Maren Morris stands up against claims that she “deserves to be sexualized”

Maren Morris didn’t take kindly to a so-called fan saying she deserves to be sexualized because of the clothing she wears.

In a fiery exchange on Twitter Wednesday, the “My Church” singer responded directly to a follower who took offense to the silver wrap-around crop top Maren wore for her promotional tour photo.  

“When you dress like that, you’re definitely inviting people to look at you in a sexual way,” the critic allegedly wrote, according to screen shots that have since been set to private. “Don’t complain about being sexualized when you sexualize yourself.”

The user also called Morris’ outfit “disgusting” and remarked, “Imagine if Luke Bryan tried to use sex appeal to win awards by posing with his shirt half off.”

Maren referenced the negative comments when she tweeted her tongue-in-cheek response, which reads, “Daniel’s really gonna hate it when he finds out I did Playboy.”  Morris, 31, even included snaps from her 2019 Playboy photoshoot, which depicted her posing for tastefully done half-naked portraits.  She also linked to the poster’s account, which as of Thursday morning had apparently been deleted.

The country singer later spoke out about the exchange when another user, who also deleted their tweets, appeared to defend her critic.

“He publicly put this sexist garbage online and [directly tagged] me,” Morris remarked in response. “Also, ‘not liking someone’s clothing’ is one thing. Saying I deserve to be sexualized for a *pretty tame* outfit is just a hop, skip to ‘don’t dress like a slut and you won’t get creeped on.'”

“The Bones” singer later retweeted one of her old posts that supported women being able to wear “whatever… they want.” 
 

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Adele goes nuts as England advances to the finals of Euro soccer championship

Samir Hussein/Getty Images for September Management

Adele may be a global superstar, but she’s also just a girl from London.  And she, along with her fellow Brits all over the world, lost her mind when England’s soccer team defeated Denmark on Wednesday to advance to the Euro finals.

Adele posted a video of herself screaming and jumping for joy after England’s captain Harry Kane, scored the winning goal. She captioned the video, “ITS BLOODY COMING HOME” — a reference to the line “It’s coming home/football’s coming home” from the unofficial soccer anthem of England, “Three Lions.”

As Billboard notes, Adele was probably especially thrilled because Kane is a member of her favorite team, Tottenham [TOT-en-em] Hotspur.  England will now take on Italy at Wembley Stadium, the site of England’s last major football victory, the 1966 World Cup.  Wembley Stadium was also the site of the last two concerts Adele has played to date, in June of 2017.

Ed Sheeran is equally thrilled about England’s football chances. Even before they made the finals, he posted a video of himself saying, “Guys, I don’t know if you heard the news but…it’s coming home.”  He’s also said that he’ll be happy if “Three Lions,” which is currently advancing up the British charts, knocks his hit “Bad Habits” out of the number-one spot.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Adele (@adele)

 

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Jamie Lynn Spears asks to be left alone amid sister Britney Spears’ conservatorship controversy

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As Britney Spears‘ conservatorship controversy grows, her little sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, issued another plea asking the singer’s fans to leave her alone.

Jamie Lynn, 30, first broke her silence regarding her big sister’s conservatorship last month in a series of Instagram stories, where she said, “Maybe I didn’t support her the way the public would like me to, with a hashtag on a public platform, but I can assure you that I’ve supported my sister long before there was a hashtag and I’ll support her long after.”

Despite her remarks, fans continued to accuse the Zoey 101 alum of profiting from her big sister’s legal situation and being complacent about the conservatorship. Those accusations intensified following a New Yorker article, published July 3, that claimed Jamie Lynn and other members of her family “have all spent years on [Britney’s] payroll, and, as friends who spoke with her at the time recalled, she was increasingly resentful of their efforts to influence her.”

Members of the Spears family have yet to publicly react to the New Yorker report. However, on Tuesday, Jamie Lynn received some vindication when the British tabloid Daily Mail issued a counter claim about her, stating in its headline, “Britney Spears’ sister Jamie Lynn shares photos of her home life… after it’s revealed she is the ONLY family member not on singer’s payroll.”

The Nickelodeon star took a snapshot of the article and shared it to her stories, captioning the post, “Facts….now leave my broke-a** alone.”

Since Britney asked to end her 13-year conservatorship last month and leveled serious accusations against her conservators and members of her family, Jamie Lynn began limiting what she posts on social media.  She also disabled comments across her accounts.

