The White Stripes/Raconteurs/Dead Weather rocker will be dropping a fresh solo tune called “If I Die Tomorrow” next Wednesday, June 8. The track is available to presave now.
“If I Die Tomorrow” will appear on White’s upcoming album Entering Heaven Alive, the second of two solo records he’s releasing this year, following April’s Fear of the Dawn.
Notably, White sings the phrase “If I die tomorrow” on the Fear of the Dawn single “What’s the Trick?” But judging by a preview of the tune, “If I Die Tomorrow” will be much different sounding song.
Entering Heaven Alive arrives July 22. It includes the previously released songs “Love Is Selfish” and “Queen of the Bees,” as well as an acoustic version of the lead Fear of the Dawn single “Taking Me Back,” dubbed “Taking Me Back (Gently).”
White is currently supporting both albums on his Supply Chain Issues tour, which continues Friday in Reno, Nevada.
British New Wave veterans The Fixx released their first new studio album in a decade, Every Five Seconds, today.
The album features 10 new original songs from the band. Commenting on the themes of the record, Fixx frontman Cy Curninsays, “Life can either be a series of broken obsessive thoughts or it can be a wonderful mosaic of moments. Every Five Seconds reflects this human paradox. The constant struggle between bewilderment and betterment.”
Four tracks from Every Five Seconds were released in advance of the album — “Wake Up,” “Closer,” “Woman of Flesh and Blood” and “Take What You Want.” In addition, an animated music video for the latter tune, featuring enigmatic images of disembodied hands, debuted in April on The Fixx’s official YouTube channel.
The band will support Every Five Seconds with a U.S. tour that gets underway on June 10 in Las Vegas and runs through a June 30 performance at Milwaukee’s Summerfest.
The Fixx scored a string of hits during the 1980s that included four songs that reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 — “Saved by Zero,” “One Thing Leads to Another,” “Are We Ourselves?” and “Secret Separation.”
The group’s most recent previous album, Beautiful Friction, was released in 2012.
Here’s the full track list of Every Five Seconds:
“A Life Survived”
“Closer”
“Take What You Want”
“Wake Up”
“Suspended in Make Believe”
“Lonely as a Lighthouse”
“Cold”
“Spell”
“Woman of Flesh and Blood”
“Neverending”
Twenty years ago Saturday — June 4, 2002 — 17-year-old Avril Lavigne released her debut album, Let Go. The pop/punk album helped popularize the genre and went on to become one of the best sellers of the decade, moving more than 16 million copies worldwide.
Let Go spun off four massive hits: “Complicated,” “Sk8er Boi,” “I’m With You” and “Losing Grip.” The album and its singles collectively earned Avril eight Grammy nominations, four Juno Awards and the MTV VMA Best New Artist Moonman.
Looking back, does Avril think Let Go still holds up?
“Oh, I definitely think my vocals are way stronger now, that’s for sure!” Avril tells ABC Audio. “But … yeah, the songs are cool. I like them. A couple are … I don’t know. My voice has, like, evolved for sure.”
Avril points out one cringeworthy songwriting moment in “My World,” a song about growing up in Napanee, Ontario.
In the song, Avril sings, “Made my money by cutting grass/Got fired by a fried chicken a**/All in a small town, Napanee.” She laughs, “I think it’s hilarious in ‘My World’ that I literally say the town’s name that I came from and my job and that I got fired.”
“I worked at a fried chicken chain and got fired, but I was a really good worker … the guy was a d*****bag,” Avril continues, still laughing. “I literally got fired and then wrote about it and put it in this song … I think that’s hilarious. And part of me is like, ‘Why did I do that?’ But the other part of me is like, ‘Hmm, that’s pretty cool that you did that!'”
You’ll hear all of Let Go‘s hits on Avril’s current Love Sux tour, which wrapped its Canadian leg Thursday night in Halifax.
Chris Young returns with the deluxe version of his Famous Friends album today. In keeping with the original theme of collaboration, he’s adding three more duets to the track list.
