Em Beihold‘s song “Numb Little Bug” blew up on TikTok. Now it’s a radio hit and her first major tour starts April 19. But the singer/songwriter says she isn’t trying to become a superstar or get to number one: For her, it’s all about helping people with her music.
“My biggest goal is to create a safe, inclusive place,” she tells ABC Audio. “‘Cause I definitely grew up kinda being excluded from things and people didn’t really understand me. And so when people are like, ‘I had my first day at school and no one talked to me, but I listened to your song and I feel like I have a friend through the phone’ — like, that’s the most meaningful by far.”
In fact, Em says some of the stories that fans have shared with her make her cry.
“There was someone who was like, “I’ve never felt seen before, and your song literally invited me to take the steps to see a therapist and talk to my friends and family,'” she recalls. “It’s crazy! That’s crazy that someone can change their whole life based on a song!”
And while Em released a number of songs prior to “Numb Little Bug,” she’s happy that it’s this particular song that’s really introduced her to listeners.
“This would be the one that I want them to hear, because it’s the bluntest song I’ve ever written,” she explains. “I’m also a very blunt person. I don’t sugarcoat things.”
She laughs, “I’ve always been too much of an open book, which isn’t the best for me. But if it’s able to help other people, that’s great.”
And stay tuned: Em says “there are also more songs in the pipeline moving forward that have kind of a different sound.”
Sure, the title track of Cole Swindell’s upcoming album, Stereotype, is a fun-loving song — but there’s a deeper meaning behind its name.
“I was like, ‘I want my album to be called Stereotype,’ because there have been times in my career where people thought, ‘This is all this guy can do. He’s the ‘Chillin’ It’ guy. Here’s the beer guy.’ Whatever it is,” the singer reflects.
But as he put together the track list for his fourth outing, Cole made sure to include plenty of songs that would prove that opinion wrong. “There’s the fun stuff, and then there’s also stuff like ‘Walk on Whiskey’ and ‘Girl Goes Crazy,’” he says, pointing to the album’s final two tracks.
“Stuff that I haven’t really sang about before. That, I think, makes the album really what it is,” the singer adds.
It’s not the first time Cole’s been able to express his more vulnerable, singer-songwriter side in his music. Songs like “You Should Be Here,” “Dad’s Old Number” and “Break Up in the End” all speak from a more intimate and reflective place, he notes. But as his success has continued to grow, Cole says he’s found more leeway to release more and more music in that vein.
“Now I can play those stripped-down songs that hit you right here in the heart: That I love to write and I love to record,” he points out.
Stereotype arrives on Friday. The song’s lead single is “Never Say Never,” Cole’s duet with Lainey Wilson, which recently made it to the final six nominees for Video of the Year at the upcoming CMT Music Awards. They’ll perform together during the show, which airs on CBS April 11.
Halestorm‘s 2012 sophomore album The Strange Case of… celebrates its 10th anniversary this Sunday, April 10. The RIAA Gold-certified record helped the Pennsylvania rockers break out with the Grammy-winning hit “Love Bites (So Do I),” as well as the singles “I Miss the Misery” and “Freak Like Me.”
Speaking with ABC Audio, frontwoman Lzzy Hale recalls the Strange Case era being “such an exciting time” for her and her band mates.
“We had already gotten through our first album cycle…which was more, like, wonder, and ‘I don’t know what’s gonna to happen! Is the world gonna like us, are we going to do this again?'” Hale shares. “I feel like Strange Case of… had a mission to it…we had a better idea of who was listening to us, what we wanted to do.”
Another important difference was the upgraded transportation for the Strange Case tour.
“It was our first time in a bus,” says guitarist Joe Hottinger. “We weren’t driving ourselves anymore. It was, like, ‘All right! This is amazing!’ We just went crazy for a few months, ’cause we were, like, ‘Yay, we’re on a bus, whee!'”
Hale laughs, “It was a lot of partying that went on.”
The duo remembers one time in particular having to wake up early for a midday festival set after a long night of partying to celebrate bassist Josh Smith‘s birthday.
