Dee Snider was supposed to perform at San Francisco Pride next month, but the two sides agreed to part ways after Snider supported Paul Stanley’s recent tweet suggesting gender confirmation treatment for children has been “turned into a sad and dangerous fad.” 

At the time, SF Pride said they “appreciate Dee seeing this as a teachable moment” — but has Dee really learned anything?

“I think he has learned some,” Suzanne Ford, executive director of SF Pride, tells ABC Audio. “But I don’t think he’s at a place where we would probably be totally in alignment about our opinions about health care for trans children.” 

Nguyen Pham, president of SF Pride, adds, “One of our core pillars of our overall mission is to educate the world. So we do see this as an opportunity to narrow that gap of understanding just a little bit with our key allies.” He agrees with Suzanne, but adds, “We do see potential there.”

Ford takes particular issue with Stanley’s description of gender confirmation treatment as a “fad,” describing the comment as “quite dangerous.” Pham adds it suggests we shouldn’t believe trans kids.

“I think we really need to lean into believing children when they come to us,” Pham says.

Snider was supposed to serve as the parade’s celebrity grand marshal and perform Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as the rallying cry, so now SF Pride is looking for a replacement.

“We are hoping that somebody out there, a recording artist or a celebrity will see how much we need someone to stand with us,” Ford says. “An icon in the queer community that would come and be with us to help us make this statement.” 

SF Pride is happening June 24 and 25. More info can be found at sfpride.org.

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Taylor Swift‘s a bit busy these days, between her Eras Tour and rerecording all her old albums. But some fans still apparently believed she had enough time to write a memoir, which is due to be released in July. Well, she hasn’t, but that didn’t stop hopeful Swifties from ordering a random book in the mistaken belief she wrote it.

The book in question doesn’t have a title or an author listed. It’s only known 4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023. According to Variety, thanks to preorders, the $45 tome has made it into the top 10 on Amazon’s sales chart and to number one on Barnes & Noble’s website.

Variety has confirmed that the book is not, in fact, by Taylor — instead, it’s by some unnamed celebrity. One book-related gossip account claims that it’s related to K-pop superstars BTS, but that’s nowhere near confirmed, according to Variety.

The magazine says a screen shot of the book’s sales pitch describes it as a “fun, celebratory title” that will “skew slightly younger” and have “massive publicity.” The pitch compares it to Prince Harry‘s Spare or Matthew Perry‘s recent memoir.

So why are fans convinced that it’s by Taylor? According to Variety, a document on social media claimed that the book’s title and author would be revealed on June 13 — 13 being Taylor’s lucky number, of course — and that it has 544 pages. And 5 + 4 + 4 = 13, duh!

There’s also the fact that the book is coming out July 9. Taylor fans know that’s a date she specifically mentions in the lyrics of her song “Last Kiss” on Speak Now.

But again, Variety has confirmed the book wasn’t written by Taylor. 

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Quinta Brunson flaunted different fashion looks during awards show season, but says before meeting stylist Bryon Javar it wasn’t easy to find someone who understood her or was willing to dress her frame.

“Not only am I 4-foot-11, [but] I’m 4-foot-11 with breasts and a butt. And that’s just the cardinal sin: to be short and have the nerve to have any type of curve,” she tells InStyle. “Before working with Bryon, there were times where I would work with other stylists and I just have to be like, ‘I’m not this young,’ or ‘this feels too young for me.’ And it would be like, ‘No, you can pull it off.’ And I was like, ‘But it’s not about pulling it off. It’s about what I want to represent when I come to certain award shows or certain events I have to do.'”

“I want to make sure I can convey who I am through what I wear,” the star continued, adding fashion is a way for her to show who she is without talking.

Quinta learned to love her body thanks to her experience as a trained dancer. As a woman with curves, she thought it’d be fitting to include some others in her show Abbott Elementary.

“This is a mockumentary, I feel they do better when you have people who look more familiar,” she says. “I wanted to portray people who looked real. And that inherently comes with, in my opinion, women who have curves.”

Though she knows she may upset people, she embraces Beyoncé‘s “I was born free” lyric in “Church Girl,” noting, “This is starting to really be my ministry. I was born free. I can do what I want.”

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Veruca Salt‘s Louise Post has premiered the video for her new solo single, “Guilty.”

“The first verse and chorus landed as an accusation, but then I realized it was far more interesting, and much more true to life, to have everyone in the song be guilty of something,” Post says of “Guilty.” “To have the narrator own up to her own guilt, and then acknowledge the universality of it all. I mean, what would we be without our secrets? The song is ultimately about not taking ourselves so seriously.”

You can watch the video, which features everything from therapy sessions to card-playing bugs, streaming now on YouTube.

“Guilty” will appear on Post’s upcoming debut solo album, Sleepwalker, due out June 2.

