When the 2021 CMA Awards show returns this November, someone new will be taking over hosting duties. Reba McEntire, who helmed last year’s ceremony along with Darius Rucker, will not return, according to a report from Billboard.
The Country Music Association confirmed that Reba will be sitting out the hosting gig this year, after the singer herself told Billboard that, “to my knowledge,” she would not be coming back. It’s not clear whether Darius will repeat his hosting duties.
On Wednesday, the CMA announced that the 2021 show will take place on November 10, returning to Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. That’s the venue where the awards show has traditionally taken place, though in 2020, it moved to the smaller Music City Center, also in Nashville, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
More details about the show, including information about who’s hosting, performing and presenting, is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. A limited number of tickets to attend the show will also be available, and are going on sale on November 1. Ticketed fans will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend the show, and will also need to wear face coverings.
BTS‘ partnership with UNICEF on its LOVE MYSELF campaign, designed to promote self-esteem among young people and end abuse and bullying, has been declared a success four years since it launched.
UNICEF announced that since the inception of the campaign in 2017, it’s raised $3.6 million to help UNICEF’s work, generated nearly five million tweets and inspired more than 50 million engagements.
Over the four years, BTS also addressed the United Nations General Assembly meeting multiple times. released an exclusive music video for the cause, and set up booths at their concert venues with information on how to protect yourself and others from bullying.
In a statement, the K-pop superstars said, “We started LOVE MYSELF as a way to reach young people and help improve their lives and rights…We hope that many people felt how the love received from others can become the power that allows them to love themselves.”
“We hope that the LOVE MYSELF message can continue to serve to invigorate everyone’s lives,” BTS added. “We will be honored if all seven of us can continue this campaign to return the amazing love that we have received, and give people the strength to come closer to LOVE MYSELF.”
“We hope to keep doing what we are doing…so we can help people find happiness and love,” they concluded.
Earlier this year, BTS and their label, BIGHIT Music, pledged more than $1 million to UNICEF and also announced they would donate proceeds from the sale of their LOVE YOURSELF album and related merchandise.
(ARLINGTON, Texas) — Police are investigating an active shooter situation reported at Timberview High School in Arlington, Texas, the school district said.
An unknown suspect apparently shot multiple people before fleeing the scene, according to an internal police briefing. The number of victims was not immediately clear.
First responders gather outside Timberview High School in in Arlington, Texas, after rep…
The school is on lockdown, the Mansfield Independent School District said. The scene is secure, according to the internal briefing.
Arlington police said they are conducting a “methodical search.” ATF officials are at the scene.
Arlington is located between Fort Worth and Dallas.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
If you happen to be in Fox Creek neighborhood of Detroit, you can now mail a letter or package at a post office that’s named after the late Queen of Soul.
On Monday, the Fox Creek Station post office, located at at 12711 E. Jefferson Ave., was officially renamed the Aretha Franklin Post Office Building, Patch.com reports.
Legislation to have the post office named in Aretha Franklin‘s honor was introduced in the House of Representatives last year by Michigan congresswoman Brenda Lawrence, a close friend of Franklin’s. Former President Donald Trump signed it into law in January 2021.
Lawrence visited the post office Monday for a dedication ceremony celebrating the rechristening, along with Michigan’s two U.S. senators — Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow — and Franklin family members.
“This building will always stand as a reminder that we all deserve a little RESPECT,” Rep. Lawrence said. She also posted photos from the event on her Twitter feed.
Added Sen. Peters, “Aretha Franklin was not just the Queen of Soul — she was a Detroit icon whose legacy of music and activism will forever symbolize Detroit’s strength and resilience.”
A postal service press release announcing the building’s name change gave some background information about Aretha’s life and achievements. It noted that she was a child prodigy who sang gospel at Detroit’s New Bethel Baptist Church, where her father, Reverend C. L. Franklin, was a minister; that she “found acclaim and commercial success” after signing with Atlantic Records in 1966; and that she went on to become “a symbol of Black empowerment during the civil rights movement.”
Aretha died of cancer at her Detroit home on August 16, 2018, at the age of 76.
Gyllenhaal and Aniston in 2002 – Jon Kopaloff/WireImage
Jake Gyllenhaal admitted that it was “torture” filming the 2002 romantic drama The Good Girl with Jennifer Aniston — because he had a big, fat crush on her.
“Oh, it was torture. Yes it was,” the 40-year-old actor confessed on The Howard Stern Show. “But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both.”
Gyllenhaal also described what it’s really like to act out an intimate scene, saying they are not all that enjoyable to film. “Weirdly, love scenes are awkward, because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it? You know, maybe if you have a closed set, it’s less…That doesn’t turn me on,” he explained.
Gyllenhaal also noted that the scenes feel “oddly mechanical” and not natural.
“And also, it’s a dance, right? It’s a dance…You’re choreographing for a camera,” he said, likening it to filming a “fight scene” because those, too, require a strict set of instructions.
The Spider-Man: Far From Home star added that Aniston called the shots when filming their love scene and, in order to make herself feel more comfortable when they were lying in the horizontal position, he recalls her stating beforehand, “I’m putting a pillow here.”
