Fall Out Boy guitarist Joe Trohman tells the origin story of the band in his new memoir, None of This Rocks.
In an excerpt posted by Rolling Stone, Trohman recalls how he and bassist Pete Wentz had wanted to start a pop-punk band together in Chicago. In the midst of looking for a vocalist, Trohman ran into a “fair-skinned waif of a teen with thick glasses and enormous sideburns” by the name of Patrick Stump while looking through CDs at a Borders bookstore.
“We both liked to talk, that was evident,” Trohman recalls of the meeting. “We both liked to talk about music, too. And we both seemed to like each other. We also both liked to hear ourselves talk.”
Before recruiting Andy Hurley, Trohman, Wentz and Stump went through a revolving door of drummers. At the time, Trohman described himself as the “glue guy” in the band, who’d be “keeping us together, making us rehearse when no one wanted to, trying to push us forward when all felt hopeless, trying to make our terrible band good through sheer brute force.”
After Hurley joined, Fall Out Boy recorded their proper debut, 2003’s Take This to Your Grave. Its underground success eventually led Fall Out Boy to signing to a major label for 2005’s breakout effort, From Under the Cork Tree.
“As things began to grow out of the DIY and into the mainstream machine, my role in the band, as the person who kept us together and pushed us forward, was becoming obsolete,” Trohman writes.
Trohman describes his behavior during the Cork Tree era as “rough” and “even more foul” during the recording of 2007’s Infinity on High. As for what happens next, you can read None of This Rocks, which is out now.
Paul McCartney is speaking out in support of a campaign by PETA’s Indian branch to have an allegedly abused elephant sent to a rescue center.
PETA India claims that a captive female elephant known alternately as Jeymalyatha and Joymala has been beaten by its keepers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. They’ve shared viral videos from June 2002 and February that allegedly show the animal being abused.
McCartney has written a letter to India’s Union Cabinet Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav, asking him to immediately relocate Jeymalyatha to a suitable animal sanctuary.
“I have considered India a spiritual place ever since I travelled there in the 1960s. I was impressed by India’s cultural love for animals,” writes Sir Paul, a longtime vegetarian and PETA supporter. “I know India reveres elephants, its national heritage animal; but cruelty to animals happens everywhere, even in India.”
He continues, “What reflects on a country’s values is how that cruelty is addressed. That’s why I am confident that action will be taken to send sorely abused elephant Jeymalyatha (Joymala) to a suitable rescue centre where she can receive the specialized care she needs for her psychological wounds, and can live unchained and in the company of others of her kind.”
McCartney adds, “I trust you agree that Jeymalyatha has suffered more than enough and that she deserves to spend the rest of her time on this Earth away from her abusive trainers, rehabilitating, and with others of her kind.”
A variety of Indian celebrities are also supporting the PETA campaign, with many posting tweets using the hashtag #FreeElephantJeymalyatha.
Visit PETAIndia.com for more details about the story.
Taraji P. Henson made her 52nd birthday unforgettable with a sexy dance with Usher during his Las Vegas residency.
The Hidden Figures star saved her best moves for the eight-time Grammy winner as he serenaded her with Bobby Brown’s “Rock Wit’cha” Saturday night at Dolby Live at Park MGM.
“To@tarajiphenson and all the birthday girls that celebrated with me last night….” the 43-year-old entertainer captioned the video on Instagram. “Do yo dance it’s yo birthday….”
Henson shared a series of videos from the show, commenting, “Soooooo about last night!!! Thank you @Usher #wehadatimelastnight #birthdaybehavior #virgoseason.”
Taraji also posted a video from their dance and thanked Usher for the “amazing birthday turn up.”
The “My Boo” singer is continuing his residency through July 2023.
On Monday, Usher announced he is releasing a special 25th anniversary edition of his 1997 seven-times Platinum My Way album.
The special edition features the original album, plus three “reimagined” versions of the album’s three monster hits: “My Way,” “Nice & Slow” and “You Make Me Wanna.” The new version will be released on September 16 and is now available to presave.
Also on September 16, a mini-documentary about the album will premiere on Usher’s YouTube channel.
Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis says her new movie, The Woman King, brings Black women to the forefront and is one of the most important works of her career.
The film has a 100% critics rating on the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its wide release Friday.
