Ever since Andy Grammer released his latest hit “Saved My Life,” fans have shared with him their stories about the special people who saved their lives. But Andy says the song inadvertently ended up saving the special person in his life who inspired it — emotionally, if not literally.
“Leigh is the one that I wrote it about. She’s my godmother, and she showed up for me when mom passed away,” Andy tells ABC Audio. “And she had been having an unreasonably difficult year. She lost both of her brothers…so she was kind of raw and going through it. And to have this song come out — I didn’t plan it at all, the song was written before these things happened to her. But she kind of needed a boost, and it’s really worked out.”
Andy’s also helped fans thank their special people by literally going with the fans to surprise them in person. One fan in particular was adopted and needed extensive surgery, but her mom never gave up on her.
“So, she’s saying that to her mother,” Andy says, describing their surprise visit. “And then we play ‘Saved My Life,’ and they’re crying, and it’s the sweetest thing ever!”
Andy will likely play the song Saturday when he performs at the 36th Carousel of Hope Ball, benefiting the Children’s Diabetes Foundation. When it comes to charity events, he says, “I think that music is an intensifier. So whatever feeling that you’re feeling, when you add music to, it’s like a flame that you’re adding gas to. And if you are all here together to try to raise money… then music can make your heart open up and go like, “Y’know what? I can give more here.”
He smiles, “So, I love to try to be the gasoline.”
Jordan Davis has much to celebrate these days, with the double #1 success of “Slow Dance in a Parking Lot” and most recently, “Buy Dirt.” He says that the latter hit set him down a path of writing about the things he wants his music to say most.
“It kind of freed me, in the sense of, like, that song is everything that I want to say in a song,” Jordan reflects. “It ties in the three things…of faith, family and friends.”
While commercial success is nice and plentiful, the most important thing is putting out music that makes him confident he’s “doing what I’m here to do,” the singer adds.
In his new music, Jordan says he’s staying within the world of gratitude and close-to-the-chest songwriting that he created with “Buy Dirt.” Next up, he’s bringing those themes to his new single, “What My World Spins Around.”
“‘World Spins’ is still in that vein of the three things that I want to write about and sing about,” he points out. “I just feel like I’m really confident right now in releasing new music, and proud of this next record.”
Though he admits it’s “been a minute” since he put out a full album, Jordan teases that fans won’t have to wait too much longer before getting their hands on a new batch of songs.
“I’d put it out tomorrow if I could!” he adds. “Well, actually, it’s not done yet. But when it is done, I would love to get it out as soon as possible.”
Speaking with The Smashing Pumpkins‘ Billy Corgan on his Thirty-Three podcast, the U.K. artist reveals he’s recorded a “full psychedelic rock album.”
“It’s just sitting there,” Yungblud shares. “I don’t know when it’ll come out yet.”
If he had his way, Yungblud would release the record without warning all at once.
“I just wanna kinda drop it,” Yungblud says. “I don’t wanna work a psychedelic rock album…There’s no singles, it’s one feeling the whole way through that I just wanna drop at some point.”
“‘Cause everybody’s gonna be, like, ‘Well, what’s the single?'” he continues. “I’m, like, ‘Yo, just let it be.'”
While you wait for that, you can check out Yungblud’s new, self-titled album, which was just released in September. The record includes the single “The Funeral.”
Wednesday, October 5, marked the 30th anniversary of the release of R.E.M.‘s eighth studio album, Automatic for the People.
A follow-up to the influential alternative-rock band’s chart-topping 1991 album, Out of Time, Automatic for the People was similarly successful, peaking at #2 on the Billboard 200 and #1 in the U.K., and going on to be certified four-times Platinum by the RIAA.
The album yielded three singles that reached the top 30 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart — “Drive,” “Everybody Hurts” and “Man on the Moon,” which peaked at #28, #29 and #30, respectively.
Led Zeppelin bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones created string arrangements for four tracks — “Drive,” “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite,” “Everybody Hurts” and “Nightswimming.”
“Man on the Moon” was a tribute to late comedian Andy Kaufman, and the song’s title was later used for the title of director Milos Forman‘s 1999 Kaufman biopic, which starred Jim Carrey. The tune also appeared in the movie.
In an April 2022 episode of the Broken Record podcast, singer Michael Stipe noted about Automatic for the People, “Song by song … the whole album is referencing the 1970s.” He also pointed out that “Drive” was an homage to David Essex‘s “Rock On,” and that “Everybody Hurts” was inspired by Nazareth‘s cover of the Everly Brothers hit “Love Hurts.”
The album’s title is a reference to the motto of Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods, a soul-food restaurant in R.E.M.’s hometown of Athens, Georgia.
