Beck has premiered a new single called “Thinking About You.”
The track falls on the acoustic, sincere side of the “Loser” artist’s wide-ranging musical spectrum. You can listen to it now via digital outlets.
“Thinking About You” follows Beck’s latest album, 2019’s Hyperspace. In between, he’s put out a number of collaborations, including a reworking of the Paul McCartney song “Find My Way,” and covered Neil Young‘s “Old Man” in 2022, which was nominated for Best Rock Performance at this year’s Grammys.
Meanwhile, Beck is also getting back on the road for the Summer Odyssey co-headlining tour with Phoenix. The joint outing launches in August.
Sam Smith praised Madonna in a sentimental post about the recent Grammy Awards. Madonna famously introduced Sam and collaborator Kim Petras ahead of their controversial “Unholy” performance.
Sam shared an Instagram photo of them posing with Madonna at the ceremony and wrote, “Overwhelmed, grateful and inspired. Thank you for your love and support @madonna. I’ll never forget your kindness.”
Sam’s post comes days after Madonna took to Instagram to decry how their moment at the Grammys was seemingly overshadowed by comments about her appearance.
“It was an honor for me to Introduce. Kim Petras and Sam Smith at the Grammys. I wanted to give the last award which was Album of the year, but I thought it was more important that I present the first trans- woman performing at the Grammys — a History making moment!! And on top of that she won a Grammy!!” the singer wrote, while also praising the duo’s fearlessness.
Madonna called out those who focused more on “Close-up photos of me Taken with a long lens camera By a press photographer that Would distort anyone’s face” over Sam and Kim’s history-making moment. She slammed the negative attention for being ageist.
Kim responded to Madonna’s post by commenting with three red heart emojis.
Elvis Costello paid tribute to his friend and collaborator Burt Bacharach at the kickoff for his 10-night residency at New York’s Gramercy Theatre Thursday. Bacharach died Wednesday at the age of 94.
“It’s been a tough day,” Costello told the audience, as reported by Variety. “You know, a really great man left us yesterday. And people say, when somebody leaves you who’s a great age, they say, well, it was a good ending. Yeah, but it’s never time to say goodbye to somebody if you love ‘em. And I’m not ashamed to say I did love this man.”
Costello went on to play three Bacharach-penned tunes: “Baby It’s You,” recorded by The Shirelles and The Beatles; “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” made famous by Dionne Warwick; and “Please Stay,” recorded by The Drifters. Costello had previously recorded two of those songs, “Baby It’s You” with Nick Lowe and “Please Stay,” for his all-covers album Kojak Variety. Costello also said he was planning to perform some of the songs he wrote with Bacharach later in the residency when his pianist, Steve Nieve, joins him.
In 1998 Bacharach and Costello teamed up for the album Painted From Memory, which went on to earn the pair a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for the song “I Still Have That Other Girl.” A box set of their work, The Songs Of Bacharach & Costello, including the new collection Taken From Life, featuring unreleased songs from a proposed Painted From Memory musical score, is due out March 3. It is available for preorder now.
On Friday, Universal Pictures debuted the new trailer to Fast X, the penultimate movie in the Fast and the Furious saga.
The snippet doesn’t skimp on insane stunts and stars, with EGOT winner Rita Moreno starting things off as Dom’s grandmother, telling Toretto’s clan, “I know that this road has been very hard. And yet here you are. Building this magnificent family.”
However, the peace doesn’t last long. Via flashbacks of 2011’s Fast Five, we learn that when Dom and his crew took out a drug kingpin in Rio De Janeiro, the kingpin’s son Dante, played by Jason Momoa, witnessed it all, and he wants payback.
Momoa’s character says in voiceover, “You built such a beautiful life. Filled with love and family … You stole that from me. My future. My family. And now I’m gonna break yours, piece by piece.”
Later, he taunts, “That’s the problem with having such a big family. How do you choose the ones you save?”
The trailer also shows off series newcomers: Oscar winner Brie Larson, Reacher‘s Alan Richtson and The Suicide Squad‘s Daniela Melchior.
The trailer reveals Jason Statham‘s Deckard Shaw is back, with Academy Award winner Helen Mirren as his mom, Magdalene. And fellow Oscar winner Charlize Theron‘s baddie Cipher goes toe-to-toe with Michelle Rodriguez‘s Leddy.
John Cena returns, too, as Dom’s “little” brother Jakob — this time fighting alongside Dom, after his heel turn in Fast 9.
The coming attraction also teases a start to where it all began: a climactic street race between Dom, Dante and the Toretto clan. “We raced for respect,” Dom says of the past. “Today I race to stop the bloodbath.”
The High School Musical alum confirmed her engagement to her boyfriend, baseball player Cole Tucker, in a joint Instagram post on Thursday.
Alongside a snapshot of Tucker hugging Hudgens from behind, the couple wrote, “YES. We couldn’t be happier.”
The post also included a second photo of Hudgens’ hand, showing a closer look at the engagement ring, with the Eiffel Tower lit up in the background at night.
Many of the pair’s famous friends flocked to the comments section to congratulate the bride and groom to-be including actress Sarah Hyland, who shared lyrics from “Thank Goodness,” from Broadway’s Wicked, writing, “Couldn’t be happier, right here look what we’ve got a fairy-tale plot, out very own happy ending.”
The social media post comes about a week after news spread that the couple had gotten engaged. It’s unclear exactly when the proposal happened.
Hudgens, 34, and Tucker, 26, have kept their relationship relatively private, though Hudgens confirmed they were dating in May 2021.
