The four-song collection arrives just six months after the former Beatles drummer’s previous release, the five-track Zoom In EP.
During a Zoom press conference this week promoting Change the World, Starr explained that he hoped the EP would bring his fans “joy.” He also noted that the record’s lead track, “Let’s Change the World,” offers an important message regarding climate change and pollution.
Reflecting on the song, which was written by Toto‘s Joseph Williams and Steve Lukather, Ringo maintained, “[H]alf the world’s on fire, half of it’s under water and [politicians are] still wondering, ‘Well, we can’t do that’…And I think we have to do a lot. So I’d like to change the world for the kids.”
The second track is a reggae tune titled “Just That Way,” which Ringo co-wrote with his longtime engineer Bruce Sugar, and features veteran reggae guitarist Tony Chin and bassist Fully Fullwood.
“I got [a] real bass player and guitar from Jamaica playing on it…which gives it more force,” Ringo said. “And for me, it’s so great, ’cause I get to play with those guys.”
Track three is the country-influenced “Coming Undone,” which was penned by hit-making songwriter/producer Linda Perry. The song features contributions from acclaimed New Orleans musician Trombone Shorty, who added a brass section that, according to Starr, completely transformed the tune.
The EP finishes with a cover of one of Ringo’s favorite early rock ‘n’ roll tunes, “Rock Around the Clock.”
The track features a guitar solo by Starr’s brother-in-law, Joe Walsh, that Ringo said not only “rocked” but was different than any solo he’s heard on other versions of the tune.
The new movie The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain tells the true story of 66-year-old Kenneth Chamberlain, a military veteran who was shot and killed in his apartment by police in White Plains, New York, a decade ago.
Chamberlain’s family says the shooting was unjustified, and his son, Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., tells ABC Audio the tragedy began with a phone call from his father’s neighbor, urging him to “get to White Plains right away.”
“I asked why and he said, the police are banging on your father’s door,” he continues. “As soon as I asked them what was going on, he just yelled out, ‘Oh my God.'”
Fighting back tears, Kenneth Jr. goes on to say, “When I asked him what happened…he said, ‘I think the police just shot your father.’ And here I am, almost a decade later, still fighting to get some type of accountability in his killing.”
Executive producer Morgan Freeman says the movie is yet another reminder of the sometimes callous and cruel treatment of people of color, which was exposed in the more recent cases of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others.
“These sort of things are generally not sensationalized, let’s put it that way. This old black man was shot by the police — No whys, no wherefores,” he said.
Noting police are “first responders…not emergency medical people,” Freeman contends the police should have never been involved in the first place.
“This was inadvertent, but a call from his life alert thing, not somebody saying somebody is breaking into my house,” he explains. “And he called back and said that was a mistake, I don’t need anybody. And they called police and said it’s ok, stand down.”
The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain is playing now in select theaters.
In the very likely event you missed Metallica‘s last-minute concerts in San Francisco and Chicago this past week, you can still pretend you were there from the comfort of your own home.
The streaming site Nugs.net is offering full audio from both shows to its members. You can sign up at Nugs.net/metallica.
The San Francisco show, which took place on September 16, featured an audience of just 400 people, and marked Metallica’s first full live, in-person concert in 738 days. On September 20, the metal legends headlined the 1,100-capacity Metro in Chicago, which they hadn’t played since 1983.
Metallica’s next scheduled shows are headlining sets this Friday and Sunday at the Louder than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky.
Released on October 1, 1971, Teaser and the Firecat reached #2 on the Billboard 200. It featured three of the singer/songwriter’s most enduring tunes: “Morning Has Broken,” “Peace Train,” and “Moonshadow,” which peaked at #6, #7 and #30, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100.
A super-deluxe box set version of the reissue features four CDs, a Blu-ray, two LPs and a seven-inch vinyl single. The CDs feature a newly remastered version of the original album, a variety of unreleased studio recordings, a disc collecting audio of various TV and radio performances, and a CD boasting a full-length 1971 concert in Montreux, Switzerland.
The Blu-ray features an HD-audio version of the album, a 1977 animated video for “Moonshadow” and a 2020 concert clip of “The Wind,” and video of various live TV performances. The LPs feature an alternate version of Teaser and the Firecat on one disc and a selection of live performances from Montreux and the BBC on the other.
