Twenty years ago on October 10, 2002, Jay-Z teamed up with his then-girlfriend, now-wife, BeyoncéKnowles–Carter, to release one of the most iconic hits in hip-hop history.
“‘03 Bonnie & Clyde” landed at number four on Hov’s 3x Multi-Platinum RIAA-certified seventh studio album, The Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse. The hit single notched a top five spot on the Billboard chart and went on to become certified Gold.
With writing and producing credits from Jay, KanyeWest and Tupac, the song sampled the beat from and was inspired by Pac’s 1996 single, “Me and My Girlfriend.” Jay-Z and Beyoncé pay homage to Tupac with a mural of the late rapper’s face during a scene of the music video.
The close-to-five-minute visual features the duo in a modern take of the infamous real-life criminals BonnieParker and ClydeBarrow. The cop-and-robber short was nominated for Video of the Year at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards but lost to MissyElliott‘s “Work It.”
In celebration of the song’s 15-year anniversary in 2017, Beyoncé posted a few throwback clips of the iconic video.
“I can’t believe its been 15years since Bonnie and Clyde 🙏🏽 You ready 😊🙏🏾? Lets go get em❤️💛💙💜💚,” she wrote in the captions, referencing some of the song’s lyrics.
“’03 Bonnie & Clyde” marked the first official collaboration between Hov and B and the start of their romantic relationship. The couple is now married and share three children: 10-year-old BlueIvy and five-year-old twins, Rumi and Sir.
Saturday Night Live took aim at recent controversies involving Herschel Walker, Kanye West, and Universal’s upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie among others during this weekend’s cold open.
Bowen Yang played the host of a game show called “So You Think You Won’t Snap,” in which contestants were read real-life headlines designed to trigger their rage.
First up was Heidi Gardner as a yoga teacher who had “been sober for 15 years” — that is, until Yang showed her a video of President Joe Biden stumbling his way through a response to a question from 60 Minutes‘ Scott Pelley regarding his mental acuity. The scene then switched to Gardner chugging a huge glass of wine.
Next up was Chloe Fineman as a mom of four, who managed to stay calm after hearing that Walker, the former NFL football player and Senate hopeful, supports a total abortion ban, while allegedly paying for one and lying about it.
Yang’s follow-up that the accusation “actually led to his best fundraising day ever” also didn’t seem to shake her; and likewise, his revelation that “86% of kids today say that when they grow up, their dream job is influencer.”
However, watching a clip of the upcoming Super Mario movie featuring Pratt as the voice of Mario, was too much. “He was supposed to be Italian! That was like his whole thing!” she screamed.
Kenan Thompson‘s Dale, who was “taking advantage of Biden’s new weed policy and just had sex before coming on this show,” lost it at the very mention of Elon Musk.
Finally, a photo of West wearing a “White Lives Matter” tee shirt during his Yeezy Season 9 show at Paris Fashion Week on Monday drove SNL newcomer Devon Walker to take a hot clothes iron to his face.
Skateboarding icon Tony Hawk is famous for not being recognized in public, but one person who will always recognize him is Goldfinger frontman John Feldmann.
“Tony Hawk really changed the trajectory of my career,” Feldmann tells ABC Audio.
Feldmann is, of course, talking about Hawk’s Pro Skater video game series, the first installment of which featured Goldfinger’s song “Superman” on the soundtrack. Thanks to its placement in the game, “Superman” has become one of Goldfinger’s signature and most beloved songs.
“So many kids played that game,” Feldmann laughs. “So many people played that game.”
Initially, Feldmann didn’t even know that “Superman” was even in Pro Skater, but he soon realized it was about to become a phenomenon when he and Goldfinger played the song while on tour in England shortly after the game was released.
“We played, like, five, six songs that I thought were gonna be our biggest hits,” Feldmann recalls. “Then we played ‘Superman,’ and the whole crowd just [formed] the biggest the circle pit of the night, it was just this wild moment…It’s just become this huge thing.”
Both the first and second Pro Skater games were remastered in 2020, and brought back “Superman” for the soundtrack while also adding a few other, newer songs, including Machine Gun Kelly‘s “Bloody Valentine.” Feldmann feels that the spirit of the Pro Skater soundtrack continues to live on in today’s music.
“There’s definitely a movement happening, that’s been happening for the last year with all these artists,” Feldmann says, name-checking blackbear and WILLOW. “It’s just amazing to watch all these younger kids making music that I grew up on, that changed my life.”
