Music

Kane Brown joins a star-studded list of presenters as part of the upcoming 2021 ESPYS Presented by Capital One, the awards show that celebrates the best in sports.

Kane’s the sole presenter from the country genre, but he’s not the only musician: Rapper DaBaby will also hand out an award. Other celebrity presenters include actor Taye Diggs, YouTube star Dude Perfect, actor/comedian Tracy Morgan, Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts and many more.

The 2021 ESPYS, which will be hosted by actor/producer Anthony Mackie, is set to air on ABC on July 10. The show will take place in New York City.

Kane’s passion for sports has been well documented over the years. Specifically, when it launches in October, his 2021 Blessed & Free Tour will highlight his love of basketball. The tour route includes stops at all 29 NBA arenas, making Kane the first-ever country star to hit each one on a headlining tour.

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Dua Lipa is ready to take her talents to the big screen.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the singer has signed on to make her acting debut in a new spy thriller called Argylle.

Dua will be in good company for the Matthew Vaughn-directed flick. She’ll join an all-star cast including Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, John Cena and Samuel L. Jackson.

THR reports that not only will Dua show off her acting skills for the first time, she’ll be bringing her tried and true music skills to film as well, providing original music for the title track and score.

The film is based on an upcoming book by Ellie Conway about “the world’s greatest spy Argylle as he is caught up in a globe-trotting adventure.” It’s planned as the first of three films in a franchise.

Argylle will begin shooting this August in Europe.

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The CMT Music Awards show is going through changes in 2022.

Variety reports that the show will broadcast on April 3, 2022, which is a departure from its usual June airing. The announcement comes just a couple weeks after Viacom revealed that the annual country music awards show is moving from its original home of CMT to CBS, the former’s much larger sister broadcast network.

Of course, April is the month that CBS formerly aired another country music awards show: The ACM Awards. The ACMs most recently aired on CBS in April 2021, but the network and the Academy subsequently parted ways after failing to agree on terms for a deal renewal. 

There’s no word yet on whether the ACMs will keep its usual April broadcast slot or move to another time of year in order to avoid competition with the rescheduled spring CMT Awards. It is also not yet known where the ACMs will air next year, though per Variety, the Academy has reportedly been in negotiations with NBC.

Meanwhile, the CMT Awards are riding the momentum of the success of their 2021 show, which saw a ten-percent increase in total viewership on CBS and was the top social program of the night across TV.

ViacomCBS has also announced a string of special programming, dubbed “Country Music Week,” to surround the next CMT Awards.

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Twenty One Pilots have premiered the video for “Saturday,” a track off their new album, Scaled and Icy

The clip finds Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun performing a concert for a party inside a submarine when their underwater vessel is attacked by a giant sea creature that looks a lot like the dragon on the Scaled and Icy cover.

Ever the professionals, the duo keeps playing even as the sub fills up with water, before they eventually swimg to the surface.

You can watch the “Saturday” video streaming now on YouTube.

Scaled and Icy, the follow-up to 2018’s Trench, was released in May. It also includes the lead single “Shy Away.”

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2021 is definitely a comeback year for Jazmine Sullivan, who in January released her first project in six years, Heaux Tales.

The vulnerable EP features transparently explores the singer’s personal experience with heartbreak and love, which landed Sullivan a spot on Rolling Stone’s 2021 Hot List. 

“In my music, I feel like I can talk about things that I wouldn’t normally have talked about and just be proud of who I am, and own who I am,” Sullivan tells Rolling Stone. “When I’m making music and I’m in a studio, it really feels so personal.”

“I’m just literally telling my story, and it’s for me,” she explains. “I know people are going to hear it, but it’s just me getting out these thoughts and these feelings that are inside of me.”

Heaux Tales features duets with fellow R&B vocalists Ari Lennox, H.E.R. and Anderson .Paak. The EP is also intertwined with interludes from Lennox and other women expressing their needs and wants in regards to love sex and taking control of one’s body. But Sullivan says her favorite ‘heaux tale’ on the EP is “The Other Side.”

“It was refreshing to write that story,” Sullivan says. “It’s very different from who I am, and my perspective. I feel like people were able to look at what they would consider a gold digger through a different lens after that.”

Sullivan promises not to make fans wait another six years before she releases the follow-up to Heaux Tales, the way she made fans wait following her 2015 album, Reality Show. “Life is not promised. So I just want to be able to do as much as I can but in my healthiest state,” she adds.

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The Retaliators finally has a premiere date.

The hard-rocking film — which features Papa Roach‘s Jacoby Shaddix in his film acting debut, as well as appearances by artists including Mötley Crüe‘s Tommy Lee and members of Five Finger Death Punch — will make its debut at London’s FrightFest, taking place August 26-30.

The Retaliators, which was first announced in 2020, follows a mild-mannered pastor who’s thrust into a world of violence as he tries to solve the mystery of his daughter’s murder. It’s being produced by Better Noise Films, an offshoot of the Better Noise Music record label.

