Lil Nas X is revealing which two pop stars are among his biggest inspirations.
In two exclusive clips of his interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, obtained by People, Lil Nas says he counts Miley Cyrus and Doja Cat as major influences.
“Miley is just the sweetest person ever and I feel like she’s one of those people that don’t even realize how impactful and how much of a legend they already are,” he says. “And what they have done and what they’re doing right now, even to this day. And I really admire her and her ability to constantly change herself.”
Lil Nas X, of course, worked with Miley’s dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, on the mega-successful remix of “Old Town Road.”
Of Doja Cat, Lil Nas says seeing her VMAs performance last year motivated him to up his game. “It literally made me start going to the gym,” he says. “Because I was like, ‘I want to get in shape because I want to start doing crazier, better performances.'”
“And just her music, she’s diverse, her videos, and her personality is really colorful and pop,” he adds. “She’s funny. She’s a fun person. She takes things seriously, but doesn’t take things seriously. You know what I mean? She takes what she does seriously.”
Lil Nas X is set to release his new album, Montero, Friday.
By the time the world knew that Carly Pearce and Michael Ray were divorcing, after less than a year of marriage, Carly had already been dealing privately with the heartbreak for months. Her wide range of emotions comes out in all of the songs on her upcoming album 29: Written in Stone, including “Diamondback,” the first track on the record.
“I think it was the last song I wrote for this project,” Carly tells People. “You try to do the right thing and you try to stay quiet, and I just stopped caring in that moment. I went, ‘Hmm … I gotta go there’ — and I did.”
Carly grew up listening to strong female artists telling their own truth, which is what gave her the courage to not sugarcoat her story, either.
“All of the great women that I love as writers and as singers and as performers — [like] Natalie Maines of The Chicks, had those go-off moments,” Carly says. “I grew up loving those. Miranda [Lambert] writes from such an unapologetic place. Loretta Lynn writes from such an unapologetic place.”
(JACKSONVILLE) — Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer has no interest in the University of Southern California.
“There’s no chance. I’m here and committed to trying to build this organization,” Meyer said.
USC athletic director Mike Bohn fired head coach Clay Helton on Monday following a 42-28 loss to Stanford on Saturday.
“As I committed to upon my arrival at USC, during the past two off-seasons we provided every resource necessary for our football program to compete for championships,” Bohn said in the announcement The added resources carried significantly increased expectations for our team’s performance, and it is already evident that, despite the enhancements, those expectations would not be met without a change in leadership.”
Helton went 46-24 in his seven years as head coach and won one conference championship.
Meyer is in his first season as the Jaguars head coach. He won three national championships while coaching in college at Florida and Ohio State and had a combined 187-32 record 17 seasons at Bowling Green, Utah, Florida, and Ohio State.
Jacksonville lost its Week One game to Houston 37-21.
The U.K.’s Download Festival is heading to Germany, and Metallica will be along for the ride.
The metal legends are headlining the inaugural Download Germany, set to take place June 24, 2022. The lineup will also include Five Finger Death Punch and Sabaton, with more artists being announced at a later date.
The U.K. version of Download was founded in 2003, and is held in England’s Donington Park. However, it hasn’t taken place since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though a smaller, downsized version, deemed Download Pilot, was held this past June.
Download is set to return in 2022 with headliners Iron Maiden, KISS and Biffy Clyro.
It’s safe to say things got a bit heated Tuesday night during the Verzuz battle between New York rappers Fat Joe and Ja Rule.
During the livestreamed music event, held at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Joe and Ja brought out some of their famous friends and collaborators — including Nelly, Ashanti, Jadakiss, and Remy Ma — to assist them on some of their hit songs. While the music competition remained mostly friendly, things became a bit tense when Ja Rule asked his “Put It On Me” collaborators Lil Mo and Vita to come on stage and sing.
“Oh, them dusty b******,” said Fat Joe, referring to Lil Mo and Vita. “You had to go to the crack house to find them b******.”
Fans were quick to slam Joe’s comments, with Lil Mo responding in an online post that she was “disappointed” in him. Joe apparently received the message, apologizing on Twitter early Wednesday morning.
“Shout out to the ladies very sorry if i disrespected i love vida and lil Moe,” he tweeted. “I’m super sorry love my sisters.”
Neither Mo nor Vida have publicly responded to Joe’s apology as of late Wednesday morning.
