Billy Idol became a grandfather for the first time last year, and the 65-year-old pop-punk singer tells People that the experience has enriched his life.
“It opens you up emotionally,” he says. “Everything is a new experience for her. In a way, I’m reliving those experiences myself.”
Idol’s daughter, Bonnie Broad, gave birth to a daughter of her own in May 2020. Billy says his one-year-old grandkkid, who’s named Poppy Rebel, is already a fan of his music.
“The other day she was bouncing up and down to ‘Rebel Yell,'” he says of his 1983 hit. “But of course, she also loves ‘Baby Shark.'”
The rocker, who just announced that he’ll be releasing a four-song EP next month titled The Roadside, says the downtime he had during the COVID-19 pandemic gave him the chance to spend some quality time with his granddaughter. He tells People that he’s been teaching the little one how to talk and walk.
“She can say ‘dude,’ ‘duck’ and ‘fish,'” he reports.
Last month, Billy posted an adorable video on his Instagram of Poppy feeding him blueberries.
Idol recently launched a run of 2021 U.S. tour dates that continues tonight with a show in Airway Heights, Washington. The trek winds down with a four-show Las Vegas residency in October.
The first trailer has been released for Introducing, Selma Blair, a Discovery+ documentary about actress Selma Blair‘s battle with multiple sclerosis.
The trailer shows raw and emotional moments of Selma dealing with symptoms of the illness and treatments for it, including chemotherapy. We see glimpses of the actress at some of her lowest points, as well as more joyful times spent her 10-year-old son, Arthur.
“I always thought I was on a reality show,” Selma says at the beginning of the trailer. “Like, I was in a documentary but only God would see it…and disapprove.”
The Cruel Intentions actress revealed her diagnosis in 2018. Earlier this week, she showed her love and support for her The Sweetest Thing co-star Christina Applegate after Applegate revealed her own MS diagnosis.
The Mayo Clinic describes MS as “a potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord.” Currently, there is no known cure, but there are treatments available that may alleviate some of the symptoms.
Introducing, Selma Blair will open in select theaters on October 15 and launch on Discovery+ on October 21.
The Chicago Health Commissioner has found that there’s been “no evidence” that Lollapalooza was a “super-spreader event” for COVID-19.
Speaking with media Thursday, Dr. Allison Arwady said that the department has “had no unexpected findings” in regards to COVID numbers 14 days after the start of Lollapalooza. The festival had required attendees to either be fully vaccinated, or show proof of a negative COVID test obtained within 72 hours of entering the grounds.
Arwady said that 203 people that attended Lollapalooza have tested positive for COVID-19, which is in line with the expectation of around 200 cases. Fifty-eight of those were Chicago residents, 138 were from Illinois but not Chicago, and seven came in from out of state.
Arwady estimates that about 90 percent of Lolla attendees were vaccinated. Of those vaccinated, .0004 percent, or four in 10,000, tested positive. The unvaccinated positivity rate was .0016 percent, or 16 in 10,000. As of Wednesday, August 11, no hospitalizations or deaths have been reported.
Lollapalooza took place from July 29 to July 1. Performers included Foo Fighters, Limp Bizkit, Journey, Black Pumas, All Time Low, Angels & Airwaves, Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Tyler, the Creator, Marshmello, Megan Thee Stallion and Jimmy Eat World.
Also on August 12, the nation’s second-largest events promoter, AEG, announced that come October 1, all ticket holders at its events will need to show proof of vaccination. That’s a step further than the largest promoter, Live Nation, which said it’d be up to the artists to the decide if audiences at their shows must test negative or be vaccinated.
Who will be the next group of musical legends to join the Country Music Hall of Fame? Fans can find out soon. An inductee announcement will take place next week, hosted by Reba McEntire.
The Country Music Association will livestream the event on their YouTube page at 10 a.m. CT on August 16. Reba, who’s making the announcement, has been a member of the Hall of Fame since 2011; she was inducted via the “Modern Era Artist” category.