One of those is a revamped version of “Think of You,” Chris’ duet with Cassadee Pope, which topped the country charts in 2016. He’s also including two new team ups: one with Jimmie Allen and one with Old Dominion.
Both those duets happened naturally, Chris says. The Jimmie collab, “Music Note,” was a long time coming from two musical pals who both love collaboration.
“Jimmie Allen had been yelling at me because we hadn’t done a song together, and I’m like, ‘Dude, you didn’t ask, so I didn’t know you wanted to do one,’” Chris recounts. “And I just sent him ‘Music Note’ when we wrote that song. I was like, ‘Hey, this could be cool for the two of us,’ and he was down for it.”
As for the Old Dominion duet, “Everybody Needs a Song,” Chris says that was a no-brainer, too, because he wrote the song with one of the band members.
“That one was a co-write between me, [songwriter] Chris DeStefano and Brad [Tursi],” the singer explains. “So Brad just went and asked everybody. So both of them, all three of them if you want to count the third one [with Cassadee Pope], were all pretty organic.”
The new duets join the three collaborations on the original track list, including duets with Mitchell Tenpenny, Lauren Alaina and the smash hit title track with Kane Brown.
The deluxe version of Famous Friends also includes two new solo tracks and an acoustic version of Chris’ 2015 hit “I’m Comin’ Over.”
(WASHINGTON) — As mass shootings continue to rock the nation, President Joe Biden delivered prime-time remarks on guns Thursday evening from the White House, imploring the nation to “For God’s sake, do something.”
“This time we must actually do something,” he said, calling for a ban on assault weapons.
“We need to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. And if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21, strengthen background checks, enact safe storage law, and red flag laws. Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability, address the mental health crisis,” he said in an impassioned address.
The latest mass shooting on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving four dead, follows a massacre of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, as well as an apparently racially-motivated attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, leaving 10 Black people dead.
“We spent hours with hundreds of family members who were broken, whose lives will never be the same,” Biden said. “They had one message for all of us. Do something. Just do something … After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done. This time that can’t be true.”
Biden taking the national spotlight on Thursday evening comes amid questions over why he has not yet lobbied lawmakers personally and more forcefully as they aim to find a compromise on gun control legislation.
Biden told reporters earlier this week he “will meet with the Congress on guns — I promise you,” but did not provide details on when such a meeting might take place. On Thursday, he once again made the case for legislative action.
“This isn’t about taking anyone’s rights. It’s about protecting children, ” he said. “It’s about protecting families, it’s about protecting whole communities, it’s about protecting our freedoms to go to school, to a grocery store to a church without being shot and killed. According to new data just released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America. The number one killer. More than car accidents, more than cancer. Over the last two decades, more school-aged children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active-duty military combined.”
“Think about that,” he said, adding, “How much more carnage are we willing to accept? How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we say enough, enough?”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back Thursday against the notion that Biden hasn’t been involved in negotiations, arguing he’s been involved since taking office and repeating a sentiment from earlier this week that he “wants to give it some space” as the talks continue.
Biden’s making the speech Thursday, Jean-Pierre said, because he wants to make sure “that his voice is still out there and that the American people know that he’s fighting for them.”
Jean-Pierre also said the president is “encouraged” by what he’s seeing on Capitol Hill, even though Biden himself cast doubt that legislation will be passed, telling reporters he’s “not confident” as he recounted his first-hand experience in the Senate.
While serving as then-President Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden was tasked in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting to lead the administration’s effort to enact tougher gun control laws — but in the nearly decade since the nation mourned for Newtown, no action on gun control has passed at a federal level.
The last meaningful gun reform legislation passed on Capitol Hill was the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004 due to a “sunset” clause in the legislation. Similar legislation has failed for decades in the Senate due in large part to the filibuster rule, which requires 60 senators for a measure to advance toward a final vote. Though Democrats hold a razor-thin majority in Congress, they cannot push legislation through the Senate without the support of at least 10 Republicans.