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Mariah Carey settles $3M lawsuit with ex-assistant accused of blackmailing her

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Mariah Carey can officially shake off some of her legal woes. The singer has settled the $3 million lawsuit levied against her ex-assistant, Lianna “Azarian” Shakhnazarian, for alleged trying to blackmail her. 

The lawsuit, which was filed in 2019, was closed out on Wednesday by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Andrew Borrok, who simply wrote “Case settled,” Page Six reports. The terms of the settlement were not made public. 

Carey, 51, accused her former assistant, who was fired in 2017, of betrayal and blackmail — claiming that Shakhnazarian secretly filmed her during personal activities and then threatened to release them if she didn’t pay her $8 million. The pop star also claimed that a non-disclosure agreement that Shakhnazarian signed when she was hired in 2015 was violated. 

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Lil Nas X explains how his kiss on the BET stage came to be

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Lil Nas X is revealing more about what led him to kiss one of his male backup dancers during his 2021 BET Awards performance. 

Speaking with the OHP Uncut podcast, the 22-year-old Grammy winner, who is openly gay, discussed the controversial end to his BET performance of “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and revealed it was not a spur-of-the-moment call.

“I feel like it’s what needed to be done,” remarked Lil Nas X. “Because it’s easy to just hug a guy, but I feel like if you kiss the guy, you get straight to the point. I really sugarcoat the performance, and it gets the job done.”

The rapper said the inspiration for the kiss struck in May when he guested on Saturday Night Live, where he also performed his number-one hit. Lil Nas X revealed the dancer he kissed at the BET Awards was the one who licked his neck during his SNL performance.

The “Old Town Road” singer said he broached the idea to the dancer, recalling, “I was like, ‘Hey, what if we kissed in this one?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, sure.'”

Despite the public backlash, Lil Nas X said he cared more about his family’s reaction to the kiss, and revealed they were super supportive.

“My family had no idea it was about to happen, but they loved it,” he grinned. “I think one of my sisters, I forgot exactly what she said… She was like, ‘Wow, you absolutely murdered that.’ She was like, ‘The best performance of the night, not just saying that.'”

According to TMZ, only three FCC complaints were filed about the kiss — compared to Jennifer Lopez and Shakira‘s 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, which received over 1,000 complaints.

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Isaiah Rashad shares release date and cover art for new album, ‘The House Is Burning’

Courtesy of Top Dawg Entertainment

After a five-year layoff and battling with mental-health issues, Isaiah Rashad is ready to bare his soul on his new album, The House Is Burning.

Fans quickly predicted that the album would be some of this best work yet, after the Chattanooga rapper shared the cover art and release date on Instagram on Wednesday. The cover features a house engulfed in orange flames. 

“Album of the Year,” wrote one fan in the comments, while another said, “It’s about…time.” Yet another said, “Five years zay has returned.”

The House Is Burning will be Rashad’s first album since 2016’s acclaimed The Sun’s Tirade, which peaked at #4 on Billboard‘s Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart and at #2 on the Top Rap Albums chart. The new record will feature his electric single “Lay wit Ya” featuring fellow Tennessean Duke Deuce, and the smooth track “Headshots (4r Da Locals),” in which Rashad discusses being in a healthy mental space.

The House Is Burning arrives on July 30.

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Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell says current band The Dirty Knobs will release second album in 2022

Credit: Pamela Littky

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell has revealed that The Dirty Knobs, the current band he fronts, will be back with their second album next year, when the group also is scheduled to return to touring.

In a recent message on his Twitter page, Campbell announced, “The Dirty Knobs are coming to your town next year with some special guests and a brand new album…Our second!”

The band’s debut album, Wreckless Abandon, was released in November 2020, and the group initially had a run of headlining dates in small venues, as well as a stint opening for country star Chris Stapleton, lined up for this year, but both were pushed back until 2022.

According to TheDirtyKnobs.com, the headlining concerts are scheduled from a March 9 show in Tampa, Florida, through an April 30-May 1 stand in Austin, Texas. The group then will lend support to Stapleton starting with June 2 performance in Nampa, Idaho, and mapped out through a July 23 event at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.

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The Go-Go’s’ Charlotte Caffey reflects on band’s debut album, ‘Beauty and the Beat,’ on its 40th anniversary

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Today marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Beauty and the Beat, the debut album by The Go-Go’s.

The album spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200, making The Go-Go’s the only all-female band whose members played their own instruments to ever top that chart.

Beauty and the Beat featured two of the group’s biggest hits, “Our Lips Are Sealed,” which peaked at #20 on the Billboard Hot 100, and “We Got the Beat,” considered the band’s signature tune, which reached #2.

