The coaches on The Voice are known for ribbing each other on camera, so when Blake Shelton announced that he’s leaving the show after season 23, fans might’ve expected his fellow coaches to get their light-hearted digs in. The 22nd season of The Voice is currently underway.
But John Legend had sweeter words to share: Speaking to ET Online, the pop superstar applauded Blake’s lengthy tenure at The Voice. After he finishes next season, Blake will have been on the show for 23 consecutive seasons — the longest stint of any coach.
“You can’t do something forever. We’re gonna miss him, though. He’s been the heart and the anchor and the soul of the show for a long time,” John says. “And he’s a friend of mine, and I really enjoy working with him. We’re all gonna miss him.”
The current season of The Voice marks the last time the two men will serve as coaches, as John is sitting out the upcoming 23rd season. “But I’ll be back on The Voice — just not this coming season,” the singer adds.
Journey guitarist Neal Schon recently revealed that the band would be returning to the road next year for a new tour with their 2022 opening act Toto. Now, the group has announced official plans for the trek, which will celebrate Journey’s 50th anniversary.
The outing, dubbed the 50th Anniversary Freedom Tour 2023, will feature 38 North American dates, running from a February 4 concert in Allentown, Pennsylvania through an April 25 show in Palm Springs, California.
The trek will include the four previously announced makeup concerts that Journey postponed earlier this year, which are scheduled for March 1 in Washington, D.C.; March 4 in Hartford, Connecticut; March 9 in Quebec City; and March 12 in Toronto.
Tickets for the newly announced shows will go on sale to the general public this Thursday, October 20 at 10 a.m. local time at JourneyMusic.com. Citi card members will have access to presale tickets starting Tuesday, October 18 at 10 a.m. local time; visit CitiEntertainment.com for more info. A limited number of VIP packages will also be available.
“We are all thankful and overwhelmed by the success of our Journey Freedom Tour 2022 this year,” says Schon. “We are looking forward to hitting the road again with our very good friends Toto! Come join us for a special evening full of fun and Rockin’ good memories.”
Adds Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, “Excited to perform for our fans as we tour next year with Toto. The combined hits of both bands represent a couple of decades of excellence that have become a soundtrack for people’s lives.”
Meanwhile, Journey recently debuted a lyric video for “Beautiful as You Are,” a song from their recently released Freedom album. Check it out on the band’s YouTube channel.
Harry Styles shook off an “unfortunate” injury during his concert in Chicago. A fan threw a bottle toward the stage, and it hit him square in the groin.
Fan-captured videos of the event are circulating on social media. One video, taken from fan account @glambygab, starts a few seconds before the bottle made contact.
Harry is seen chatting with the crowd before the stray bottle flies from the pit area and pelts him between the legs. Harry immediately stops talking, lets out a pained “oh” and winces all at once. He then stays doubled over for nearly 10 seconds before he speaks to the crowd again, starting with a frank, “Well. That’s unfortunate.”
Harry then comically begins kicking his legs one at a time and declares, “Okay. Shake it off.” After a few bounces, he goes back in business and jokingly restarts the concert by talking in a high-pitched voice.
Harry just wrapped his residency at Chicago’s United Center. He is next heading to Inglewood, California for a multi-date residency at the Kia Forum, set to start on October 23.
Harry isn’t the only artist who has to deal with rowdy fans throwing objects onstage. During Lady Gaga‘s Chromatica Ball tour, her team had to issue a warning to fans about the danger of throwing objects onstage.
Gaga was hit by a teddy bear while belting out “Hold My Hand” at a show in Toronto. Her Twitter fan page posted the video and warned fans, “Please DO NOT throw items on stage at The Chromatica Ball. This not only is dangerous to Gaga, but items may also catch on fire in the jets as well and cause damage.”
Five Finger Death Punch frontman Ivan Moody is stepping away from the metal game.
During the band’s show in Denver on Friday, Moody told the crowd that he’ll be “retiring from heavy metal” after the next Death Punch album so that he can spend more time with his family.
“The last 15 years of my life, I have toured the world, I have seen every country, every city on this planet at least twice — that’s a fact,” Moody said while sitting next to his children. “Through that time, as many of you parents know, hard workers, I have missed a lot of time with my kiddos.”
Moody then shared that he’d “made…a deal” with his kids earlier that day, and he’s “gonna stick to it.”
