L-R — Bure, Barber, Coulier — Ray Tamarra/GC Images
Dave Coulier, Candace Cameron Bure, Andrea Barber and Scott Weinger from Full House will be back under the same roof in March, which will be two months after the January death of Tanner family patriarch Bob Saget.
The stars will be on hand at Connecticut’s Hartford Convention Center for the first-ever 90s Con, which runs March 11, 12 & 13.
For those looking for even more of a throwback, Neve Campbell from the Scream movies and Party of Five will also be there, as well as Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle from Boy Meets World; Joey Lawrence from Gimme A Break and Blossom; Jo Marie Payton from Family Matters and The Proud Family;AJ McLean from The Backstreet Boys ; and Melissa Joan Hart from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, among many others.
Tapping into people’s appetite for ’90s nostalgia,90s Con 2022 is taking place next month in Hartford, Connecticut, and some of your favorite boy band members will be on hand for the occasion.
Backstreet Boys AJ McLean and Nick Carter and *NSYNC‘sJoey Fatone will appear during all three days of the con, which runs from March 11 through March 13. All three guys will be part of a panel, and will be posing for photos and signing autographs separately and together. If you want a selfie with all three together, it’ll cost you $175. Selfies with each guy individually cost between $40 and $50.
Less than a month after the con, AJ and Nick will join the rest of the Backstreet Boys as they kick off their rescheduled DNA World Tour in Las Vegas on April 8.
In addition, Chilli and T-Boz from TLC will be attending the con, but only on the 12th and 13th. They’ll also be available for autographs and selfies.
If you want even more ’90s nostalgia, 90s Con 2022 also will feature appearances by the cast of Full House, plus Joey Lawrence, Holly Marie Combs, Christopher Lloyd and the stars of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Boy Meets World, Party of Five and Family Matters.
“I Hope” singer Gabby Barrett is hoping to someday walk in the footsteps of the legendary Shania Twain.
Speaking to Billboard, the 21-year-old spoke about the possibility of launching an international career similar to the “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” singer. “I would love to eventually sell out Madison Square Garden one day. That’s definitely a bucket list goal,” Gabby raved. However, that dream of hers will have to wait because, she says, “my role first and foremost is being a good mother to my daughter and raising her correctly.”
Gabby welcomed Baylah May in January 2021 with spouse Cade Foehner. While being a mom is her number one priority, she added, “I think everything just follows the way that it’s supposed to be.”
An example of that is her breakout anthem “I Hope,” which she believes came out at the right time. “I don’t think I could write that now,” she admitted, “I am in a very happy marriage, so I think I would write that a little bit differently.”
Gabby, who finished third on American Idol, reflected on her music journey and credits an unlikely person for her success. Apparently, the former coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bill Cowher, is the reason her dad even allowed her to sign to her label, Warner Music Nashville. Gabby said CEO John Esposito wanted to sign her so badly, he exploited her father’s love of the Steelers and reached out to Cowher to personally change his mind.
“My dad was a big part of the journey coming up for me. When Coach Cowher gave him a call, he called me freaking out. He was like, ‘Do you know who just called my phone? Coach Cowher! He’s iconic,'” Gabby recalled, laughing. “He was all for my signing with the label after that.”
(WASHINGTON) — After weeks of warning of “severe” sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joe Biden addressed the nation and the world from the White House Thursday in what’s unfolding as a defining moment in his presidency as President Vladimir Putin pressed a large-scale attack.
Biden announced escalated sanctions to correspond with the escalated Russian aggression, but not the full economic punishment Ukraine and others have called for and none yet on Putin himself, although he did say that option was “not a bluff. It’s on the table.”
“The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity,” Biden said firmly. “This is a premeditated attack.”
Biden announced new sanctions on four large Russian banks including VTB and SberBank, additional Russian elites and family members, and applying the restriction of Russia’s sovereign debt to state-owned enterprises, companies whose assets exceed $1.4 trillion.
“Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences,” Biden said. “Today, I am authorizing additional strong sanctions and new limitations on what can be exported to Russia. This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time.”
However, Biden stopped short not only of sanctioning Putin himself also of cutting Russia off from the SWIFT international banking system.
