Of the track’s story, Luke shares, “It’s about a guy that obviously, his girl leaves him and he’s expecting to really be down about it. Instead, he goes out, gets a beer in his hand, starts partying and life’s pretty good.”
“I knew I wanted a fun uptempo song everyone could enjoy this summer,” the country superstar adds. “I can’t wait to start doing it live. It’s gonna be a blast.”
Luke will perform “But I Got A Beer In My Hand” during the American Idol season finale on Sunday, May 21. Fans can tune in to the three-hour special at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
On the tour front, Luke’s set to kick off his Country On Tour on June 15. For the full tour schedule and to get tickets, visit lukebryan.com.
Hyro the Hero has premiered a new song called “Head Under Water” featuring Ice Nine Kills guitarist Dan Sugarman.
“There’s such intense emotion we conveyed through this track that I hope listeners will be able to connect with it,” Hyro says. “It’s a deep dive into depression and the dark thoughts that arise when struggling with life’s problems.”
“When you feel like you have nobody to talk to or that can understand, it can lead to terrible things,” he continues. “Mental health is no longer a taboo subject and it’s being brought up in discussion throughout society today, so I wanted to touch on it because I know the feeling first-hand.”
“Head Under Water” also features the band Reddstar. You can listen to it now via digital outlets and watch its accompanying lyric video streaming now on YouTube.
“The song started out with this tipsy piano saunter and grew from there,” says frontman A/J Jackson. “Around the time I was writing the song, a lot of people I knew had been reinventing themselves as ‘experts’ and creating personas and courses. Perhaps some of that rubbed off on the lyrical matter.”
“In the final phases of the song production, it ended up being a matter of what elements we could take away from the song and still let it stand,” he adds. “Very excited to send this song off into the world!”
You can listen to “Everyone’s a Guru Now” via digital outlets.
“Everyone’s a Guru Now” follows Saint Motel’s 2021 album The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, which spawned the singles “Van Horn,” “Preach” and “It’s All Happening.”
A posthumous album compiling the late, legendary Olivia Newton-John‘s all-star duets is out now.
Just the Two of Us — The Duets Collection Volume One, features some new and never-before-released duets, alongside previously released tracks and songs that have been available digitally, but never before on CD or vinyl. Olivia’s duet partners on the collection include Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey, Richard Marx, Michael McDonald, Barry Gibb, John Travolta, Jon Secada and Olivia’s daughter, Chloe Lattanzi.
Of note, Olivia’s duet with Dolly Parton on “Jolene,” from September 2021, was Olivia’s final recording before her death in August 2022. It was released digitally in February, but is now available on CD and vinyl for the first time.
Olivia’s duet with Mariah Carey on the Grease classic “Hopelessly Devoted to You” was taped at Mariah’s Live in Australia TV special years ago, but it’s never been released before this.
In a statement, Mariah says, “I dressed up as Bad Sandy for Halloween in 5th grade and thought I was everything. Years later, THE Olivia Newton-John walked out onto my stage in Melbourne, Australia and we sang our hearts out together to ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You.’ This is a moment I will never ever forget.”
Here’s the track listing for Just the Two of Us:
“Suddenly” (Featuring Cliff Richard)
“Jolene” (Featuring Dolly Parton)
“Act Of Faith” (Featuring Michael McDonald)
“Window In The Wall” (Featuring Chloe Lattanzi)
“Take A Chance” (Featuring John Travolta)
“Put Your Head On My Shoulder” (Featuring Paul Anka)
“Face To Face” (Featuring Barry Gibb)
“I Honestly Love You” (Featuring Jim Brickman)
“The Best Of Me” (Featuring David Foster)
“True To Yourself” (Featuring Vanessa Amorosi)
“Lost Inside Your Heart” (Featuring Jon Secada)
“I’ll Come Runnin’” (Featuring Tina Arena)
“Never Far Away” (Featuring Richard Marx)
“How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” (Featuring Kelly Lang)
“Stone In My Pocket” (Featuring Amy Sky & Nielsen Chapman)
“Love Is A Gift” (Featuring Delta Goodrem)
“Hopelessly Devoted To You (Live)” (Featuring Mariah Carey)
Warren Zevon didn’t get chosen for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier this week, and David Letterman, who is a huge Zevon fan, has some thoughts on the snub.
