One of Carrie Underwood‘s favorite meals to make is pretty “ugly.”
The singer cites one of her to-go meals to make at home is a veggie lasagna that she’s dubbed “ugly lasagna” due to its messy nature, but it’s packed with nutrients and yummy flavor.
The longtime vegetarian’s recipe calls for bell pepper, spinach, onion and vegan cheese, among any other vegetables the cook chooses to include. “The good thing is you can really throw literally any vegetables you have in your refrigerator in it,” Carrie explains. “I’ve used leftovers before…keep it colorful, it’s all good. Veggies are your friends.”
As for the “ugly” part, Carrie says the dish gets its name from the non-elegant way she spoons it onto her plate from the slow cooker. “When I get it out of the crock pot, it’s like a big ole pile of awesome on my plate,” she describes.
You can find the full recipe in Carrie’s book, Find Your Path.
Alter Bridge is headed to Europe later this year alongside a few friends.
Myles Kennedy and company have announced the Pawns and Kings tour, a trip throughout Europe and the U.K. featuring support from Halestorm and Mammoth WVH. The trek launches November 1 in Hamburg, Germany, and concludes December 12 in London.
For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit AlterBridge.com.
Alter Bridge’s most recent album is 2019’s Walk the Sky, which features the singles “Wouldn’t You Rather” and “Godspeed.” A follow-up record is currently in the works.
Meanwhile, Halestorm and Mammoth WVH are hitting the road together on a U.S. tour kicking off in May.
Dispatch has released a Russian version of the band’s beloved anti-war song “The General” in support of Ukraine.
If you’ve never heard the original 1997 song, the lyrics tell the story of a “decorated general with a heart of gold” who realizes that “this fight is not worth fighting.” In singing “The General” in Russian, Dispatch singer Chadwick Stokes imagines a Russian military officer having the same realization amid the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
“The hope is that this will reach the ears of those participating in this invasion and realize that this fight is not worth fighting,” Dispatch says. “To force someone to act against humanity is to destroy their own humanity. Please share this message of peace far and wide.”
You can watch Stokes perform the Russian version of “The General” now on YouTube. Proceeds earned from the song will be donated to the Leleka Foundation, which is providing first aid kits to emergency medical responders and frontline fighters in Ukraine.
The singer recently shared a series of videos on Instagram Stories from inside the studio that show his session musicians unpacking their instruments and warming up. He’s joined by producer and engineer Ryan Gore, along with songwriter Bart Butler, with whom he’s written several tracks on his debut album, California Sunrise, and the follow-up, Heartache Medication, including “Heartache on the Dance Floor.”
“It’s 9:28 in the morning, we’re about to get rolling,” Jon says enthusiastically from behind the camera in his Stories.
The hitmaker also shared a black and white photo of himself in the recording booth singing into the microphone with the caption, “Finishing up album 4!”
“Let’s GOOOOO!” comments CMA Award-winning fiddle player Jenee Fleenor, who’s played on both of Jon’s previous albums.
“Last Night Lonely,” the lead single off the new project, is currently climbing the top 30 on country radio.
Lil Nas X teased fans on Monday that he had an announcement that will do more than excite them — and he wasn’t trolling. The “Industry Baby” proudly announced his first-ever tour that’ll take him across the globe this fall.
“i’m having my very first tour. and all of u better come or i will cry on instagram live,” he said on Twitter, which included an over-the-top trailer of what’s to come.
Dubbed the Long Live Montero Tour, the Grammy winner will traverse North America and Europe beginning September 6 with a stop at Detroit’s The Fillmore. From there, Lil Nas X will visit Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles and many other cities before wrapping his North American trek in San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on October 23.
The rapper will take a short respite to recharge his batteries before jumping over the pond to resume his tour in Europe, with the first show slated in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on November 8. He’ll hit up the continent’s major cities through November 17, with a final stop set in Barcelona, Spain.
You won’t have to wait long to grab your tickets, because they go on sale this Friday starting at 10 a.m. local time on the tour’s official website. There is also a pre-sale event that’ll allow you early access to tickets a few days before. Starting Wednesday, Cash App Cash Card holders can register for an exclusive presale “using the first nine numbers of their Cash Card on Ticketmaster and completing the purchase using their Cash Card.”
Lil Nas X’s upcoming world tour is in support of his debut album, Montero, which produced three RIAA-certified Platinum singles: “That’s What I Want,” “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and “Industry Baby.”
