Colbie Caillat‘s first solo album since 2016, Along the Way, is out October 6. Many of the songs were inspired by Colbie’s 2020 breakup with her fiancé, Justin Young, who she’d been with for nearly a decade, but she insists that the album’s not a downer.
“It’s absolutely a breakup album,” she laughs. “But in the most optimistic way. It’s about endings and how they bring on new beginnings.” But she notes that it took her a long time to get into the right headspace to release the album.
“I recorded this album over two years ago and I remember thinking, like, ‘I don’t know how I can sing these songs,'” she tells ABC Audio. “How am I going to go promote these, like, with a smile on my face?”
“The fact that it’s been this much time and I actually, I’ve digested it all and now I’m just wanting to share these songs for anyone who’s going through that … I feel like it will help people,” she says, adding that she’s excited for her fans to hear it.
Colbie says of Along the Way, “I feel like this is the album I’m most proud of … and so I feel like [listeners will] come along, because it’s all the things that they need or that they’re used to from what I’ve released in the past — just a more mature, elevated version of it.”
Colbie made the album after disbanding her short-lived country group, Go West, but Along the Way also has a country sound to it.
“Now it’s mostly all I listen to and I’m a superfan,” she says of country music. In addition, Colbie says some of her old songs have elements that are similar to country music, making her “feel really comfortable with it.”
Fill up your water bottle and get your devil horns ready: Metalchella is here.
Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Tool are headlining the inaugural Power Trip festival, taking place October 6-8. It’ll be held in Indio, California, at the same site of Coachella and 2016’s Desert Trip, which featured the similarly stacked lineup of The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who.
“It’s a strange concept, isn’t it?” Priest bassist Ian Hill tellsLA Weekly of Power Trip. “Six bands over three days, everybody gets to see the headliner. You couldn’t get six bands of this stature all on the same bill on the same day. There wouldn’t be the time, or the room for the egos probably. Who would wrap the show up?”
“It’s the first thing like this that we’ve ever done,” Hill adds. “We’ve been out with bands like KISS and AC/DC before, years ago. So we’ve been on the two-big-act bill, sort of thing. But with the festival theme, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Power Trip will kick off Friday with Guns N’ Roses and Iron Maiden, then AC/DC and Judas Priest on Saturday, and Metallica and Tool on Sunday.
“I think playing on the bill, just Metallica and us, it’s absolutely going to inspire us,” Tool guitarist Adam Jones tells LA Weekly. “We’re excited to be at our best and to microwave the crowd.”
Jones adds that Tool’s “dusted off some tunes that we haven’t played in a long time” for their set.
“Songs that we think will be appropriate for the setting,” he says.
Stephen Sanchez‘s debut LP, Angel Face, tells the story of a love triangle between a 1950s singer named The Troubadour Sanchez, a woman named Evangeline and a mob boss named Hunter. Releasing a retro-sounding concept LP as your first album is a bold move, but Stephen says that’s the selling point.
“There aren’t a lot of artists doing what I’m doing, if any, at my age,” he tells ABC Audio. “I think it’s safe to say, with respect to other artists, that this is a very different record and I’m a very different artist. I mean, nobody is making ” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>1950, ’60s-style music. Nobody’s making a conceptual record their first go-round that is in that style. And nobody sings it like I do, and no one’s doing it at [age] 20.”
That’s why the “Until I Found You” singer feels the album will really take off when he starts touring and fans can see the story play out onstage.
“I think people are going to come see the show live and, and see how much of a unicorn this record is, in the same way that they did with ‘Until I Found You,'” he predicts. “And I think it’s going to do some really great things for music and for the world.”
If you’re already a fan of Angel Face, which ends when Hunter guns down The Troubadour, there’s a sequel coming. “The death of The Troubadour, I don’t think it ends exactly just there,” he teases.
“I already have a story that I’m writing for this little extension piece to the record,” he reveals, calling it a Kill Bill-style story set in 1969, where Evangeline, driven insane with grief, has to track down Hunter in New York “before the police can save him from her wrath.”
The Offspring, Sum 41 and Pierce the Veil have announced a collaboration with the apparel company Broken Promises.
The collection is set to launch on Saturday, October 7, and will only be available for two weeks.
“It’s a dream come true to be collaborating with legendary bands The Offspring, Sum 41 and Pierce the Veil,” says Broken Promises founder/designer Mandee Bence. “These are bands that we grew up listening to, as teenagers when we were trying to figure out who we really were, and discovering music that we were able to really connect with. We tapped into these emotions as we took inspiration from some of our favorite songs for this collection.”
Broken Promises will also be offering exclusive merch at the upcoming When We Were Young festival, taking place October 21-22 in Las Vegas. The Offspring, Sum 41 and Pierce the Veil are all on the lineup along with headliners Blink-182 and Green Day.
A week before its official premiere, AMC, the company distributing the movie, has announced that as of October 4, the film had sold more than $100 million worth of advance tickets globally. The film is set to open October 13 in nearly 8,500 theaters in 100 countries.
TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR, which was filmed in August during one of Taylor’s shows in LA, will play at least four times per day on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at all U.S. AMC locations.
Many theaters showing the film are offering Taylor-themed popcorn and soda containers, giveaways, and the opportunity to rent out an entire showing for $800.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday said his administration had no choice but to build about 20 miles more southern border wall — after he’s long dismissed Donald Trump’s wall as a waste of money that doesn’t work to stop illegal immigration.
“Money was appropriated for the border wall,” Biden told reporters, referring to congressional action during the Trump administration. “I tried to get them to reappropriate — to redirect the money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what is appropriated. I can’t stop that.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre could not point to instances when Biden attempted to change the funding designation. The White House also could not immediately explain why the project was moving forward now.
The Biden administration is waiving 26 federal laws to make way for unfinished border wall construction in South Texas, according to documents formally published in the federal register Thursday.
The waivers include ones for the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act allow for border barrier construction in select areas of Starr County, Texas.
In explaining the rationale for the move, made amid a migrant surge, GOP outrage and Democratic criticism, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “there is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers,” even as Biden repeated to ABC Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang Thursday his argument that a wall isn’t effective.
Biden pledged during his 2020 presidential campaign against then-President Trump that his administration would not build “another foot of wall.” But the Department of Homeland Security is required to use the funds appropriated in 2019 on border barrier construction, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.
Construction plans from Customs and Border Protection describe an 18-foot portable barrier, different from the 30-foot bollard design used during much of the Trump administration. Trump’s design at times required blowing up land to lay the foundation for his wall, as ABC News reported in 2020.
“CBP remains committed to protecting the nation’s cultural and natural resources and will implement sound environmental practices as part of the project covered by this waiver,” the spokesperson said.
Border officials have said barriers, and the infrastructure that comes with them, can help focus patrols and allow agents to apprehend migrants more efficiently. However, migrants have been known to evade barrier sections, crossing in more dangerous and remote areas.
Further, barriers constructed above the official borderline do not prevent migrants from turning themselves into authorities and initiating an asylum claim. Once a non-citizen crosses the official international boundary – which exists in the middle of the river along much of the Rio Grande Valley region – they are legally allowed to fight deportation proceedings.
The construction authorized under the waivers will span a total of 17 miles in Starr County, Texas, where wall building was left incomplete, and wouldn’t be continuous.
“This is not a new barrier announcement,” Homeland Security spokesperson Luis Miranda said in a statement. “The specific construction in the [Rio Grande Valley] was announced in June, and as made clear then, DHS continues to prioritize deploying technology and other system elements.”
The announcement stirred the ire of environmental advocates who fought the Trump administration’s construction efforts for years.
“It’s disheartening to see President Biden stoop to this level, casting aside our nation’s bedrock environmental laws to build ineffective wildlife-killing border walls,” said Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Starr County is home to some of the most spectacular and biologically important habitat left in Texas and now bulldozers are preparing to rip right through it. This is a horrific step backwards for the borderlands.”
Legacy landowners and local leaders in the region told ABC News they have not been consulted or informed of plans for barrier construction. Many are committed to “fighting” any new construction.
“What the hell! We can’t catch a break down here,” one Starr County landowner told ABC News. “This feels like what we had to go through 3 years ago. We haven’t been told anything and it’s frustrating.”
The Biden administration announced last year it would work to close gaps in the barriers and fix incomplete construction zones. The work also involved cleaning up abandoned construction sites and finishing gates that agents used on patrols.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is considering attending House Republicans’ candidate forum for speaker next week, multiple sources familiar with his thinking told ABC News.
The sources, however, cautioned that nothing is finalized and his plans could change.
The closed-door candidate forum is scheduled for Tuesday. There, lawmakers will make their pitch for why others should elect them speaker to succeed ousted leader Kevin McCarthy.
If Trump were to make an appearance at the event, it would mark his first time on Capitol Hill since the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters, who stormed the complex as Congress had gathered to certify Trump’s 2020 election defeat. (Trump denies all wrongdoing related to Jan. 6.)
Trump remains hugely popular with the conservative base and is influential in how some GOP lawmakers act. Some members of the Republican conference have floated his name for speaker — but Trump has maintained publicly that it isn’t his priority.
“I’ll do whatever it is to help. But my focus, my total focus, is being president,” he told reporters earlier this week, also saying: “We have some great people in the Republican Party that could do a great job as speaker.”
The Constitution does not require that the speaker of the House be a sitting representative, but every past speaker has been.
McCarthy was removed from the speakership on Tuesday in a historic vote led by a rebellious faction of his own party, who were joined by the Democratic minority.
An interim speaker pro tempore, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., has since been named until an internal election can be held for McCarthy’s replacement. The chamber recessed soon after McCarthy was booted and is in uncharted territory.
Among the Republicans who have said they are seeking to be speaker are House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.
