We haven’t heard from Taylor Swift in a minute, but at least Avril Lavigne has. On Instagram, the singer showed off a thoughtful gift she received from Taylor to congratulate her on the release of her new album Love Sux.
Taylor sent Avril a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, along with a note that reads, “Been dancing around my kitchen to your fabulous new album!! It’s AMAZING, like you.” She signed it, “Your forever fan, Taylor.” Avril posted a video of the flowers and the note, soundtracked to Taylor’s hit “Style.”
When Taylor was on her 1989 World Tour in 2015, she invited Avril to join her onstage in San Diego; the two performed Avril’s debut hit “Complicated.”
Love Sux features guest appearances and production from Travis Barker and Mark Hoppus of Blink-182, blackbear, Machine Gun Kelly and Avril’s boyfriend Mod Sun.
Avril will appear on The Kelly Clarkson Show today. Coincidentally, both singers became household names in 2002, but Avril had a bit of a head start: She released “Complicated” 20 years ago this week, while Kelly won American Idol in September of 2002.
“Dos Oruguitas” singer Sebastián Yatra; Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images for Disney
Everyone talks about “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” but the Encanto song that snagged an Oscar nomination is the touching ballad “Dos Oruguitas (Two Caterpillars),” which appears on the soundtrack in both English and Spanish. Colombian star Sebastián Yatra, who sings both versions of the song, has a simple explanation for why Encanto‘s music is a massive hit.
“Y’know, there’s some people that just really know what they’re doing…One of those people is Lin-Manuel Miranda,” Yatra tells ABC Audio. “And he understands emotions and people, and he really understands kids and what can trigger all these emotions in the whole family, and take them somewhere special.”
Sebastián adds with a laugh, “I mean, it’s not a coincidence that he’s done what he’s done. So we’re following the leader on this one, and he did it right!”
As for why “Dos Oruguitas” was submitted for the Oscars and not “Bruno,” Sebastián describes it as the “heart and soul” of the movie, comparing it to an obscure album track that “not as many people have heard of,” but that has “a huge impact on their lives.”
“I’m just happy about the whole soundtrack and the movie and Colombia being [in] the spotlight in such a positive way,” he adds. He’s also happy that he’ll be attending the Oscars to see if the track wins. Meanwhile, he’s performing it on his just-launched tour, which hits the U.S. in August.
“It was amazing to sing…the whole crowd just sings [along]…and the kids go berserk!” he says.
And if “Dos Oruguitas” is the first song you’ve ever heard by Sebastián and you’d like to hear more, he advises, “Listen to my new album Dharma from start to finish and go to the tour…I feel like you guys are going to get something really special out of it.”
LOCASH admit that during the touring shutdowns that came with the COVID-19 pandemic, the duo worried that their country music careers might be starting to fade.
“We thought they forgot us for a while,” band mates Preston Brust and Chris Lucas admit. But that all changed with their 2020 return to the top spot on country radio with “One Big Country Song,” after a four-year gap since their last number-one hit. Then, the 2022 ACM Awards nominations came out, and they learned they were up for Duo of the Year.
“It feels incredible. It’s great to be back, man,” they continue, adding that they’ve already got big plans to blow off a little steam while they’re in Vegas for the show.
“Gamble, eat sushi at KUMI…Chris has got to go to Sinatra, it’s his favorite restaurant,” Preston says, when asked what they’re most looking forward to doing in their down time. “Just kind of hang loose and drink a little bit, kind of lighten up, because we got kids at home.”
He jokes, “We got the IVs lined up for after the party!”
But when it comes to the awards show itself, LOCASH is all business — at least, sort of. The band mates joke that they’re working on rigging the Duo of the Year category in their favor with help from their buddy and one-time duet partner Jimmie Allen, who’s co-hosting.
“I texted Jimmie the other day,” Chris adds. “I was like, ‘I don’t care what name is in that envelope. If you’re announcing, you better say LOCASH.’”
The ACM Awards will take place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on March 7. The event will livestream on Amazon Prime Video.
It’s a story that captivated the world, and it’s now in limited-series form on Hulu debuting today. The Dropout takes you behind the scenes of the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos. Amanda Seyfried plays Holmes, and she tells ABC Audio it’s the role of a lifetime.
“I love playing people who are misunderstood,” Seyfried tells ABC Audio. “I think all people in the public eye in some way or another are misunderstood because you can’t know everything about somebody.”
“I also think playing somebody who…is very, very public, but you know nothing about? Fascinating,” she adds.
And, that’s what The Dropout hopes to do — shed some light on the part of Holmes that people, as Seyfried says, know “nothing about.”
