Thomas Rhett wasn’t kidding when he said he was thinking about making an album all about the realities of being a dad to young kids.
As a father to four young girls, TR’s got plenty of material to choose from, and he shared a snippet of “#dadlife” content on TikTok this week.
In the clip, Thomas uses a microphone to sing along to “For the First Time Ever” from Frozen, harmonizing with the film’s main character, Elsa. The country star is straight-faced throughout the hilarious video as he goes right into the first chorus.
“For the first time in forever / There’ll be music, there’ll be life / For the first time in forever / I’ll be dancing through the night,” TR sings, swapping verses with a recorded version of the song.
It’s not the first time that the singer has thought about his kids’ favorite tunes in relation to his own musical pursuits. After putting out his song “Bring the Bar to You,” he realized that it reminded him of the wildly popular song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from the Disney film Encanto — even though he wrote “Bring the Bar to You” two years before Encanto came out.
You could be the world’s greatest musician, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily know anything about the music business. You’d think “Sunroof” singer Nicky Youre would seem to be ahead of the game since he graduated from college with a degree in International Business. But according to Nicky, that’s only helped him out “a little bit” as he tries to navigate the industry.
“I don’t think that I learned all that much at school,” he laughs. “I think, if anything, it just helped my business mindset with…how to think about certain things and critically think. Because the music industry is, like, the most complex, complex thing I’ve ever seen.”
“So it’s super, super interesting, but having some form of a business mindset helps me a lot,” the California native continues. “And eventually I want to go into the business side of things once, y’know, my music career is kind of over.”
Right now, Nicky only has three songs out, but he’s already planning his next move. In fact, he already knows what he doesn’t want to do behind the scenes in the biz: be a manager.
Nicky explains, “I didn’t realize how much managers do until I had my manager. So I don’t know if I want to be a manager because…we’re texting like every day from like 9 to 12 and always doing something!”
Nicky adds that he’d prefer a job in A&R, which means he’d be scouting and signing talent to a record label and overseeing their artistic development. “I feel like I have a good sense of stuff that’s really cool,” he explains. “And musically, I think that would be a cool job for me.”
“But I dunno,” he laughs. “That’s going to be hopefully in like a long, long future.”
Luke Bryan is a huge fan of all kinds of roller coasters, but not necessarily all amusement park rides.
“I won’t ride, like, a Tilt-A-Whirl or anything that just spins around,” the country superstar tells ABC Audio. “I mean, I can do the loops and twists, but I’m not gonna sit there and do five minutes of high-speed spinning around just to try to make myself throw up.”
Luke feels at home on any coaster — and not just because of “Roller Coaster,” the hit song he put out in 2014.
The singer and his family are embracing their daredevil sides in honor of his son Tate’s upcoming 12th birthday: Luke’s got an epic, three-day roller coaster and theme park trip planned to celebrate.
That’s an appropriate way to celebrate, since Tate’s an even bigger thrill seeker than Luke is at theme parks.
“There’s physically nothing — I mean, if Tate could go hop on Jeff Bezos’ rocket tomorrow, he’d go get on that rocket,” Luke continues. “He’s not scared of anything.”
Tate’s birthday is August 11. Summer is a pretty festive season in the Bryan household: the singer celebrated his 45th birthday in mid-July.
Throughout the span of his rap career, Wiz Khalifa has worked with a slew of artists, including some who have unfortunately passed away. In a new interview with Billboard, he looks back on his collaborations with two late rappers: Nipsey Hussle and Young Dolph.
Wiz teamed up with Hussle in 2011 for “Hopes & Dreams” off his Rolling Papers project. According to the “Black and Yellow” rapper, they’d met at the 2010 XXL Freshman cover shoot in New York and hit it off. While he was recording his album in his LA studio, he wanted to collab with his “homies,” so he reached out to Nip to get him on a song.
“This is my first major label album, and I love Nip so much that he had only done mixtape stuff — but if this was gonna be my first major-label shot, I want to bring my homies with me, and the people I respect, love, and think are tight as f***. It didn’t matter if they were on blogs at the time,” he said. Unfortunately, the song “ended up not being cleared because of business deals at the time.”
Wiz would later go on to work with Young Dolph on the 2017 track “On the River,” featured on Dolph’s album Gelato. He remembers Dolph as a “cool dude” who “didn’t like to be around a bunch of people.”
