Music

Eve has a discography of songs that capture a wide range of emotions and experiences, but “Love is Blind” is the one that showed her the powerful impact music can have on people. While a guest on the Apple radio station The Message with Ebro Darden, she said the song was based on a poem she wrote, inspired by something she’d witnessed.

“The two verses of ‘Love is Blind’ is a poem that I wrote when I was 16, because my friend at the time who was 17 was dating this dude, older dude who was basically putting her up in an apartment,” Eve explained. “She got pregnant. Come to find out this dude had a whole other life, whatever. He used to beat her. She used to come to my house and have black eyes. It was crazy.”

Eve notes she didn’t really understand the impact of “Love is Blind” until the song dropped and she began to see fans’ reactions.

“That’s when I started to understand how music can really affect people and, I don’t know, where people can see themselves in your lyrics,” she said. “Because people would come up to me and be like, ‘Thank you so much for that song. My sister went through this,’ or ‘I’m going through this, but I went and found some help.'”

Eve says she’s grateful to her label Ruff Ryders Entertainment for allowing her to release a song that was different than the others playing on the radio.

“At that time, there was no music out like that,” she said. “And especially coming from a female, the fact that they were like, ‘Nah, let’s do it.’ They knew that was something. It was really important for me to get that song out.”

The full episode is now available on Apple Music.

If you are affected by abuse and needing support, or know someone who is, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). You can also chat online at thehotline.org or online.rainn.org, respectively.

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Shinedown‘s recent show in Milwaukee featured a special guest: frontman Brent Smith‘s son.

The younger Smith joined his dad’s band for a performance of the song “Second Chance.” You can watch footage of the father-son moment on Shinedown’s Instagram.

From the reaction of Papa Smith and the crowd, he did even better than the best he can.

“One for the books,” the post’s caption reads. “A proud moment at Milwaukee’s @fiservforum. Killed it.”

Shinedown is currently on their U.S. Dance, Kid, Dance tour, with support from Bush and Morgan Wade. The band’s put out three new songs in 2025: “Dance, Kid, Dance,” “Three Six Five” and “Killing Fields.”

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Kehlani‘s latest song, “Folded,” has inspired the launch of a charitable function. The singer has teamed with the Laundry Project for Nini’s Fluff & Fold, an event offering free laundry services to single mothers. It’s named after the fictional dry cleaners featured in the music video for the song.

“growing up i knew how hard it was for all the single mamas in my family to get the tasks done on top of it all,” she wrote in an Instagram announcement. “clean clothes is a basic necessity. i got yall.”

“thank you @engagecurrent for sponsoring this initiative, and my brother @city.james for such an incredible idea,” she continued. “AS A THANK YOU FOR SENDING THIS SONG OVER THE MOON! i love you mommy’s. you deserve the world.”

Nini’s Fluff & Fold is a first come, first served event taking place Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. local time in LA, Chicago, New York, Atlanta and other cities. Kehlani will not be present. More information is available on the Laundry Project’s website.

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Lady Gaga‘s upcoming song “Dead Dance,” which she recorded for the soundtrack of the new season of Wednesday, will also have a video. That’s according to The Hollywood Reporter, which cites a source as saying that Wednesday director Tim Burton helmed the clip, which was shot in Mexico. 

Citing multiple sources, People reports the reason Kelly Clarkson was absent from her talk show earlier this year was indeed due to the illness of her late ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock. Prior to the announcement of Blackstock’s death from cancer at age 48, Kelly had told fans she was canceling her August Las Vegas residency shows to be with her kids through their father’s illness. It’s not known if Blackstock’s death will affect Kelly’s upcoming plans, which include a return to The Voice, more Las Vegas shows and an NBC interview series set to premiere Aug. 19.

After teaming up at Lollapalooza to perform “Ordinary,” Alex Warren and Luke Combs have now officially released their live duet to streaming services.

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Charles Kelley stopped by CBS Mornings on Thursday to promote his new album, Songs for a New Moon. You can check out his appearance online now.

Brett Young will bring his Back to Basics World Tour to the SSE Arena in Belfast, Ireland, on Oct. 31. Tickets are on sale now.

Recorded by the late Charley Pride in the ’80s, Endlessly: A Tribute to Brook Benton will be released on Sept. 19. 

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Kid Cudi has discussed his struggle with mental health over the years, and that continues in his upcoming book, Cudi: The Memoir. In an excerpt obtained by GQ, he opens up about nearly overdosing while working on his album Man on the Moon II.

