G-Eazy and Demi Lovato take aim at negative media coverage against them in their new collaboration, “Breakdown.”
The song finds the two singers in a dark place, battling inner demons and anxiety as Demi confesses, “I got big plans/But none of them feel like mine,” while the rapper admits to feeling “all alone in a dark space.”
The video follows the pair as they stand alone in adjoining rooms on a living room set, watching headlines about Demi’s drug overdose and G-Eazy’s arrest for assault and drug possession flash across the walls and TV screen.
“I’m in the middle of a breakdown baby/I need you,” Demi professes in the chorus.
“Thank you@G_Eazyfor sharing this song with me,” Demi writes on Instagram.
“Breakdown” is the latest single off G-Eazy’s album, These Things Happen Too, set for release on September 24.
Kanye West on Thursday released a new music video for “24,” from his Donda album.
The video, directed by Nick Knight, picks up where West’s second listening party left off — with the rapper rising toward the ceiling of Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, then flouting out of the stadium and soaring through the clouds.
Donda arrived last month after multiple delays. Despite Kanye’s complaints that the 27-song collection was released without his approval, it topped the Billboard 200 in the first week of its release, becoming West’s 10th #1 album.
Loretta Lynn was the force behind the star-studded Hometown Rising concert, held at the Grand Ole Opry on September 14, to raise money for those impacted by the devastating floods that struck Middle Tennessee in August.
Proceeds from the show, which drew country music superstars like Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Luke Combs, Luke Bryan, Keith Urban and more, went directly to the United Way of Humphreys County, with the concert netting nearly one million dollars for the worthwhile cause.
“I’ve heard from so many friends that the show Monday night that my friends put together for our community not only raised money, but it also raised spirits after a long few weeks of loss and heartbreak,” Loretta says. “I loved the performances and the stories.
“While we shared some heartbreaking images and footage from our hometown, what I saw in those moments was the resilience people have shown amid so much loss,” she continues. “We’ll all be okay as long as we continue to help one another.”
Donations can still be made by texting TNFLOODRELIEF to 44321.
In August, it was announced that John Mellencamp would be serving as a guest programmer on Turner Classic Movies this month, and now details have been revealed about the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s programming contributions to the network.
Mellencamp has curated two special nights of films that will be shown on TCM — airing tonight, September 17, and Friday, September 24. The heartland rocker will appear alongside TCM host Ben Mankiewicz to introduce the movies, which are some of his favorites.
For tonight, Mellencamp has chosen Tortilla Flat, Cool Hand Luke and The Misfits, and his picks for September 24 are The Fugitive Kind, On the Waterfront and East of Eden.
Back in July, the 69-year-old singer/songwriter lent his voice to a Turner Classic Movies interstitial segment called “From Hollywood to the Heartland” that looked at how small towns were portrayed in select vintage movies and featured him reflecting on his own experience growing in a small Indiana town.
Also, on August 27, Mellencamp’s new documentary The Good Samaritan Tour 2000 got its premiere on TCM’s YouTube channel, and you can still watch it on the website.
As previously reported, the film focuses on John’s 2000 trek of the same name, which featured a series of free, unannounced acoustic concerts held at public parks and on street corners in select major cities in the Midwest and on the East Coast.
The doc is narrated by Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, and includes special contributions from Nora Guthrie, daughter of late folk legend Woody Guthrie.
(MOSCOW) — In St. Petersburg’s municipal elections this week, Boris Vishnevsky is running against himself. But that does not mean he has no challengers. Far from it, in fact.
The veteran anti-Kremlin opposition politician is running against two men who have legally changed their names to be the same as his. They have even altered their appearances on the ballots, adopting beards to resemble him.
It is an update on a long-running tactic in Russian elections, known as “a double,” where authorities try to siphon votes away from an opponent by putting up candidates with the same name in the hope confused voters will put their mark next to the wrong person on their ballot paper.
Vishnevsky filed a complaint to the elections commission but it was rejected. He said had faced similar tactics before, but not at such lengths.
“We’ve simply never had such a thing before,” Vishnevsky told ABC News in an interview last month. “We’ve had situations before where they’ve put up people with the same last names in elections, but before this we’ve never had someone changing their last name and first name.”
The clone candidate ploy — which is being used in multiple races in Moscow too — is just one of a torrent of alleged dirty tricks, manipulation and crude repression being deployed around Russia’s parliamentary elections that are taking place this weekend and that the Kremlin is determined will produce a convincing result for its ruling party. The three-day vote, which starts Friday, decides seats in Russia’s lower house of parliament, as well as in regional and local councils.
