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Apple Music is getting into the giving spirit this holiday season with the return of From Apple Music With Love, a special countdown to the holidays. Each day at 8:00a PST from November 25 – 30, Apple Music subscribers will receive exclusive gifts from some of the biggest and brightest names in music, stamped with love and ready for unwrapping. This year, gifts range from live concert recordings, new renditions of favorite songs, a classic album rerelease alongside a brand new holiday album, and party-crushing mixes to close out the year. Do yourself a favor and enjoy the musical experiences we’ve put together with Apple Music listeners in mind.

Today’s exclusive gift comes from Sam Smith, and features their stunning October 2022 performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

“I definitely wanted this to be different to my other shows,” Sam Smith tells Apple Music. “I come from a theatre background and really missed that feeling on my last tour. It takes a village of talent to put on my shows, and it’s important for me now to showcase and celebrate the artists around me.” In Live From Royal Albert Hall, which arrives to Apple Music listeners as part of the From Apple Music With Love series, Smith celebrates their body of work with a curated selection of songs from the evening.

Though Smith was mostly performing songs from their catalogue, the singer says the set was imbued with the spirit of their fourth studio album Gloria, scheduled to release in January 2023. “With this show it was about adding a little Gloria to all my songs,” Smith says. “I always want to change all the songs a little to fit the mood and the tones of whatever project I’m currently releasing. But I am also passionate about playing the songs the way people love them.” One listen to Live From Royal Albert Hall and you’re sure to have found that Smith couldn’t lose either way.

Tune in every day at 8am PST to keep counting down the holidays with an exclusive gift on Apple Music and check out Sam Smith’s October 2022 performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall HERE

Inspired by the World Cup, Brazilian photographer Carlos Locatelli innovated the idea of a record that refers to the national passion for women and football. The artist used the body of a model and influencer, Wanessa Moura, to produce a “human sticker album.”

The influencer said she was a little uncomfortable when she received the invitation, but she accepted the challenge after understanding the proposal. “At first, I didn’t understand the idea, but I accepted the challenge of artistically approaching the woman’s body and sensuality.

Today, masculinity and the objectification of women’s bodies are outdated figures, and they don’t complete the album”, explains the model.

Wanessa gained worldwide fame after being compared to actress Penélope Cruz in 2019 and was on the cover of Vietnam’s Baazar magazine.

Always active on the networks, she always seeks to exalt the female body and power, encouraging women of all body types to seek their space in the world of fashion and catwalks.

The model has performed a provocative test in favor of female empowerment before. In 2018, the year of the last World Cup, the model took pictures with phrases and expressions stamped on her body, asking for respect, freedom, and rights for women. “I will always raise this flag. In the same way that we root for Hexa, we should hope that women are respected and stop being objectified”, completes Wanessa.

England against Iran is the World Cup game that has caused the biggest social media reaction so far, a new study has found.

The research by sports betting site Nostrabet analysed the number of tweets containing the official fixture hashtag for each team’s first two games of the tournament.

It found that the number of tweets containing #ENGIRN on the day of England’s incident-packed game with Iran totalled 538,974 – by far the highest amount in the tournament so far, and more than the second and third most tweeted matches combined.

The match provided plenty of reasons for discussion on social media, from England’s six goal haul and exciting performances from young stars, to the gruesome clash of heads between Iran goalkeeper Ali Beiranvand and Majid Hosseini, and the record amount of injury time that was added.

The second most tweeted game of the opening two rounds of World Cup action was Wales vs Iran. The #WALIRN hashtag was used 336,631 times on the day that Iran scored twice in injury time to secure a 2-0 win following a red card for Wales keeper Wayne Hennessey.

The third most tweeted game was France’s impressive 4-1 win over Australia, with the hashtag #FRAAUS being used 176,133 times on the day of the game as Kylian Mbappe and Olivier Giroud helped put the Socceroos to the sword.

Completing the top five, Japan’s massive win over Germany generated 166,612 tweets with the #GERJPN hashtag, putting it in fourth, while the fifth most tweeted game was Saudi Arabia’s stunning upset of Argentina, which produced 158,013 posts containing #ARGKSA on the day of the game.

Commenting on the study, a spokesperson for Nostrabet said: “It’s fascinating to see which games have generated the biggest reaction on social media, with the top matches generating hundreds of thousands of posts. There has been plenty to talk about during this World Cup both on and off the pitch, and with half of the games already played, it will be interesting to see how social media reacts as we prepare for the knock-out stages and the stakes get even higher.”

At the other end of the scale, Japan vs Costa Rica generated the fewest tweets of the World Cup so far, with just 11,406 uses of #JPNCRC on the day of the game. Uruguay’s 0-0 draw with South Korea was similarly uninspiring, as it prompted 16,042 posts containing #URUKOR, while the same day also featured the third least tweeted game, with Switzerland v Cameroon (#SUICMR) receiving 18,202 posts.

Overall the fixture hashtags have been used a combined 2,947,534 times since the tournament started on 20 November. The day of fixtures that has generated the most tweets so far is 21 November, the first Monday of the World Cup, which produced 643,724 posts containing the fixture hashtag for one of the day’s games. The second most tweeted day was 25 November, which prompted 487,560, while the third biggest day was 22 November, with 410327 tweets.

The most tweeted games of the World Cup so far, by Nostrabet

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