“We’re going to show you what might have been going on in this person’s head. Like, don’t we all want to know the motives?” the actress explains.
Taking on the persona of Holmes was admittedly a bit tricky for Seyfried, who shares that it took “maybe a week into filming” before the entrepreneur’s deep, manufactured voice “became second nature.” Once she was able to conquer that, it unlocked a “whole other layer of character.”
“I mean, without that accent and the voice, and like the way she spoke, I don’t know who I would be playing,” Seyfried says.
“It’s so luxurious. It’s so indulgent at times as an actor, depending on who you’re playing, what accent you’re using, and especially if it’s different than your own, you go that much further into the character and away from yourself,” she explains. “And thankfully, she had a…very interesting way of speaking. And I can’t go that deep, but I go as deep as I can and I hope it’s effective.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Charlotte 119, Cleveland 98
Indiana 122, Orlando 114 (OT)
Philadelphia 123, New York 108
New Orleans 125, Sacramento 95
Milwaukee 120, Miami 119
Utah 132, Houston 127 (OT)
Oklahoma City 119, Denver 107
Phoenix 120, Portland 90
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Buffalo 5, Toronto 1
NY Rangers 5, St. Louis 3
Dallas 4, Los Angeles 3
Seattle 4, Nashville 3
Asia recently released a 10-CD box set titled The Official Live Bootlegs Volume 1 featuring recordings of five full concerts by the prog-rock supergroup’s original lineup from various years of their career.
Drummer Carl Palmer, who helped put the collection together, tells ABC Audio that choosing shows from various locations or with diverse set lists weren’t important criteria for what made it to the box set.
“We just selected the best live recordings, and wherever they came from, they came from,” he explains. “We didn’t really go for certain countries, we just went for the best live recordings. So that’s how it’s made up.”
Palmer adds, “[I]f there was a better set list but the sound wasn’t as good, then that wouldn’t make it…[W]hen you’re talking about live recordings, you’ve got to go for the best sound, not necessarily the best set list.”
That being said, the five concerts all come from different years and locations, with at least some set variations between each show.
The first concert was recorded at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, New York, in May 1982. The second show was held at The Centrum in Worcester, Massachusetts in August 1983.
The other three concerts were captured after Asia’s classic lineup reunited for its 25th anniversary — in March 2007 at the Credicard Hall in São Paulo, Brazil; in May 2008 at the International Forum in Tokyo; and in December 2010 at The Forum in London.
Palmer says the timing of the box set’s release was appropriate, with Asia celebrating its classic 1982 self-titled debut’s 40th anniversary, noting that versions of many of the songs from first album are featured on the live recordings.
(NEW YORK) — An Indiana bill to ban transgender girls from participating in girls sports in K-12 schools passed the state Senate on Tuesday. State legislators voted 32-18 in favor of the bill.
The bill now goes to Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s desk for signature. He has not explicitly said if he will sign it into law.
Holcomb previously stated that he agrees “adamantly that boys should be playing boys’ sports and girls should be playing girls’ sports.” It is unclear whether his definition of “boys” and “girls” is trans-inclusive.
Several organizations have spoken out against the legislation and called for Holcomb’s veto since Tuesday.
“With so much going on at home and abroad, it’s disappointing to see Indiana lawmakers prioritize regulating transgender student-athletes,” Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on LGBTQ suicide prevention and crisis intervention, told ABC News. “This will likely become the second anti-trans bill enacted in 2022 and the 11th anti-trans sports ban across the country. While the rationale for these bills is based on myth and misunderstanding, the impacts they’re having are very real.”
Advocates say the bill will have a serious negative effect on transgender students’ mental and physical well-being.
“Trans kids — like all kids — just want to be able to play with their friends. This regressive and damaging legislation hurts transgender youth and doesn’t address any actual problem,” Cathryn Oakley, Human Rights Campaign state legislative director and senior counsel, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This bill puts already vulnerable youth in more danger, and threatens the health and safety of all children in Indiana,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, an anti-LGBTQ defamation organization, said in a statement. “Every child should have the chance to play with their friends and to belong, just as they are, and experience the lifelong benefits that being on a team can offer.”
Jay Brown, senior vice president of programs, research and training at The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, spoke on the stigma and potential consequences that bills like HB 1041 can perpetuate in the organization’s 2021 Epidemic of Violence report.
“When lawmakers discuss bills banning transgender and non-binary youth from accessing medical care, playing school sports or using restrooms, it sends a message that even from an early age transgender and non-binary people are different and unwelcome,” he said.