The American public is widely supportive of universal background checks, which have already passed through the House’s Democratic majority. An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in September 2019 found 89% support for universal background checks, including at least eight in 10 Republicans and conservatives.
Ahead of Biden’s speech, Vice President Kamala Harris offered brief remarks Thursday afternoon on the mass shooting in Tulsa and urged Congress to pass gun safety laws.
“No more excuses,” Harris said. “Thoughts and prayers are important, but not enough. We need Congress to act.”
As Biden prepared for his speech on Thursday, funerals were underway in Uvalde, where he visited families of victims.
He claimed earlier this week to have visited more aftermaths of mass shootings than any other American president.
In impassioned remarks from the White House last week after the Uvalde shooting, Biden expressed outrage at lawmakers who are blocking “common-sense” gun laws and rejected the argument often heard from Republicans that gun violence is a mental health issue.
“These kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency they happen in America. Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” Biden said with outrage. “Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with and stand up to the lobbies?”
(TULSA, Okla.) — Two doctors, an employee and a patient were gunned down at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical building on Wednesday after the gunman allegedly targeted his doctor, blaming him for pain.
Here is what we know about the four people who died in America’s latest mass shooting.
Dr. Preston Phillips, 59
Dr. Preston Phillips was an orthopedic surgeon at Saint Francis Hospital. He had “an interest in spinal surgery, joint reconstruction — including joint replacement and the treatment of fractures,” according to the hospital website. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1990 and also earned advanced degrees in organic chemistry and pharmacology, as well as theology from Emory University, police said in a statement on the victims.
Dr. Cliff Robertson, president and CEO of Saint Francis Health System, described Phillips as a “consummate gentleman,” telling reporters, “he is a man that we should all strive to emulate.”
Phillips was the target of the mass shooting, authorities said.
Phillips performed surgery on the suspected gunman on May 19, Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said.
The suspect was released from the hospital on May 24, and after his release, he called several times over several days complaining of pain and wanting additional treatment, the chief said.
On Tuesday, Phillips saw the suspect again for additional treatment, the chief said. Then, on Wednesday, the suspect called the doctor complaining of back pain and wanting additional help, the chief said.
A letter found on the gunman, who died by apparent suicide at the medical facility, made it clear “that he came with the intent to kill Dr. Phillips and anyone who got in his way,” Franklin said. “He blamed Dr. Phillips for the ongoing pain following the surgery.”
Dr. Stephanie Husen, 48
Dr. Stephanie Husen, a sports medicine specialist, was working at the medical office when she was killed.
She graduated medical school at Oklahoma State University in 2000 and completed her internship and residency at Greenville Memorial Hospital, according to her hospital profile.
She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma and was a member of the Chi Omega Sorority.
“Our hearts are with the family and loved ones who lost such an incredible woman,” the chapter said in a statement on social media. “She was known and loved by so many and will always be remembered.”
Amanda Glenn, 40
Amanda Glenn was an employee who had a “supervisory role” at the medical facility, officials said.
She leaves behind a husband and two teenage sons, The Oklahoman reported, citing her Facebook page.
“Amanda Glenn was a devoted wife, mother and friend,” the Sandite High School baseball team posted on Facebook. “She was on our Booster Club Board and served the baseball boys and coaches selflessly. She was the biggest cheerleader for both of her sons and all of our boys.”
Glenn worked in the medical field for over 18 years and had a “true servant’s heart” in that she “always put everyone else first,” the Tulsa police said in their statement on the victims.
William Love, 73
William Love was a patient receiving care when the gunfire erupted.
Officials said Love held a door closed to help someone else escape the shooting. That person appears to be his wife of nearly 55 years, Deborah Love, according to a police statement.
“William Love’s family would like us to share that at the time of shooting, William heard the gunshots and knew his wife would not be able to escape the building on her own,” the Tulsa Police Department said in its statement on the victims. “He sacrificed his life for her.”
Love was a retired Army first sergeant with 27 years of service who served one tour in Vietnam, police said.