Pressed by reporters why not sanction Putin directly now, Biden deflected.
“Sir, sanctions clearly have not been enough to deter Vladimir Putin to this point,” said ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega. “What is going to stop him? How and when does this end? And do you see him trying to go beyond Ukraine?”
“No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden replied. “It has to — it’s going to take time, and we have to show resolve. So, he knows what is coming. And so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them.”
“Between our actions and those of our allies and partners, we estimate that we’ll cut off more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports,” Biden said in his prepared remarks. “We’ll strike a blow to their ability to continue to modernize their military. It will degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program. It will hurt their ability to build ships, reducing their ability to compete economically. And it will be a major hit to Putin’s long-term strategic ambitions.”
But it’s still unclear whether the sanctions will make any difference in what Putin claimed overnight would be a “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine, which is proving to be much more widespread.
“To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside, if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” Putin warned the world.
While it was also still unclear just how far Putin would go beyond eastern Ukraine, Russian forces attacked near the capital city Kyiv — raising new fears he would try to topple Ukraine’s government.
Biden has maintained that U.S. forces will not fight Russians on the ground but announced he was authorizing additional U.S. force capabilities to deploy to Germany as part of NATO’s response force — including the 8,500 troops put on “heightened alert” last month.
“Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the East. As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power,” Biden said.
“I’ve also spoken with Defense Secretary Austin and Chairman of Joint Chiefs General Milly about preparations for additional moves, should they become necessary, to protect our NATO allies and support the greatest military alliance in the history of the world — NATO,” he added later on.
Biden also said that NATO would convene a summit Friday.
“This aggression cannot go unanswered,” Biden added. “If it did, the consequences would be much worse.”
Will Biden sanction Putin personally?
The Biden administration had threatened further sanctions on major Russian financial institutions and banks and to take steps to restrict Russian access to technology — as it did Thursday — but it had also weighed cutting Russia off from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) — which would hinder Russia’s participation in global markets, and to directly sanction Putin’s inner circle — or the Russian president himself.
Biden told reporters late last month that he would consider personally sanctioning Putin if Russia invaded Ukraine — a day after 8,500 American forces were put on “heightened alert” in the region — but those efforts did not appear to deter the Russian leader, nor did economic sanctions imposed this week by the U.S. and European allies, including halting the certification of Nord Stream 2, a major natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany.
But Biden has not gone that far.
The administration has begun to roll out a “first tranche” of sanctions, related to Russian banks, oligarchs and the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, as some lawmakers have criticized Biden of not going far enough on sanctions, which haven’t resulted in Russia reversing course.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell at a press event in Kentucky ahead of Biden’s remarks called on the administration to “ratchet the sanctions all the way up” on Russia.
“Don’t hold any back. Every single available tough sanction should be employed and should be employed now,” McConnell said.
He said “we honestly don’t know” if sanctions would be enough to deter Putin but argued harsher ones were still necessary.
As of Thursday morning, Russian forces had advanced from three directions — from the south heading north, from Belarus heading south to Kyiv and from northeast of Ukraine heading to the south — as Ukrainian woke up to a nation at war.
US military assessment, diplomatic moves
U.S. intelligence believes these three axes were “designed to take key population centers,” a senior defense official said Thursday.
The White House has said the sanctions will be “united and decisive,” but it remains to be seen how the West can punish Putin, who seems intent on moving ahead with his plans, despite weeks of attempted diplomacy from the international community and a set of sanctions already imposed.
With the U.S. condemning what’s it calling an “unprovoked and unjustified” attack on Ukraine, Biden met with his National Security Council in the Situation Room early Thursday ahead of a virtual video call with G-7 leaders to discuss a united response to the Russian attack.
Notably, Russia was a part of the G-7 until its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 — where it is now closing in further on Ukrainian borders.
Biden was at the White House overnight as the attack unfolded.
Within minutes, Biden was on the phone with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had reached out to him after receiving “silence,” he said, on a phone call to Putin. Russia has two tactical goals in Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy’s office: seizing territory and toppling Ukrainian leadership.
Consequences — for Americans
After their call, Biden released a statement saying that Putin “has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.”