Goldfinger released a rerecorded version of “Superman” featuring Biffy Clyro‘s Simon Neil in August.
The 2004 compilation The Animals Retrospective, featuring classic songs that famed British Invasion band The Animals and its lead singer, Eric Burdon, recorded from 1964 to 1970, will be released on vinyl for the first time on November 18.
The album, which can be preordered now, will be issued as a two-LP set on standard black vinyl, while Target also will offer an exclusive, limited-edition orange-vinyl version.
Retrospective is a 22-track collection that includes classic tunes by The Animals’ original lineup and by the group’s late-1960s Eric Burdon & The Animals incarnation, as well as “Spill the Wine,” the 1970 smash that Burdon recorded with the band War.
Hailing from Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K., The Animals started as a blues-influenced rock ‘n’ roll act. The band quickly found fame in 1964 thanks to their chart-topping version of the traditional folk song “The House of the Rising Sun,” and followed that with such hits as “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” “It’s My Life” and “Don’t Bring Me Down.”
In 1966, Burdon reformed the band with a new lineup and the group, rechristened Eric Burdon & The Animals, relocated to California and began exploring a more psychedelic-influenced sound. Among this version of the band’s hits were “When I Was Young,” “San Franciscan Nights,” “Monterey” and “Sky Pilot.”
After the group’s 1968 breakup, Burdon began collaborating with the San Francisco-based funk-rock band War, scoring a #3 hit in ’70 with “Spill the Wine.”
Reflecting on the original Animals in Retrospective‘s liner notes, Burdon said, “We were the ultimate club band. We had our differences and sometimes came to blows, but we all stood together when anybody attacked us from the outside.”
Here’s the compilation’s full track list:
Side 1
“House of the Rising Sun”
“I’m Crying”
“Baby Let Me Take You Home”
“Gonna Send You Back to Walker”
“Boom Boom”
“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”
Side 2
“Bring It On Home to Me”
“We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (U.S. single version)
“It’s My Life”
“Don’t Bring Me Down”
“See See Rider”
“Inside-Looking Out”
Side 3
“Hey Gyp”
“Help Me Girl”*
“When I Was Young”*
“A Girl Named Sandoz”*
“San Franciscan Nights”*
“Monterey”*
Side 4
“Anything”*
“Sky Pilot”*
“White Houses”*
“Spill the Wine”**
* = Eric Burdon & The Animals
** = Eric Burdon & War
Taylor Swift did a bang-up job on the set of her new movie, Amsterdam, says her Oscar-winning co-star — and was even nice enough not to tell him he’s an “awful” singer.
Oscar winner Christian Bale stars in the David O. Russell film, along with John David Washington and Margot Robbie. Taylor plays Elizabeth Meekins, who wants Bale and Washington’s characters — a doctor and an attorney, respectively — to investigate the suspicious death of her father, an Army general who founded the regiment where the two men first met.
“She just became part of the team. She was fantastic,” Bale tells ABC Audio. “You know, she just showed up and she was playing her character and she fit right in….movies, they move pretty quickly, y’know, you gotta get going [right away].”
Bale says he also had “the great privilege and sort of surprise of finding myself singing alongside of Taylor,” in the film. In fact, he and Washington both sang with Taylor, despite the fact that they’re not exactly on her level, vocal-wise.
“She was incredibly generous in just not looking at me and going, ‘Please shut up. You are awful!’ because I am!” Bale laughs. “Me and JD [Washington], half the time [we were] forgetting the lyrics, being-off key.”
At one point after he, Taylor and Washington had been trying to film the singing scene for hours, Bale says David O. Russell told them, “Hey, I just got an idea: Christian and JD, how about you just shut up for a second? We’ll just record Taylor.'”
Bale laughs, “Oh, my God, we suddenly realized we had been destroying this song all day long when there was this angel right next to us singing it beautifully. And it gave me goosebumps. Her talent is incredible!”
After getting her best scores ever last week on Dancing with the Stars, Jordin Sparks and her partner BrandonArmstrong will dance Monday night starting at 8 p.m. ET, as the show presents “Disney+ Night.” Jordin says she’s excited about the theme, especially because it’s allowed her to do a special dance inspired by her four-year-old son DJ.
“I’m grateful that I’m still around to be able to do Disney Night. And it’s been opened up even more because now it’s Disney+, so it’s like Marvel and Star Wars and all those things,” Jordin tells ABC Audio, adding, “But for me, it’s very personal…the song I’m doing is ‘Remember Me‘ from Coco. I’m doing the song because it’s something I sing to [my son] every single night before he goes to sleep.”
