Madrid Desk, Dec 22 (EFE).- Artists Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Karol G and Sabrina Carpenter dominated the music industry in 2024, a year in which Puff Diddy’s monstrous side was revealed, while a painting by an AI robot fetched $1 million and a duct-taped banana artwork sold for $6.2 million.
In 2024, Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie published his book ‘Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder’ about the stabbing attack on him in 2022, and it became known that Canadian short story writer Alice Munro did nothing when her second husband began sexually abusing her daughter when she was 9 years old.
‘Inside Out 2’, ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ and ‘Despicable Me 4’ were among the highest-grossing movies of the year.
Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ sured the $1 billion mark for the first time in history, with nearly 10 million tickets sold.
The American singer-songwriter also received six Grammy nominations for her album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, although she was unable to unseat Beyoncé, who remains the most nominated artist at the awards and leads the 2025 edition with 11 new nominations for ‘Cowboy Carter’.
Sean John Combs, known as ‘Puff Diddy’ or ‘Puff Daddy’, who faces more than a 100 allegations of sexual abuse, was arrested on Sep. 16 on charges of extortion, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature went to South Korea’s Han Kang, while the most talked-about novel was Percival Everett’s James, which won the National Book Award.
Auteur movies were also the rage in 2024, with Jacques Audiard’s ‘Emilia Pérez’ the big surprise of the Cannes Film Festival and winner of four European Film Awards and 10 Golden Globe nominations.
In 2024, Pedro Almodóvar directed his first feature film in English, ‘The Room Next Door’, which won the Golden Lion for best film.
In the world of art, a painting created by a humanoid robot was auctioned for more than $1 million while the artwork ‘Comedian’, consisting of a banana stuck to the wall, fetched $6.2 million.
Spanish and Latin American cuisines confirmed their dominance in 2024, with no less than six restaurants in the top ten of The 50 Best list, led by Barcelona’s Disfrutar.
The year also saw the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, after the devastating fire that almost completely destroyed it in 2019. EFE
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