Gerard Way recalls the origins of My Chemical Romance‘s opus “Welcome to the Black Parade” in Anthems We Love: 29 Iconic Artists on the Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives, an upcoming book by music writer Steve Baltin.
In an excerpt from the book, published by The Daily Beast, Way explains how “Welcome to the Black Parade” came together, sharing that he and his bandmates “knew it was special.”
“The song actually had started as this song called ‘The Five of Us Are Dying,’ which is like a riff on an old Twilight Zone episode title,” Way says. “It was these chords we really liked, it was a striving kind of a punk song.”
The track began to take on a new meaning, Way says, as the concept for what became MCR’s The Black Parade album began to take shape.
“I started to realize during the actual tracking of the album that there was no song that introduced or encapsulated some of the concepts on the record in that way,” Way explains. “There was definitely stuff that was capturing certain conceptual elements, like hell, and being raised Catholic and mothers, and it had a lot of stuff, there’s like a war theme. But there was no ‘Black Parade’ song, and I had known that that’s what I wanted to call the album.”
Anthems We Love, due out October 25, dives deep into 28 other iconic songs by artists including U2, Linkin Park, The Beach Boys, Aerosmith, The Doors, Fleetwood Mac, KISS, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Bob Marley and Toto. Among those interviewed include U2’s The Edge, Brian Wilson, Linkin Park‘s Brad Delson and The Doors’ Robby Krieger. The foreword is written by acclaimed director Cameron Crowe.
(WASHINGTON) — Ahead of another deadline on the restart of payments for America’s $1.7 trillion in federal student loans, President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a plan to cancel debt for a subset of Americans and continue to keep a pandemic-era pause on the repayments — a sweeping move he has openly weighed in some form or another since his time as a candidate.
“In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023,” Biden wrote in a Twitter post.
Pell Grant recipients can qualify for up to $20,000 in debt forgiveness as part of Wednesday’s broader announcement on student loan forgiveness. Other student loan borrowers who don’t have Pell Grants will still have loans forgiven up to $10,000, as has been previously reported.
Both forgiveness options are for people who earn less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 as a household.
According to the White House, Biden will give remarks Wednesday at 2:15 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room.
Biden’s social media post also announced an extension of the pause on student loan payments through Dec. 31, 2022 — the final extension — a move that’s intended to give time for the transition back to repayment. Multiple people familiar with White House policy discussions previously told ABC News that the loan pause, first put in place under President Donald Trump during the disruptions of COVID-19’s onset, was expected to be extended. Millions of borrowers were due to restart payments on Sept. 1.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told ABC News that the much-anticipated decision on loan forgiveness would come “soon” but was vague on details.
“We recognize it’s an important issue for many families. And we want to make sure that they get the information directly from the president,” Cardona said.
One-third of federal loan borrowers have less than $10,000, meaning they could see their debts completely wiped out should this policy come to fruition. Another 20% of borrowers, around nine million people, would have their debt at least slashed in half.
Including a broader debt forgiveness plan for Pell Grant recipients would wipe out the debt for up to 20 million borrowers, the White House estimated, and reach 43 million people in total.
Such a major cancelation may seem like a big step for Biden to take without Congress, but legal and policy experts say it’s clearer: The move would be well within the president’s authority — it just hasn’t been wielded before because of the political implications.
“The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act,” said John Brooks, a law professor at Fordham University who focuses on federal fiscal policy.
“A lot depends on the size of the cancellation. The smaller the amount of cancellation, the easier the question is,” Brooks said. “Wiping out all student debt with a single stroke might be tougher, but the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”
Still, Biden could get taken to court — possibly by loan servicing agencies who would lose revenue or by members of Congress who may believe Biden is spending money in a way that hasn’t been appropriated by legislators.
Outside experts also wonder how long the processes would take to cancel student loans once a policy is announced — and how complicated it would be for borrowers to work their way through it, which are details that have yet to be released.
Some fear that people might fall through the cracks if applications to cancel debt become too labor-intensive because of the prospective income cap.