Each year, the Country Music Hall of Fame selects a new class of members across three different categories: “Modern Era Artist,” “Veteran Era Artist” and “Songwriter.” Last year, the three incoming acts were Dean Dillon (as a Songwriter), Marty Stuart (as a Modern Era Artist) and Hank Williams, Jr. (as a Veteran Era Artist.)
After the new class is announced, they’ll be inducted into the Hall of Fame in a formal Medallion Ceremony.
Reba’s no stranger to that event, either: In addition to receiving a medallion of her own when she became a Hall of Famer in 2011, she returned to the ceremony in 2019 to help induct her longtime friends and frequent collaborators, Brooks & Dunn, who were that year’s Modern Era inductees.
(KABUL, Afghanistan) — As Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals, the U.S. is warning that its fighters are committing atrocities that could amount to war crimes and the State Department will soon announce that it is significantly reducing its staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, according to a U.S. official.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price said that while the embassy in Kabul will remain open, they will be reducing their civilian footprint due to the “evolving security situation.” He added that they expect to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
To facilitate this decision, the Pentagon “will temporarily deploy additional personnel to Hamid Karzai International Airport.”
Price said they will continue to relocate qualified Afghans who assisted the American mission, such as interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government, and flights will ramp up in the coming days.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul has also urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.
A military analysis said the city could be isolated in 30 to 60 days and be captured in 90 days, a U.S. official told ABC News, but that timeline seemed even more accelerated Thursday as the Taliban claimed Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city.
While the Taliban have previously denied reports that its fighters have executed Afghan troops, the U.S. embassy said Thursday it was “hearing additional reports of Taliban executions of surrendering Afghan troops” and said they were “deeply disturbing and could constitute war crimes.”
Extrajudicial killings are a war crime according to international law.
In addition, the Taliban have detained “several members of the Afghan government, including both civilian leaders and officers of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces … in several locations,” the embassy said in a statement Thursday.
Those arrests “contradict the Taliban’s claim to support a negotiated settlement” and “contrast the Taliban’s own rhetoric providing for the safety of Afghan leaders and troops in areas recently seized by the Taliban,” the embassy added.
Critics have condemned the Biden administration for putting any stock in what Taliban leaders say or do in Doha, Qatar, where the militant group’s political leadership is based. Negotiations there with the Afghan government have been all but dead since they launched last September, but U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is there this week in a last-ditch effort to revitalize them.
Khalilzad was meeting separately with Taliban and Afghan government negotiators Thursday, according to a State Department spokesperson.
But critics said the administration should not put faith in a group that the U.S. says is actively committing atrocities.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News those reported atrocities were “deeply, deeply troubling,” but the administration has not taken any action to punish the group for them.
The Taliban have previously denied reports that they have killed Afghan troops — but CNN obtained video last month showing 22 Afghan commandos being executed after they’d surrendered.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday that the administration has “not taken any tool off the table except for this military presence on the ground,” but would use them “if it’s appropriate.”
It’s unlikely that the tools Price referenced — including U.S. sanctions — would have any impact at this point.
In the meantime, the U.S. embassy issued its second alert to urge all American citizens left in Afghanistan to immediately evacuate the country.
“Given the security conditions and reduced staffing, the Embassy’s ability to assist U.S. citizens in Afghanistan is extremely limited even within Kabul,” the embassy said in its alert.
Just like in a similar alert Saturday, the embassy reiterated Thursday that U.S. citizens should enroll in its emergency notification system “in the event of a future official evacuation flight.”
Like any new parents, Ed Sheeran and his wife Cherry want to spend as much time as possible with their baby daughter, Lyra, but Ed says they also make sure to take time for themselves, too.
Appearing on Apple Music 1’s The Rebecca Judd Show, Ed says, “Me and my wife have a date night. It’s a strict date night every single week. And no matter who’s in town or who wants to see us, it’s always this one night in the week and we go out and our rule is we can’t talk about our baby. We have to talk about each other and catch up.”
“As a parent, you spend so much time discussing being a parent that you kind of forget who you were before,” he notes. “So we have one night a week where we are who we were before.”
