Following the successful opening weekend of his debut Las Vegas residency, Luke Bryan is adding several new dates to the calendar.
Due to high demand, the country superstar will perform an additional nine shows at Resorts World this year on June 15, 17, 18, 22, 24 and 25, August 31 and September 3 and 4. They join previously announced shows on February 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25 and 26.
The demand comes after a sold-out first night of the residency on Saturday. The innovative show features a stage that moves to the melody as Luke performs hits including “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” and “One Margarita,” and a catwalk suspended 45 feet in the air that brings the singer up-close-and-personal with fans in balcony seating.
“What an amazing night and start to our run of headlining shows at Resorts World Las Vegas. We’ve worked long and hard to put together an incredible, high-energy show for the fans,” Luke shares. “I am so proud of how it turned out and I hope everyone who comes leaves there having as much fun as me.”
Tickets for the new shows go on sale February 21 at 1 p.m. ET.
Charlie Puth cannot wait for fans to hear his upcoming new album, Charlie, because it will mark an entirely new chapter in his songwriting and creation process. The studio effort offers a more-vulnerable and honest glimpse at the singer — and Charlie says that’s because it was born out of anger.
Speaking to Insider, the “Light Switch” singer admitted, “The one word that comes to mind when I think about this album in the beginning when I was making it, was ‘revenge.’… I was mostly, I guess, angry.”
Charlie explained that he was feeling stuck in life, and that frustration bubbled over into him questioning himself as well as his romantic and platonic relationships. “Why is this song not resonating with people? Why did this relationship not work out?’ It was a lot of that,” the Grammy nominee asked.
That soul-searching eventually gave way to a major epiphany. “I was coming to terms with who I was for the first time in five years. And that’s what I realized at the end of the album, and while I was making ‘Light Switch,'” Charlie said. “It felt special to me because it’s the most polarizing record I’ve ever made. It’s unusually fast. It sounds like nothing I’ve ever made before.”
Charlie also warned that “Light Switch” is “the most lighthearted song out of the whole bunch” on his new album. He also revealed some of the other tracks’ titles, which include “Loser,” “That’s Hilarious” and “There’s a First Time for Everything.”
Charlie feels at peace with his upcoming body of work because of its authenticity. “The difference is I’m not trying to be so cool… I’m not pretending to be the cool kid,” he said.
A release date for Charlie has yet to be announced.
Ringo Starr‘s recently announced latest photo book, Lifted: Fab Images and Memories of My Life with The Beatles from Across the Universe, has officially been released and can be purchased now exclusively at JuliensAuctions.com, coinciding with Valentine’s Day.
Two editions of the limited-edition book are available — a Collector’s Edition that’s priced at $59 and a Signature Edition that costs $495. The Signature Edition, limited to just 500 copies, features a color cover of The Beatles signed by Ringo and comes housed in a special slip case.
Lifted pays tribute to Starr’s years with the Fab Four and features many rare, unseen and newly discovered photos of the band members, as well as recollections and anecdotes written by Ringo.
Starr put together the book with help from noted pop-culture journalist and author David Wild while quarantining during the COVID-19 lockdown. Besides images from his personal archives, Ringo also “lifted” photos of the band from the internet that caught his eye, which are featured in the book.
Starr explains in a statement, “These fantastic images came back to me in recent years from here, there and everywhere — online and off — and have somehow helped me get back to seeing my life with The Fab Four through fresh eyes.”
Proceeds from Lifted will benefit Ringo’s Lotus Foundation, which funds and supports charitable projects that focus on various social welfare causes.
Meanwhile, Ringo has shared a photo on Facebook of him, his brother-in-law Joe Walsh and their wives, Barbara and Marjorie Bach — who are sisters — celebrating the Los Angeles Rams’ Super Bowl victory on Sunday. The pic shows all four wearing Rams jerseys, accompanied by a note from Ringo that reads, “We are the champions go Rams go peace and love.”
The annual Eurovision Song Contest, aka Eurovision, is one of the biggest music-focused events in, well, Europe — and that craze is finally coming to America, thanks to Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg.
Deadline reports that the Grammy winners have teamed for NBC’s new series American Song Contest, a musical competition series that they will host. The official commercial promoting the event aired during Sunday night’s Super Bowl.
Singers from all 50 states as well as the country’s five territories and the U.S. Capitol — 56 in all — will compete against each other to not only create the best hit song, but score America’s vote to advance to the top. This year’s list of competitors will be announced soon.
This concept is similar to how Eurovision operates, where singers from each country on the European continent — now including former territories such as Australia — create a new song, and the winner is decided by popular vote.