“The White House is about to ask the Education Department to do something that is extraordinarily difficult, and that is going to have the effect of denying debt relief to low-income folks, economically vulnerable folks, who have the hardest time navigating these complicated paperwork processes,” Mike Pierce, executive director and co-founder of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a think-tank that advocates for universal debt cancellation, told ABC News in an interview.
Pierce and other supporters for more progressive debt cancellation, including the NAACP, said the smoothest path would include full and universal cancellation for everyone.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem. And tragically, we’ve experienced this so many times before,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, reacting to the details of the potential policy announcement.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people – especially Black women – behind. This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020,” Johnson said.
But for many borrowers and advocates for canceling student debt — particularly the nearly half of people with federal student loans who would see their debt extinguished or cut significantly — Biden’s policy would still be cause for major celebration and be seen as a start to reforming the college and university system, where rising costs have become a major area of focus.
For Michigan teacher Nick Fuller, a possible Biden announcement on student loans could come just before the financial crunch of winter, when his heating bills skyrocket.
Though Fuller worked hard his first few years out of school to pay down his school debt, and then had his loan frozen for much of the pandemic, he’s concerned that restarting payments on top of monthly living costs could put him over the edge.
“I think things will get really tight in the winter because my utility bills are higher,” Fuller told ABC News. “I mean for January and February — the highs are zero and the lows are -20 [degrees] for almost two months.”
The frozen temperatures might sting a little bit less if Biden forgives $10,000 of Fuller’s remaining student loan bills, he said.
“It’s about two-thirds of the debt that I have left,” he said.
That would make payments “a lot more affordable and a lot more manageable in my situation,” he said.
Easing the student debt crisis — which is also how Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described the issue in 2018 — could also aid a crippling teacher shortage that has caused thousands of staff vacancies at the start of the latest school year, something Fuller has seen himself.
Pinched salaries and rising inflation have had many teachers on edge with the loan forgiveness deadline approaching.
And because Black students are among the fastest growing group of people taking on debt, advocates argue that canceling some student loans could also begin to address racial inequities.
Shareefah Mason, the dean of Educator Certification at Dallas College, feels this impact firsthand as a Black woman with student debt. She leads the apprenticeship component of a program that pairs students with residency partners to ensure they earn while they learn, effectively reducing education debt for aspiring teachers.
“I bear the weight of $70,000 in student loans,” Mason told ABC News. “The data shows that student loan debt exponentially impacts and disproportionately impacts Black women.”
The average amount of student debt accrued by Black women is more than any other group at $38,800, according to Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on education reform.
But Mason’s program, the very first full-time paid teacher apprenticeship in the state of Texas, allows students to earn one of the cheapest bachelor’s degrees in the state, Mason said.
The goal, she said, is to aid future educators in breaking the generational barriers that she has faced as a Black woman.
Mason said “they will not have to worry about student loan debt,” which could open more doors for minority communities that have historically lacked the means to access higher education.
“My students will be able to earn, as a first year teacher in the city of Dallas, upwards of $60,000,” Mason said.
For the nation’s most impacted borrowers, Mason said, “there needs to be a space created for them to make enough money to pay their student loans without having to sacrifice their ability to create generational wealth for their families.”
Founding INXS member Andrew Farriss has been busy promoting his 2021 debut solo album, a self-titled effort that sees the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter putting aside his famous band’s funky modern-rock sound in favor of tunes with strong country and Americana influences.
Farriss, who lives on a cattle farm in his native Australia, says his lifestyle has helped him relate to people who reside in the rural Southern and Southwestern U.S., and to embrace the music that’s popular in those regions.
“These experiences for me drew me more and more into where I’m now in, which is sort of country rock, Americana, folk music,” he explains to ABC Audio, “because I feel I’ve connected with communities that aren’t city or suburban people. I understand now. I get it, now [that] I’ve lived out there and I’ve done it.”
Andrew also notes that additional inspiration for the songs on his solo album from a horseback riding trip came from he took with his wife a few years ago along the Mexican border in Arizona and New Mexico. Farriss says he became fascinated with the history of the Western U.S. and began writing tunes that drew parallels between the area and his own country.
