Cher Lloyd made the decision to ditch the sassy, picture-perfect pop star image to get raw, emotional and real on her latest single, “Sirens.”

The ballad shows off the pint-size British star’s vocal range, which she says is one of the reasons she decided to make the track the second single off her just-released sophomore album, Sorry I’m Late.

“This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time and something that I’ve been doing behind closed doors — the sort of ballad, mid-tempo type of song,” Cher said during “Live From MTV.” “And I feel that it’s been forever since I actually had a song that was real singing that I could strip back and sing acoustically, so “Sirens” for me, was perfect because it was sort of like a new beginning.”

But it wasn’t just testing something new in her song. Lloyd carried that over to her video for the single as well. The singer stripped away her bubble-gum pop persona and in its place we see an emotional, gritty Cher.

And in case you were wondering, those are real tears in the video, because Cher based the story around the time her father was arrested when she was just 5 years old.

“I really felt like I’ve done a lot of pop videos, you know I’ve done videos in front of a green screen with lots of pretty colors, looking all fantastic — not a hair out of place — on this one I thought, I ...

With reporting by Chris Kim

Listen: no one thinks it’s really all that hard for Seth MacFarlane to be funny. He’s the creator of “Family Guy” and “Ted,” verdamnit: so taking risks is not something he’s really all that disinclined to do.

But still! When it comes to taking an iconic genre like the Western and turning it into his personal brand of silly tomfoolery? Well, now that sorta takes some balls. Luckily, between himself and his “A Million Ways to Die in the West” costar Charlize Theron, they “certainly do” have a full pair — which is just enough to do something this kinda-crazy (in a good way) and get away with it — at least, as MTV News found out when we sat down with the duo.

“A Million Ways to Die in the West” opens May 30. Balls not included.

Alicia Lutes

When we visited the set of Foster the People‘s “Best Friend” video earlier this month, they told us we’re in for some “pretty crazy” special effects.

What they didn’t tell us is that we’d see a girl with monster-like teeth eat another girl’s legs.

Nor did they mention that there’d be a girl throwing up a stiletto and another stretching her body — think Gumpy — into a tall, slender Alien-like thing. All that we learned on Thursday (May 29) when the indie-rock threesome released the visuals for the Supermodel track.

The clip plays out like a miniature horror film — but this time, it’s a cast full of models, and the monsters and demons are themselves. Frontman Ben Foster said it’s all meant to reflect the pressure women feel to obtain that “perfect” body — an insecurity addressed not only on “Best Friend,” but Supermodel as a whole, too.

“It’s a commentary on the modeling industry and the fashion industry and the pressures women feel and girls feel every day,” he said. “It’s a playful take on that; it’s not too heavy handed.”

Emily Blake

Angelina Jolie has that very special combination of having spent most of her life in the public eye and having cycled through many trendy looks during that time.

Since the premiere of her latest film, “Maleficent,” was just last week, we thought we’d take a look into the archive to track Jolie’s style over the years.

The result is an interesting arc that gets a little dark in the ’90s (see her with Mulder, Scully and Brendan Fraser) and solidifies in the early aughts.

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And then she stopped aging, I guess?

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Kevin P. Sullivan

Want to score a date with “Surfboard” singer Cody Simpson? Well, here’s step one — be of an advanced age!

Woah woah woah, step back for a second, all you Mrs. Robinsons out there. He’s underage until January. 17-year-old Cody recently split with 19-year-old model Gigi Hadid, and he told People that her older woman status was one of the things that attracted him to her in the first place.

“I’m a big fan when a girl is smarter than you,” Simpson said. “That’s why I’ve been with older girls, ’cause I like intelligence.”

This definitely explains why Simpson didn’t choose to date the girls in his own grade — because if you go by the Game of Grade Point Averages, there was literally no one in his high school class that was smarter than him. Simpson graduated as the valedictorian of his Atlanta high school last Thursday (May 22), officially putting his money where his mouth is. And in case all of that intelligence and older woman-loving wasn’t enough to put you on Team Simpson, know that he is also cultured and extremely well-traveled.

“Instead of learning about Europe, I got to go to Europe and immerse myself into all these cultures and get a better understanding,” Simpson continued. “I got to go to the U.K. last year and visit Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace and all these places I had learned about.”

So step three of scoring a date with Simpson — after all of that intelligence and old lady-ness ...

They’ve conquered YouTube, toured worldwide and been the cause of at least half a dozen moral panics — and now, the Janoskians will get to showcase their shenanigans on a much bigger screen.

Deadline reports that the Australian quintet, who are best known for viral video stunts in which they pretend to wack off on strangers at shopping malls (among other things), have signed a deal with Lionsgate to develop and star in a new feature film. The flick might see them following in the famous footsteps of high-profile pranksters like the “Jackass” crew.

