Music

Darius Rucker is giving the gift of music to his hometown, Charleston, South Carolina.

The singer just announced a new music festival that’ll take place in the city for the first time this year. Called the Riverfront Revival festival, the two-day event will take place in the city’s Riverfront Park, and will spotlight local food, art and culture as well as great music.

“Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Charleston,” Rucker says in a statement. “For years now, I’ve had this bucket list dream of bringing together a bunch of friends to perform in a way that also showcases this incredible city and all it has to offer.”

Darius will perform a headlining set, and he’s bringing some of his superstar friends to the party, too. Brothers Osborne will take the stage, as will Jimmie Allen — an artist who’s got a hometown festival of his own, the Delaware-based Bettie James Fest, now in its second year.

The bill isn’t just mainstream country hitmakers: Beloved bluegrass/folk outfit Trampled by Turtles will perform, as will Texas singer-songwriter Charley Crockett and Charleston-based rock group SUSTO.

Other performers include Larry Fleet — who’s currently on tour with Morgan Wallen — plus Maggie Rose, The War and Treaty, Lauren Jenkins and many more.

The Riverfront Revival will take place October 8 and 9. Tickets go on sale to the general public starting May 4, with a Darius-exclusive fan pre-sale starting May 2 and a Riverfront Revival pre-sale beginning the following day. One dollar from each ticket sale will benefit the Medical University of South Carolina’s Arts in Healing program, which offers art and music therapy to adults and children.

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Lady Gaga’s voice will be heard in the upcoming Tom Cruise action thriller Top Gun: Maverick.  She announced Wednesday that she performed the track “Hold My Hand” after cryptically tweeting out its lyrics at the start of the week.

It all started on Monday, when the Grammy winner wrote, “Hold my hand everything will be ok I heard from the heavens that clouds have been grey.”  The tweet energized her fanbase because the lyrics didn’t match any other her previous songs. Then, the next day, she tweeted out, “Why’d you take so long to tell me you need me.”

She kept the chain of mysterious lyrics going on Wednesday by sharing an image of handwritten lyrics, which spell out “I see that you’re bleeding / You don’t need to show me again.”  

It then culminated with her exciting reveal, that she appears on the soundtrack for Top Gun: Maverick.  Her song “Hold My Hand” arrives May 3 and is available to pre-save now.

Reports sparked last week that she wrote a song for the action flick after a fan stumbled upon a purported movie poster that credits Gaga in the “music by” section and shared a video of it to his Twitter. Her name was sandwiched between composers Harold Faltermeyer and Hans Zimmer. 

Top Gun: Maverick hits theaters on May 27.

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Testament has added a fall leg to the band’s Bay Strikes Back North American tour alongside Exodus and Death Angel.

The newly announced dates run from September 9 in Phoenix to October 15 in San Jose, California. The trek follows the ongoing spring leg, which concludes May 25 in Sacramento, California.

“We’ve all been having a killer time playing a lot of sold out shows for die hard metal fans across the U.S. and we wanna keep the party rolling!” says Testament frontman Chuck Billy.

As with the spring dates, Testament’s lineup for the fall leg will feature ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo.

For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit TestamentLegions.com.

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People magazine has finalized its list of the celebrities it says are the most beautiful inside and out, and among the names are Olivia Rodrigo, Adele and Selena Gomez.

For Olivia, the magazine hailed the 19-year-old singer for shaking up the Grammy Awards with her breakthrough debut album SOUR.  “The process of making SOUR and putting it out in the world really challenged me, and I’ve grown so much, and I’ve learned so much more about myself,” she told the outlet. “I’m a more confident person because of it.”

Right behind her in the issue is Adele, who was highlighted for her massively successful fourth studio album, 30.  The 15-time Grammy winner said making the heartbreak album “was all of our journey, not just mine,” and that she is “very proud of myself for sticking to my guns and putting out an album that was about something so personal to me.”

As previously reported, the pandemic delayed her hotly anticipated album and, despite its November release, it went on to become the best-selling album of 2021.

As for Selena, the 29-year-old makes the list because of her efforts to speak out against harmful beauty standards and their effects on mental health.  She said of her Rare Beauty brand, “Beauty really does come from how you feel about yourself… I want to celebrate everyone’s uniqueness.”  The Only Murders in the Building star was also saluted for her music and producing career.