“After this year, I am going to make one more Five Finger Death Punch, and then I am retiring from heavy metal,” Moody declared.
Fan-shot footage of Moody’s comments was posted to YouTube by user Follow Me to the Rockshow.
The Denver show was the penultimate stop on Five Finger Death Punch’s tour in support of their new album AfterLife, which dropped in August. The outing also included Megadeth, The Hu and Fire from the Gods on the bill.
Five Finger Death Punch will return to the road in November for a U.S. tour with country star Brantley Gilbert.
Things are heating up on The Real Housewives of Miami.
During BravoCon on Sunday, the Peacock Original series debuted the trailer for its fifth season in front of fans and the current cast — Alexia Nepola, Larsa Pippen, Lisa Hochstein, Julia Lemigova, Dr. Nicole Martin, Guerdy Abraira, Adriana de Moura, and Marysol Patton.
The trailer begins with a main focus on Lisa’s contentious divorce from Lenny.
“I don’t know if my marriage is going to survive,” she says, before the next scene where Lisa reveals to her cast mates that her estranged husband is already seeing another woman.
The current situation is much different from the life Lisa described when she first began the show.
“My husband is a top plastic surgeon in this town, and I am his best creation,” she says in a flashback. “My husband built the perfect wife, and I built the perfect life.”
Lisa and Lenny were married for 12 years before he filed for divorce in May. They share two children: seven-year-old son Logan and three-year-old daughter Elle.
In addition to Lisa’s relationship woes, the trailer teases conflict between all of the RHOM ladies, as well as the struggles within each of their own relationships.
The first four episodes of season 5 of The Real Housewives of Miami will be available to stream December 8, with subsequent episodes released weekly on Thursdays.
The “Loser” artist was set to perform an acoustic set as the opener on the tour, but, according to Variety, those who purchased tickets to the upcoming shows received an email informing them that Beck will “unfortunately no longer able to join Arcade Fire on their upcoming North American tour.”
The news comes after four people accused Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler of sexual misconduct in a report Pitchfork published in August.
The allegations against Butler range from sending unwanted sexually explicit photos and demanding such photos and videos from women to sexual assault. In a statement to Pitchfork, Butler maintained that his encounters with all four accusers were “mutual and always between consenting adults.”
Pitchfork’s report was published just days before Arcade Fire was set to embark on a European tour. While Arcade Fire still went through with the European dates, opener Feist dropped off the bill after two shows.
Beck’s reps declined to comment to Variety. Neither he nor Arcade Fire has publicly commented on the development.
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.
Taylor Swift‘s got a busy couple of weeks ahead of her, as she rolls out the promotional activities for her new album Midnights, due out Friday.
On Instagram, Taylor posted a video detailing what fans can expect in the near future, starting this Thursday: A teaser trailer will be released during the third quarter of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.
Friday, the album arrives, followed by what is described as a “special very chaotic surprise” at 3 a.m ET. At 8 a.m ET, the music video for one of Midnights’ tracks, “Anti-Hero,” premieres, along with what’s described as a #TSAntiHeroChallenge on YouTube Shorts. The lyric videos for other tracks drop at 8 p.m. ET.
As previously announced, Taylor will then appear on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday, October 24. Tuesday the 25th we’ll get another music video — so far, she hasn’t told us which one it’ll be. Next Friday, October 28, Taylor will appear on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show.
Meanwhile, Sunday night at midnight, naturally, Taylor released a first look at the lyrics of the album in partnership with Spotify. A billboard in New York City’s Times Square reads, “I should not be left to my own devices.” More lyrics will be revealed on billboards around the world, and on Spotify, this week.
Along with the lyric reveals, Taylor will also be sharing clips about Midnights on the pre-save page of Spotify’s mobile version. In the first clip, she says she’s going to reveal “five things that kept me up at night and helped inspire the Midnights album.” She then reveals what one of those things is: “Self-loathing.”
There’s also exclusive merch available via that pre-save page.
Despite various proposals that would have allowed the members of BTS to avoid South Korea’s mandatory military service, it appears that ultimately, ARMY will have to allow their boys to serve in the actual army.
In a statement released on Twitter, the group’s label, Big Hit, announced that all seven members of BTS will enlist in the military, with the first one up being Jin. He’ll be releasing solo material at the end of this month and will then “initiate the process” of enlistment. The group’s label said that the rest of BTS — RM, J-Hope, Suga, Jimin, V and Jungkook — will then subsequently enlist “based on their own individual plans,” which means they won’t be able to perform with their full lineup until 2025.
