights.

“SOCAN has a responsibility to act when the rights of music creators and publishers are put at risk,” CEO Jennifer Brown said in the statement. “Innovation can’t come at the expense of human creativity.”

SOCAN's chief legal officer and general counsel Andrea Kokonis said the organization is seeking to establish that existing copyright protections remain applicable as the technology develops. “Our evidence is clear, and so is our objective: to establish that AI companies must respect the rights of music creators and publishers,” Kokonis said.

The organization declined to comment beyond what is contained in the court record. Suno has not yet publicly responded to the allegations in SOCAN's announcement.