“I started thinking more and more and more lyrically about how to draw in both from Australiana and Americana, and join them together,” he explains. “I could sing songs about bushrangers, as we call ’em, or outlaws, in Australia, I could sing about outlaws in America. But it was the cultural fusion…that was a powerful thing.”
Farriss tells ABC Audio that when he plays live, he does include some INXS songs alongside his solo material, noting that when he performs tunes by his old band, “I like to rearrange them.”
Kodak Black is lending a helping hand to Haitians affected by extreme gang violence in the country. Lawyer Bradford Cohen tells TMZ the rapper is sending 35,000 bottles of alkaline water to those cut off from food and water as a result of the nation’s crisis and has already spent $50,000 on shipping costs.
The money, Cohen explains, is specifically being used to ship the water from Florida to Haiti via cargo ships. The rapper will now keep in contact with government officials to ensure the bottles are delivered to their exact destinations.
According to the United Nations website, gang violence in Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince, led to nearly 100 deaths and even more injuries over a five-day period last month. Many were forced to flee their homes and hide indoors for safety.
The wars have also resulted in fuel shortages, increased transportation costs, and exacerbated malnutrition for individuals who have been denied access to drinking water and food.
Cohen says Kodak is calling for an end to the fighting. The labels on the bottles sent to Haiti, he adds, read “LAST” as the rapper hopes this is the final time Haitians will ever have to go without water.
Kodak’s previous efforts to help the island include donations to food banks and orphanages to assist in getting Haitians health care.
Nita Strauss has clarified her status with Alice Cooper‘s band following the announcement that she wouldn’t be joining the shock-rocker on his upcoming fall tour.
“It’s an interesting thing that everyone’s picked up saying it’s a ‘departure,’ but I don’t feel, necessarily, that I left,” Strauss tells Louder. “I took a step back and I’m stepping back from this upcoming tour but I don’t think anyone has ever used the word quitting or leaving outside of other people.”
Strauss first shared the news in a July Instagram post, writing, “it is bittersweet for me to let you guys know that I will not be joining the Alice Cooper band for the upcoming fall tour.” And while she did not explicitly say she’s leaving the group permanently, Strauss did write, “The past eight years together has been the experience of a lifetime,” which could be read as a reflection on the end of her time with Cooper.
As Strauss now tells Louder, not only is she leaving the door open for a possible return, but so is Cooper.
“When I had my last few shows with Alice, we had what Alice called a ‘Hiatus Dinner’ where he said, ‘We wish you the best, we love you, you’re welcome back,'” Strauss shares. “There’s no shutting of a door and changing of the guard, it’s just I’m taking a step back a little bit.”
“Depending on what the schedule looks like next year, I may have the chance to come back, I may not,” she adds. “But it definitely doesn’t feel as final to me and to the people in Alice’s band and the inner circle as it has been portrayed out in the world.”
Strauss is currently the guitarist in pop star Demi Lovato‘s live band.
Zedd is going all-out to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his debut album Clarity, which was released in October of 2012.
He just announced he’ll perform the album in its entirety, accompanied by a 50-piece orchestra, at LA’s Dolby Theatre October 9. Tickets for the special show go on sale to the general public Friday at 10 a.m. local time, via Zedd.net.
“When I was making the Clarity album I spent the most time on the melodic and harmonic elements of each song,” Zedd explains. “Those motifs are the glue that hold the album together. It’s a dream to have the opportunity to play all of those ideas orchestrated and reharmonized with the instrumentation in the amazing orchestra we have put together.”
Clarity and its deluxe edition featured the hit title track with vocals by Foxes, as well as “Stay the Night” with vocals by Hayley Williams of Paramore. The song “Clarity” won the Grammy for Best Dance Recording in 2014.
Other guests on the album and its deluxe edition included Ryan Tedder, Ellie Goulding, Matthew Koma, the surviving members of the legendary rock band The Doors, Skrillex, Bright Lights and Empire of the Sun. It’s not clear if any of these artists will join Zedd for the special show.
On October 7, Zedd is playing Clarity in its entirety at the Bill Graham Civic Center Auditorium in San Francisco, but there’s no orchestra involved.
Zedd, Maren Morris and BEAUZ just released a new single, “Make You Say.”
Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of the death of longtime Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, who passed away from an undisclosed illness at age 80 on August 24, 2021.
The Rolling Stones have posted a tribute video on their socialmediasites, along with a note that reads, “One year on without our beloved Charlie. Remembering him and all the incredible things he achieved in his life.”
The video, which is set to the 1994 Stones song “You Got Me Rocking,” features a montage of photos and film clips of Charlie.
In addition, Stones singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Ronnie Wood have posted separate homages to Watts on their own social media pages.
Jagger’s tribute features a video including a series of photos of him and Watts together over the years, soundtracked by the melancholy 1974 Stones tune “Till the Next Goodbye.”
The clip also features audio of Mick talking about his relationship with Charlie.
“I miss Charlie because he had a great sense of humor,” Jagger says. “And…outside of the band, we used to hang out quite a lot and have interesting times. We liked sports — we’d go to football, we’d go to cricket games, and we would have other interests apart from music. But, you know, of course, I really miss Charlie so much.”
The video was accompanied by a message that reads, “Thinking of Charlie today,” along with a blue heart emoji.
Wood’s homage features four photos of Watts and a message that reads, “Charlie, missing you every single day. [Wife] Shirley, [daughter] Seraphina and [granddaughter] Charlotte, we hold you close in our hearts xxx.”
Watts played drums with The Stones from January 1963 until his death and appeared on all of the band’s albums.
(NOTE LANGUAGE) Some actors, includingStranger Things‘ David Harbour, have been critical of Method acting, but for multiple Oscar-nominee Andrew Garfield, it’s worked out just fine.
On the latest episode of WTF with Marc Maron, the Spider-Man: No Way Home star explained his experience playing a 17th century Jesuit priest in the 2016 Martin Scorsese film Silence.
“I had an incredibly spiritual experience. I did a bunch of spiritual practices every day. I created new rituals for myself. I was celibate for six months, and fasting a lot, because me and Adam [Driver] had to lose a bunch of weight anyway,” Garfield said.
“There were all the spiritual practices we got to do while we were praying, meditating … It was very cool, man. I had some pretty wild, trippy experiences from starving myself of sex and food for that period of time.”
Garfield credits Ryan Gosling for turning him on to Method acting after screen testing together for a project.
“I was overwhelmed. I was like, ‘This guy has figured something out. He’s doing something on a deeper level here,'” Garfield recalled.
Garfield, 39, says he ultimately sought out Gosling’s acting coach, Greta Seacat, who took him under her wing.
“There’s been a lot of misconceptions around what Method acting is, I think,” notes Garfield. “It’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances, and being really nice to the crew simultaneously, and being a normal human being, and being able to drop it when you need to and staying in it when you want to stay in it.”
“I’m kind of bothered by this idea of ‘Method acting’s f******* bull****.’ It’s like, no, I don’t think you know what Method acting is if you’re calling it bull****.”
Harry Styles finally responded to the conspiracy theory that he’s secretly bald — and he’s just as confused as we are.
To recap, TikTok influencerAbigail Henry spread the rumor last month after reading a Reddit thread claiming an “A list musician/ occasional actor… has gone almost completely bald.” Henry believed Harry was the mystery celebrity because he once boasted about being able to escape public notice very easily — and, as she said, what could be easier than removing a toupee?
As it turns out, the hair on Harry’s head is, in fact, the real deal.
“What is it with baldness?” he asked Rolling Stone. “It skips a generation or something, right? If your grandad’s bald then you’ll be bald? Well, my granddad wasn’t bald, so fingers crossed.”
The “As It Was” singer first learned about the rumor from his friend and collaborator Kid Harpoon. “He’s completely obsessed with it,” Harry said. “He won’t stop sending me messages about [people] trying to work out if I’m bald.”
Speaking of viral trends, Harry also responded to how loudly people sing the “leave America” line when he’s performing “As It Was.” Multiple TikTok videos show the audience belting the line at the top of their lungs.
“They’re definitely reaching some decibels,” the Grammy winner joked. “It seems to be getting louder and louder right as I’m about to head back to tour America. So I’m intrigued as to what exactly will be shouted at that section when I’m in America.”