Here’s the full track list of Automatic for the People:
“Drive” Side
“Drive”
“Try Not to Breathe”
“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”
“Everybody Hurts”
“New Orleans Instrumental No. 1”
“Sweetness Follows”
“Ride” Side
“Monty Got a Raw Deal”
“Ignoreland”
“Star Me Kitten”
“Man on the Moon”
“Nightswimming”
“Find the River”
The new Peacock miniseries A Friend of the Family debuts October 6 on Peacock. It’s based on the true story of the Broberg family, whose daughter Jan was kidnapped, twice, in the 1970s by a family friend.
The real-life Jan is an executive producer on show and despite some embarrassing revelations about her parents, they decided as a family to be “completely honest, vulnerable and exposed.”
“If that can help one person see the predator who lives in their family or their congregation or their neighborhood and prevent their child from suffering this kind of abuse, then it’s worth it,” she shares.
The story was the basis of the wildly popular 2017 Netflix docuseries Abducted in Plain Sight, which A Friend of the Family star Mckenna Grace tells ABC Audio she used as research to prepare for playing the teenage version of Jan, leaving her “mind boggled.”
“There’s so much that this family went through, and the fact that Robert Berchtold was just such a master manipulator and put them through so much. It was just really insane,” she recalls. “And it was incredible to see Jan’s resilience and the amazing person that she is today.”
Grace says the series reinforced for her that as a woman, you always have to be on guard, something her mother tells her constantly.
“Last night we were walking through a parking lot together and I was looking down at my phone and she was like, ‘You need to get off of your phone while you’re walking through a parking lot at night. You need to be more aware of your surroundings,'” says 16-year-old Grace.
“That’s the unfortunate situation, is that I can’t go for a walk at night by myself.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Houston 3, Philadelphia 2
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Baltimore 5, Toronto 4
Oakland 3, LA Angels 2
Cleveland 9, Kansas City 2
Texas 4, NY Yankees 2
Minnesota 10, Chi White Sox 1
Seattle 5, Detroit 4
Toronto 5, Baltimore 1
Boston 6, Tampa Bay 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Pittsburgh 5, St. Louis 3
Arizona 4, Milwaukee 2
NY Mets 9, Washington 2
LA Dodgers 6, Colorado 1
San Francisco 8, San Diego 1
Chi Cubs 15, Cincinnati 2
Miami 12, Atlanta 9
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PRESEASON
Philadelphia 113, Cleveland 112
Indiana 122, Charlotte 97
Toronto 125 Boston 119 (OT)
Dallas 98, Oklahoma City 96
Phoenix 112, LA Lakers 110 (OT)
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE PRESEASON
Boston 5, NY Rangers 4
Washington 4, Detroit 2
Winnipeg 5, Calgary 0
Colorado 2, Dallas 1
Vancouver 5, Edmonton 4
(NEW YORK) — Most people suffering from long COVID are experiencing some trouble performing day-to-day activities, new federal data shows.
As of Sept. 26, 81% of adults with ongoing symptoms of COVID lasting three months or longer — or four out of five adults — are experiencing limitations in their daily activities compared to before they had the virus.
Additionally, 25% said they were experiencing significant limitations.
The data was published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The NCHS has been issuing the experimental Household Pulse Survey to ask about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic since April 2020 but included a question last month, in the survey sent to more than 50,000 people, on how long COVID has reduced people’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
Young adults between ages 18 and 29 had the highest share of people currently with long COVID who have trouble performing daily tasks, at 86.3%. Meanwhile, those between ages 40 and 49 had the lowest share, at 76.1%.
When current long COVID patients were broken down by race/ethnicity, Black Americans were the most likely to report problems performing day-to-day activities, at 84.1%. This was also the racial group most likely to report significant limitations, along with white Americans.
The data showed that Asian Americans have the smallest share of long COVID patients with trouble performing daily tasks, at 76.7%.
The survey did not report data for most states. However, of the 14 states with data, Texas had the highest percentage of long COVID patients with activity limitations at 87.6% and Kentucky had the lowest percentage at 69%.
Long COVID occurs when patients who have cleared the infection still have symptoms lasting more than four weeks after recovering. In some cases, these symptoms can persist for months or even years.
Patients can experience a variety of lingering symptoms including fatigue, difficulty breathing, headaches, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, and continued loss of taste and smell, according to the CDC.
It’s unclear what causes people to develop long COVID but research is ongoing.
The data showed that 14.2% of survey participants said they had experienced long COVID at some point during the pandemic.
Adults under age 60 were more likely to say they had the condition than older adults, and females were more likely to report long COVID than males.
A review from Johnson & Johnson’s Office of the Chief Medical Officer for Women’s Health published in June 2022 analyzed data from studies involving 1.3 million patients and found women are 22% more likely to develop long COVID than men.