“First of all, it is a movie that’s led by women, and it’s a movie that’s led by Black women and it’s a movie that’s led by dark-skinned Black women,” Davis said on Good Morning America Tuesday. “There is no white savior and it’s women who are warriors, tapping into not only their physical strength, but also…they’re humanized — and so, when have you seen that ever?”
Davis plays the character of Nanisca in the dramatic epic about the Agojie, an all-women warrior army in the historical African kingdom of Dahomey.
“They were women who were recruited from the age of 8 and 14 in Dahomey, West Africa, which is now Benin, and they were women who were not considered beautiful so they weren’t marriage material. They were unruly. No one can control them. And so they were sort of sold into the kingdom as Agojie,” Davis explained. “They could not have children. They could not get married and they could not have sex. They have to train all day into the night…”
“But what’s interesting is as restrictive as that is, they took great pride in what they did. Because…[i]t made them matter because it gave them a purpose,” Davis continued.
Davis said, “…this is my magnum opus, this is my gift to the 6-year-old Viola — who was always called ‘Black and ugly’ — that 6-year-old girl that was always running from the bullies.”
“This has me sort of reaching back to her and saying, ‘Look, you matter and you surviving and you being tough, you keep being tough,'” Davis said.
(NEW YORK) — Ukraine’s stunning blitzkrieg counteroffensive in the northeastern part of the country has routed Russian forces and continues to make rapid progress, in some cases pushing back Russian troops back into Russia, U.S. officials said Monday.
While they acknowledge that the constant flow of U.S. military aid and equipment has helped “change the battlefield dynamics,” the officials also have been quick to praise Ukraine’s military for how it has employed the equipment on the battlefield and for anticipating what weapons it would need to eventually launch the offensive.
While there are few details of the long-anticipated Ukrainian offensive in the south targeting the city of Kherson, the surprise Ukrainian offensive launched near the city of Kharkiv has led to a dramatic turn of events.
In a matter of days, U.S. officials said, Ukrainian military forces have retaken as much as 1,200 square miles of territory in northeastern Ukraine once held by Russia for months, pushing eastward from Kharkiv as far as 40 miles. The Ukrainian advance northward from Kharkiv has come as close as 10 miles to the border with Russia as Russian troops hastily retreated in what Russia’s defense ministry called a “regrouping” of forces.
“On the ground in the vicinity of Kharkiv, we assess that Russian forces have largely ceded their gains to the Ukrainians and then withdrawn to the north and east,” a senior U.S. military official told reporters Monday. “Many of these forces have moved over the border into Russia.”
“We also assess that Ukrainian forces have very likely taken control of Kupiansk and Izyum in addition to smaller villages,” said the official.
Both cities were important to Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine, particularly Izyum, which had been used as the main logistical hub for its months-long assault on the Donbass region.
“We’ve seen the Ukrainians use to great effect, the capabilities that they have across the battlefield to change the battlefield dynamics,” the official added, referring to military capabilities provided to Ukraine by the United States and other countries.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the United States has provided $14.5 billion in military equipment, including Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles, howitzer artillery, and the long-range HIMARS rockets (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) that can reach more than 40 miles behind enemy lines.
While that assistance was described by the U.S. military official as being “incredibly helpful,” the official directed praise at Ukraine’s military.
“Much of the credit, if not most of it goes to the Ukrainians and what they’re doing to employ these capabilities,” said the official.
A senior U.S. defense official complimented Ukraine’s communications with the United States to anticipate what gear it would need against Russia, such as requesting howitzer artillery to counter what they expected to be an “artillery battle the Russians intended to wage” to take over the Donbass region.
That was soon followed by Ukraine’s request for a counter to Russia’s advantage in long range rocket systems and its establishment of major logistical hubs and military headquarters far behind enemy lines.
“That’s when we started focusing on the ability of providing the HIMARS and GMLR systems (the rockets fired by HIMARS),” said the official. “So, it is absolutely a partnership and in listening to the understanding of what they’re seeing, and then seeing what we can do to provide them with capabilities to address that.”
Last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said that the United States had provided “thousands” of the long-range rockets fired by the HIMARS systems that Ukraine has used to strike at more than 400 Russian targets behind enemy lines, including ammunition depots, logistical hubs and military headquarters.