The Oscar-winning song from the 2017 Pixar film is sung from the point of view of a musician who leaves his daughter to go on the road. It features lyrics like, “For ever if I’m far away/I hold you in my heart/I sing a secret song to you/Each night we are apart.”
“When I heard that song and I saw the movie, I related to it so much,” Jordin explains. “Being a musician, being on the road, having to be away for, you know, long hours. And so I’m doing that song for him.”
“He’s actually getting to come to the show for the first time, so I can’t wait for him to actually be there and see it!” she says excitedly. “So there’s a little bit more pressure about it because it is so personal. I really want to do well.”
Outside of the ballroom, Jordin’s just released a collaboration with the Australian duo for KING + COUNTRY called “Love Me Like I Am.”
Brett Young noticed a big shift in his songwriting process when he went in to create his third album, Weekends Look a Little Different These Days, in 2021: Instead of writing songs about what he was going through at that moment, he started drawing from the past.
“This album was all about learning to go back and draw from past experiences,” Young explains, pointing out that if he’d only written about his current life stage — as a happily married father — the songs might’ve gotten a little repetitive.
“So that there was something for everybody, and you didn’t get a lullaby record about my babies and my happy marriage. You got a little bit of everything,” he continues.
That’s not to say the songs weren’t personal: For example, “You Didn’t” was written about a time in his life when he and his now-wife Taylor called it quits for a while.
“We didn’t fight. Nobody cheated. It was none of that. We just broke up,” Brett remembers. “I was in a different place than she was.”
And even though this breakup happened years before he wrote a song about it, the singer says he was still able to tap into that pain. “I went through that. I felt that,” he notes.
What started with the dilemma of needing to write more than his current life stage became an important process of growth and learning, Brett goes on to say.
“This whole album has been a challenge for me,” he explains. “In a good way. It’s really grown and stretched me as a writer, because up until album number three, I’d written what I was going through in the moment.”
Weekends Look a Little Different These Days came out in June 2021.
Veteran British musician and producer Peter Asher is recovering from an emergency brain operation that he underwent on Friday, October 7.
The 78-year-old Asher, known as one-half of the 1960s pop duo Peter and Gordon, as well as for his work as a producer with Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, posted a message about his health scare Saturday on his Instagram.
“As some of you may have heard, I had quite the scare yesterday,” he wrote. “I wasn’t feeling 100% for a few weeks so I went to get an MRI after my wife and daughter insisted I check things out. Good thing I did because I had to be rushed into emergency brain surgery from there. Two small holes in my head but I am on the mend and should be outta here by next week which I am really excited for.”
Asher continued, “I am honestly just bored because I’m usually so active and can’t stand having to stay in one spot but I am grateful things went so well. In the meantime I’ll be watching movies from the bed with my daughter @vickyt and the little teddy she gave to keep me company. Thanks for the kind messages!”
The post is accompanied by a photo of a smiling Peter in a hospital bed giving a thumbs-up sign, along with a teddy bear wearing a pink t-shirt that says “Feel the Heal.”
Meanwhile, Asher has postponed the upcoming October performances of his “A Musical Memoir of the 60s and Beyond” show, which had been scheduled for October 14 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and on October 15 in Plainville, Massachusetts. Visit PeterAsherMusic.com for more details.
(WASHINGTON) — The man who allegedly left two dead and six injured after he went on a stabbing spree in Las Vegas “had every intention” of killing the victims, one of the survivors told ABC News.
Yoni Barrios, 32, allegedly approached a group of performers outside the Wynn Casino on Thursday and asked to take a picture with them before removing a knife, according to an arrest report.
Barrios allegedly told police he removed a black carbon knife from a suitcase, telling the women he was a chef, and he became angry because he thought the women were laughing at him and making fun of his clothing, according to the report.
“Barrios started running and looking for groups of people so he could ‘let the anger out,'” the arrest report stated.
Surveillance video showed the suspect stab several victims, including street performer Maris Mareen DiGiovanni, before running south along the sidewalk, where he stabbed victim Brent Hallet in the back, according to the arrest report.
The suspect then continued running south and stabbed two victims before turning east along Sands Avenue and stabbing another two victims, the report stated.
Both DiGiovanni and Hallet died from their injuries.
Anna Westby, one of the street performers, told ABC News from her hospital bed that he “had every intention of killing her [DiGiovanni], killing us.”
Westby said the suspect approached them, asking for a photo with his logo. After DiGiovanni said yes, he pulled out a knife, she added.