(ATLANTA) — Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams said she has continuing doubts about voting equity in her upcoming rematch with incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, telling ABC News in a new interview that she would “not question the outcome of the election” but would continue to “question the process.”
Abrams, a former state lawmaker-turned-prominent voting rights advocate, repeatedly attacked Kemp in 2018 given that he was her rival and the sitting secretary of state who was overseeing their race. Abrams also challenged what she said were Georgia’s excessively strict regulations around voter registration and more, calling them tantamount to suppression. Kemp said he wanted to ensure election integrity.
Abrams waited more than a week to acknowledge Kemp’s victory after the 2018 election. Pressed twice by ABC News congressional correspondent Rachel Scott in an interview on Sunday about whether she would concede the 2022 gubernatorial election if she lost, Abrams repeatedly drew a distinction between conceding the outcome — which she said she would do — and criticizing the process, including regulations restricting voter access to polling places and absentee voting.
“I have always acknowledged the outcome of elections,” she said in a clip from the interview, set to air Oct. 9 on Hulu’s “Power Trip.” “What is deeply concerning to me is the conflation of access to the right to vote and the outcome of elections.”
“Voter access is not the same as election outcomes,” Abrams continued, “and when those become conflated and we buy into the conflation, when we buy into the false equivalency, we erode access to democracy.”
Conservatives have tried to draw comparisons between Abrams’ handling of the 2018 race and former President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, who won the popular vote by a margin of more than 7 million. (Abrams lost to Kemp in 2018 by some 54,000 votes.)
When Abrams finally acknowledged on Nov. 16, 2018, that Kemp had won, she pointedly stated that it was “not a concession speech.” But as she later stressed, she doesn’t deny Kemp’s victory — unlike Trump.
She echoed that position to ABC News.
“What I said in that speech is that I would not concede [to] a system that would not permit voters to be heard,” she said. “I will always acknowledge the victor, but I will never say that there is a system in place that denies access that should be validated.”
She added, “For those who do not appreciate nuance, my response is always going to be: Yes, I will acknowledge the victor. I did so in ’18. I will do so in 2022. But in 2022, I intend to be the victor myself.”
On Friday, shortly before her interview with ABC News, a federal judge knocked down a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s election practices, ruling in favor of the state. Fair Fight Action, a group founded by Abrams, filed the suit shortly after the 2018 election and as part of the suit called for an overhaul of Georgia’s voting system.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, an Obama-era appointee, wrote in his order that “although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the [Voting Rights Act of 1965].”
Kemp and other Republicans seized on the ruling and accused Abrams of using her group’s challenge to advance her own political interests — a claim Abrams dismissed to ABC News.
“This was not a lawsuit about my election,” she said. “This is a lawsuit about voting issues that were exposed by my election but were endemic to the state of Georgia.”
If elected governor, Abrams said she would continue to fight to expand voting access and propose changes to the state’s voting laws.
Hulu’s “Power Trip,” with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, releases new episodes on Sundays.
(TUCSON, Az.) — A professor was shot and killed on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson on Wednesday, campus police said.
The campus police chief said a male professor in the Department of Hydrology was shot and killed by a former student. The suspect was identified by police as Murad Dervish.
Police responded to the campus’ John W. Harshbarger building “for a shooting,” University of Arizona Police said on Twitter shortly after 2 p.m. local time Wednesday.
Police did not issue a lockdown but warned people to stay away from the building and surrounding area.
“Male suspect was ID’d but no longer on scene. Police currently looking for him,” University of Arizona Police said, describing the suspect as being in his mid-30s with short brown hair and wearing a blue baseball cap and carrying a dark backpack.
All remaining classes being held at the school’s main campus have been canceled Wednesday, police said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Wednesday for their work in making molecules “click.”
Two Americans, K. Barry Sharpless of Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University in California, and one Dane — Morten Meldal at the University of Copenhagen — received the prize.
Sharpless and Meldal — independent of each other — “laid the foundations of click chemistry,” a field in which molecular building blocks are snapped together “quickly and efficiently.”
Bertozzi then used this field to develop bioorthogonal chemistry, in which scientists modify molecules in cells of living organisms “without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell.”
“This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route,” Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a statement.
Sharpless previously won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001, making him only the fifth person to win two Nobel prizes and the second person ever to win the award twice, according to the committee. His first award was for developing three types of chemical reactions.
Last year, scientists Benjamin List and David MacMillan won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a new tool in molecular construction.
Each Nobel prize is worth 10 million kronor — the equivalent of about $900,000 — and is given to laureates with a diploma and a gold medal on Dec. 10, the date the creator of the Nobel prizes, Alfred Nobel, died in 1896.