He is survived by his wife, brother, two daughters and their spouses, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, police said.
With today marking the 70th anniversary of the coronation of the U.K.’s Queen Elizabeth II, SirPaul McCartney posted a message on his socialmediasites congratulating the 96-year-old monarch on her long reign.
“70 beautiful years of Queen Elizabeth the second. Congrats ma’ am! And thanks,” Paul writes. Accompanying the caption is a photo of McCartney with the queen in 1996 at the opening of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, which the former Beatles legend co-founded.
A variety of Platinum Jubilee events commemorating Queen Elizabeth’s 70th anniversary have been scheduled over the next few days, including the Platinum Party at the Palace concert this Saturday, June 4, which will feature performances from Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen + Adam Lambert, Duran Duran, Diana Ross and many other stars.
McCartney says he begins his routine about an hour before he has to hit the stage.
“I have a gargle with salt water, then I do my teeth, then I figure out what I’m going to wear, and then I have a kind of Chinese syrup solution you put hot water in. It’s supposed to be good for your throat,” McCartney says.
After that, he usually gets some makeup put on his face, then gets together with his band to do a quick warmup by running through “a bit of ‘Let It Be’ and a little bit of ‘Hey Jude.'”
Then, before hitting the stage, he and the band “come together and do a little confidence boost huddle!”
McCartney’s next show is this Saturday, June 4, in Syracuse, New York.
(CONCORD, N.H.) — New Hampshire police investigating the unsolved shooting deaths of a retired couple said Thursday that they are looking to speak to the owner or operator of a car that was parked near a hiking trail where the bodies of the victims were discovered in April.
New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella and Concord Police Chief Bradley Osgood released photos of a dark green 2006 to 2012 Toyota RAV4 that was parked near the March Loop trailhead in Concord on April 18, the day Stephen Reid, 67, and his wife, Djeswende “Wendy” Reid, 66, were last seen alive.
Authorities emphasized that the person who owns or was driving the car is not a suspect in the case, but investigators are eager to speak to them about what they might have seen on the trail that day.
The Marsh Loop trail is part of the Broken Ground Trails system where the bodies of the couple were discovered on April 21, a day after relatives reported them missing, police said.
The FBI has joined the investigation and a $33,500 reward is being offered for information that leads to the arrest and indictment of the person or persons responsible for the killings.
Autopsies revealed the Reids were both shot multiple times.
The development comes about three weeks after authorities released a sketch of a man authorities described as a person of interest. The man was seen in the vicinity of where the bodies were found the day the Reids went missing, officials said.
A spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Justice, which released the sketch, told ABC News Thursday that the person of interest has not been located.
During a news conference on Thursday afternoon, Formella said there is no connection between the person of interest and the vehicle being sought in the case. The person of interest is not currently a suspect in the case, he said.
The Reids left their home in the Alton Woods apartment complex in Concord around 2:22 p.m. on April 18 and went for a walk in the Broken Ground Trails area, Formella and Osgood said in their joint statement on Thursday.
The couple was reported missing on April 20 when Stephen Reid failed to show up at a planned event, authorities said. Their bodies were discovered a day later, officials said.
Homicide investigators and the couple’s children, Lindsay and Brian Reid, have asked the public to report any information that could possibly help crack the case.
The couple’s family released a statement after the murders, describing Stephen and Wendy Reid as soulmates who traveled the world and shared a “mutual love of adventure and fitness.”
The Reids moved to Concord about three years ago when Stephen Reid, who grew up there, retired from a more than 30-year career as an international development specialist working on humanitarian projects around the world through USAID, their family said. The couple met while Wendy Reid, who was from West Africa, was studying in Washington, D.C., on an athletic scholarship, the family said.
(NEW YORK) — There may be no crying in baseball, but some major leaguers are crying foul over the official baseballs used during this year’s play.
Meredith Wills, an astrophysicist and a lifelong baseball fan, said things are “very different” this season.