The vinyl single features a remastered version of “Moonshadow,” backed with a previously unreleased recording of the late U.K. comedian Spike Milligan reading the narration for the aforementioned animated video.
One of the bonus tracks is a newly recorded version of “Bitterblue,” retitled “Bitterblue².”
The box set also comes packaged with a softcover replica of the original 1972 Teaser and the Firecat book, and a 108-page hardcover essay book.
In advance of the reissue, a previously unheard 1970 demo of “Moonshadow” was released Thursday as a digital track.
Visit Cat Stevens’ official store for more details about the Teaser and the Firecat reissues.
The woman who accused Nicki Minaj‘s husband, Kenneth Petty, of rape in 1994 detailed the alleged incident on Wednesday in her first television interview.
Speaking on The Real, Jennifer Hough declared, “I’m tired of being afraid.”
She said that on September 16, 1994, when Hough and Petty were both 16 years old living in New York City, he grabbed her on the way to school, led her into a house and raped her.
In August, Hough filed a lawsuit against Minaj and Petty, accusing the couple of “witness intimidation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, harassment, assault, battery, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.”
During her interview, Hough revealed that because of the incident, “I had to leave my family, I had to leave my home and I had to move away.”
She added that when Minaj announced she married Petty in October 2019, “I was so afraid of being known as the person he violated. And I didn’t want that. You know, it’s Nicki Minaj. I didn’t want that to reflect on my children.”
Hough says she was distressed by Nicki’s 2018 Instagram comment in which she said Hough was in a relationship with Petty at the time of the incident.
“It wasn’t true,” Hough said. “We were never in a relationship. It just felt woman-to-woman, that was wrong of her because I don’t know you and you don’t know me to know that that statement you put out to the world to be true. You have 150-something million followers on [Instagram]. They all believed it. It hurt coming from another woman.”
As reported previously, earlier this month, Petty pleaded guilty for failure to register as a sex offender in the state of California. He is scheduled for sentencing on January 24, 2022. The 43-year-old, who has homes in New York City and Los Angeles, was registered as sex offender in New York, but not in California. He is required to register as a sex offender in both states after being convicted for the first-degree attempted rape of a 16-year-old girl in 1995, for which he served a four-year prison sentence.
A variety of celebrities, including music stars such as Cyndi Lauper and Barbra Streisand, are calling on entertainment industry leaders to demand action on climate change from Congress.
In a letter addressed to the heads of companies including Facebook, Netflix, Sony, Walt Disney, Apple, Google and Amazon, the artists, working with the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, state that the bosses are “needed to lead our community’s call for action and embrace this vision for a better world.”
“Now is the time to use your influence to shape our future,” the letter continues. “Congress needs to hear you demand, unequivocally, that it put forward and pass the most ambitious climate change agenda in U.S. history.”
The letter asks that the business leaders “demand publicly and loudly that our senators and representatives” pass legislation that is currently before them. The legislation, the letter claims, will “create healthier communities, put millions to work in clean energy jobs, and free us from the fossil fuels that are driving climate change.”
The artists go in to say that they’ll be using their own platforms to remind all Americans to tell their senators and representatives in Congress that they “demand climate action now,” by taking up the president’s agenda.
“Tweet. Post. E-mail. Call. Whatever it takes,” the letter concludes. “This is our moment, and there is no time to waste.”
Others music stars who signed the letter include Coldplay, Adam Levine, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, John Legend, Selena Gomez, Shakira, Lorde, Billie Eilish, Camila Cabello, Dua Lipa,and Demi Lovato, as well as celebs including Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Hugh Jackman, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Kerry Washington, Lin-Manuel Miranda, J.J. Abrams, Chris Evans, Ryan Reynolds and Ellen DeGeneres, among many others.
Kings of Leon have canceled a few upcoming tour dates so that brothers Caleb, Jared and Nathan Followill can be with their sick mother.
“Our mother, who many of our fans know and love, has been dealing with a medical crisis for the last several weeks,” the band writes in a statement posted Thursday. “While it has been hard to take the stage each night, it has been the love and energy from you, our fans, that has gotten us through.”