Go-Go’s keyboardist/guitarist Charlotte Caffey, who wrote or co-wrote eight of the album’s 11 tracks, including “We Got the Beat,” tells ABC Audio that she’s extremely proud of Beauty and the Beat‘s success.

“The fact that it really stayed [at #1] for six weeks…Wow, come on,” she gushes. “I mean, from where we started, we were girls. No one wanted to hear from girls, did they? — I guess they did — But yeah, that was a whole overwhelming moment.”

The album was co-produced by Richard Gottehrer, who also produced Blondie‘s first two records and co-wrote such classic ’60s pop hits as “Hang On Sloopy,” “I Want Candy” and “My Boyfriend’s Back.”

Caffey says working with Gottehrer “was like being in a master class,” and credits his pop sensibilities for helping to make the album sound great.

Charlotte recalls that Gottehrer “wanted us to do slower tempos than what we were playing live, so we could really understand the lyrics and let the melodies…come through.”

Caffey says the band members initially were angry that the recordings didn’t capture the group’s live sound, but she notes that when she heard “how those songs sparkled on the radio, then I understood.”

Here’s the Beauty and the Beat track list:

“Our Lips Are Sealed”
“How Much More”
“Tonite”
“Lust to Love”
“This Town”
“We Got the Beat”
“Fading Fast”
“Automatic”
“You Can’t Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can’t Sleep)”
“Skidmarks on My Heart”
“Can’t Stop the World”

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A “fun kind of crazy mood” lands Old Dominion “On a Boat That Day”

Mason Allen

Old Dominion grabs your attention from the very beginning of their top-twenty hit, “I Was on a Boat That Day.” But what exactly is the seemingly nonsensical, exotic-sounding phrase that starts off the song?

There’s an amazingly simple explanation, but Brad Tursi says first, you need to understand the mood the five guys in the band were in at the time: They’d fled Nashville to isolate themselves in a house and recording studio in Asheville, North Carolina — and they were getting a little wild.

“Honestly, that song, we wrote it, obviously, the same day we recorded it,” Brad recalls. “We went upstairs, we had some tequila, we were in a fun kind of crazy mood.”

“Usually you start every song, you find the tempo, and you have a click track and it’s easier to edit…” Brad continues. “But we kind were discussing it and someone was like, ‘Forget [it]… No clicks!’ And then [lead singer] Matt [Ramsey] just went, ‘One, two!’ So we just played it right off his count off, and that’s how this crazy thing in the beginning started.”

With lyrics like “drunk as a skunk eating lunch with a cross-eyed bear,” the antics don’t end there, but Trevor Rosen reveals there is a message in the song.

“It’s just a guy who needs to put some things behind him, right?” he says. “I think this character in our story is much like the world that we live in… He’s trying to get past a tough time. So what better way to do that than to get on a boat and get away from it all?”

“I Was on a Boat That Day” is the lead single from OD’s as-yet-unannounced fourth album, the follow-up to 2019’s self-titled Old Dominion.

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Ed Sheeran’s new tattoos pay tribute to his daughter, and his latest video

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Ed Sheeran fans know that the singer’s body is his own personal canvas that he’s completely covered with tattoos. But somehow, he’s found space on his body for a couple more images to commemorate some of his recent milestones.

British tabloid The Sun quotes Ed as saying, “I got some vampire teeth on my shoulder for the [‘Bad Habits] video and an orca for Antarctica.”  Orcas, or killer whales, can be found in Antarctica; Ed and his wife, Cherry, conceived their daughter while visiting that continent in December of 2019. They subsequently named her Lyra Antarctica.

Fans first spotted the whale tattoo in an Instagram post a few weeks ago: It’s located on the underside of Ed’s left arm, above his armpit.

As for the vampire teeth, in the “Bad Habits” video, he plays a glam-rock vampire with spiky blond hair, glittery eyes and a pink suit.

Ed reportedly added about his extensive ink, “I am completely covered in the weirdest, most colorful tattoos and that is the thing no one can get their head around, apart from my wife. Everyone says I look like a melted crayon. But I love them. I love that any time something random happens, I put it on my body.”

Ed’s other tattoos include images of a Heinz ketchup logo, an enormous lion, a koala, a goat, a painting by Henri Matisse, a teddy bear, a Kiwi bird, a gecko, a pair of glasses, a cup of tea, a maple leaf, a phoenix, two characters from the Shrek movies, three boxing gloves and around 50 more.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Ed Sheeran (@teddysphotos)

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