Ed also revealed that he hasn’t listened to his debut album + (Plus) since it came out, so for the 10th anniversary concert he’s doing next month — in which he’ll play the album in its entirety — he’s literally having to relearn his own songs. As he explains, “I wouldn’t have played [some of the songs] since the tour in 2011,”
In addition, Ed also sang Judd the first song he ever wrote: “Typical Average Teen.”
“The creator of The Simpsons was doing a show, my cousin knew him,” Ed recalls. “And…they were doing this show about a typical average teen. And he was like, ‘My cousin wrote something like that!’ So it was actually going to be the soundtrack to this thing for a while.”
Ed continues. “I don’t know what happened, but it would have been so weird to have my first song end up being the soundtrack of a TV show.”
Chris Stapleton lends his powerful voice to a heavy metal classic on “Nothing Else Matters,” the country star’s submission to an upcoming Metallica tribute album.
The project — which also features cover songs from country performers like Jon Pardi, Darius Rucker and Mickey Guyton — is called The Metallica Blacklist, and celebrates the 30th anniversary of the release of the band’s career-defining, Grammy-winning self-titled project, also called The Black Album.
It arrives in full on September 10, but fans can hear Chris’ rendition of “Nothing Else Matters” now. If you pre-order Blacklist you’ll automatically receive the song, along with a cover of “Nothing Else Matters” from singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, as well as an alternate mix of the song from Metallica themselves.
Proceeds from all the songs on Blacklist benefit Metallica’s All Within My Hands Foundation, with each participating artist also selecting a charity that their song will support. In Chris’ case, that’s Outlaw State of Kind, a charitable fund he and his wife Morgane established in 2016.
Summer Walker landed herself in hot water on Wednesday when sharing her thoughts about the COVID-19 vaccine and asked those who got it to keep their distance from her.
This isn’t the first time Walker, 25, has been called out for spreading conspiracy theories about the vaccine. Most recently, she took to her Instagram side account and expressed in a Wednesday story, “If u vaccinated please stay away from me.”
The remarks didn’t go over too well on Twitter, causing #SummerWalker to start trending. While most fans lamented they are having a harder and harder time defending her, one joked the “Over It” singer is “trying to make sure her next tour has no guests.”
In March, the R&B singer wiped her official Instagram account after sharing a hoax video that contained lies about how the coronavirus spread.
She then peddled more false COVID-19 theories on her side account. Those posts have also been deleted.
Shinedown‘s Brent Smith helped keep Spiritbox‘s spirits high after the band’s tour with Limp Bizkit was canceled.
According to the “Secret Garden” metallers, Smith sent them $10,000 toward covering the losses the band incurred due to the tour’s cancellation.
“Can we talk about what an amazing person @TheBrentSmith from @Shinedown is?” Spiritbox tweeted Thursday. “He just gifted us $10,000 towards our losses since our tour was recently cancelled. This is such an amazing and kind gesture, seriously thank you!”
And Smith wasn’t the only one who reached out. Spiritbox added that We Came As Romans, from whom they rented a large part of their light package for the Bizkit tour, waived the invoice to “help soften our losses.”
“We have never met @TheBrentSmith and we barely know the guys in @wecameasromans,” Spiritbox wrote. “These people were not helping out a friend in need, they are just truly selfless people who wanted to do something kind for another band. We hope to conduct ourselves like them someday.”
Limp Bizkit had canceled the tour “out of an abundance of caution and concern for the safety of the band, crew and most of all the fans.”
The Home Alone franchise will be back this holiday season.
A new adventure comedy, Home Sweet Home Alone, is set to debut exclusively on Disney+ November 12, 2021.
Following in the footsteps of Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McAllister is Max Mercer, a young boy who’s accidentally left behind while his family goes to Japan for the holidays. He must protect his family home from a trespassing married couple determined to steal a priceless heirloom.
The film’s cast includes Ellie Kemper, Rob Delaney, Archie Yates, Aisling Bea, Kenan Thompson, Tim Simons and Pete Holmes.
The original Home Alone movie came out in 1990. Home Sweet Home Alone will be the sixth movie in the franchise.