Journey has unveiled full details of its forthcoming studio album, Freedom, a 15-track collection that will be released on July 8.
In advance of the album, Journey’s first studio effort since 2011’s Eclipse, the band has released a soaring new single titled “You Got the Best of Me.”
Explaining what inspired the new track, guitarist Neal Schon says, “I wanted kind of a punky rendition of ‘Any Way You Want It…I usually don’t go in saying I’m going to look for something like that, but then it just came to me, like ‘Wheel in the Sky’ did years ago. It just kind of flew out of my mouth.”
“You Got the Best of Me” is available now via digital formats. The song was co-written by Schon, longtime Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain and drummer/producer Narada Michael Walden, who also co-produced the track with Schon. Randy Jackson plays bass on the song. Jackson — who previously played with Journey during the mid-1980s — and Walden were recruited as the band’s new rhythm section after Ross Valory and Steve Smith were fired in 2020, although neither has been taking part in the group’s current tour.
Freedom came together while Journey was off the road because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During the pandemic, there wasn’t much to do,” Schon notes. “I spent a lot of time in my little studio at home, learning how to play keyboards and looping. Some of those ideas ended up being songs. So it kind of came out of nowhere.”
Freedom also includes “The Way We Used to Be,” which was released as a single last year. You can pre-order the album now.
Meanwhile, Journey’s Freedom Tour 2022 with Toto continues Tuesday, April 27, in Nashville.
Here’s the album’s full track list:
“Together We Run”
“Don’t Give Up on Us”
“Still Believe in Love”
“You Got the Best of Me”
“Live to Love Again”
“The Way We Used to Be”
“Come Away with Me”
“After Glow”
“Let It Rain”
“Holdin On”
“All Day and All Night”
“Don’t Go”
“United We Stand”
“Life Rolls On”
“Beautiful as You Are”
At Monday night’s Cinemacon event in Las Vegas, the annual confab for movie theater owners, Sony Pictures announced there will be a fifth Ghostbusters movie, as well as a third Venom film, and — reaction to Mobius be damned — another Spider-Man adjacent spin-off film.
The Ghostbusters movie would be a follow-up to the hit Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which emerged from a pandemic delay to become a beloved addition to the franchise, with a 94% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes.
A third Venom film is a bit of a no-brainer, considering its predecessor, 2021’s Venom: There Will Be Carnage made a half-billion dollars worldwide.
However, the flip side of the coin was Sony Pictures’ announcement of another obscure Spider-Man spin-off following the stumble with Jared Leto‘s Morbius. El Muerto, about the Marvel Comics luchador superhero, will star Puerto Rican rapper Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio aka Bad Bunny. The star was also there to unveil some footage of Bullet Train, an action pic in which he appears with Brad Pitt.
Bullet Train will also star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who, as reported, landed the title role of a better-known Spidey foil, Kraven the Hunter. Footage of that movie was shown in a Sony sizzle reel that also included peeks of the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody, the animated sequel Spider-Man: Across the Multiverse, Denzel Washington‘s third Equalizer movie, and Tom Hanks‘ A Man Called Otto.
Wednesday, Michael Bublé starts his mini-residency in Las Vegas, which includes six performances at Resorts World from April 27 to May 7. But if you can’t make it to Sin City, Michael will be coming to you later this year.
The newly announced U.S. Higher tour gets underway in Duluth, Georgia on August 8, and is currently scheduled to wrap up October 11 in Buffalo, NY. Fan club pre-sales start May 3, with tickets on sale to the general public on May 6 at 10 a.m. local time. The tour includes stops at New York’s Madison Square Garden, L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena and more.
Before the U.S. leg of the tour, Michael will spend most of June and July in the U.K., and after the U.S. leg wraps, he’s heading to South America and Australia.
(NEW YORK) — Melissa Lucio was first sentenced to death in 2008 for the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah Alvarez. After nearly 15 years on death row in Texas, Lucio was granted a stay of her scheduled April 27 execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday.
Calls for a court to review her case and save Lucio’s life grew this week, garnering bipartisan support and inspiring rallies across the country. Rep. Jeff Leach, chair of the Texas House Criminal Justice Reform, Interim Study Committee, was one of several legislators to speak in support of Lucio’s request for clemency.
“I believe so strongly that the system has failed Melissa Lucio at nearly every turn,” Leach said in the committee’s first hearing on April 12, days after visiting Lucio in solitary confinement at Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas.