Russia’s elections are heavily managed and as usual the outcome is not in doubt: President Vladimir Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, will keep its constitutional majority in Russia’s 450-seat lower house, known as the Duma. A handful of parties, vetted by the Kremlin, make up the rest.
But the environment these elections are happening in is different, coming as Russia has rapidly slid over the past year from authoritarianism to something far closer to a full-fledged dictatorship, where no real political opposition is tolerated.
Authorities have blocked opposition candidates on a broad scale, introducing new procedural and legal barriers or, in some cases, simply jailing or driving them out of the country with the threat of arrest.
This time, anti-Kremlin candidates who once would have been tolerated on the ballot have no place. In June, Dmitry Gudkov, one of the opposition’s best-known politicians, left for exile in Ukraine, saying he and his family had been threatened with jail. Even the traditionally tame opposition parties have come under attack, in particular the Communist Party, which saw one of its top leaders, Pavel Grudinin, barred from running.
“Faster and faster democratic progress is devolving into dictatorship,” said Darya Artamonova, a 19 year-old candidate running in municipal elections in a suburb in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, one of the only opposition candidates permitted on the ballot there. During the campaign she told ABC News her parents were sent a funeral wreath expressing condolences for her death, an obvious threat.
In the past 18 months, the Kremlin has launched a broad campaign of repression larger than anything in Putin’s 20-year rule. Critics and independent analysts say the campaign is aimed at squeezing out organized dissent in the country.
That has included outlawing the movement of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s best-known opponent who authorities jailed in January after he survived a nerve agent poisoning. A new law bans anyone associated with Navalny’s organizations from running for office for five years.
An arsenal of new laws has given authorities broad capabilities to jail or block critics from the vote. Safeguards to prevent ballot stuffing have also been weakened: Authorities have pushed people to vote online, a tactic critics say will facilitate rigging. Holding the vote itself over three days also makes monitoring more difficult. Russia’s election commission this year will also not live-stream CCTV from voting stations.
Moreover, the campaign has targeted independent media. Authorities have designated most of Russia’s leading independent news sites as “foreign agents,” a label that imposes restrictions and opens reporters up to risk of criminal prosecution. A top election monitoring group, Golos, has also received the same designation.
The intense control around the elections, analysts said, reflects the Kremlin’s concerns that the ruling party United Russia is polling at below 30%, a historic low.
In Russia, where the parliament is effectively a tame extension of the Kremlin, the main purpose of elections is about producing a big result for United Russia to validate Putin, according to Andrey Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
“They are not about political representation,” Kolesnikov wrote in an article this week. “What will happen over the three days of September 17–19, 2021, is more of a confidence vote on Putin and his regime.”
To boost the result, authorities have been pressing state employees and military personnel to register to vote, with some state organizations telling staff they must persuade at least two others to do so too. On Friday, long lines appeared at some polling stations in Moscow, a sign critics said of state workers being obliged to go vote. At one station in the central Arbat neighborhood, a man in a line told ABC News many of those waiting were soldiers from a nearby defense ministry headquarters building. Moscow’s elections commission later confirmed the queue was being caused by military personnel voting.
Navalny’s team is seeking to exploit United Russia’s unpopularity. His group has launched a tactical voting campaign known as “Smart Voting.” The campaign calls for people to vote for any candidate with the best chance of beating United Russia’s, regardless of who they are. This week Navalny’s team published a list of candidates — the majority from Russia’s Communist Party — it recommends people should vote for.
The authorities have moved to block the tactical voting campaign, forcing Russian search engines to remove “Smart Voting” from their searches.
On Friday, Apple and Google deleted Navalny’s app from their stores in Russia, under pressure from Russia’s government. In a letter published by Navalny’s team, Apple said it was obliged to because Navalny’s organization is banned as extremist and that authorities allege it illegally enables “election interference.”
NHC, which stands for Navarro Hawkins Cheney — the new group made up of Jane’s Addiction members Dave Navarro and Chris Chaney and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins — will perform on the second weekend of Eddie Vedder‘s Ohana Festival, October 2. But now you can get a preview of what they’ll be playing.
The new trio has released two new songs: The rocking “Feed the Cruel” and the more melodic and mellow “Better Move On.” You can also see the band in action in a black-and-white performance clip for “Feed the Cruel,” now streaming on YouTube.