“BIG HIT MUSIC has focused to the milestone moment when it would be possible to respect the needs of the country and for these healthy young men to serve with their countrymen, and that’s now,” the statement said in part. It added, “The members of BTS are honored to serve.”
As Billboard notes, in South Korea, all able-bodied male citizens must spend at least 18 months in the armed forces. The draft usually starts at age 18, but K-Pop entertainers can postpone their service until age 30. Jin turns 30 in December. The youngest member, Jungkook, is 25.
Over the weekend, BTS performed in the South Korean city of Busan, in their role as ambassadors for that city’s bid to host the World Expo in 2030. The BTS in BUSAN concert was attended by about 50,000 people, with 49 million more watching online.
Billboard reports that at the concert, J-Hope told fans the group was “in a stage where we need your trust.”
After weeks of getting in hot water on social media, Kanye West is buying his own platform.
Specifically, Ye has agreed to acquire the app Parler, which bills itself as “the world’s pioneering uncancelable free speech platform.”
The move comes after Ye’s Instagram account was restricted recently for violating the platform’s rules and guidelines, reportedly over a now-deleted post that was labeled as anti-Semitic. Twitter on the same day also removed a tweet that was judged anti-Semitic.
In the Parler announcement, Ye declared, “In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.”
The announcement — which described West as “the richest Black man in history,” a descriptive he himself has used recently — claims Ye is “taking a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech, using his far-reaching talents to further lead the fight to create a truly non-cancelable environment.”
Further, the press release says Ye’s ownership “will assure Parler a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome.”
Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer noted in the announcement, “This deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech,” explaining, “Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again. Once again, Ye proves that he is one step ahead of the legacy media narrative.”
(NEW YORK) — The East Coast of the U.S. will need to brace for more devastating storms like hurricanes Fiona and Ian should the global reliance on fossil fuels remain business as usual, scientists are warning.
Warming temperatures around the world are the root contributor that will cause more storm systems to behave like Fiona and Ian, with increased moisture and the likelihood of rapid intensification as they head toward land, according to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters on Monday.
This will make the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. a “breeding ground” for rapidly intensifying hurricanes, the researchers said.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory studied data over the past four decades of hurricane activity and the conditions that shaped them and found that the rates at which hurricanes strengthen near the U.S. Atlantic Coasthave significantly climbed since 1979.
The direct observations made by the researchers showed that the increase was “very likely due to climate change,” Karthik Balaguru, a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and author of the study, told ABC News.
The trend will likely continue if the current level of greenhouse gas emissions continues around the world, according to the study.
A mix of environmental conditions caused by a unique phenomenon along the Atlantic Coast makes it more conducive to hurricane development, Balaguru said.
Land is already generally warmer than ocean waters. Still, as greenhouse gases build and global temperatures rise, land is heating up much more rapidly, and the ocean and the difference in temperature between land and ocean continue to grow, Balaguru said. The increase in the temperature difference between the land and the sea can create stronger storms, he added.
“Unlike the ocean with unlimited water supply, there’s much less water in soil,” Ruby Leung, an atmospheric scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said in a statement. “That means the land can’t evaporate as much as water, so it can’t get rid of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases as quickly as the ocean.”
The same mix of hurricane-favoring conditions doesn’t appear in the Gulf of Mexico but could form in other regions, including those near the East Asian coastline and the northwest Arabian Sea, the researchers said.
Combined with warmer ocean waters and greater atmospheric humidity, these conditions allow the storm systems to jump multiple storm categories in a short amount of time, according to the study. And because of the speed of the strengthening, the storms can often elude meteorological predictions, even with modern-day technology, the researchers said.
Last month, Hurricane Fiona caused widespread destruction in Puerto Rico — five years after Hurricane Maria wiped out much of the island’s infrastructure. Just 10 days later, Hurricane Ian did the same to southwest Florida, completely decimating Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach with deadly storm surge and catastrophic winds. Both storm systems strengthened into powerful Category 4 hurricanes before landfall.
Damage from weather and climate disasters could exceed $100 billion by the time 2022 comes to a close, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week.
A study published in Nature in January found that annual costs of flooding alone in the U.S. could climb by 26% to $40.6 billion by 2050 as a result of climate change.