“The prayers of the world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces,” Biden said.
The American president has acknowledged that there will be “consequences at home” — particularly at the gas pump and in energy prices — as a result of the Russian invasion and subsequent sanctions but has vowed to mitigate those costs.
However, ahead of his Thursday remarks, U.S. crude oil prices topped $100 a barrel, sending gasoline prices to an average of $3.54 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association. At least three states had average gas prices of $4 or higher. Meanwhile, U.S. stock and dow futures also plunged.
“We’re taking active steps to bring down the cost, and American oil and gas companies should not — should not — exploit this moment to hike their respect prices to raise profits,” Biden said Thursday. “In our sanctions package, we specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue.”
Throughout the crisis, Biden has reminded Americans that the U.S. has a responsibility to defend its NATO allies — and democracy around the world.
“America stands up to bullies,” Biden said Thursday. “We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”
ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Patrick Reevell, Allison Pecorin, Zunaira Zaki, Sarah Kolinovsky and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
Walker Hayes has signed on to help kick off a partnership between the NHL and TikTok. The singer will take the stage ahead of the 2022 NHL Stadium Series game later this month.
He’s performing on the TikTok Tailgate Stage at the NHL Pregame, and his set will be available to watch on TikTok beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, February 26.
Of course, it’ll include his breakout hit, “Fancy Like,” which went viral on TikTok after the singer posted a clip of himself dancing to it with his teenage daughter, Lela. Since then, the video has amassed over 34.9 million views on the app, and “Fancy Like” skyrocketed to the top of the country charts.
Ahead of his performance, Walker told NHL.com that he’s still not used to his newfound stardom.
“Just being involved in something of this caliber is still very new to me,” he pointed out. “‘Fancy Like’ — the song that exploded my career — is not even a year old. For [me], my wife and kids, especially playing a show like this involved with the NHL, these are dreams coming true for us.”
“Fancy Like” is on Walker’s new Country Stuff: The Album.
High-quality audiophile versions of Van Halen‘s first six studio albums will be released later this year as two-LP box sets mastered at 45 rpm, as well as on the SACD format, by the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, starting with the band’s self-titled 1978 debut.
Two-LP vinyl versions and SACDs of 1979’s Van Halen II, 1980’s Women and Children First, 1981’s Fair Warning, 1982’s Diver Down and 1984’s, um, 1984 will then be released at a later date.
The vinyl box sets, which are pressed on 180-gram vinyl, will feature LPs created using Mobile Fidelity’s ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step lacquering process. The LPs come housed in a deluxe box that features special foil-stamped jackets.
All six albums can be pre-ordered now at MusicDirect.com, with the LP sets priced at $125 and the SACDs at $29.99. The albums also will be available in bothformats at MoFi.com.
Van Halen’s first six albums all featured the band’s classic lineup of frontman David Lee Roth, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen and bassist Michael Anthony. The records all were certified multi-platinum by the RIAA, with Van Halen and 1984 both being certified Diamond for sales of at least 10 million copies in the U.S.
“Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab is excited to release Van Halen’s first six iconic albums in the [UltraDisc One-Step] and SACD formats for the first time,” says the company’s president, Jim Davis. “Fans will experience Van Halen’s original blend of raw power and Hollywood flair like never before through these limited-edition, audiophile-grade One-Step vinyl box sets.”
The streaming service is also home to the original series, which stars Kyla Pratt as Penny Proud, Tommy Davidson as her dad, Oscar, Paula Jai Parker as her mom, Trudy, and Jo Marie Payton as Penny’s grandma, Suga Mama. However, all the attention means Kyla and Jo Marie have to be quiet in public — unless they want a lot more attention from fans, that is.
“You know, something, this thing here, this thing never changes,” Jo Marie laughs to ABC Audio, referring to her distinctive voice. “So, a lot of people have heard this thing, but it gets me through the bank real quick!”
She says with a laugh, “Because the minute somebody notices my face, I open my mouth. And so the bank manager says, ‘Miss Payton, can you come over here, please?'”