Authored by Republican Indiana state Rep. Michelle Davis, HB 1041 is one of several anti-trans bills being proposed around the country.
“I want to make sure that all the opportunities are provided for our young females and we protect the fair competition for them so they have all those possibilities,” Davis said at a hearing in January. Davis admitted under questioning during the hearing she could not cite any examples in Indiana of a cisgender student losing a chance to compete to a trans athlete, according to Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV.
Another Republican-backed bill, SB 435 or the “Save Girls’ Sports Act,” which similarly calls for a ban on transgender boys and girls participating in high school sports teams that correspond with their gender identity, passed in the Georgia Senate last week. It will have to pass in the House before going to Gov. Brian Kemp, a sponsor of the bill, for review.
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca and Tony Morrison contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Russia is hitting civilian targets in Ukraine, killing innocent people and destroying hospitals, schools and critical infrastructure like running water, electricity and gas, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken alleged Wednesday.
But President Joe Biden and his administration have stopped short of accusing the Kremlin of conducting war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine so far, with the top U.S. diplomat saying instead they are “looking very closely at what’s happening” and “documenting it.”
The U.S. and its NATO allies continue to provide Ukraine with assistance, including anti-aircraft missiles known as Stingers, a senior U.S. official confirmed. But that lethal military aid, overwhelming condemnation at the United Nations and the flight of Western businesses and crippling sanctions, including new ones announced Wednesday, have yet to change Vladimir Putin’s calculus as he seeks to topple Ukraine’s government.
Instead, Russia is increasingly switching to using indiscriminate bombardment to terrorize cities into submission — a tactic Putin’s forces honed previously in Chechnya and Syria and that seems to have secured them their first major Ukrainian city, Kherson.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has been pummeled with heavy artillery, rockets and airstrikes, destroying apartment buildings and government offices alike. Another major city, Mariupol, is under ferocious, continual bombardment with rocket barrages and ballistic missile strikes, knocking out the power.
Schools, hospitals and residences; buses, cars and ambulances; and infrastructure like drinking water, electricity, and gas amid Ukraine’s bitter winter have all been hit.
“These aren’t military targets. They are places where civilians work and families live,” Blinken told reporters, adding, “This is shameful.”
But while Biden said Wednesday morning he believed Russia is intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure, Blinken stopped short of that, saying the U.S. is still assessing particular strikes.
“We’re looking very closely at what’s happening in Ukraine right now, including what’s happening to civilians. We’re taking account of it, we’re documenting it, and we want to ensure, among other things, that there’s accountability for it,” he told reporters Wednesday.
The International Criminal Court announced Wednesday it would launch an immediate investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine after 38 member states, including the United Kingdom and Canada, referred reported atrocities to the ICC.
“Our work in the collection of evidence has now commenced,” ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said in a statement. Khan announced Monday that he would request to open a probe, which requires either authorization from a pre-trial ICC chamber or a referral by member states. Ukraine, like Russia and the U.S., is not a member state.
Under the ICC’s founding document, the Rome Statute, “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities” is a violation of international law.
Russia has outright denied that it has struck any civilians or civilian infrastructure.
Amnesty International, among other human rights groups, reported Tuesday that it had documented “the escalation in violations of humanitarian and human rights law, including deaths of civilians resulting from indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and infrastructure.”
“Strikes on protected objects such as hospitals and schools, the use of indiscriminate weapons such as ballistic missiles, and the use of banned weapons such as cluster bombs may all qualify as war crimes,” the group said.
While Blinken wouldn’t go that far, he compared Russia’s tactics in Ukraine to previous conflicts, where its forces were “absolutely brutal in trying to cow the citizenry of a given country, and that includes at the very least indiscriminate targeting and potentially deliberate targeting as well.”
To fight back, the U.S. provided several hundred anti-aircraft missiles, known as Stingers, to the Ukrainian military Tuesday, a senior U.S. official confirmed to ABC News. The missiles were part of a $350 million package Biden approved late Friday night, bringing total U.S. military aid to approximately $1 billion.
Before Putin launched his war, U.S. aid had been shipped in on regular flights to the capital Kyiv, where the airport has been shut down. Still, the U.S. has been successfully delivering military aid, according to Blinken, who declined to offer details on how.
“We are very actively working — every day, every hour — to provide that assistance,” Blinken said of the U.S. and its NATO allies, adding, “Vitally needed assistance is getting to where it needs to go.”
The U.S. also unveiled new sanctions Wednesday that target Russia’s oil and gas sector, its defense industry and its ally Belarus.