In a YouTube chat with his former Late Show colleagues Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay, the former talk show host says he’s disappointed Zevon wasn’t recognized.
“Warren Zevon was on the ballot for the first time and was not voted in,” he says. “I will say that I’m disappointed. I’m not angry, because I would’ve been surprised had it gone the other way.” He adds, “I think to be angry would’ve been 30 years ago, when he should’ve been inducted.”
But Letterman doesn’t need the Hall of Fame to tell him how great Zevon is. “Warren can do without the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s next year — we’re so long overdue on Warren, but that’s fine. He’s above and beyond the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”
Slash‘s song with Chris Janson and Dolly Parton is here.
The previously teased track, titled “21 Forever,” features the Guns N’ Roses shredder ripping a solo as the two country singers duet about how you “can’t be 21 forever.”
“I’m so thrilled to announce, that two Global Icons have joined me in song, for my absolute biggest collaboration to date,” Janson says. “Dolly and Slash, it doesn’t get any BIGGER than that. I’m incredibly humbled and grateful for these two. Hope you all enjoy ’21 Forever.'”
You can listen to “21 Forever” now via digital outlets and watch its accompanying lyric video streaming now on YouTube.
Last month, Slash performed on country music’s CMT Music Awards as part of a tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd. He and GN’R have also performed live with Carrie Underwood multiple times.
Megan Moroney has released her highly anticipated debut album, LUCKY.
The 13-track collection was produced by Sugarland‘s Kristian Bush and features her single “Tennessee Orange,” which is in the top 10 and rising on the country charts.
“After we wrote the title track ‘Lucky,’ I knew I wanted it to be the name of my debut album,” Megan says of her record. “If you know anything about me and my story, a lot of things (both good and bad) happened to get me to where I am today, and I just feel very lucky.”
“I couldn’t live out this dream without the support of my fans, family, and team,” she continues. “I can’t wait to bring these songs on the road with me this year and I hope everyone loves them as much as I do!”
Megan is currently touring the country on her sold-out headlining THE LUCKY TOUR.
Here’s the track list for LUCKY:
“I’m Not Pretty”
“Lucky”
“Tennessee Orange”
“Kansas Anymore”
“Girl in the Mirror”
“Another on the Way”
“Traitor Joe”
“Why Johnny”
“God Plays A Gibson”
“Georgia Girl”
“Sleep on My Side”
“Mustang or Me”
“Sad Songs For Sad People”
(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday it is changing the way it does surveillance of COVID-19 in the United States as the emergencies related to the virus come to an end.
In January, the Biden administration told Congress that it would let the COVID-19 national emergency and the public health emergency expire on May 11.
Accordingly, the CDC said it plans to either transition certain categories of COVID-19 national reporting to other sources or discontinue them entirely.
“Although next week marks the end of the public health emergency, it is not the end of COVID-19,” Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said during a call with reporters Thursday. “COVID-19 remains a risk and CDC remains committed to preventing severe illness and death associated with COVID-19, particularly for those who are at higher risk.”
He continued, “We will continue to keep our eye on the COVID-19 ball, and we will do so through a multitude of metrics.”
In one of the biggest moves, the federal health agency will stop sharing data about COVID-19 transmission levels and community levels and use COVID-related hospital admissions as the primary metric to measure virus spread.
Shah said this is because community levels rely on aggregate case rates, which are ending when the public health emergency expires, and those case rates may not be reported to CDC by jurisdictions after May 11.”
The CDC has noted that as the pandemic has progressed, case data has become less reliable because of increases in home testing, with results often not reported to public health officials.
“Since February of 2022, there has been a 99% accordance with the CCL, the community levels — which are being retired — and the new hospital admission-driven metrics,” Shah said. “In short, we will still be able to tell that it’s snowing, even though we’re no longer counting every snowflake.”
Hospitalizations will move from being reported daily to weekly, while keeping track of demographic data, such as age and race/ethnicity, as well as data on the treatment being received by patients.