“Our tour manager blasted in the bunk, like, ‘Guys, you’re on an hour!'” Hottinger recalls. “We’re, like, ‘What? Oh, my god, I forgot!'”
“It’s 99 degrees out and high noon and you’re gonna sweat it out!” he laughs.
Halestorm’s next album, Back from the Dead, drops May 6.
The Clash will mark the 40th anniversary of the band’s classic 1982 album Combat Rock with a special expanded reissue titled Combat Rock/The People’s Hall that will be released on May 20.
The People’s Hall is a 12-track collection compiled by The Clash featuring recordings made at the same time as the Combat Rock sessions in a London building called The People’s Hall located in an area of the city given the name of the Republic of Frestonia, where some residents had attempted to secede from the U.K. in 1977.
Released on May 14, 1982, Combat Rock was the final Clash album by the group’s classic lineup of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon, and the band’s most successful studio effort. The album peaked at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, and featured the singles “Rock the Casbah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” as well as such gems as “Know Your Rights” and “Straight to Hell.”
The People’s Hall includes unheard, rare and early versions of songs, among them an alternate version of “Know Your Rights,” the previously unreleased instrumental “He Who Dares or Is Tired,” and the outtakes “The Fulham Connection” and “Idle in Kangaroo Court.”
Coinciding with the announcement of the reissue, two previously unreleased versions of two Combat Rock songs featuring The Clash collaborating with late English Beat and General Public member Ranking Roger — “Rock the Casbah” and “Red Angel Dragnet” — have been made available as a digital EP, while a limited-edition vinyl EP featuring the tracks will be issued on May 20.
Combat Rock/The People’s Hall, which can be pre-ordered now, will be available as a two-CD set, a three-LP collection and via digital formats.
Here’s the CD track list:
CD 1: Combat Rock
“Know Your Rights”
“Car Jamming”
“Should I Stay or Should I Go”
“Rock the Casbah”
“Red Angel Dragnet”
“Straight to Hell”
“Overpowered by Funk”
“Atom Tan”
“Sean Flynn”
“Ghetto Defendant”
“Inoculated City”
“Death Is a Star”
CD 2: The People’s Hall
“Outside Bonds”
“Radio Clash”
“Futura 2000”
“First Night Back in London”
“Radio One” — Mikey Dread
“He Who Dares or Is Tired”*
“Long Time Jerk”
“The Fulham Connection” (aka “The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too”)
“Midnight to Stevens”
“Sean Flyn”
“Idle in Kangaroo Court”
“Know Your Rights”*
Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Tyler Perry Studios
Celebrated actress Sheryl Lee Ralph has played and starred in roles that have cemented her as one of the most beloved actresses in Black film and TV.
Her current portrayal as the hard yet warmhearted veteran teacher Barbara Howard on the hit series Abbott Elementary, shows why the 65-year-old actress is loved by many. But according to Ralph, she wasn’t always shown appreciation. In a recent interview with People, she opens up about a time she was fired from a project after being told she wasn’t “Black enough.”
The exclusive interview details the highs and lows of Ralph’s decades-long career, including the hurtful memory of the star’s early years.
“People’s thinking was not very inclusive. You [had] directors who were still trying to tell you how to be Black,” Ralph said. “I was fired from a pilot because the producer told me I was ‘not Black enough.’ Those were his words. It was horrible. I can still remember the way I felt.”
Ralph recalled a similar incident in a March interview with the hosts of The View: “[I] had a memorable audition with a big casting director who looked at me and said, ‘Everybody knows you’re a beautiful, talented, Black girl. But what do I do with a beautiful, talented, Black girl? Do I put you in a movie with Tom Cruise? Do you kiss? Who goes to see thatmovie?'”
She told the co-hosts she left that audition “with some of the best ammunition.”
“Everybody knew I was a beautiful, talented, Black girl and I should be in the movies with the likes of a Tom Cruise, and he shouldkiss me,” she said.
Despite feeling hurt by the comments, Ralph remains positive, saying, “Look at me now.”
The new Hulu true crime series The Girl from Plainville is inspired by the true story of Michelle Carter‘s unprecedented “texting-suicide” case, which led to the death of Conrad Roy III and Carter’s conviction of involuntary manslaughter.