“Players, when they hit the ball, they’ll talk about it feeling like mush coming off the bat,” Wills told ABC News’ “Start Here.” “We’re seeing that pitchers really don’t like to hold the ball or throw the ball. They call it spongy. They’ll actually say that it’s squishy.”
Over the past few years, a complaint among some baseball fans was that it was easier to hit home runs. According to data analyzed by FiveThirtyEight, last season averaged nearly 1.22 home runs again; this season only .97 are averaged so far. Average home runs per game hit their peak in 2019 with 1.39 a game.
A league official told ABC News that several factors are contributing to the drop in home runs in the beginning of the 2022 season relative to prior seasons and not any one cause is to blame. The official pointed to factors that include conditions, pitchers on the roster, weather and the ball.
Also, a labor stoppage at the beginning of the 2022 season resulted in a protracted spring training and less practice for hitters heading into regular season games.
Some scientists like Wills pointed to the ball and said that depending on climate, the ball will become harder and easier to launch.
“[The yarn] dries out. It will shrink down. It’s like your hair frizzing in humidity,” said Wills.
To address this problem, the league began using humidors, according to Wills, which was also told to ABC News by a league official.
A league official told ABC news that the humidors being used in all 30 ballparks are consistent with the public recommendations made by experts to make the ball perform more consistently in various atmospheric conditions.
The 2022 baseball season began on April 7 and some pitchers have already expressed anger because they say they can’t control the new ball.
At the end of April, New York Mets starting pitcher Chris Bassitt expressed frustration toward the league for the lack of consistency in baseballs, saying that the “bad” baseballs are “all different,” following an April 26 game against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Mets won 3-0, but three Mets players and two Cardinals players were hit by pitches.
Bassitt said that the inconsistency among the baseballs is being exacerbated by the different climates, despite the use of humidors.
“The problem is that it’s sitting on a flat shelf for two weeks. Balls are getting flat spots,” said Wills, who added that fans may start to recognize that more pitchers are discarding or throwing away balls before pitching.
An MLB official provided ABC News with league-wide data through May 15 of the current season. The data suggests that there is no evidence yet that pitchers are struggling to control the ball, saying that the league has seen the lowest walk rate since 2019, the lowest hit by pitch rate since 2019 and the lowest rate of wild pitches per game since 2012.
Also, due to the pandemic wreaking havoc on game schedules, Wills said that there are batches of balls from multiple years being used.
The MLB released a statement in November 2021 confirming that, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and supply-chain issues, the league and sports equipment company Rawlings “incorporated excess inventory” into “a full complement of baseballs” for the 2021 season.
“Every baseball used in a 2021 MLB game, without exception, met existing specifications and performed as expected,” said the statement. “MLB’s independent panel of experts and the Players Association were informed of this decision. The baseballs were fully within the specification range both before and after the production change.”
The statement also added that the excess inventory has been “exhausted,” and the 2022 season will be played “with only balls manufactured after the production change.”
In May 2022, an MLB official told ABC News that in response to player feedback following last season, the league has taken steps to make the ball more consistent than ever, including mud applied on game days, providing each team with rosin bags and umpires manually checking baseballs to ensure a level playing field is maintained.
Wills said she is not convinced. She said that the change in production has created a whole new host of problems for the league.
“If you want to break something,” she said. “Try to fix something that’s not broken, that’s pretty much the surest way to do it.”
(NEW YORK) — A spate of deadly gun attacks across the country has reignited the national debate on gun reform in the United States. Lawmakers are arguing over what to do, if anything, to regulate guns.
Many are pointing specifically to a 2008 Supreme Court decision that was the first time the Supreme Court ever held that the Second Amendment protected an individual’s right to gun ownership. The case, District of Columbia v. Heller, has been cited as one of the reasons why big gun reform may not be possible.
“The Supreme Court had not decided before Heller whether the Second Amendment created an individual right,” said attorney John Bash, who was a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia on the landmark case.
Bash pointed to the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment as examples of other protected individual rights.