“He was funny, loved to crack jokes, and his music was really good …,” Wiz said of Dolph. “He was one of them dudes that was always a pleasure to be in contact with … I loved that about him.”
Nipsey was fatally shot outside his Marathon Clothing Store in March 2019; Dolph was shot and killed last November while at a cookie shop in his hometown of Memphis.
The Moody Blues‘ John Lodge and Justin Hayward haven’t performed together since the band’s tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of 1967’s Days of Future Passed album ended in November 2018, and Lodge says there are no plans for them to work together moving forward.
Since 2018, Lodge and Hayward have regularly toured as solo artists, although their respective concerts always showcase plenty of Moody Blues material.
Meanwhile, Lodge tells ABC Audio that his contact with Hayward these days only involves business matters.
“He’s doing what he wants to do,”Lodge says. “I email him about different things, but I don’t know what he wants to do [with regard to new music]. He doesn’t want to be a Moody Blue. That’s all I know.”
As for his feelings about Hayward, Lodge notes, “We’ve had a friendship for over 50 years, so that’s not gonna change, from my point of view.”
In a Facebook post last November following the death of founding Moody Blues drummer Graeme Edge, Hayward explained that he felt the band couldn’t carry on without Edge.
Lodge recently played a one-off show with his solo group in Ocean City, New Jersey, and although he has no other confirmed concerts scheduled this year, he tells ABC Audio that he’s hoping to line up more tour dates for later in 2022.
“I told my agent when I want to go on the road, and hopefully he’s working hard at it,”Lodge says with a laugh. “It’s my life, you know? I love being on the road. I love meeting people. I love playing the music to people and getting the reaction from it. And it’s what I’ve done since I was 15.”
Hayward will kick off a two-week U.K. solo tour on September 11.
Yvette Nicole Brown has been a part of Star Wars, The Muppets, The Avengers, and so many great franchises in her career, but there’s one thing that would really make her life complete.
“I still haven’t done Sesame Street,” she tells ABC Audio. “In my mind, I always thought to myself, if I ever get asked to do Sesame Street, it would mean I had finally really made a mark in this industry…Like I became the person in this industry that I hope to be….So I’m just praying one day it comes.”
Brown’s latest project is the Disney+ special LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation, which features characters from the recent film franchise including Finn and Rey. The Community alum voices General Leia and Lt. Valeria, and she sets up the premise of the special for us:
“Well, it takes place right after Rise of Skywalker and Finn and all his friends who’ve been through a lot, [so] he says, ‘let’s take a vacation.'” she explains. “And so they leave to go on the vacation and get separated. And then Finn has this vision of three Force ghosts. There’s Leia and Anakin and Obi-Wan. And they tell him about vacations they’ve been on that didn’t go quite as planned.”
Brown has described herself as a “nerd,” and not just for sci-fi and fantasy.
“Being a nerd just means you just love something so much. And I’m a nerd about puzzles. I’m a nerd about knitting, I’m a nerd about naps,” she insists.
“You can be a nerd about a thousand things,” adds the 50-year-old actress. “I’m a nerd about my dog Harley, you know?”
LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation hits Disney+ on Friday.
John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are expecting a baby!
The Cravings cookbook author, 36, announced the news in an Instagram post on Wednesday, revealing that she’s expecting another baby after undergoing in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
“The last few years have been a blur of emotions to say the least, but joy has filled our home and hearts again,” Teigen wrote alongside a photo of herself showing off her baby bump. “1 billion shots later (in the leg lately, as you can see!) we have another on the way.”
“It’s been very hard keeping this in for so long!” she added.
Teigen, who is already a mom to 6-year-old Luna and 4-year-old Miles, expressed her apprehension around sharing her pregnancy news and talked about the nerves she would feel after each appointment.
“Every appointment I’ve said to myself, ‘OK if it’s healthy today I’ll announce,’ but then I breathe a sigh of relief to hear a heartbeat and decide I’m just too nervous still,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever walk out of an appointment with more excitement than nerves but so far, everything is perfect and beautiful and amazing.”
It’s unclear if Teigen will be having a baby boy or girl, but many of her fans and friends flooded her comments section sharing their warm wishes and congratulatory messages, including fellow “Cravings” co-author Adeena Sussman.