At the beginning of a show at the Los Angeles Forum earlier this week, the brothers learned their mother “took a turn for the worse.”
“It was a hard show to get through, but you held us up that night in a way we will never forget,” KoL says. “Immediately following the show, we all flew home, where will remain by her side until the time comes to say goodbye.”
Canceled dates include KoL’s headlining concert at California’s Shoreline Amphitheatre Thursday and their set at this weekend’s Eddie Vedder-founded Ohana Festival.
“We wanted to say thank you to all of our fans, to Eddie, and to the entire Pearl Jam family for supporting us during this time,” the band says.
Along with the Followill brothers, their cousin Matthew Followill is also a Kings of Leon member.
Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton has played ace attorney Billy McBride in Amazon Prime’s drama Goliath for four seasons, but for the premiere of the series’ last season, he sat in the director’s chair.
“They had to twist my arm a little bit,” Thornton tells ABC Audio.
“I even begged them to take my name off because I don’t really fancy myself a director,” he continued, despite having an Oscar nomination for Sling Blade. “You know, it’s kind of uncomfortable directing people that you’ve been working with for three seasons. You know, it’s like, ‘Oh, hey, we’re buddies, we’re actors…’ OK, now I’m your boss and here’s what you’re going to do.'”
After his character survived being shot in the season three finale, there was a lot of ground to cover for the new season, Thornton explained: “The first episode is the one that has to establish everything. So it’s kind of a hard job in a way, but it actually turned out to be fun directing.”
The new season has McBride and his team facing off against a family-owned pharmaceutical company being sued for contributing to the opioid crisis. Law & Order vet and Oscar winner JK Simmons plays the company’s icy CEO; screen legend Bruce Dern plays Simmons’ brother.
Another addition to the cast for the final season is Hunger Games veteran Jena Malone, who plays an attorney with some big shoes to fill.
“It’s such a great series, so many well-developed characters and well-loved characters,” Jena enthuses. “It’s always nice to walk into an environment where things already feel so exciting [and] trying to figure out how you can bring something new to that to also allow these characters to finish their journey for the audience.”
Just four months after welcoming their first child together, Jason Derulo and his girlfriend Jena Frumes have broken up.
The couple started dating in March of 2020, and Jena has been a constant presence in Jason’s TikTok videos. The two welcomed sonJason King on May 8.
On Twitter today, Jason wrote, “Jena and I have decided to part ways. She is an amazing mother but we feel being apart at this time will allow us to be the best versions of ourselves and the best parents we could be. Pls respect our privacy in this time.“
Jason and Jena have the same birthday — September 21 — and People captured an Instagram post Jenna put up Wednesday showing the two marking the occasion in Aspen, Colorado — a post she later deleted.
“Blessed to share the same day of birth with my lover. You are the most handsome, hardworking, talented, silly, loving human ever,” Jena wrote about Jason in the post. “You truly make me whole and I’m so grateful for the love we share. You and our mini make me the happiest girl in the world and I can’t wait to make more memories with you guys.”
She continued, “I know I’m a tough cookie but you make me soft and accept me for who I am and I’m forever grateful for that. Cheers to another year! I love you so much, forever.”
Although she deleted that post, her Insta is still filled with pics of Jason. And Jena is still on Jason’s Instagram as well.
(OKLAHOMA) — Julius Jones, who has spent the past 20 years on death row, has never been closer to freedom, despite the fact that last week, his execution date was set for Nov. 18.
The Oklahoma Parole Board voted 3-1 to commute Jones’ sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole, and now, the final decision on his fate remains in the hands of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt.
Jones’ mother, Madeline Davis-Jones, told “Nightline” the news is “magical.”
“I’m still in shock, because it’s not over, you know? We still have so much ground [to] cover,” Jones’ sister, Antoinette Jones, said. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but it was a good feeling.”
Antoinette Jones said her brother was calm when he heard the parole board’s recommendation, as he knows work still has to be done to secure his freedom.
“He said, ‘I’m good. I’ll be even better when I get out and I can hug y’all and we can start helping change the world,'” Antoinette Jones said. “It was a relief. I could breathe a little bit easier.”