The issue, which has Dame Helen Mirren gracing the cover, hits the newsstands on Friday.  The magazine will also celebrate beautiful friendships, celebrity pets and more.

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Garth Brooks is bringing his Stadium Tour up to Canada. The singer just announced a stop in Edmonton, Alberta, which will be the only Canadian stop on his current tour.

Garth was most recently in Edmonton in 2017, when he played shows for more than 160,000 fans. This time around, he’s hitting the city’s Commonwealth Stadium, marking the first time he’s ever played that venue.

The show will take place June 25, following back-to-back dates in Salt Lake City. It’s also one of the only international dates currently listed on his Stadium Tour calendar, along with a whopping five sold-out shows in Dublin, Ireland that Garth’s got planned for September.

Tickets for the Edmonton show go on sale beginning May 6, and though the venue has a capacity of over 60,000, fans should hurry: Garth’s stadium shows have been selling out in record time. After his now-sold out June 18 Salt Lake City date went on sale, fans snapped up 50,000 tickets in just 45 minutes.

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Apparently, Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox weren’t joking when they said they drank each other’s blood.

You may recall that Fox made the claim earlier this year when announcing her engagement to MGK. In a new interview with Glamour UK, Fox confirms that the blood drinking had actually, really happened.

“It’s just a few drops, but yes, we do consume each other’s blood on occasion for ritual purposes only,” Fox says.

The Transformers actress also clarifies some misunderstandings she thinks people might have about the practice of, again, drinking someone else’s blood.

“I guess to drink each other’s blood might mislead people or people are imagining us with goblets and we’re like Game of Thrones, drinking each other’s blood,” Fox says, perhaps misunderstanding herself that people aren’t confused by the amount of blood drank, but the drinking of any blood at all.

“When I do it, it’s a passage or it is used for a reason,” she continues. “And it is controlled where it’s like, ‘Let’s shed a few drops of blood and each drink it.’ [Kelly’s] much more haphazard and hectic and chaotic, where he’s willing to just cut his chest open with broken glass and be like, ‘Take my soul.'”

Elsewhere in the interview, Fox shares that she feels she’s been “manifesting” Kelly since she was four years old.

“I think I made him,” she says. “My thoughts and intentions grew him into the person that he is, who knows what he would’ve looked like or been like if it wasn’t for me.”

All we can say is: Congrats to the happy couple!

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Lauren Spencer-Smith is finally getting her Juno Awards moment.

In 2020, right around the time the Canadian singer/songwriter made her debut on American Idol, her 2019 live album, Unplugged, Vol. 1, was nominated for a Juno, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys.  She was just 16 at the time. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to attend the ceremony because it was canceled due to the pandemic, and when the winners were announced, she ended up losing to Canadian icon Bryan Adams.

But now, Lauren’s been announced as one of the stars who’ll be appearing at the 2022 Juno Awards, which are taking place in Toronto on May 15. She’ll perform her global hit “Fingers Crossed” and also present an award.

As previously reported, Shawn Mendes will also appear to accept the International Achievement Award, and Avril Lavigne will perform.

Hosted by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu, the Junos will stream live globally at CBCMusic.ca/junos, as well as CBC Music’s social platforms.

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Justin Bieber dropped a new song and video…sort of.

Apparently, Justin has teamed up with Houston rapper Don Toliver for a song called “Honest,” which is dropping “very very very soon.”  To tease it, he’s released a video that runs about a minute-and-a-half called “I Feel Funny,” which, according to the captions, was shot in about 15 minutes, between takes for the actual video for “Honest.”

In the “I Feel Funny” clip, Justin wears an orange ski mask and a white suit, and engages in a variety of goofy antics, while rapping the song in an odd voice. Some of the lyrics go, “Bills on bills/I want to make them/all these hearts/I used to break them/I settled down/I found a pocket/I hold the game and I won’t drop it.”

There’s also a scene where Justin is shown riding a snowmobile, green-screened onto a backdrop of snowy mountains. In the caption, it says, “Are we revealing too much of the actual video at this point?”

The video is a collaboration with Lyrical Lemonade’s Cole Bennett, who apparently also directed “Honest.”

(Video contains uncensored profanity.)

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