New export controls will bar oil and gas extraction equipment and refining technology, preventing Russian firms “from maintaining and upgrading current projects and, to some degree, from launching new projects,” the White House said.
The State Department is also implementing “full blocking sanctions” on 22 entities in Russia’s defense sector, while the Commerce Department is extending export controls on Russia to include Belarus, to prevent the country from transferring semiconductors and other technology to its powerful neighbor and ally.
ABC News’ Patrick Reevell, Ben Gittleson, and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., introduced a bill on Tuesday calling for strict limitations on no-knock warrants in drug-related investigations.
The bill, named for Amir Locke, would also ban “quick-knock” warrants, nighttime warrants, and the use of explosive devices, chemical weapons, and military grade firearms while warrants are carried out.
Locke, a Black Minnesota native, was 22 when he was fatally shot by Minneapolis SWAT officer Mark Hanneman during an early morning execution of a no-knock search warrant on Feb. 2.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner has ruled the death of Locke, who was not named on the warrant, a homicide.
Hanneman has not been charged with any crime and is currently on paid administrative leave while the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigates the shooting.
Outcry to ban no-knock warrants once again surged after Locke’s death, leading to protests reminiscent of those immediately following the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in 2020. While Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey issued a moratorium on the request and execution of no-knock warrants in the city, concerned citizens and legislators have called for a more permanent solution.
Neka Gray, Locke’s aunt, asked that an end be put to no-knock warrants when a coalition of Black women and mothers met at Minneapolis City Hall to demand justice for Locke.
“Unfortunately, Amir won’t benefit from it. But the next person will,” Gray said. “And so what we’re asking is that this no-knock warrant, that this policy that was put in place where it only affects people that look like me, people that look like Amir, people that look like many people that are standing behind me, we’re just asking that that is changed.”
Omar discussed her bill during a press call on Tuesday.
“The use of no-knock warrants has a deep-rooted history in division, racism and the criminalization of Black and brown people,” she said. “This is yet another occurrence of police in Minneapolis utilizing tactics that deny human dignity,” she added, referring to the events that led to Locke’s death.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden supports the end of no-knock warrants in a press briefing last month following Locke’s death.
“We have been engaging with, as you know, civil rights groups, a number of law enforcement groups. All agree on the need to reform the use of no-knock warrants,” she said.
Psaki also spoke about a Department of Justice policy announced by United States Attorney General Merrick Garland in September that regulates federal use of chokeholds, carotid restraints, and no-knock warrants.
The policy states that “federal agents are generally required to “knock and announce” their identity, authority and purpose, and demand to enter before entry is made to execute a warrant in a private dwelling” before entering after a “reasonable amount of time”. Exceptions may be made “in the most compelling circumstances.”
Biden briefly mentioned the Department of Justice’s policy at the State of the Union, before calling for funding the police and drawing applause.
The Locke family’s legal team issued a statement on Tuesday in response to the proposed legislation:
“We join the Locke family in applauding U.S. Rep. Omar for introducing this critically important bill. There is no doubt that no-knock warrants are a tragic and devastating failure of policy — a policy that directly led to the deaths of Amir Locke, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black and Brown people throughout the country for the past several decades.”
The statement said that while the “ultimate goal” is a ban on all no-knock warrants “it is a significant step forward.”
“We implore other members of Congress to champion this life-saving cause and pass this legislation to protect the lives and safety of those they swore an oath to serve,” it said.
ABC News’ Sejal Govindarao contributed to this report.
5 Seconds of Summer are back with a new single, the first from their upcoming fifth album.
It’s called “Complete Mess,” and it’s the first song to be entirely written and produced by the band — specifically, guitarist Michael Clifford produced it. “For this record we realized if you want something done that truly represents how you feel, you’ve got to do it yourselves,” the Aussie group says in a statement.
“We wanted that expansive sound that we naturally gravitate towards when we play together, so we had to learn how to record that,” they add. “This new music is so authentically us. It’s exactly the kind of music we want to be making right now and it’s a good song to be able to reconnect to our fans after such a long time of not releasing music. We can’t wait for everyone to hear what we’ve been working on.”
The song’s chorus goes, “You make me complete/ You make me a complete mess,” a phrase inspired by a t-shirt that singer Luke Hemmings used to wear.
A music video for the tune also debuted today. The clip, which you can watch on 5 Seconds of Summer’s official YouTube channel, features the band members wandering around in the desert.
5SOS will launch the North American leg of their 2022 World Tour on June 11 in Vancouver, Canada. The trek is set to wrap up July 24 in Maryland Heights, Missouri.