“I was at peace with dying,” Cudi began, recalling a night in his New York City apartment where he’d been “crying for hours” and had just done “more coke than I ever had in my life.”

“I tried to get up off the bed, but my legs wouldn’t work, so I collapsed to the floor and started to crawl,” he wrote. “Eventually, I gave in and just laid on the ground. My heart was racing. It felt like it was going to burst any minute.”

“‘You made great music that people loved,’ I thought,” Cudi continued. “‘But this is the end.’”

In the memoir, Cudi described how he started using cocaine as a way to grapple with fame and gradually increased his consumption. He said he believed that being Kid Cudi would “transform my life in all the best ways,” but would later realized it was “not like anything I had imagined.”

By the time he started working on Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven, Cudi admitted he had thoughts about dying by suicide.

“After we’d finished a session, I’d be alone Googling exit bags. I was thinking about a way I could actually do it. I was plotting it. There’s a song at the end of Speedin’ Bullet where I say good-bye, and that was meant to be my final album,” he writes. “I was going to kill myself at the end of that album, or before it came out, or during that cycle. I was not planning to live that year. Not many people around me expected me to either.”

Cudi: The Memoir comes out on Aug. 12.

If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or by visiting 988lifeline.org. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

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Another track has just been released from the upcoming album Beat Live, which captures a performance from the 2024 BEAT tour featuring former King Crimson members Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, guitar great Steve Vai and Tool drummer Danny Carey.

The tour had the four artists celebrating the ’80s-era music of King Crimson, reinterpreting three of the band’s albums – 1981’s Discipline, 1982’s Beat and 1984’s Three of a Perfect Pair – which were also the first three to feature Belew and Levin.

The latest preview of the live album is a performance of the track “Frame By Frame,” which appeared on Three of a Perfect Pair. 

“This is a miraculous piece of music,” Vai says of the song. “It contains unique, death-defying poly-metric intertwined guitar parts that seamlessly and elegantly support a most gorgeous lyric and vocal melody line. It’s a joy to perform every time. Did I mention that the guitar parts are death-defying?”

The Beat tour hit 65 North American cities in 2024 and Beat Live captures their performance at the United Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles. The album will be released in various formats on Sept. 26 and is available for preorder now.

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Mgk‘s new album, Lost Americana, features a song called “dont wait run fast,” which ESPN has announced will serve as its 2025 college football anthem. But it turns out the song was inspired by pro football, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift.

Speaking to ABC News Live, mgk said, “It was cool ’cause I wrote that song after I left the Chiefs’ losing party that I had to perform at at the Super Bowl.”

Earlier this year, the Chiefs lost to the Eagles at Super Bowl 59.

Asked what it was like to play a “losing party,” mgk laughed, “Just let me be the only one that can say I’ve done it. Don’t ever sign yourself up for that. Wait to sign the paper … until third quarter or something.”

He added that he “rocks with” the Chiefs and felt “honored” that he was asked to do it.

“I was in Travis’ suite [during the game] and at the beginning of it, Taylor was like, ‘Hell yeah, we’re gonna come watch you perform. It’s gonna be crazy tonight.’ And internally, I was stoked. I was like, ‘Oh, what a legendary night this is gonna be.'”

“By the third quarter, dude, I was looking at that score — I went up to Taylor, I was like, ‘Y’all aren’t coming tonight, huh?’ She was like, ‘I don’t think so, man. I’ll see if I can get him to get out.’”

In other mgk sports-related news, MGK Day will be celebrated in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, Aug. 8-10. Events include a free concert by the singer and a celebrity shootout, where stars including former NFL players, streetball legends, UFC champions, snowboarders, actors and WWE stars will play a half-court, streetball-style basketball game.

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If you still think of Scotty McCreery as the teen who won American Idol in 2011, the new cover of Cigar & Spirits may just change all that. 

McCreery casts a steely gaze in a dark suit and tie for the summer 2025 issue of the lifestyle magazine, along with an article titled “Country Music Star Scotty McCreery Goes Deep” and an “exclusive bonus pictorial.”

Meanwhile, his hit with Hootie & the Blowfish, “Bottle Rockets,” has made it into the top 10 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart in only a dozen weeks. It’s the band’s first country top 10, following nine solo number ones for lead singer Darius Rucker. 

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