“We’re waiting for that little bebé with open arms,” Sussman wrote.
The announcement comes nearly two years after Teigen shared the heartbreaking news that she suffered a miscarriage. A few days before sharing the news, she told her followers that she had been admitted to the hospital due to “excessive bleeding.”
Teigen and Legend were going to name that baby Jack.
(LOS ANGELES) — A fire burning out of control in a Northern California national forest and threatening a town of nearly 8,000 people has quickly become the largest wildfire in the state this year, officials said.
The McKinney Fire in the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County, near the Oregon border, had burned 57,519 acres and was 10% contained as of Wednesday night, according to Cal Fire.
Rain in the area on Tuesday presented firefighters with opportunities to properly combat the fire, officials said. However, the fire is expected to grow in the next few days due to drier and hotter weather. The forecast was for temperatures to reach 96 on Wednesday.
Red flag warnings were in effect as well.
The blaze grew by nearly 3,000 acres overnight on Monday as gusty winds helped fan its spread through a drought-dry tinderbox of high grass, brush and timber, according to Cal Fire.
Two people were found dead in their car in a driveway in the town of Klamath River, Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue told ABC News. Firefighters said they suspected that the two were caught in the fast-moving fire as they tried to flee, according to the sheriff. More rescue teams were expected to search the area on Monday.
The fire started around 2:15 p.m. Friday and has caused the closure of Highway 96 in the area and the evacuation of several communities, including the partial evacuation of Yreka, California, officials said.
There was concern that lightning storms over the fire area could have sparked additional fires, officials said. But that same storm system also carried a significant amount of moisture, slowing the fire’s spread significantly over the past 24 hours, the sheriff said on Monday.
“We’re feeling pretty good” about protecting Yreka, whose western fringes were threatened by the fire, he told ABC News.
The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News Sunday afternoon that more than 100 structures have been destroyed, including the homes of several deputies who are continuing to work despite personally being under evacuation orders.
Many of the lost structures are along the Klamath River, which runs parallel to Highway 96, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. The Klamath River Community Hall in Klamath River was also among the structures destroyed, officials said.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said search crews rescued about 60 hikers from a section of the Pacific Crest Trail, a popular backpacking trail that runs from Canada to Mexico.
Sgt. Shawn Richards of Jackson County Search and Rescue told reporters the hikers were not in immediate danger. He said that because of the rapidly spreading fire, unpredictable winds and smoke reducing visibility to roughly 20 feet, the decision was made to rescue the hikers before conditions worsened.
More than 1,300 firefighters are battling the blaze on the ground and from the air with 10 helicopters and 16 air tankers, Cal Fire said Monday.
“Really erratic winds from the start of the incident all the way up until now,” Kelsey Lofdah, a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, told San Francisco ABC station KGO of challenging firefighting conditions. “Pretty extreme fire behavior throughout the entire shift.”
The Yreka Police Department issued evacuation orders for a neighborhood in the western part of the town “due to its proximity to the fire” about 12 miles away.
“Please leave IMMEDIATELY,” the police department wrote in the evacuation order.
The police department also issued evacuation warnings to residents in all areas of the community west of Interstate 5.
The cause of the fire is under investigation and emergency management officials are assessing the damage.
Californian Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency on Saturday for Siskiyou County due to the effects of the McKinney Fire. A state of emergency frees up more state resources to be used in battling the blaze, including dispatching more firefighters and equipment to the scene.
The McKinney Fire surpassed the Oak Fire in Mariposa County near Yosemite as the largest wildfire in the state this year, according to Cal Fire. The Oak Fire, which started on July 22, was 72% contained on Monday after burning 19,244 acres and destroying 182 structures, including more than 100 homes, officials said.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Cleveland 7, Arizona 4
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Tampa Bay 3, Toronto 2
Minnesota 4, Detroit 1
Seattle 7, NY Yankees 3
Chi White Sox 4, Kansas City 1
Houston 6, Boston 1
Baltimore 6, Texas 3
Oakland 3, LA Angels 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Philadelphia 3, Atlanta 1
NY Mets 9, Washington 5
Miami 3, Cincinnati 0
Pittsburgh 8, Milwaukee 7
San Diego 9, Colorado 1
LA Dodgers 3, San Francisco 0
Chi Cubs at St. Louis (Postponed)
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Atlanta 91, Indiana 81
New York 64, Los Angeles 61
Seattle 89, Minnesota 77
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Charlotte FC 3, D.C. United 0
CF Montreal 2, Columbus 1
Nashville 1, Portland 1 (TIE)
Miami 1, San Jose 0
(ARLINGTON, Texas) — A 16-year-old boy is speaking out after he was held at gunpoint and detained by police in what authorities said appears to have been a misunderstanding.