The plot of the movie will center on the Janoskians’ attempts to throw a huge party in Los Angeles, but it’ll be the promise of spontaneous, testosterone-fueled craziness on the part of group members Beau Brooks, Jai Brooks, Luke Brooks, Daniel Sahyounie and James Yammouni that should make this movie a hit. The report on the deal promises “stunts, public pranks and wish fulfillment,” which might mean some exciting opportunities for avid fans to participate.

With a modest budget, producers will be relying on the guys’ charisma and screen presence to lure audiences to the theater. But considering that they’ve already caused crowd-control crises at malls worldwide and singlehandedly shut down Times Square, packing a bunch of movie theaters to capacity should be a piece of cake.

Kat Rosenfield

Because any great R&B singer should be able to spit a few bars when necessary, right? This week Jhené Aiko debuted an alternate version of her Sail Out track “Stay Ready (What a Life),” which finds her showing off some of her rhyming skills.

Her alter ego J Henny, or J Hennessy, replaces Kendrick Lamar‘s verse on the original track, adding some fire. The 26-year-old singer recently told Rap-Up that J Henny had a bit of Sasha Fierce in her.

“She still sings, but she’s more aggressive,” Aiko explained. “She likes to really talk a lot of sh– and talk about things that a lot of R&B singers don’t talk about.”

Nadeska Alexis

A native of Grenada, a product of Brooklyn, a student of hip-hop. Hi, I'm @neweryork.

Surviving “The Challenge” means facing down your biggest fears — for Diem, it’s heights, for Cara Maria, it’s water, and on last week’s “Free Agents” episode, we learned that for Zach, it’s premium plastic wrap. The show’s resident Goliath became totally claustrophobic after being bound in the clingy kitchen supply during “Sausage Party,” and though he came away with a second-place finish, he couldn’t stop the panicked freak-out that had been bubbling up throughout the obstacle course. Guess we can assume he chooses paper at the grocery checkout!

On the next episode, trouble will come off the field, though, with kinda-sorta couple Nany and Cohutta. The pair seems to be getting along famously, but Nany is convinced she’s destined to screw things up in the sneak peek below. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she says repeatedly to her pseudo-BF at the bar, but like a self-fulfilling prophecy, when she gets home, she and Johnny find themselves in a compromising position between the sheets (or, more accurately, on top of a couch). “I don’t know where it came from,” she says in retrospect. “I don’t really like Johnny like that, but it is what it is.”

What’ll happen between Nany and Cohutta? Find out on the next “Free Agents” episode, tonight at 10/9c!

Matthew Scott Donnelly

With Edgar Wright gone, should Marvel bother with “Ant-Man” anymore?

Sure, it has Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas and a lot of other great actors. Yes, that sizzle reel showing off Ant-Man’s size-changing shenanigans was pretty fantastic. But without Wright’s signature magic in the mix, does anyone actually want to see a movie about the bug-sized hero — especially when there are so many other heroes worth exploring on film?

With “Ant-Man,” Marvel faces many obstacles, including finding a replacement for Wright and other key creatives, while still meeting its July 2015 release date. It’s not an impossible goal to achieve, but it’s a difficult one — and perhaps an unnecessary one. Perhaps the better alternative is to stop down on “Ant-Man” altogether and refocus on some of the other heroes in the Marvel catalogue that bring more to the table.

Here are nine movies that make more sense for Marvel right now than “Ant-Man.”

“Doctor Strange”
The Sorcerer Supreme was name-checked in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” Casting and director rumors have swirled around for years. It’s time to pull the trigger, Marvel. Make the Master of the Mystic Arts a priority.

“Captain Marvel”
Carol Danvers, the world is waiting for you. Marvel Studios has broken the superhero movie mold in so many ways over the years. They need to come out of the gate with the first female-led superhero movie, and there is no candidate better than the hero who wears Marvel in ...

Instagram’s zero tolerance policy against nipples has just made another high-profile enemy. Scout Willis, daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, went topless on the streets of New York yesterday, baring her breasts in protest of the photo-sharing application’s banning of the female nipple.

“Legal in NYC but not on @instagram,” Willis wrote, captioning a photo that showed her topless and browsing the produce at a Lower East Side grocery. (New York City is one of the few places in the U.S. where women can walk around naked from the waist up without risking arrest for indecent exposure.)

The original (NSFW) tweets can be seen here and here.

This isn’t the first time Instagram has been called out for its seemingly hypocritical policy when it comes to photos of female breasts. In addition to reportedly suspending Rihanna’s account in April after she posted a photo of her topless cover for Lui magazine (which Instagram cagily described as having happened “by mistake”) the application has come under fire for removing pictures of breast cancer survivors and breastfeeding moms — while simultaneously allowing photos of bare-chested men, or photos posted by leery men of nearly-nude women, to stay up.

Rihanna jumped on the topless bandwagon, supporting Scout on Twitter with the battle cry “FREE THE NIPPLE.”

Instagram shut down Scout’s account, and she later posted the photo-sharing site’s response, informing her that she can reactivate her account if she adheres to ...