“I have been a fan and love the concept of Eurovision and am thrilled to bring the musical phenomenon to America. I’m so excited to work with Snoop and can’t wait to see every state and territory represented by artists singing their own songs,” Kelly said in a statement.
Added Snoop, “I am honored to host ‘American Song Contest’ alongside my lil sis Kelly Clarkson, aka Miss Texas.”
The series is set to premiere March 21 and will run for eight weeks before wrapping on May 9 — ahead of the Eurovision song contest.
Mickey Guyton earned rave reviews for her powerful rendition of the national anthem at Super Bowl LVI.
With a broadcast introduction that referred to her as “the voice of an angel,” the country powerhouse opened the big game by singing the anthem supported by a team of backup singers. This marks Mickey’s first time performing at the Super Bowl.
“What a dream. Thankful,” Mickey writes on Twitter, alongside a photo of her posing with the background singers. “Just wanted to check in and tell y’all I love you! Thank you for today.”
Following the performance, Mickey’s country peers and others took to social media to celebrate.
“@MickeyGuyton u were awesome!!! So happy for u!! Just wonderful young lady!” Darius Ruckerpraised.
“Now the world knows what us in Nashville have known for years. Smashed it, Mickey,” cheeredBrothers Osborne.
“Wow @MickeyGuyton ! What a way to start the #SuperBowl,” ravedReese Witherspoon, with fellow Academy Award winner Halle Berrystating, “Mickey Guyton. That’s the tweet.”
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: The 1975 deleted their social media profiles.
As of Monday morning, the group’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages are all deactivated. But while you may not be able to like a tweet or photo from Matty Healy and company at the moment, the good news is new music is likely in the works.
As any longtime 1975 fan will tell you, the band has a history of social media chicanery, which is often a prelude to a new album announcement. They pulled similar stunts leading up to their last two records, 2018’s A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, and 2020’s Notes on a Conditional Form, and even pretended they were breaking up ahead of the reveal for 2016’s I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it.
The 1975’s most recent release is the 2021 single “Spinning,” featuring Charli XCX and No Rome. Healy has also teased new music under the moniker Drive Like I Do, which was one of The 1975’s first band names.
Fresh off receiving seven Oscar nominations his film Belfast, Kenneth Branagh‘s Death on the Nile topped the Valentine’s weekend box office. The follow-up to 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, also directed by and starring Branagh, delivered an estimated 12.8 million.
Death on the Nile added an estimated $20.7 million overseas, for a first-week cumulative worldwide total of $33.5 million.
Last week’s number one movie, Jackass Forever, dropped to second place, delivering an estimated $8.1 million in its second week of release. The film’s stateside tall currently stands at $37.4 million to go with $10 million internationally, for a global total of $47.4 million.
Moviegoers didn’t say “I do” to the Jennifer Lopez/Owen Wilson-led romantic comedy Marry Me, which stumbled out of the gate with an estimated $8 million debut for a third-place finish.
Spider-Man: No Way Home banked just shy of $7.2 million in its ninth week of release, taking fourth place. Its total here in the states now stands at $759 million, putting it just $1 million short of overtaking 2009’s Avatar as the third-highest grossing film of all time at the domestic box office. Overseas, No Way Home has earned just under $1.05 billion to date, putting its worldwide tally at $1.8 billion.
This week’s third debut, the Liam Neeson thriller Blacklight, rounded out the top five, grabbing an estimated $3.6 million. The film hasn’t opened overseas yet.
According to published reports, Ivan Reitman, who directed comedy classics like Animal House, Stripes, and Ghostbusters, died Saturday at 75.
Born in 1946 in what is now Slovakia, to Jewish parents who survived the Nazi occupation, Reitman’s family fled to Canada when he was four years old. Raised in Canada, he eventually ended up in the orbit of rising comic stars Dan Akykroyd, John Belushi and Harold Ramis, from the country’s Second City troupe. Belushi and Akyroyd would later star on Saturday Night Live, while Ramis, who co-wrote Reitman’s first feature, 1978’s Animal House, was a veteran of Canada’s beloved sketch show SCTV, as was eventual Ghostbusters co-star Rick Moranis.
Prior to that, 1978’s Animal House brought Belushi big screen stardom, and in 1979 Reitman directed another SNL vet, Bill Murray, in the summer camp comedy Meatballs.