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Reigning Academy of Country Music Awards’ Entertainer of the Year Miranda Lambert is the ACM’s most-nominated artist in history. 

Over her storied career, Miranda has earned a record-breaking 17 Female Artist of the Year nominations, as well as four nominations in other categories. This year, the Texas native, who recently released her cookbook Y’all Eat Yet?, notched nominations in five categories, including Entertainer of the Year, Female Artist of the Year and the newly created Artist-Songwriter of the Year.   

“I’m so thankful [to] the country music community for believing in my art all these years. You know, this will be my 18th, well I missed my 17th ACM when I won Entertainer finally and I was in Europe,” Miranda recalls to ABC Audio with a laugh. “I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me! The one I miss in 17 years, I win Entertainer!’ But it was just it was still such a beautiful moment.”

“I’m happy to be part of this family and to continue to make art that my peers lift up,” the recent Triple Crown Award recipient adds. “You know, it’s awesome. [The] ACMs have been great to me. Being nominated for Entertainer again, going in as the reigning one, feels pretty dang good!”

The 58th Academy of Country Music Awards, hosted by Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks, will stream live on Amazon Prime Video May 11 at 7 p.m. ET.

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Judas Priest has been working on a new album to follow 2018’s Firepower. Speaking with ABC Audio, guitarist Richie Faulkner shares that the actual recording of the album is “almost finished.”

“I think we have some vocals to do, and then we’ve gotta mix and then master,” Faulkner says.

What comes after that, though, is a little bit more up in the air.

“We gotta finalize artwork and actually manufacture the stuff … make the vinyl and get that done,” Faulkner explains. “I think vinyl takes a little while these days, so it depends how long that takes to actually manufacture the physical product. So that’s the question mark.”

Still, Faulkner is optimistic that “it shouldn’t be too long now” before the next Priest album is officially done and ready to go. He adds that he and frontman Rob Halford spent some time in the studio recently recording vocals.

“It’s sounding great, man,” Faulkner says. “Hearing some new Priest stuff that we haven’t heard before with that legendary voice on is always an exciting thing to be a part of.”

While you wait for that, you can hear Faulkner shred with his new band Elegant Weapons. The group’s debut album, Horns for a Halo, drops May 26.

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Josh Groban‘s latest Broadway role, the lead in the revival of Sweeney Todd, has been a huge success. He recently scored a Tony nomination, the musical is also nominated for a Tony. Of course, the longer Sweeney runs, the longer fans will have to wait for a new album from Josh, but he says the fact that he’s doing the show will make his next album even better.

“The good news is during quarantine, I wrote a lot and I got a lot of songs, and there’s a huge amount of material that is ready for me to press the red button on,” he tells ABC Audio. “So there’s lots of creative excitement ready where that’s concerned.”

He recalls, “I know when I came out of [my last Broadway show] Great Comet, I came out just absolutely out of the cannon, ready to do [last album] Bridges.”

And he expects the same thing to happen when he’s done with Sweeney Todd.

Josh explains, “For me, theater is where I go to rediscover myself, to dive into a story, and see things through a different lens and through a different interpretation.”

“I’m going to wait a minute to do another album and to put out another album. But the time that I will have spent doing [the show] will be, I think, really, really worthwhile.” 

In addition to his Tony nominations, Josh was nominated for the 23rd annual Broadway.com Audience Choice Awards. He scored a nod for Favorite Leading Actor in a Musical. Voting is underway now and runs through May 21 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Winners will be announced June 1.

Meanwhile, the Sweeney Todd cast album comes out later this year.

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Rapper Tory Lanez, who was convicted of shooting hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion, was denied a motion for a new trial by a Los Angeles judge on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. 

Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, was convicted of three felonies in December for assaulting Megan with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence. He could face up to 22 years in prison and deportation to his native Canada.

Lanez’s lawyers argued that evidence was wrongly admitted during the trial, including an Instagram post and Megan’s testimony about prior bad acts. However, Superior Court Judge David Herriford rejected these arguments, stating that their exclusion would not have changed the outcome of the trial. Lanez’s lawyers plan to appeal to a higher court.

During the motion hearing, Lanez pleaded with the judge, stating, “I could be your son. I could be your brother.” His lawyers had an elaborate presentation prepared, complete with audio-visuals and witnesses, but the judge refused to allow it. The trial was full of media and Lanez’s fans and family members, with many more outside in the hallway.

The trial set off a storm of cultural issues and arguments, including the protection of Black women, gender politics in hip-hop, and online toxicity. Megan Thee Stallion, who testified that Lanez fired a handgun at her feet, has seen her prominence surge since the incident, winning a Grammy for best new artist and having multiple Billboard Hot 100 hits. No sentencing date has been set for Lanez.

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