Following a New York Times report that Kelly Clarkson is prepping a Christmas album for release later this year, Kelly’s announced a brand-new holiday single — with an amazing title.
“Christmas Isn’t Canceled (Just You)” will be released September 23. “You’re gonna love it!” Kelly promises in a new Instagram video.
The single is described as the first release from Kelly’s ninth studio album, which her label confirms will be her second holiday release since 2013’s Wrapped in Red. Overall, it’ll be her first album since 2017’s Meaning of Life.
This week, Kelly kicked off the third season of her Emmy-winning talk show and on Monday, she’ll return for the 21st season of The Voice.
The rapper welcomed his third child with wife Tricia Davis six weeks ago. Davis announced the birth of their son on Instagram.
“Six weeks ago in the shadow of the Buck Moon this beautiful human came into our lives,” she wrote, alongside a selfie with the newborn. “He arrived rooted and calm, mostly just observing the two whirling dervishes around him.”
“Welcome home Hugo,” she continued. “May you crush the distorted masculine and awaken the divine.”
Macklemore and Davis, who married in 2015, are also parents to two daughters: six-year-old Sloane Ava Simone and three-year-old Colette Koala.
An early, pre-ParachutesColdplay performance is now streaming via Amazon Prime’s Coda Collection.
The set, titled Amsterdam Sessions, was recorded at a Netherlands studio in June 2000, just a month before the U.K. band’s debut album dropped. It marked one of Coldplay’s first performances outside of their home country and has never before been released outside of Holland.
You can watch a preview of Amsterdam Sessions, featuring a rendition of the future hit “Yellow,” now on YouTube.
Since that humble performance, Chris Martin and company have since become worldwide superstars. Their upcoming ninth album, Music of the Spheres, featuring the lead single “Higher Power” and the much-anticipated BTS collaboration “My Universe,” arrives October 15.
(NEW ORLEANS) — As Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc in New Orleans, it swept away a historic jazz landmark that Louis Armstrong once considered a second home.
“The message that boosting might soon be needed, if not justified by robust data and analysis, could adversely affect confidence in vaccines and undermine messaging about the value of primary vaccination,” the officials wrote, backed by other worldwide organizations.
For their part, the Biden administration has emphasized that science will lead and federal regulators will have the final say — and that their call to push out booster shots is motivated by wanting to “stay ahead” of the virus.
“You don’t want to find yourself behind playing catch up,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said when announcing the plan. “Better stay ahead of it than chasing after it.”
The Karnofsky Tailor Shop and Residence, which was built in 1913, collapsed after water pooled on its roof. According to the National Park Service, a young Armstrong worked for the family who owned the shop and loaned the future jazz legend money to buy his first cornet — a brass instrument that resembles a small trumpet.
“That is another devastating blow to the community, so much history there [that] once again, a hurricane has come in and just kind of washed away,” Kia Robinson, the director of programs and marketing at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, told ABC News.
Ida destroyed homes and businesses, knocked out power to more than 1 million residents and left at least 82 people dead. It hit Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 29 — almost exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city that is known as the birthplace of jazz.
‘Insult to injury’
Before Ida, the jazz community was already reeling from the ongoing pandemic, which has shut down music venues, canceled shows and left many in the music community without an income or a lifeline.
“New Orleans is very much so a gig town, you know, people work performance to performance, gig to gig, so a lot of our musicians don’t have a safety net,” Robinson said.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, Robin Barnes Casey, known as the Songbird of New Orleans, lost all of her bookings, and all of her international tours as a cultural ambassador to the city were canceled.
At the time, she and her husband, musician Pat Casey, who perform as the duo LoveBirds, had just become new parents to baby Riley.
“All of a sudden, everything we could do financially [to support our family] was just stopped,” Barnes Casey said.
“It was definitely mentally, emotionally an exhausting time and then also being brand new parents, we had a challenge and a blessing,” she added.
As COVID-19 vaccines became widely available this spring, some musicians were able to book some gigs again. But amid a surge in cases in Louisiana and the emergence of the delta variant, the city again had to take a step back.
Gov. John Bel Edwards reinstated the mask mandate in August, and large gatherings like the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which was scheduled to run in October, were canceled again this year.
For New Orleans saxophonist Derek Douget, Ida has added “insult to injury.”
“COVID took away all the gigs, [and] then the hurricane comes in, not only taking the gigs or prospects of gigs away, but it’s destroyed your property,” Douget told ABC News as he helped his parents deal with hurricane damage to their home.