All three musicians have a long history together. Hawkins and Chaney once played together in Alanis Morissette‘s backing band, and Chaney later joined Jane’s Addiction with Navarro. The three also played together under the name Ground Control this past January on the David Bowie tribute livestream A Bowie Celebration: Just for One Day!Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor joined them then on vocals.
Taylor Swift is taking fans into her “Wildest Dreams” with the surprise release of her ‘Taylor’s Version’ of the hit track.
On Friday, the superstar offered fans a special treat by releasing her reimagined version of the song, thanks to its popularity on TikTok as part of the trending Slow Zoom videos, where the camera slow-zooms in on a person as an apropos song plays.
“Hi!” Saw you guys got Wildest Dreams trending on tiktok, thought you should have my version,” Taylor writes on her socials, with several kissing heart emojis.
The new rendition of the song still honors its pop roots while elevating the cinematic element. A preview of the song was shared earlier this year in the trailer for Spirit Untamed.
Upon its original release as a single in 2015, from Taylor’s 1989 album, “Wildest Dreams” reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Billboard Mainstream Top 40.
Taylor is getting ready to release the re-recording of Red on November 19. She released Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in April.
It looks like Dr. Anthony Fauci isn’t the only official who is refuting Nicki Minaj‘s recent comments regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. Trinidad and Tobago health minister Dr. Terrence Deyalsingh is, too.
Earlier this week, Nicki, who was born in Trinidad, shared with fans that one of the reasons she did not attend the Met Gala was because attendees had to be vaccinated, and she was not. In a later tweet, she claimed that a friend of a family member who received the vaccine became impotent afterward.
The claim sparked much controversy and prompted Deyalsingh to investigate the claim, which he debunked in a video shared on Twitter Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, we wasted so much time yesterday running down this false claim,” he says in the clip. “As we stand now, there is absolutely no reported such side effect or adverse event of testicular swelling in Trinidad or, I dare say … anywhere else in the world.”
The media storm surrounding the “Anaconda” rapper’s tweets even attracted the attention of the White House, with officials offering to chat with Nicki about the vaccine’s effectiveness. There were also rumors that Twitter had suspended Nicki’s account, presumably for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. However, a Twitter spokesperson told ABC News, “Twitter did not take any enforcement action on the account referenced.” And Nicki’s account is still active as of Friday morning.
The Zac Brown Band just dropped a new song, “Fun Having Fun,” from their upcoming The Comeback album, out on October 15. The song was written by lead singer Zac Brown, along with Kenny Habul, Kurt Thomas and Ben Simonetti, and inspired by reminiscing about their own respective carefree childhoods.
“‘Fun Having Fun’ is about all the dumb stuff you do when you’re a kid. One of my co-writers on the track is actually my buddy Kurt, who I went to high school with in Dahlonega,” Zac says of his Georgia upbringing. “He and I made a demo tape when we were kids called KZ, for Kurt & Zac, and he was the first guy I ever sat down with and thought, ‘We’re gonna be big.’”
Zac is now the proud parent of five children, which is why he felt so drawn to “Fun Having Fun.”
“It was fun to circle back to that time in my life and remember some of the things that we did together, especially with the perspective of now being a parent,” Zac adds.
Tyra Banks is defending this year’s most controversial Dancing with the Stars casting choice — Olivia Jade.
The 21-year-old daughter of Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli is set to make her DWTS debut Monday night. But some fans criticized her involvement because of her parents’ participation in the Varsity Blues college admissions cheating scandal. But returning show host Banks told Entertainment Tonightthat fans need to give Olivia the benefit of the doubt.
“I think Olivia is so brave,” the supermodel said. “I think people don’t know her, they know what happened to her.”
As previously reported, Giannulli and Loughlin pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison last year for paying $500,000 to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California as rowing crew recruits, when neither participated in the sport.
“She has said that she did not know about what was going on and it’s really sad, and it’s very hurtful when something publicly happens but you had nothing to do with it. So I trust that she says she didn’t know,” continued Banks.
“[Olivia] is having to deal with that and I think she’s coming to Dancing with the Stars to be able to tell her story and show her vulnerability,” Banks went on. “And is she a celebrity? Not traditionally, but what is a celebrity today? If that’s the case then there’s no Instagram influencer that is a celebrity. We are in a whole different world and celebrity has taken a turn and a change.”
As for whether or not Olivia deserves to be on the show, Banks declared, “If people are talking about you, you’re famous and you can be on Dancing with the Stars.”
Dancing with the Stars returns Monday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