In the limited series, Chloë Sevigny plays Conrad’s mother, Lynn Roy, and tells ABC Audio that she was “surprised” how much the role affected her.
“I think [because] I’m a new mother, had a child in 2020 and the material, yeah, really hit in a way that was harder than I had anticipated,” she explains.
Elle Fanning, who plays Michelle, also admits the material was heavy, and adds that she felt a strong responsibility to tell the story “the right way,” which doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with everything.
“You don’t have to like someone to play them, but you have to at least understand and come at it from a human perspective,” she says. “And I do feel like I understand her.”
One way that Elle understands is when it comes to technology and social media.
“I could relate, in a sense, to growing up in social media,” the actress shares. “Like this false intimacy that our phones can create and especially like a relationship that was literally all over text. You know, [Michelle and Conrad] met only a handful of times, and that just felt — it’s very modern.”
Elle adds the series can be looked at as a cautionary tale to remind people “words matter.”
“Like it’s so easy to bully over a device… It’s so easy to do that because you’re not standing in front of someone and see how those words you’re saying affect them, and you probably wouldn’t say the same things if you were standing in front of them,” she says.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with troops crossing the border from Belarus and Russia. Moscow’s forces have since been met with “stiff resistance” from Ukrainians, according to U.S. officials.
Russian forces retreated last week from the Kyiv suburbs, leaving behind a trail of destruction. After graphic images emerged of civilians lying dead in the streets of Bucha, U.S. and European officials accused Russian troops of committing war crimes.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Apr 07, 5:21 am
Ukraine’s NATO agenda: ‘Weapons, weapons and weapons’
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba said his country had a “simple” agenda for Thursday’s NATO meeting.
“It has only three items on it. It’s weapons, weapons and weapons,” Kuleba told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday.
NATO foreign ministers are meeting this week to discuss the situation in Ukraine, including whether to implement new sanctions and supply additional weapons, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who spoke alongside Kuleba.
“So we are providing support, but, at the same time, working hard to prevent the escalation of the conflict,” Stoltenberg said.
Kuleba called on “all allies to put aside their hesitations” in aiding Ukraine.
“We are confident that the best way to help Ukraine now is to provide it with all necessary to contain [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and to defeat Russian army in Ukraine, in the territory of Ukraine, so that the war does not spill over further,” Kuleba said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to meet with Kuleba on Thursday, according to his office.
“The G7 is committed to holding President Putin to account for his unprovoked war of choice and ensuring he endures a strategic defeat in Ukraine,” Blinken said on Twitter on Thursday.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Dallas 131, Detroit 113
Brooklyn 110, New York 98
Boston 117, Chicago 94
Utah 137, Oklahoma City 101
LA Clippers 113, Phoenix 109
Atlanta 118, Washington 103
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Detroit 3, Winnipeg 1
Washington 4, Tampa Bay 3
St. Louis 4, Seattle 1
Vancouver 5, Vegas 1
Calgary 4, Anaheim 2
(NEW YORK) — Six state attorneys general issued a threat to the National Football League on Wednesday: protect female employees or face a potential investigation.
“Our offices will use the full weight of our authority to investigate and prosecute allegations of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation by employers throughout our states, including at the National Football League,” the attorneys general from New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington wrote in a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “All of this is entirely unacceptable and potentially unlawful.”
The letter was obtained by ABC News.
The letter centers on a story written by the New York Times that it said “described a workplace culture that is overtly hostile to women.”
All but one of the states have an NFL franchise and the state of New York is home to NFL headquarters.
“In New York, where the NFL is headquartered, the Office of the Attorney General has never hesitated to take action to protect employees from sexual harassment and abuse, whether they are entry-level employees of the Weinstein Company or servers and bartenders at Batali-owned restaurants,” the letter says.
In February, a congressional committee heard from former Washington Commanders employees about potential sexual harassments allegations. Tiffani Johnston, a former marketing and events coordinator for the then-Washington Redskins, was allegedly put next to owner Dan Synder at a dinner “not to discuss business, but to allow him, Dan Snyder, to place his hand on my thigh under the table.”