“They’ve had devastating effect,” Milley said in Germany last week. “Russian lines of communication and supply channels are severely strained. It is having a direct impact on the Russian ability to project and sustain combat power.”
“Russian command and control in the headquarters have been disrupted and they’re having great difficulty resupplying their forces and replacing their combat losses,” he added.
(NEW YORK) — Ukraine’s counteroffensive in its northeast likely marks a turning point in the war and has profound consequences for Russia’s position going forward, according to military analysts.
The counteroffensive has seen Russia’s frontline in the Kharkiv region collapse in less than a week, forcing thousands of its troops to retreat as Ukrainian troops have recaptured hundreds of square miles of territory, officials said.
The defeat not only removes Russia’s ability to threaten Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, but also likely ends Russia’s ability to mount any major offensives in Ukraine again, the analysts said. It also will have a major knock-on effect on Russia’s capacity to hold its positions on the other fronts around the country. It means in the long-run, the war now favors Ukraine, they said.
“Ukraine has turned the tide of this war in its favor,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington D.C.-based think tank that tracks the war closely, wrote in an analysis. “Kyiv will likely increasingly dictate the location and nature of the major fighting, and Russia will find itself increasingly responding inadequately to growing Ukrainian physical and psychological pressure in successive military campaigns unless Moscow finds some way to regain the initiative.”
That does not mean the war will end soon, the ISW wrote — Russia still occupies around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory — and it is likely to continue into 2023, experts said.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive routed a Russian force that had been one pincer in an attempt to seize the whole of the Donbas region, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s minimum declared objective for the war. Ukraine retook the strategic city of Izyum, which had been the headquarters for the Russian effort to advance in Donbas from the north.
Izyum’s seizure means an end to the Russia’s hopes of taking Donbas, the ISW and other analysts said. A second Russian offensive group trying to advance from the south onto the city of Bakhmut has now “lost any real operational significance,” the ISW wrote.
Russian forces were already overstretched as they tried to seize the Donbas region, which made them unable to significantly advance for months, and painfully defending against a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south, the experts said.
Russia has been unable to replenish its forces because Putin has balked at ordering a full mobilization or putting the country on a war footing, fearing that could lead to domestic unrest that could threaten his rule, officials said. As a result, Russian forces are increasingly numerically inferior to Ukrainian in some areas.
The Russian-appointed head of the Kharkiv region claimed Monday that Russian troops had been outnumbered 8-to-1 during the Ukrainian offensive.
The rout of Russia’s troops in the northeast — that saw them abandon dozens of tanks and vehicles — means it now must redeploy reserves that it does not have to stabilize the front there, experts said.
But moving some of Russia’s troops already deployed on other areas of the front risks giving Ukraine a chance to repeat its Kharkiv offensive elsewhere, hitting places where Russia has thinned its lines, according to the ISW. One potentially vulnerable area is the city of Kherson and the area around it west of the Dniepr river where Ukraine has already made it extremely difficult for Russia to re-supply its forces.
Russia is reeling from the rout in the northeast, its troops’ moral will be badly shaken. The risk for Moscow now is that the failure in the northeast could snowball elsewhere, triggering a domino effect as its forces panic and loses the will to fight, Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, told ABC News.
Without a mass mobilization, that is fraught with huge political risks at home, Russia has no hope of reversing the direction of the war, Muzyka said.
“It’s a horrible position to be in and actually there are no good choices,” he said. “They have to decide. The alternative is losing the war.”
“As a consequence of the north eastern rout of their forces, the Russians now have very few (if any) good choices. Their positions in the east are compromised and require a substantial realignment of defensive lines and logistics,” Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on Twitter.
The grim outlook for Russia is shared by Russian nationalist military bloggers, who have large followings on social media and are often embedded with their forces there. The bloggers are the most vehement supporters of the war, but recently have written highly critical posts about the Russian leadership, furious at how the invasion has been conducted.
They have demanded the Kremlin call a full mobilization and put Russia on a war footing, warning it is the only way to reverse the direction of the war.
“Not to recognise that Russia is waging a war is the greatest stupidity,” Yury Kotyenok, who posts under the account Voenkor Kotenok Z, wrote following the retreat in the northeast.