Dr. Brendan Jackson, lead of the CDC’s COVID-19 Response, said there are other metrics the CDC will continue to monitor that can give notice before a potential spike.
“Hospitalizations provide the best national level view of COVID trends,” Jackson said during the media call. “There are also metrics that provide earlier signals of change in COVID activity.”
For example, “CDC reports emergency department visits for COVID-19 on our COVID data tracker website down to the state level. This is a key early indicator of evolving trends,” he added.
Additionally, the CDC is switching its test positivity data to a surveillance system, which is based on voluntary reporting from over 450 laboratories nationwide.
Also seeing changes is V-safe, a smartphone tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to provide check-ins after people receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Starting May 19, people who participated in v-safe will not be able to add new COVID-19 vaccine doses to their account. People who received doses that were added before May 19 will have health check-ins until June 30.
“At this point in the program, very little new data are being reported to the v-safe system,” the CDC said in a press released. “V-safe was developed specifically for COVID-19 vaccines and has been an essential component of the pandemic vaccine safety monitoring systems that have successfully and comprehensively characterized the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines used in the United States.”
The CDC said it is developing a new version of v-safe, expected to launch later in 2023, which will allow users to share post-vaccination experiences with new vaccines.
However, there are certain activities that will be unaffected by the CDC’s change in reporting and the end of the emergencies.
These include case data broken down by demographics as well as CDC’s work on long COVID, vaccine effectiveness and wastewater surveillance.
Shah said there is still a need within the agency to modernize the way they collect and monitor disease, so it does not take as long to do so as it did with COVID-19.
“In the next pandemic, we shouldn’t wait six months to have complete hospitalization data,” Shah said. “We shouldn’t need dozens of data use agreements to understand the demographics of who’s getting vaccinated.”
He continued, “We should have access to robust data before a pandemic. We should be ready, so we don’t have to get ready. That is the work ahead of us and the work we are committed to doing.”
Paul Stanley and Dee Snider are both responding to the backlash they received over Stanley’s recent tweet about gender confirmation treatment for children, where he suggested it’s been “turned into a sad and dangerous fad.”
In a new post on social media, the KISS guitarist seems to regret his initial statement, saying, “While my thoughts were clear, my words clearly were not.”
Stanley insists he supports those struggling with their sexual identity, especially considering the “constant hostility” they experience, noting, “It’s hard to fathom the kind of conviction that one must feel to take those steps.”
But Stanley didn’t actually clarify what he meant by his original statement. “A paragraph or two will remain far too short to fully convey my thoughts or point of view,” he explained, “so I will leave that for another time and place.”
Meanwhile, Snider, who was dropped as a performer from SF Pride because he agreed with Stanley’s initial tweet, just released a statement regarding his position.
“I was not aware the transgender community expects fealty and total agreement with all their beliefs and any variation or derivation is considered transphobic,” he writes, insisting he has spent his lifetime supporting the transgender community’s right to “identify as they want.”
He does say, however, he does not “believe young children are ready to decide their gender allocation.” While he believes their choices “should be supported and accepted by their parents,” he doesn’t think they’re “mentally developed enough” to make such drastic decisions that could affect the rest of their lives.
He adds that he will continue to support the transgender community no matter how they feel about him, and also shares, “I am open to educating myself so I can be a better ally.”
David Bowie’s 1975 track “Golden Years” has gotten the remix treatment with the release of the new digital single, “Golden Years (TOKiMONSTA Remix).”
“To me, I connect with Bowie as an amazing innovator. He was always reinventing himself and pushing the envelope of music while somehow never ceasing to be authentically himself,” Los Angeles-based producer and DJ TOKiMONSTA, born Jennifer Lee, shares. “His experimental fashion choices are always a beacon for me to challenge my style and look.”
The new take on the song is part of a trio of Bowie remixes for Peloton’s celebration of Bowie’s legacy, coinciding with his 75th birthday, which was in January.
The original “Golden Years,” released in November 1975, was the first single off Bowie’s classic album Station To Station and was a top 10 hit for the rocker. The tune has since been covered by artists like LCDSoundsystem‘s James Murphy and was even featured in the 2001 movie A Knight’s Tale.