The Jazz Foundation of America deployed teams of volunteers to assess needs and provided financial assistance to thousands of musicians — from direct payments to fulfilling need-based requests, most recently providing those who lost power during Ida with generators and fuel tanks.
“We have a long history, a long and painful one, of working with musicians in Louisiana and throughout the South during these natural disasters,””Jazz Foundation of America executive director Joseph Petrucelli told ABC News.
The Jazz Foundation of America raised over $2 million for its COVID-19 relief fund, while the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation supported more than 2,500 in the Louisiana jazz community through grants.
“During 2020 we assisted more musicians and more families across the country than we did in any year previous,” Petrucelli said. “This was because we’re dealing with such widespread deprivation and devastation and loss of work that the need was really universal.”
‘We celebrate life’
When Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, Barnes Casey was 17, and as she left her home in New Orleans amid the destruction, she found hope in music.
“Music has always been my salvation and my therapy and my happiness,” she said. “I survived mentally through Katrina because I listened to music all the time.”
This is why, despite all of the roadblocks before them, the Caseys — along with thousands of other musicians — were determined to keep the music going, despite the pandemic and despite Ida, through uplifting virtual performances.
And according to Petrucelli, many were able to raise relief funds to support the music community through their efforts. “There’s just been so much, so much goodwill and kindness,” he said.
“It was such a blessing for us, because we were able to still do what we loved, we were able to still perform and make people happy,” Barnes Casey said. “[Music] can make people mentally check out and think about the beauty of the world and forget the sorrows of the world.”
And the sorrows for the jazz community amid the pandemic have been immense. The human toll of the virus touched every corner of the jazz world as dozens of jazz musicians and producers died of COVID-19, including New Orleans jazz legend Ellis Marsalis.
For Douget, Marsalis’ death in April 2020 was particularly painful.
Douget was a member of the Ellis Marsalis Quintet for 25 years and first met Marsalis when he was 17. He considered him a mentor and a friend.
“He was a true intellectual, just intellectually curious all the way to the end of his life. Losing him was devastating,” Douget said. “He was like a father figure to me and to a lot of the musicians, particularly the ones that played in his band.”
Just last week, prominent New Orleans musician Bennie Pete, a founding member of the Hot 8 Brass Band, became the latest member of the city’s jazz community to die of COVID-19.
Even amid great loss, Barnes Casey said the resilient spirit of New Orleans and its music community continues to uplift.
“Despite that’s all going on, [New Orleans] is such a unique place, because we celebrate life so much. We even, you know, we celebrate funerals, but it’s more about celebrating the life that we’re sending off,” she said.
And in that spirit, Douget continues to teach the next generation of musicians, carrying on the legacy of greats like Marsalis who dedicated their lives to jazz education.
“They had a profound influence on my life,” Douget said. “They showed me that, of course, learning your instrument and learning the craft, all that is important, but it’s just as important to pass it along to the next generation of young people. And that’s what their lives were about. That’s what they did. And I tried to basically model my life on theirs.”
Rolling Stone has published a brand-new list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time — it’s first since 2004 — and among the top 100 tracks on the list are hits by Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Adele, Madonna and Whitney Houston.
Highest-ranked is Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” at number 55. Taylor’s “All Too Well,” a fan favorite from her album Red, is number 69 — in fact, it has a higher ranking than The Beatles‘ iconic song, “Yesterday.” Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” is number 82, Kelly’s “Since U Been Gone” is number 93, and Whitney’s version of Dolly Parton‘s “I Will Always Love You” is 94.
The number-one song on the list is Aretha Franklin‘s 1967 classic version of Otis Redding‘s “Respect.”
The top 50 includes such crowd-pleasers as Elton John‘s “Tiny Dancer,” Fleetwood Mac‘s “Dreams,” Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” Prince‘s “When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain,” Lorde‘s “Royals,” Beyoncé‘s “Crazy In Love,” Bruce Springsteen‘s “Born to Run,” Queen‘s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Rolling Stone‘s ranking was determined by more than 250 artists, musicians, producers, music industry figures, critics and journalists, who all submitted in their top 50 choices, which Rolling Stone then tabulated. More than half of the songs on the new list weren’t present on the 2004 list.
In case you’re wondering, the song that’s ranked #500 is “Stronger,” by Kanye West.