Recriminations over the disaster in northeast Ukraine also erupted unusually on a pro-Kremlin talk show on the channel NTV. Boris Nadezhdin, a politician, told his fellow guests Russia now faced a choice: “Either mobilization and full-scale war, or we get out.”
(LONDON) — As non-working members of Britain’s royal family, Prince Harry and Meghan have charted their own future by working on lucrative independent projects.
What will happen to some of those projects in the wake of the death of Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, remains a closely watched question.
Shortly before the 96-year-old queen’s death on Sept. 9, Meghan, the duchess of Sussex, launched her long-awaited podcast, “Archetypes,” which quickly rose to the top of Spotify’s charts with its debut episode featuring Meghan’s friend Serena Williams.
This week, Spotify announced that new episodes of the podcast will be paused “during the official mourning period for Her Majesty The Queen.”
Whether Harry’s upcoming memoir will continue as planned is not yet clear.
Harry, the duke of Sussex and fifth in line to the throne, is scheduled to release a memoir this year that he has said will be a “firsthand account” of his life “that’s accurate and wholly truthful.”
“I’m writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become,” Harry said in a statement released last year by Penguin Random House, the book’s publisher. “I’ve worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story—the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned—I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.”
Since leaving their senior royal roles in 2020, Meghan and Harry, the youngest son of King Charles III, have been candid about the difficulties they say they faced as senior members of Britain’s royal family, including sitting down for an explosive, tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey last year.
Harry’s relationship with some members of his family, including Charles and his brother Prince William, have reportedly continued to be strained, leading royal watchers to wonder what details Harry would include in his memoir.
At the time the book was announced, Penguin Random House said it would be an “honest and captivating personal portrait” of Harry’s life and that it would be released in late 2022.
“In an intimate and heartfelt memoir from one of the most fascinating and influential global figures of our time, Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him,” the publisher said in a statement.
Penguin Random House has not so far announced a change to the timeline for the book being published, nor has it said whether the book will be updated with details of the queen’s passing.
Harry and Meghan, who live in California with their two children, Archie and Lilibet, were in England for charity events when the queen died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
On Saturday, the Sussexes appeared with William and Kate, the princess of Wales, outside Windsor Castle to view tributes to the queen and speak with members of the public.
A representative for William told ABC News the prince invited the Sussexes to join him and Kate.
The appearance marked the first time the two couples, once called the “Fab Four” by royal watchers, had been seen together in public in over two years.
Their last appearance together was at a Commonwealth Day service in March 2020 that was Harry and Meghan’s final engagement as senior working royals.
The two families now have homes close to each other in Windsor.
William and Kate moved this summer from Kensington Palace to Adelaide Cottage on the grounds of Windsor Castle, which is also where Harry and Meghan’s U.K. home, Frogmore Cottage, is located.
Harry and Meghan are expected to join the royal family as they mourn the queen’s passing with events scheduled to take place through her funeral on Sept. 19.
In his first public address following the death of the queen, Charles included the couple, saying, “I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.”
(NEW YORK) — A gunman in Aurora, Colorado, who killed 12 people in a mass shooting at a movie theater, in 2012, legally acquired weapons and ammunition using a credit card.
So did a shooter in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, who killed 49 people at a nightclub. After a shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas, in 2017, which left 59 dead, police found credit cards on the countertop in the shooter’s hotel room.
In recent years, gun reform advocates and some lawmakers have called on credit card companies and banks to bolster their tracking and reporting of unusual purchase activity tied to firearms in the hopes that it would help authorities identify potential mass shooters before they carry out attacks.
Late last week, major credit companies took a step that could allow them to do just that. Visa, Mastercard and American Express announced plans to use a specific code for categorizing credit and debit card purchases made at gun stores.
The move follows a decision from the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, a group that makes guidelines for such transactions, which said on Friday that it would create the unique code that allows gun stores to mark credit and debit card purchases.
Gun reform advocates applauded the step, while gun rights groups, such as the National Rifle Association, condemned it. Experts told ABC News the move may help authorities intervene before a mass shooting, but its effectiveness depends on how banks and credit card companies implement the new tool.
Here’s how the credit card code works and what happens next:
What do credit cards have to do with mass shootings?
Many mass shooters have legally purchased weapons and ammunition using credit or debit cards.