Courtesy of HYBE, Trafalgar Releasing, and CJ 4DPlex. BTS 2023 (hightail.com)
BTS may be on a break, but they’re still breaking global records. It was recently announced their concert movie BTS: Yet To Come in Cinemas broke the record for the highest-grossing worldwide cinema event after amassing $40 million during its limited global run.
According to a release, the film premiered in global theaters across 128 countries and territories on February 1 and ran through Sunday, February 5. Its estimated five-day run in the U.S. alone grossed $8 million and became the weekend’s fifth highest-grossing film, with a per-screen average of $7,080 across 1,127 movie theaters.
The concert film also scored top-five box office positions in Japan, Korea, Italy and Spain. The film went to #1 in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines. It was also the #1 international film in India.
The concert film was of their October 15 performance in Busan, South Korea, as part of the city’s bid to host the World Expo 2030. They named the show BTS in BUSAN and performed signature hits like “Dynamite,” “Butter” and “IDOL.”
BTS was named PR ambassadors for Busan’s bid to host the Expo. It is competing for the rights against Rome, Italy; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Odessa, Ukraine. The host city will be chosen next year.
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI is conducting a consensual search of former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana Friday following the discovery of documents with classification markings last month, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The Department of Justice had been in contact with Pence’s legal team to schedule the search and Pence’s aides agreed to it.
The FBI declined to comment, referring questions to the Justice Department. The DOJ didn’t immediately respond to comment.
Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News Thursday.
The subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith requests documents and testimony related to the failed attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, sources told ABC News, which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Classified documents were found at Pence’s Indiana home in mid-January and turned over to the FBI at the time, sources told ABC News. A lawyer for Pence conducted the search and found around a dozen documents marked as classified.
(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. official said Friday it’s believed the undercarriage of the Chinese spy balloon shot down Saturday — where the surveillance equipment and other technology was housed — has been located in waters off South Carolina.
The official told ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz it was found Thursday and is largely intact.
It has not yet been retrieved, the official said, but that will likely be done with a crane or a winch from a vessel.
The Who’s Roger Daltrey is still working hard on his planned biopic about the band’s late drummer, Keith Moon, and in a new interview with Vulture he gives fans an update on the progress being made.
“I just finished a script, and I’m hoping to do my biopic of Keith within the next couple of years,” he says. “I’m very pleased with the script. I want people to get an understanding of him and his life, and the complete genius he was.”
Daltrey says he already has an idea of an actor “who’s a role model” to play Moon, although he worries the unidentified actor, who he says is around 40, may be “too old.” However, Daltrey thinks it still could work, because “Keith looked 50 when he died. He was 32, but he looked 54.”
“But there’s an actor who I’ve seen and when I look at him I go, ‘God, it’s Moon,’” Roger says. “It’s all to do with the eyes. The eyes are all important. You virtually wouldn’t need to say any dialogue because you could read it in his eyes.”
And it sounds like Roger won’t stop until the movie is made, noting, “I’m driven by this project. It came to me in a dream 30 years ago.”
Daltrey also gave a little insight into what he hopes is in the future for The Who, including an orchestrated Quadrophenia.
“That’s my ambition. But I can’t tell you I could physically handle it,” the almost-79-year-old says. “It’s a challenging piece of work and it deserves respect. But who knows. We’ve gone on far longer than I ever thought we would. I didn’t think it would last until the end of the week.”
(WASHINGTON) — White House communications director Kate Bedingfield is departing the administration at the end of this month — halfway into President Joe Biden’s term and just ahead of a possible reelection campaign.
Bedingfield has held the role since his inauguration. Prior to that, she served as Biden’s deputy campaign manager for his 2020 run and served in various communications roles in the Obama administration.
The White House, in announcing Bedingfield’s departure, said she “played an integral role in the successes of the first two years of the Biden-Harris Administration, from the American Rescue Plan through the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Biden called her a “loyal and trusted adviser, through thick and thin.”
“She was a critical strategic voice from the very first day of my presidential campaign in 2019 and has been a key part of advancing my agenda in the White House,” he said. “The country is better off as a result of her hard work and I’m so grateful to her — and to her husband and two young children — for giving so much.”
Bedingfield was set to leave the Biden administration last summer but decided to stay on in her role, saying at the time the “work is too important and too energizing and I have a lot of gas left in the tank.”
She will be replaced by Ben LaBolt, a former adviser to President Barack Obama.
Bedingfield’s exit comes on the heels of Biden’s longtime chief of staff Ron Klain leaving the administration. Klain was a senior adviser on Biden’s 2020 campaign, and the two had a decades-long working relationship that dated back to Biden’s time in the Senate.
Klain officially ended his time as chief of staff last week, and was sent off with cheers from White House staff gathered outside the West Wing.
Before he left, Klain gave a nod to a potential reelection campaign by Biden.
“I look forward to being on your side when you run for president in 2024,” Klain said to applause at a transition ceremony earlier this month.
Biden is expected to soon announce whether he will seek a second term. The president told reporters on Thursday he intends to run, but is “just not ready” to make the final decision.
In his State of the Union address earlier this week, Biden touted his accomplishments as he called on Congress to “finish the job” on remaining priorities such as police reform, gun control and more.
The administration has also been on a post-State of the Union “blitz” with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cabinet officials visiting 22 states, according to the White House.
But in the lead-up to a possible 2024 announcement, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found many Democratic voters were apathetic about seeing Biden run again. Nearly six in 10 Democratic-aligned adults don’t want to see Biden renominated.