Snyder, in a statement reported by ESPN, apologized for past misconduct by the organization, but denied the new allegations involving himself.
The letter to Goodell says in the aftermath of the Ray Rice scandal in 2014, the NFL promised to improve the culture for women at the NFL, but it said the allegations mentioned in the New York Times account “suggest that you have not.”
Female employees told the New York Times they were “that they were held back and criticized for having an “‘aggressive tone’ — an often unfair stereotype of women, especially women of color, who try to advance in a male dominated workplace.”
“Other women reported that, in a training intended to improve sensitivity on the issue, they were asked to raise their hand to self-identify if they had been victims of domestic violence or knew someone who had,” the letter says. “This is NOT doing better. Anti-discrimination laws in many states, including New York, prohibit employers from subjecting domestic violence victims, as well as women and people of color, to a hostile work environment.”
In a statement, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told ABC News the NFL shares the “commitment of the attorneys general to ensuring that all of our workplaces — including the league office and 32 clubs — are diverse, inclusive and free from discrimination and harassment.”
“We have made great strides over the years in support of that commitment, but acknowledge that we, like many organizations, have more work to do,” McCarthy said in an email. “We look forward to sharing with the attorneys general the policies, practices, protocols, education programs and partnerships we have implemented to act on this commitment and confirm that the league office and our clubs maintain a respectful workplace where all our employees, including women, have an opportunity to thrive.”
He pointed to employee training programs with RISE, GLAAD, Paradigm, The Winters Group and internal affinity groups where employees can interact, learn and support each other within smaller communities like BEN (Black Engagement Network), PIN (Parents Initiative Network) and WIN (Women’s Interactive Network), as examples.
(NEW YORK) — Being infected with COVID-19 raises the risk of developing serious blood clots, a new study suggests.
An international team of researchers from Sweden, the United Kingdom and Finland compared more than 1 million people in Sweden with a confirmed case of the virus between February 2020 and May 2021 to 4 million control patients who tested negative.
They found three to six months after contracting COVID-19, patients were at increased risk of being diagnosed with blood clots in their legs or lungs, according to results published in the journal BMJ on Wednesday.
Specifically, patients had a 4% raised risk of deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that forms deep in the thigh or the lower leg, up to three months after a COVID-19 infection.
Patients also had a 17% heightened risk of developing a pulmonary embolism, a clot that develops in a blood vessel and travels to a lung artery, up to six months after having the virus.
The team said its results add to a growing body of evidence about the link between COVID-19 and serious blood clots, while adding new information about how long the risk might last.
“The present findings have major policy implications,” the authors wrote, adding that the report “strengthens the importance of vaccination against COVID-19.”
They also said the findings suggest that COVID-19 patients — “especially high-risk patients” — should take anticoagulation medicine, which are medications to help prevent these clots.
During the course of the study period, the team saw 401 cases of DVT among the COVID-19 patients, compared to 267 cases among the negative patients.
Meanwhile, there were 1,761 cases of PE among virus patients in comparison with 171 cases among the control patients.
COVID-19 patients were at higher risk of blood clots if they had underlying conditions, had a severe case of the virus or if they were infected during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020.
However, there wasn’t just a risk of blood clots. The study also found an increased risk of any kind of bleeding up to two months after a COVID-19 infection.
The team noted there were limitations, including that the study was observational rather than a randomized controlled trial.
Additionally, the researchers recognized that clotting in COVID-19 patients may be underdiagnosed and information about patients’ vaccination status was not available.
Despite the risk of blood clots following COVID-19 infections being well-documented, it’s unknown what biological mechanisms are at play. However, there are theories.
One study from Michigan Medicine and the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute suggested “rogue” antibodies from a COVID-19 infection cause blood cells to lose their anti-clotting properties.
Another study from Yale School of Medicine suggested specific proteins are produced by endothelial cells — cells that line blood vessels — due to inflammation from the virus and lead to blood clots.
“It remains to be established whether SARS-CoV-2 infection increases the risk of venous thromboembolism or bleeding more than it does for respiratory infections, such as influenza, but also whether the period of [anticoagulation medicine] after COVID-19 should be extended,” the authors wrote.