Between 2007 and 2018, there were 13 mass shootings that killed 10 or more people, the New York Times found. Of those 13 shootings, the killers financed their attacks with credit cards in eight of them, the Times said.
It remains unclear whether the credit cards found in the hotel room of the Las Vegas shooter were used to purchase guns, since government officials have not disclosed how the guns were purchased, beyond saying that some were bought with cash and some online, the Times reported.
The new purchase code will help banks and law enforcement discover unusual purchases, and provide an additional means for identifying and stopping potential attackers before a mass shooting, said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and policy director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“It’s significant,” Skaggs told ABC News. “This creates a tool that will allow suspicious activity around illegal gun trafficking and around mass shootings to be detected and flagged to the authorities.”
How does the new credit card code work?
Nearly every category of a retailer in the U.S. has a code, called a merchant category code, or MCC, that marks each credit card transaction. For instance, purchases at grocery stores, movie theaters, and hair salons each carry a different code.
Until late last week, sellers of guns and other gun-related products shared a code with sporting goods stores.
“There was no way to tell whether somebody spent a thousand dollars on guns and ammo or on soccer balls and hockey sticks,” Skaggs said.
Now, credit and debit card transactions at gun sellers will carry a unique code that marks them as such.
Gun advocates hope the new code will push banks to report some gun purchases, since a law passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks requires the banks to alert authorities to suspicious transaction activity. For example, banks use algorithms to flag unusual activity that may indicate money laundering or human trafficking, Skaggs said.
It remains unclear if and how credit card companies and banks will apply a standard that deems some gun-related purchases worthy of flagging, especially when the code only shows that a purchase was made at a gun seller but not the products that were purchased, said Kevin Sullivan, a former fraud investigator with the New York Police and founder of the Anti-Money Laundering Training Academy.
“The bank is aware you shopped at a gun store — now what?” Sullivan told ABC News. “What are the parameters going to be now? What are the lines you’re going to cross?”
What are the credit card companies saying?
Late last week major credit card companies said they plan to use the code, including Visa, Mastercard and American Express. The companies did not respond directly to a question about how the new code will be enforced.
“Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” Visa told ABC News in a statement.
Similarly, Mastercard said the company would implement the new code as it would for any other category of retailer.
“With ISO approving the proposed MCC, we now turn our focus to how it will be implemented by merchants and their banks as we continue to support lawful purchases on our network while protecting the privacy and decisions of individual cardholders,” Mastercard told ABC News in a statement.
“This is exactly how we would manage the process for any other appropriate MCC, like a bicycle shop or sporting goods store,” the company added.
Likewise, American Express told ABC News in a statement that it would move forward with putting the code in place.
“When ISO develops a new Merchant Category Code, we follow our usual business practices and will work with our third-party processors and partners on implementation,” the company said.
“It is important to note that MCC codes are one of many data points that help us understand the industries in which our merchants operate,” the company added. “We are focused on ensuring that we have the right controls in place to meet our regulatory and fiduciary responsibilities, as well as prevent illegal activity on our network.”
How have gun rights groups responded?
The National Rifle Association condemned the new code for credit and debit card transactions at gun stores.
“The ISO’s decision to create a firearm-specific code is nothing more than a capitulation to anti-gun politicians and activists bent on eroding the rights of law-abiding Americans one transaction at a time,” NRA Spokesman Lars Dalseide told ABC News in a statement.
“This is not about tracking or prevention or any virtuous motivation – it’s about creating a national registry of gun owners,” he added.
Skaggs, of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, rebuked that characterization of the new merchant category code.
“There are merchant category codes for bookstores, newspapers and religious institutions,” he said. “Making a contribution to your faith institution on your credit card or purchasing books from a church-affiliated bookstore, those are all coded differently and those are all constitutionally protected rights that are widely practiced and respected in this country.”
(LONDON) — As Queen Elizabeth II made her final journey home to London, by her side the entire way was Anne, the Princess Royal, her only daughter.
Anne, the second eldest of the queen and Prince Philip’s four children, was with the 96-year-old queen when she died Sept. 8 at Balmoral Castle, her retreat in Scotland.
Anne, 72, stayed at Balmoral Castle while her older brother, King Charles III, traveled to London to fulfill the duties of his accession to the throne.