Payton adds that people recognizing her voice sometimes makes running errands a bit busier. “My daughter used to say, ‘Momma, if you just don’t say nothing, we might be able to get through.’ But if I say the slightest of things, somebody turns and looks, and my granddaughter says, ‘Yeah, that’s her, that’s her!'”
For Pratt, sharing Penny Proud’s voice also gets her noticed — even if she doesn’t necessarily want to be.
“I have the same issue!” she agrees with Payton. “Like, I literally tell people I don’t know how to be quiet. I just don’t. So I’ll be the grocery store and someone will come in like two aisles over. Even now, with having to wear mask everywhere, it’s like I have to shut up. Otherwise, people know!”
Ed Sheeran is mourning the death of his friend Jamal Edwards, who passed away at age 31 on Sunday. The “Shivers” singer reached out to fans to explain why he had been silent on social media over the past few days.
“I haven’t posted anything coz I can’t find the words, I can’t reply coz I don’t know what to say,” Ed wrote on Instagram, and shared a photo of the two. “Jamal is my brother. His light shone so bright. He only used it to illuminate others and never asked for anything in return. A stars light shines for millions of years after they go, and his will continue to light up every dark moment, we are all witnessing his power.”
Ed adds that he “would not be here without [Jamal], professionally and personally,” before closing, “There will never be anything close to what he is, but I’m so grateful to have existed within his orbit.”
Jamal, a British music entrepreneur, is credited with helping to launch Ed’s career. In February 2010, he featured Ed on his SBTV channel for an acoustic A64 session, and the two remained friends since. Most recently, he urged the Grammy winner to collaborate with Fireboy DML, a Nigerian artist, which resulted in the hit single “Peru.”
A cause of death has not been announced. Jamal was 31.
The world woke up on Thursday to reports that Russia’s military has launched its long-feared invasion of Ukraine in the early morning hours. Russia’s forces are attacking its neighboring country from multiple directions.
Celebrities including Cher, Annie Lennox and The Weeknd expressed sympathy for Ukraine, condemned Russia and are calling for peace.
Here’s what the music community has said so far:
Annie Lennox: “Now that the tanks, soldiers and war machinery are on the brink of entering Ukraine…what now? The hell that ‘warfare’ unleashes? A frenzy of blood letting…Crushing of flesh and bones…The collective trauma of suffering of pain, grief, anguish and despair for innocent men, women and children? What kind of ‘price’ must ordinary people pay for the nightmarish madness and brutality of ‘invasion’ and ‘warfare’? Or is this just an elaborate hoax? A scare tactic? A threat? Apologies for this dark reflection, but I’ve had the privilege of living in a ‘peaceful’ context since I was born — a decade after the end of WW2 — 67 years in total. I don’t take this for granted in any way and therefore find the notion of ‘war’ to be unacceptable repugnant barbarism. Sorry friends I just had to express this.”
Cher: “Why Ukraine’s Important 2 Putin’s despot, trump Hero, & If Given Chance Putin Will Devour Sovereign Countries, Till He Resurrects USSR. This Will Leave Europe, Small & unprotected.”
The Weeknd: “unfortunately i’m just now seeing what’s happening with the conflict and will pause on tomorrow’s announcement. i pray for everyone’s safety.”
Any press is good press, right? Maybe not, Thomas Rhett discovers, in a hilarious skit he posted to social media this week.
Thomas is gearing up for the release of his Where We Started album, so of course, he needs publicity. In this goofy clip, the singer “hires” a new PR expert named Rodney, who coaches TR through some unorthodox approaches to selling his record.
For example, Rodney — who bears a resemblance to Dwight from The Office, with a personality to match — encourages Thomas to get on the phone and cold-call potential album buyers. First up on the phone is Brent, who apparently previously bought pool chlorine from Rodney, and who has no clue who Thomas Rhett is.
“Hey buddy,” Rodney says, hopping on the phone when he sees that TR isn’t impressing this potential customer. “He’s gonna make you a custom monogrammed duck call, Brent.”
“Brent, I can’t promise you that,” the singer adds drily.
TR might not make you a custom duck call, but you can pre-order his new album, Where We Started, now. Its lead single, “Slow Down Summer,” is out now, and the full project will drop in April.