The incident occurred Monday afternoon at an apartment complex in Arlington, Texas, located between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Arlington police say they responded to a report of an armed man standing outside the door of one of the apartments.
A 911 caller told the dispatcher that he looked through his door’s peephole and saw a “male at his door wearing a hoodie and holding a firearm that was partially covered by a towel,” the Arlington Police Department said in a statement.
“The 911 caller advised that he’d been receiving threats from a person over social media, and the 911 caller believed the person at his door with a firearm was the same person who was making the threat,” the department said.
Apartment complex resident Rykeem Johnson, 16, says he was returning home from the pool that afternoon and was on the third floor of the building when two officers responded to the call. He matched the description of the suspect, wearing a hoodie and holding a towel, police said.
“They told me to put some weapon down. I didn’t know what they were talking about at first,” Johnson told ABC Dallas affiliate WFAA.
The teen said he froze, as officers pointed their firearms up at him from their position on the ground.
“I was very terrified. I was so terrified, I couldn’t move my body,” he told the station.
When the teen didn’t respond to verbal commands to drop the towel and show his hands, the officers called for backup and the police department’s tactical unit responded to the scene, police said.
“He goes gets his rifle and he’s pointing it directly at me, I get more scared,” Johnson recounted to WFAA. “My body starts to shake, I can’t move. My body feels stiff. In my mind, I was like, what should I do?”
The SWAT team was ultimately able to get the teen to show his hands and come down the stairs, and officers detained him, handcuffing him and placing him in a patrol car, police said.
Officers determined the teen was unarmed and was not the person making social media threats to the 911 caller and he was not arrested, police said.
“The only thing they said to me was ‘sorry for the misunderstanding. We apologize.’ That wasn’t enough for me,” Johnson told WFAA. “They had me at gunpoint, scared for my life.”
The teen was released to his older brother and guardian, Relius Johnson, who had rushed home from work after he received a call from an officer advising residents to shelter in place.
Relius Johnson told ABC News he didn’t realize at first that his brother was the one being detained by police. He said he spoke to his brother after getting the shelter-in-place call, and that he sounded “panicked.” When he got ahold of him again on the phone, his brother “started screaming, ‘Save me, they’re trying to shoot me,'” Relius Johnson said.
Relius Johnson said he told several officers at the scene that they had the wrong person. Eventually he was able to get a detective to connect with the SWAT commander, he said.
“That’s when he got on my phone with my little brother and got him to come down the stairs,” he said.
The incident lasted nearly three hours, police said.
Relius Johnson believes the situation could have been over a lot sooner if they had listened to him and his brother, whom he said officers kept calling by a different name.
“He was trying to tell them, try to talk to them,” Relius Johnson said. “If they would have listened from the very beginning, that would have been a whole different situation, as well as if they would have listened to me, for about 30, 40 minutes, when I’m trying to tell them that’s my little brother.”
“If I wouldn’t have gotten that call, or if I wouldn’t have been there, I think it would have been a totally different outcome,” he said. “I would be burying my brother instead of him being here.”
Arlington Police Department spokesperson Tim Ciesco told ABC News police are investigating whether the 911 caller mistook the teen for the person threatening him online.
“We don’t have any evidence to show that anybody that was trying to harm him was actually there,” Ciesco said.
Throughout the response, police also determined there were “consistency issues” with the original 911 caller and “slowed down its actions so that we could be sure that we were proceeding appropriately given the circumstances,” the department said. Ciesco could not elaborate on the consistency concerns due to the ongoing investigation.
Members of the police department’s command staff have been in direct contact with the family following the incident, Ciesco said.
Relius Johnson said he reached out to the chief and deputy chief to understand “how did this get to where it did.” They arranged a call on Wednesday and a sit-down meeting next week during which he hopes to get some questions about the incident answered, including why his brother was considered a suspect.