Reitman collaborated with Ramis and Murray again, along with another SCTV vet John Candy, for the 1981 hit Stripes, with the gang playing unlikely military heroes. The friends would again re-team for Ghostbusters in 1984, on a script from Ramis and Aykroyd — although Candy’s off-center take on accountant Louis Tully saw Moranis getting the role instead.
Originally conceived as a vehicle that would have included Belushi, who died of a drug overdose in 1980, Ghostbusters overcame a demanding shooting schedule to become a franchise-spawning blockbuster. The original movie is ranked by The American Film Institute #28 on its list of the top 100 comedies of all time.
The film, also starring Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts, led to the hit Ghostbusters II in 1989. The gang was reunited, minus a retired Moranis and Ramis, the latter of whom passed away in 2016, in the 2021 hit Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which was directed by Reitman’s son, Jason, and which was not only dedicated to Ramis, but featured a CGI version of him in a pivotal role from the Great Beyond.
Reitman also directed the hit Twins with Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1988, before teaming up with the latter in 1990’s Kindergarten Cop. 1993 saw DeVito and Schwarzenegger re-team for Reitman’s comedy Junior. In that year, Reitman’s political satire Dave debuted with Kevin Kline.
The filmmaker also produced hits including the Beethoven family comedies, 1996’s Space Jam, and the college classic Old School in 2003.
While promoting Afterlife, Jason said his dad was perfectly fine with the long shadow of Ghostbusters: “My father, who has made 50 movies…in between directing and producing, he’s made just some of the most important movies of the last few decades, from Animal House to Stripes to Space Jam to Dave. But my father will go down as a director and creator of Ghostbusters, that’s who he is.”
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
After taking aim at Pete Davidson, Kid Cudi and others over the weekend on Instagram, Kanye West is now making a plea for his family.
On Monday, Valentine’s Day, Ye posted a photo of his ex Kim Kardashian wearing a sparkly long coat. He captioned the pic in all caps, writing, “I DON’T HAVE BEEF WITH KIM I LOVE MY FAMILY SO STOP THAT NARRATIVE IM NOT GIVING UP ON MY FAMILY I BOUGHT THIS COAT FOR KIM BEFORE SNL I THOUGHT IT WAS PARTICULARLY SPECIAL I HAVE FAITH THAT WE‘LL BE BACK TOGETHER.”
Kanye then addressed the media, writing, “SOMETIMES PEOPLE CALL ME CRAZY BUT TO BE IN LOVE IS TO BE CRAZY ABOUT SOMETHING AND I AM CRAZY ABOUT MY FAMILY HAPPY VALENTINES.”
In now-deleted posts over the weekend, Ye dissed Davidson, who’s currently dating Kim, as well as Kid Cudi and Machine Gun Kelly, for being friends with Pete. Cudi responded, calling Ye a “dinosaur” and tweeting, “You ain’t no friend.”
On Sunday, Ye attended the Super Bowl with his kids North, 8, and Saint, 6.
(WINDSOR, Ontario) — The bridge in Canada where thousands of semi truck drivers have camped out in a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates may reopen Sunday night, according to officials.
The blockade of commercial trailers on the Ambassador Bridge, which connects the city of Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, ended peacefully Sunday with no violence after police described many protesters exhibiting “aggressive, illegal behavior” on Saturday, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens told ABC News.
Authorities now have the bridge under control after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ontario Provincial Police and Ottawa Police Service responded to the volatile scene on Saturday, where several hundred protesters planted themselves about 100 feet from the foot of the entry to the bridge, even as all of the trucks left the scene throughout the day in the face of a police crackdown.
A judge had ordered Friday that the protesters disperse after the demonstrations interrupted the flow of goods between the two countries, especially crippling the auto industry on both sides of the border.
City officials hope to reopen the bridge Sunday night.
“Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador bridge came to an end,” Dilkens wrote in a statement. “Border crossings will reopen when it is safe to do so and I defer to police and border agencies to make that determination.”
Dilkens wrote that while the nation of Canada “believes in the right to freedom of speech and expression,” those exercising those rights must also abide by the law.
“As Canadians, there is more that unites us, than divides us and we must all find the resolve to approach those who hold different views with tolerance and respect,” Dilkens said. “Illegal acts, blockades and hate speech must not be tolerated and should be denounced.”
Thousands of truckers have been protesting the COVID-19 vaccine mandates for weeks as part of what is being called the “Freedom Convoy.” The number of demonstrators reached as many as 4,000 over the weekend.
The protests began in Canada’s capital city last month after truckers began protesting the requirement for them to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to cross the U.S.-Canada border.
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Nadine El-Bawab, Matt Foster, Elwyn Lopez and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