Other artists appearing in The Retaliators include members of The Hu, Ice Nine Kills and Escape the Fate. Those bands also appear on the film’s soundtrack, as do Papa Roach, Five Finger Death Punch, From Ashes to New and Cory Marks.

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If you were around in the ’90s, there were two big questions you probably asked yourself: “How many more times can I see Titanic?” and “How the heck did Adam Duritz of Counting Crows end up dating Jennifer Aniston?”  Well, now we know the answer to the latter question.

Entertainment Tonight got a sneak peek of VICE TV’s new special Dark Side of the ’90s, one part of which focuses on LA’s celebrity hot spot of that time, The Viper Room.  In the special, Adam, who was then at the height of his Counting Crows fame, says he “lived at The Viper Room, night in and night out.” 

“I met Jennifer Aniston there,” he adds. “A bunch of my friends lied to me and told me she had a crush on me. Those same friends lied to her and told her I had a crush on her. I honestly had no idea who she was, I had been on the road during all of Friends. I had never seen it, I don’t think.”

However, Adam recalls that Aniston was “really nice, really funny, really pretty,” adding, “And also, she liked me.”  The two dated in 1995, and Adam says, “It didn’t last very long, but she’s a nice girl.” 

Adam also reportedly dated Aniston’s co-star, Courteney Cox, who appeared in the Counting Crows’ video for “A Long December.”  Asked about this in 2014, Adam said, “They were nice girls and I went out with them and that was that.”

Adam and Counting Crows recently released an EP called Butter Miracle, Suite One.  Aniston, of course, went on to marry and divorce Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux.  Cox married and divorced David Arquette and is now dating Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, whom she met through her pal Ed Sheeran.

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Fans might know Luke Bryan best as the country superstar onstage at his annual Farm Tour, but there’s another side of the singer that his audience doesn’t see as often: The guy who wakes up at sunrise and heads out to tend to his own plot of Tennessee land.

Now, viewers can get a look at life on Luke’s farm in his new mini-video series, a collection of approximately 25 one-minute long videos that will air twice a week through the summer. The series is a partnership with agriculture equipment maker Fendt, and features Luke’s Fendt 724 Gen6 tractor.

Topics for the videos range from serious to silly. In one, Luke ranks the farming skills of fellow country star Blake Shelton, while another finds him reflecting on the significance of farmers both in a national context and in his personal life.

The series is called Rise Before Sunrise with Luke Bryan, and true to its name, you’ll have to wake up on farming time to catch the clips right when they air: Each one goes up at 6 a.m. ET.

Luke’s video series lasts until September, which is also when his 2021 Farm Tour starts. The trek launches September 9 at Statz Bros. Farm in Wisconsin, followed by stops in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. The Farm Tour wraps at Kubiak Family Farms in Michigan on September 18.

In the meantime, fans can catch Luke on his Proud to Be Right Here tour, which begins in July.

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Over the weekend, The Masked Singer host Nick Cannon reportedly welcomed a baby boy named Zen with model Alyssa Scott, who previously appeared on his MTV game show Wild ‘N Out.  The newborn marks the fourth child the 40-year-old has welcomed in under a year.

Speaking on his radio show with City Girls rappers JT and Yung Miami, Cannon reacted to his guest remarking that he needs to “wrap it up and protect yourself,” referring to contraception, by asserting that each of his children were planned.

“I’m having these kids on purpose. I don’t have no accident,” he quipped. “Trust me, there’s a lot of people that I could’ve gotten pregnant that I didn’t. The ones that got pregnant are the ones that were supposed to get pregnant.” 

Besides baby Zen, Cannon also recently welcomed twin boys with Abby De La Rosa and also became the parent of a baby girl with Brittany Bell in December 2020. Cannon and Bell also share a three-year-old son.  Cannon also shares shares 10-year-old twins, son Moroccan and daughter Monroe, with ex-wife Mariah Carey.

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Against Me!‘s Laura Jane Grace is returning to the scene of one the most bizarre events of a particularly bizarre year.

On August 21, Grace will perform at Philadelphia’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping, the unassuming local business that was vaulted into the global spotlight when Donald Trump‘s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, held an impromptu press conference there last November to allege widespread voter fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Prior to the event, Trump had tweeted that it would be held at “Four Seasons,” seemingly referring to the famous hotel group, before clarifying that the site was actually Four Seasons Total Landscaping. The location was unusual for a major political press conference, to say the least — the neighboring businesses, for example, include a crematorium and an adult bookstore.

Grace’s concert will include a full solo set, as well as support from Brendan Kelly of the Chicago punk band The Lawrence Arms.

“This will be the first and last time Brendan and I will play in front of a landscaping company,” Grace says. “We promise it will be better than that MAGA s*** show.”

Tickets go on sale Thursday at noon ET via Eventbrite.

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