“They had never decided whether it was just the right to serve in a militia or a right to have a gun for self-defense. And what the majority decided was that it is an individual right, and it includes a self-defense component,” he added.
Kate Shaw, a professor of law at Cardozo Law School in New York and ABC News legal analyst, and Bash, an attorney in private practice in Austin, Texas, were clerks on opposing sides of the decision. On Tuesday, Shaw and Bash penned an op-ed in the New York Times titled, “We Clerked for Justices Scalia and Stevens. America is Getting Heller Wrong.”
“Kate believes in a robust set of gun safety measures to reduce the unconscionable number of shootings in this country. John is skeptical of laws that would make criminals out of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens who believe that firearm ownership is essential to protecting their families,” read the New York Times article.
Bash assisted Justice Scalia on the majority opinion and Shaw helped Justice Stevens argue the dissenting opinion. Bash and Shaw spoke to ABC News’ podcast, “Start Here” on Thursday morning.
“We’re required to say, and it’s actually true in this case, that the justices themselves did the most important work, but we did assist them in preparing their opinions,” said Shaw.
Due to the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, provisions of the District of Columbia Code made it illegal to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibited the registrations of handguns. The chief of police could issue one-year licenses for handguns. The code also contained provisions, including requiring owners of lawfully registered firearms to keep them unloaded and disassembled, unless the firearm was located in a place of business or for legal recreational activities.
Dick Anthony Heller, a D.C. special police officer, was authorized to carry a handgun while on duty. He applied for a one-year license for the handgun he wished to keep at home, but his application was denied. In 2007, Heller sued the District of Columbia, arguing that parts of the code violated his Second Amendment right to keep a firearm in his home without a license.
The Supreme Court held that the ban on registering handguns and the requirement to keep guns in the home disassembled or nonfunctional with a trigger lock mechanism violates the Second Amendment. Justice Scalia delivered the opinion for the 5-to-4 majority.
Shaw said the Heller decision is used to argue that gun regulations impede on an individual’s right to self defense, often incorrectly. She said the decision was to protect the Second Amendment as an individual right, but the actual specific holding of the case was quite narrow.
“[The] total prohibition just wasn’t consistent with the individual right that the court announced in Heller and, as John said, had actually never been identified or identified previously,” said Shaw.
Bash agreed with Shaw that the court had explicitly left room for reasonable regulations.
“[The court] gave a lot of historical examples of what it called ‘presumptively lawful regulations.’ [What is] really relevant nowadays is prohibitions on felons and the mentally ill getting their hands on guns and they didn’t disturb those at all and essentially signaled that they were probably OK,” said Bash. “Although there may be some wiggle room or debate there, they pretty much signaled that.”
Shaw also pointed out that the Heller opinion doesn’t call into question the ban on guns in sensitive places like schools or bans on carrying other “dangerous and unusual weapons.”
“There’s been a lot of attention paid to Heller’s announcement of an individual right to own a gun, but much less attention paid to the language in Heller. Making clear the government can absolutely regulate that,” she said.
As lawmakers look to what can be done, Bash said they still have the power to create new laws about gun reform, “if crafted correctly.”
“Background check laws and what’s called ‘Red Flag laws,’ meaning you have some indication that someone’s a threat, you afford them due process and temporarily take their firearm until a fuller hearing can be had. And there are variations on that,” he said. “Some of them may be OK. Some of them may not be OK.”
For now, the country stands in the wake of tragedy. Last month, 10 people died in a shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in what law enforcement authorities described as a racially motivated attack. Last week, 19 students and two teachers were killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. On Wednesday night, four people died in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, hospital shooting. Shaw said that the real question she and Bash ask in the op-ed is if legislators can pass gun legislation before the next tragedy.
“I think it’s right that reasonable minds can disagree about limitations on particular types of weapons and how those would fare under Heller… I think that our point is Congress has done nothing on guns since Heller was decided in 2008,” said Shaw. “If they want to decide to do nothing, I think they just need to take ownership of that decision as opposed to pointing to something external to themselves.”