Jones’ sister remains hopeful that he will be freed, and said she can picture justice for her brother.
“Julius being able to feel the sun on his skin, the natural sun on his skin. It looks like him having no chains [on] when he gets to go outside,” she said. “It looks like freedom.”
Julius Jones was 19 years old when he was arrested for the 1999 murder of Oklahoma businessman Paul Howell, and sentenced to death in 2002. What followed were decades of public scrutiny and relentless work from his legal team.
“We think Julius was wrongfully convicted and that Oklahoma is at risk of executing an innocent man,” Jones’ attorney, Amanda Bass, said.
Now 41 years old, Jones has spent most of his life behind bars. Even after so many years, his sister and mother have yet to give up hope.
Before he was in prison, friends and teachers knew Jones as a champion high school basketball player who attended the University of Oklahoma on an academic scholarship.
That all changed in 1999 when Howell, 45, was shot in his family’s driveway after a car-jacking in the wealthy suburb of Edmond, Oklahoma.
Howell’s GMC Suburban went missing and his sister, Megan Tobey, was the only eye-witness.
“Megan Tobey described the shooter as a young black man wearing a red bandana, a white shirt, and a stocking cap or skullcap. She was not able to identify the shooter’s face because it was covered,” Bass told ABC News in 2018.
Two days after Howell was killed, police found his Suburban parked in a grocery store parking lot. They learned later that a man named Ladell King had been offering to sell the car.
King named Chris Jordan and Julius Jones to investigators and said the two men had asked him to help them sell the stolen Suburban.
“Ladell was interviewed by the lead detectives in this case. He told the police that on the night of the crime, a guy named Chris Jordan comes to his apartment. A few minutes later, according to Ladell King, Julius Jones drives up,” attorney Dale Baich told ABC News in 2018.
King accused Jordan of being the driver and claimed that he and Jones were looking for Suburbans to steal, but it was Jones who shot Howell.
“Both Ladell King and Christopher Jordan were directing police’s attention to the home of Julius Jones’ parents as a place that would have incriminating items of evidence,” Bass said.
Investigators found a gun wrapped in a red bandana in the crawl space of Jones’ family home. The next day, Jones was arrested for capital murder.
Jones’ attorneys say the evidence police found could have been planned by Jordan. They say Jordan had stayed at Jones’ house the night after the murder, but Jordan denied those claims during the trial.
In the years since, Jones’ defense team has argued that racial bias and missteps from his then public-defense team played a role.
Jones’ team has submitted files to the parole board that they said proved his innocence, including affidavits and taped video interviews with inmates who had served time in prison with Jordan. They said they allegedly heard Jordan confess to Howell’s murder.
In a statement to ABC News, Jordan’s attorney, Billy Bock, said that “Chris Jordan maintains his position that his role in the death of Paul Howell was as an accomplice to Julius Jones. Mr. Jordan testified truthfully in the jury trial of Mr. Jones and denies ‘confessing’ to anyone.”
Jordan served 15 years in prison before he was released.
In 2020, Jones’ story was thrown back into the spotlight when unlikely legal ally Kim Kardashian drew public attention to his case. Kardashian, who is studying to take California’s bar exam, has been vocal on the issue of the death penalty and prison reform and has campaigned to free a number of men and women who were incarcerated.
“Kim Kardashian, I felt like maybe one of my sorority sisters … she was down to earth,” Davis-Jones said.
Antoinette Jones said Kardashian put in the effort to help her brother.
“She sat down and she broke down my brother’s case. That means that she actually did the work,” Jones said. “She did the work to go back and check certain things, to point out certain things.”
“The fact that she told me that she was able to go see my brother, it was almost like she took a piece of him and brought it to us and then we could feel like he was there with us,” Jones added.
But despite all the efforts, Julius Jones’ execution date is still in place.
His family said they have to just wait to see if Stitt will agree with the parole board’s recommendation and commute Jones’ November death sentence. Three members of the Pardon and Parole board were appointed by the governor, a fact that gives Davis-Jones some hope.
“I’d like for [Stitt] to do the right thing, because the truth will set you free,” Davis-Jones said. “But most of all, being in leadership, I know sometimes it’s hard … to make decisions, [but] you have to try to make the right decisions.”