“And we’re like, ‘That’s not a logo — the logo we were expecting,'” Westby said.
Barrios then allegedly grabbed the knife and stabbed DiGiovanni in the chest, Westby said.
Westby denied that the group of street performers was making fun of the suspect, saying, “There was not a single moment where he was provoked.”
Barrios allegedly chose his targets at random, a source told ABC News. The victims include both locals and tourists, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said during a press briefing Thursday.
He allegedly confessed to police, apologizing and acknowledging that what he did was wrong, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. Barrios allegedly did not have a coherent explanation, making it seem that he had snapped, the official said.
Surviving street performers later told police the suspect made them feel uncomfortable, according to the arrest report. One of the victims told police that Barrios told him, “sorry man,” as he stabbed him, the report stated.
As of Thursday night, three victims were in critical condition and another three in stable condition, police said. It is unclear whether their conditions have changed.
Barrios has been charged with two counts of open murder with a deadly weapon and six counts of attempted murder with a deadly weapon, according to police.
He was denied bail during a court appearance Friday afternoon and is scheduled to appear again on Tuesday.
Information on a defense attorney for Barrios was not immediately available.
(WASHINGTON) — Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy on Sunday called for a change in Washington’s ties to Saudi Arabia after the country and other members of the OPEC+ alliance decided to significantly cut production later this year in a move that will likely drive up the slumping cost of crude oil.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Murphy added to the growing number of Democrats arguing that the U.S. should, as he put it, “rethink” the relationship with the Gulf kingdom in light of the announced 2-million-barrel-per-day cut in oil production as well as Riyadh’s human rights record.
The forthcoming restrictions by OPEC+, which will begin in November, come after President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia this summer seeking, in part, to lower domestic gas prices before the midterms.
But OPEC+ said the cuts announced last week were necessary to help support the international price for oil. The global market has been roiled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other forces.
“We are here to stay as a moderating force, to bring about stability,” a Saudi minister said Wednesday. The cuts, the minister insisted, were not about “belligerence.”
Biden told ABC News on Thursday he was unhappy with the move. And while he maintained that the trip was not essentially for oil. … It is a disappointment and it says that there are problems.”
On CNN on Sunday, Murphy said that “it’s clear that we didn’t get as much as we needed to.”
“We wanted to know that when the chips were down, when there was a global crisis, that the Saudis would choose us instead of Russia. Well — they didn’t. They chose Russia. They chose to back up the Russians, drive up oil prices, which could have the potential to fracture our Ukraine coalition. And there’s got to be consequences for that,” Murphy said.
“We sell massive amounts of arms to the Saudis. I think we need to rethink those sales,” he said. “I think we need to lift the exemption that we have given this OPEC+ cartel from U.S. price-fixing liability. I think we need to look at our troop presence in the middle East and Saudi Arabia,” he said. “For years we have looked the other way as Saudi Arabia has chopped up journalists, has engaged in massive political repression.”
Beyond rethinking the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, Murphy also focused on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler, whom Biden met with in July in negotiations that drew scrutiny given that U.S. intelligence has assessed bin Salman approved the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The prince has continued to claim he was not involved, though Biden said he raised the issue at their meeting this summer.
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, sharply criticized Biden’s “heartbreaking” decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. While running for president in 2019, Biden said he would make the country a “pariah.”
Murphy’s comments on Sunday follow similar calls from other Democrats last week for some kind of punishment after the oil production cut. A trio of House Democrats introduced a bill to remove the U.S. military presence from Saudi Arabia.
“Many argued that we had to ‘repair’ our relationship with our Gulf partners to win their cooperation in stabilizing global energy markets following Russia’s invasion, and President Biden made every effort to do so, going so far as to meet the Saudi Crown Prince personally in Riyadh, despite his role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” Reps. Sean Casten of Illinois, Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Pennsylvania’s Susan Wild said in a joint statement last week.
“It is time for the United States to resume acting like the superpower in our relationship with our client states in the Gulf. They have made a choice and should live with the consequences. Our troops and military equipment are needed elsewhere,” the trio said.
The White House, while disagreeing with the production cuts, is remaining tight-lipped about how it plans to respond to OPEC+, which is unofficially led by Riyadh.
“We will be assessing and consulting closely with Congress around a range of issues on the back end of this,” Brian Deese, a top economic adviser to Biden, told reporters on Thursday. “And beyond that, I don’t want to get ahead of potential announcements by the administration.”