Harry got his answer — he’s currently performing in New York City for a Madison Square Garden residency and, apparently, the line hasn’t caught on in the states. In a viral TikTok video posted by iraiaaa.27, Harry seems stunned when no one shouts the line and he laughs while walking away from the microphone.
(NEW YORK) — With the emergence of COVID-19 and the recent surge in monkeypox cases, scientists and doctors who specialize in infectious disease are issuing increasingly dire warnings, saying wealthy countries can no longer afford to ignore small outbreaks abroad.
For decades, diseases that primarily affected lower and lower-middle income countries were relegated as “neglected” diseases, having less funding, fewer resources and little attention. Monkeypox, for example, has been smoldering quietly in Western Africa since 2017. Now, scientists are increasingly warning that global infectious disease outbreaks could become the new normal.
“I think it’s very clear that we’re living in a new age of pandemics,” said Dr. Jay Varma, a professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine.
“We’ve been dealing with infectious diseases since we appeared on this planet,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Although the advent of antibiotics, vaccines and basic sanitation measures have helped control infectious diseases, the acceleration of international travel in recent decades has unleashed viruses that may have otherwise been contained in one region.
“What’s occurring in one geographic area may not remain in that geographic area [because] a pathogen can travel by the speed of a jetliner,” says Adalja.
Experts say people tend to focus on problems closer to home, and tend to be unaware of diseases spreading beyond their borders.
“There’s sort of this false sense of security, that when something is spreading somewhere where you don’t live and don’t know anyone, it’s easy to think that it will just sort of continue that way,” says Stephen Kissler, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Harvard Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases.
Oftentimes, officials work to limit travel to slow the spread of disease, as occurred globally during the COVID-19 pandemic or the Zika outbreak in the United States. But that strategy rarely halts the transmission of a virus.
“One of the important lessons of public health is that diseases don’t respect administrative borders and they certainly don’t carry passports or request visas,” said Varma.
Historically, less funding has existed to study viruses that primarily thrived outside U.S. borders.
“Public health [is underfunded]. Infrastructure is underfunded. And that’s especially true in resource poor settings where infectious disease burden is significant,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Now, there is evidence that pandemics are picking up pace. In the past 15 years, seven emergency declarations have been made by the organization — H1N1, Ebola (twice), Poliomyelitis, Zika, COVID-19, and just recently, monkeypox.
“Ultimately, these declarations are helpful, because they unlock resources, support, visibility, and education that are important in the sort of response to an emerging infectious disease,” Brownstein said.
But not every virus — or every country — gets such resources. Just this last week, scientists have been monitoring a few dozen cases of a new virus in China called the Langya virus (LayV). Because there’s limited evidence of LayV spreading between people, experts are not overly concerned at this time, but they note that dealing with new infectious diseases is not uncommon.
“We still see the sort of power architecture of the world, to be heavily imbalanced, towards countries that have historically, over the past 200 years, held the most power and political way. And that’s primarily countries in Europe and the United States,” said Varma.
In responding to COVID-19 — a truly global pandemic — governments scrambled to protect their own citizens first. The COVAX initiative aimed to share COVID vaccines equitably around the world, but never reached its full potential, experts say.
“When you have a sort of gift to the world, like the development of highly effective COVID vaccines, they’re immediately gobbled up by the countries that have the most power and wealth, leaving the rest of the populations around the world which don’t benefit from that wealth behind,” said Varma.
Pharmaceutical companies also serve as the lifeline for many that depend on vaccines or medications to protect themselves and their loved ones. Yet, the incentive to combat neglected diseases is limited — especially early in an outbreak, when very few people are sick.
“[Neglected diseases] are a small market compared to what a pharmaceutical company might be going after like high cholesterol or heart disease or something like that, that’s much more lucrative,” said Adalja.
Experts noted that the global health community increasingly works together to stop the spread of emerging diseases. But funding remains a consistent hurdle to ensure that outbreaks are contained quickly and efficiently.
“I do think that there’s always a window of opportunity, with any emerging outbreak, to do something and potentially prevent it from spreading more broadly,” said Kissler.