(KYIV and LONDON) — At least 51 people, including a child, were killed Thursday in a Russian missile strike on a village in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine, officials said.
A 6-year-old boy and 62-year-old woman were among those killed in the attack, which targeted a building that housed a cafe and a shop in the village of Groza in the Kupyansk district. Six others were wounded and all of the casualties were civilians, according to the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office. Three people also remain missing, the press service of the police of the Kharkiv region reported.
A memorial service for a slain Ukrainian soldier was taking place in the cafe when the missile struck. Only civilians were attending the event, the regional prosecutor’s office told ABC News.
The missile used in the strike was an Iskander-M missile. This type of missile could only be intercepted by a small number of air defense systems, the prosecutor’s office said.
It’s the deadliest strike to occur in the Kharkiv region since the start of Russia’s invasion, according to the local government. It’s also one of the deadliest attacks to take place in all of Ukraine in recent months.
Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022. In June of this year, Ukrainian forces launched a counteroffensive in an effort to reclaim occupied territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced Thursday’s attack as a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism.” He urged Western allies to help strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses, saying that “Russian terror must be stopped.”
“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for only one thing: to make its genocidal aggression the new norm for the whole world,” Zelenskyy said Thursday. “Now we are talking with European leaders, in particular, about strengthening our air defense, strengthening our soldiers, giving our country protection from terror. And we will respond to the terrorists.”
Earlier on Thursday, Zelenskyy asked more than 40 European leaders gathered in Spain for their continued assistance and more weapons to help his country fight against Russian aggression.
In an emotional speech before the European Political Community Summit in Granada, Zelenskyy said schoolchildren in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were having to learn remotely or attend classes underground in subway stations due to air raids.
“Until there is a fully effective air defense system, children cannot attend school,” the Ukrainian president said Thursday, warning that “there will be a lot of Russian attacks in [the] winter.”
Last winter, Russian missiles and drones targeted Ukraine’s energy system and other vital infrastructure, causing continuous power outages across the eastern European country.
Zelenskyy confirmed that Spain has agreed to provide Ukraine with air defense capabilities in a new aid package.
The Ukrainian president also voiced confidence in continued support from the United States, despite what he called a “political storm” in Washington, D.C., after aid for Ukraine did not make the cut for a last-minute deal by American lawmakers to avoid a government shutdown.
“I am confident in America,” he said. “They are strong people with strong institutions and a strong democracy.”
Zelenskyy warned that one of the scenarios Russia is considering in the conflict is to freeze the war until 2028 to replenish its reserves. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin should not be allowed to beef up his military or else Russia could attack beyond Ukraine by 2028.
“Let only Putin’s ambitions be a ruin, not our countries, not our cities,” Zelenskyy said. “Children of every country deserve to be safe. Everywhere in the country, not just in the subway, not just in underground shelters, but everywhere. We must make it possible. We must ensure that Ukraine wins.”
Athleisure is in, and Rihanna is ready to help you stay on trend. You can shake up your closet with new pieces from her soccer-inspired Savage X Fenty apparel collection, called Savage X League. Rihanna dropped the collection on Wednesday as she showed off a new two-piece set from the line in a video posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Autumn leaves are already falling down like pieces into place and certain Swifties are proving more than happy to get into the Halloween spirit. The Wisconsin-based Mclaughlin family has created a Taylor Swift-inspired front yard display to celebrate the spooky season. Billed as the “sc-Eras tour,” the display includes 10 skeletons dressed in handmade outfits that represent Swift’s different eras, taking visual reference from a moment during the Reputation set of Taylor’s Eras Tour.
American Idol winner Nick Fradiani is set to take over the lead role in Broadway’s A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical. Nick has been the alternate for Will Swenson‘s Neil Diamond and will officially take over the role on Tuesday, October 31. “I have seen first-hand the love, passion, and excitement the audience has brought to our theater over the past year, and I’m so lucky to continue being a part of this beautiful story,” Nick said in a statement.
Autumn leaves are already falling down like pieces into place, and certain Swifties are proving more than happy to get into the Halloween spirit. The Wisconsin-based Mclaughlin family has created a Taylor Swift-inspired front yard display to celebrate the spooky season. Billed as the “sc-Eras tour,” the display includes 10 skeletons dressed in handmade outfits that represent Swift’s different eras, taking visual reference from a moment during the Reputation set of Taylor’s Eras Tour.
Andy Cohen took his son Ben to his first concert — John Mayer at Madison Square Garden in New York City. “Come, hear Uncle John’s band!” Andy captioned an Instagram post about the event, making reference to the Grateful Dead song. “First concert of what I hope will be a long run of them!”
American Idol winner Nick Fradiani is set to take over the lead role in Broadway’s A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical. Nick has been the alternate for Will Swenson‘s Neil Diamond and will officially take over the role on Tuesday, October 31. “I have seen first-hand the love, passion, and excitement the audience has brought to our theater over the past year, and I’m so lucky to continue being a part of this beautiful story,” Nick said in a statement.