“What I want to know more than anything as a citizen of this great state — is that the system can be trusted, that it’s fair, that it’s reliable. And right now, I have, as a policymaker, severe and sincere questions and concerns about whether that’s true,” he said, urging the importance of “pushing the pause button” on Lucio’s execution.
“I thank God for my life,” Lucio said in a statement reacting to the stay. “I am grateful the Court has given me the chance to live and prove my innocence. Mariah is in my heart today and always. I am grateful to have more days to be a mother to my children and a grandmother to my grandchildren.”
Lucio’s case will now head back to the 138th State District Court in South Texas, where Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz will decide how to retry it. Saenz has the options of taking the case back to trial with a new jury of her peers, offering her a plea deal or dropping the charges. ABC News has reached out to Saenz for comment.
Lucio’s eldest son, John Lucio, addressed the media after an eight-hour visit with his mother on Monday — the longest he’s been allowed since she was incarcerated — saying he would “keep on fighting this fight” until his mother is freed.
“I’ve chosen to fight for my mother because she’s fought for me,” John Lucio told ABC News.
He said the last 15 years have taken a toll on him and his family as they maintain her innocence in a crime that her lawyers said never occurred.
“Medical evidence shows that Mariah’s death was consistent with an accident,” Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project and one of Melissa Lucio’s attorneys, said in a statement after the stay was issued.
“But for the state’s use of false testimony, no juror would have voted to convict Melissa of capital murder because no murder occurred,” Potkin said.
Paramedics arrived at Melissa Lucio’s residence in 2007 to find Mariah unresponsive. Lucio told them Mariah had fallen down a steep staircase two days earlier during the family’s move to a new apartment but did not seem injured at the time. Her story came into question, however, when paramedics assessed the scene.
One responder testified he became suspicious of Melissa after observing her single-story apartment and seemingly distant behavior.
“She didn’t act at all like what I would expect of a mother,” he said according to Lucio’s habeas petition.
“The paramedic looked at these three steps that led to their front door and he testified at trial, but he didn’t believe her story. He found it to be suspicious because how could the child have been injured from these few steps?” Potkin said. “But of course, this was a complete misunderstanding, and Melissa was talking about the staircase at their home that they had just moved from.”
According to a clemency petition filed by her lawyers, Lucio asserted her innocence over 100 times during a five-hour interrogation before telling police, “I guess I did it.”
“She didn’t want to say she murdered my sister and she didn’t. I know she did not … But she was basically forced to say she did,” John Lucio said.
Some jurors who initially voted to convict Lucio have expressed doubts about whether the 53-year-old mother was granted a fair trial.
“I was disheartened to learn that there was additional evidence that was not presented at trial. I believe that Ms. Lucio deserves a new trial and for a new jury to hear this evidence,” jury foreperson Melissa Quintanilla stated in her clemency petition declaration. “Knowing what I know now, I don’t think she should be executed.”
Another juror, Johnny Galvan Jr., said he felt “pressured” to agree with the guilty verdict that resulted in Melissa Lucio’s death sentence.
“We made the wrong decision because they gave us the wrong information,” he told ABC News. “There was evidence withheld that was not presented to the jury.”
None of Lucio’s children were called to testify during her original trial, including one who said he saw Mariah fall down the stairs.
“That would have made Melissa’s case a truthful statement that her baby fell. They left it out. They told us to ignore it,” Galvan Jr. said, adding that the jury “got it wrong.”
“We need to learn that the criminal justice system fails sometimes. And we certainly failed,” he added.
Joe Maher/Disasters Emergency Committee/Getty Images for Livewire Pictures Ltd
As one of the U.K.’s biggest music stars, it’s no surprise that Ed Sheeran has been tapped to perform in the People’s Pageant, a massive spectacle that will mark the finale of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
Britain’s Press Association detailed the June 5 event, which will take place in front of Buckingham Palace and in its the surrounding streets. More than 10,000 people will be involved in the event, which will conclude the four-day holiday celebrating the Queen’s 70 years on the throne.
“I’m proud to be part of the celebration and it’s going to be a great opportunity to bring everyone together,” Ed said in a statement.
The event will be staged in four acts: For Queen and Country, The Time of Our Lives, Let’s Celebrate, and Happy and Glorious; Ed will appear during the final act.
Organizers say a billion people around the globe will watch the Pageant, which, among other things, will feature a fleet of iconic James Bond cars, 200 horses, a huge helium balloon, BMX cyclists, and a 20-foot-tall puppet of the Queen, surrounded by puppet Corgis.