On Sunday, Anne and her husband, Sir Timothy Lawrence, were part of a very small convoy that escorted the queen’s coffin on a more than six-hour drive from Balmoral to Holyroodhouse Palace in Edinburgh.
Anne was photographed curtseying to her mother’s coffin as it arrived at Holyroodhouse.
The next day, Anne, dressed in military uniform, walked with her four siblings behind their mother’s coffin in a procession from the palace to St. Giles’ Cathedral, where it lied in rest for 24 hours to allow people in Scotland to pay their respects.
At the cathedral, Anne made history by joining Charles and her two other brothers, Princes Andrew and Edward, in holding vigil at their mother’s coffin.
The tradition, known as Vigil of the Princes, had previously been carried out by male-only royal family members, making Anne the first female member to take part.
On Tuesday, Anne flew with her coffin from Edinburgh to London, where it will be taken first to Buckingham Palace and then to Westminster Hall, where the queen will lie-in-state until her funeral on Sept. 19.
Princess Anne watches as the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II is taken to a hearse as it departs St Giles’ Cathedral, in Edinburgh, Sept. 13, 2022.
The sight of Anne by her mother’s side on her final journey was a striking and fitting image given the close bond the princess was known to have shared with her mother.
In becoming a mom of two with her first husband, Mark Phillips, Anne gave the queen and Philip the first two of their eight grandchildren, Peter Phillips and Zara Phillips Tindall.
Like the queen, Anne is known for her love of horses, a passion that led to her competing in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
Anne was the first member of Britain’s royal family to compete in the Olympics. She rode her mother’s horse, Goodwill, in the three-day equestrian event in Montreal, according to the royal family’s website.
Nearly four decades later, Anne’s daughter, Zara Phillips Tindall, competed in the same event at the 2012 London Olympics and won a silver medal for Team Great Britain.
In addition to sharing a passion for horses, Anne shared a devotion to royal service with the queen, who met with Britain’s new prime minister at Balmoral just two days before her death.
Anne is described on the royal family’s website as having “one of the busiest working schedules of any member of the royal family.”
Because Anne was born as the only girl among three brothers, she was leap-frogged in the line of succession, where she is now 16th in line to the throne.
In 2013, a law called the Succession to the Crown Act ended the centuries-old practice of a younger son superseding an elder daughter in the line of succession, but the law only applies to royals born after Oct. 28, 2011.
Like the queen, Anne started her royal work at a young age — in Anne’s case at the age of 18 — and never stopped.
She is currently involved with over 300 charities, organizations and military regiments in the U.K. and around the world, according to the royals’ website.
Anne has also helped to create several charities, including The Princess Royal’s Trust for Carers, which supports caregivers in the U.K., and Transaid and Riders for Health, which each work to help people in developing countries by solving transportation difficulties.
When the queen began to reduce her workload in her later years, Anne stepped up her own duties even more, picking up engagements from the queen and in other cases joining her mom.
In one recent funny memory, Anne coached the queen on how to do a video call while working from home during the coronavirus lockdown.
“Can you see everybody?” Anne asked the queen, then 94, at the start of a June 2020 call with four carers during Carers Week in the U.K. “You should have six people on your screen.”
When the queen replied that she could only see four people on her screen, Anne replied with a laugh, “OK, fair enough. Actually, you don’t need me. You know what I look like.”
Now in the wake of her mother’s death and her brother’s accession to the throne, Anne is expected to continue her service as a senior working royal, joining Queen Camilla, Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, and Prince William and his wife Kate, the Princess of Wales, in building the next chapter of the monarchy.
Mitchell Tenpenny is teasing a new song off his upcoming album.
Recently, the singer shared a clip of a track called “Good Place” that follows a heartbroken man after a breakup, with the lyrics stating people can blame it on him acting “too selfish” and refusing to grow up, or the other party being jealous. Either way, he ventures to a bar to drink away his sorrows.
“I can’t take it/But I can take another shot baby/I’m not in a good place/But I’m in this bar/So I’m in a good place for a broken heart,” he sings over a fast paced pop-country melody.
“I couldn’t be more excited about this record! So many new songs!” the Nashville native shares. “I wasn’t suppose to share anymore but f*** it here’s one more.”
“Good Place” is featured on Mitchell’s new album, This is The Heavy, along with his current #1 hit, “Truth About You.” The album is out on Friday.