The Good Girl drew in a modest $16.9 million during its box office run when it premiered in August 2002. It also starred Zooey Deschanel, John C. Reilly, John Carroll Lynch and Tim Blake Nelson.
Today marks the one-year anniversary of Eddie Van Halen‘s death.
The legendary guitar virtuoso and Van Halen co-founder died October 6, 2020, following a battle with cancer. He was 65.
Eddie and his older brother, Alex, were born in The Netherlands before the Van Halen family moved to Pasadena, California, in 1962. The two were interested in music in an early age and played in several bands together before forming Van Halen in the early ’70s with Eddie on guitar and Alex on drums. They soon found vocalist David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony, who comprised Van Halen’s “classic” lineup.
Though each member of Van Halen brought their own personality to the band, Eddie’s guitar playing was always the star of the show. He was particularly renowned for his finger-tapping technique, famously heard in the Van Halen instrumental “Eruption,” which is now considered to be among the greatest guitar solos of all time.
Van Halen’s classic lineup released six albums, from 1978’s self-titled debut to 1984’s 1984, and produced classic singles in “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love,” “Dance the Night Away,” “Unchained,” “Panama,” and the number-one hit, “Jump.”
In between all that, Eddie married actress Valerie Bertinelli in 1981 — with whom he had a son, Wolfgang, in 1991 — and played the solo on Michael Jackson‘s hit “Beat It.”
Roth left Van Halen in 1985 and was replaced by Sammy Hagar, whose tenure fronting the band produced four-straight number-one albums. Hagar was then replaced by Gary Cherone for one more album before Van Halen disbanded in 1999.
During the group’s hiatus, Eddie underwent treatment for tongue cancer and separated from Bertinelli. The couple eventually divorced in 2007, and Eddie married his second wife, publicist Janie Liszewski, in 2009.
Van Halen reunited briefly in the mid-2000s with Hagar singing before reforming again in 2006, with Roth back and a then-teenage Wolfgang playing bass instead of Anthony. That lineup would produce a final Van Halen album, 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, before playing their last tour together in 2015.
Following his father’s death, Wolfgang revealed that there had been plans for a so-called “Kitchen Sink” Van Halen reunion tour, which would potentially feature Anthony back along with all three of the band’s singers. However, those plans were put on hold due to Eddie’s declining health.
Wolfgang, meanwhile, is carrying on the family legacy with his solo band, Mammoth WVH. The project has already scored two number-one Billboard rock singles.
Alliance for Women in Media Foundation/Getty Images for Alliance for Women in Media Foundation
Taylor Swift thanked the fans — and her medical team — Tuesday night while accepting a Gracie Award, presented by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation.
Taylor received the Gracies’ Grand Award for her Disney+ documentary folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which came out last November and featured Taylor performing every song on her folklore album with collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner.
Olympic gymnast Simone Biles presented Taylor with the award virtually. In her acceptance speech, Taylor responded by saying, “I wanted to say, first of all, thank you Simone Biles for presenting this award to me. I absolutely adore you and that just really made my heart skip a beat.”
“Making this film really was a new experience for me in so many ways — it was in the middle of the pandemic when this was really the first time that most of the people who worked on it had left our houses,” Taylor continued. “So I want to, first of all, say thank you so much to our medical team, our COVID team, who tested everyone and made sure that we knew that we were in a safe space to create music again.”
Of course, Taylor then thanked her loyal fans for “caring about all of this.”
“Thank you for being the reason why we why we could come together in this way,” she added. “You made this album into what it is and you continue to just blow me away all the time.”
Folklore, released in July 2020, went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year. Less than a month after the long pond studio sessions aired last year, Taylor surprised-released folklore‘s sister album, evermore.
Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner has shared more about the scary health issue that necessitated emergency heart surgery late last month.
In a statement posted to the band’s website, Faulkner explains that he felt something was off during Priest’s performance of “Painkiller” during their set at September’s Louder than Life festival.
“As I watch footage from the Louder than Life Festival in Kentucky, I can see in my face the confusion and anguish I was feeling whilst playing ‘Painkiller’ as my aorta ruptured and started to spill blood into my chest cavity,” Faulkner writes. “I was having what my doctor called an aortic aneurysm and complete aortic dissection.”
Indeed, if you look at fan-shot footage of the performance, it does appear that Faulkner grabs his chest towards the end of the song.
Faulkner was immediately rushed to the local Rudd Heart & Lung Center — which, luckily, was only four miles away — where he underwent over 10 hours of open heart surgery.
“It could have all ended so differently,” Faulkner muses. “We only had an hours set that night due to Metallica‘s performance after us — and it does cross my mind if it was a full set, would I have played until total collapse…? If it hadn’t happened in such a high adrenaline situation would my body have been able to keep going long enough to reach the hospital…?”
“We can always drive ourselves crazy with these things but I’m still alive thankfully,” he adds.
Faulkner is now on the road to recovery, and notes that several parts of his chest were “replaced with mechanical components.”
“I’m literally made of metal now,” he says.
Due to Faulkner’s surgery, Judas Priest postponed the remainder of their 2021 U.S. tour.
The film, a companion piece to the singer’s latest album of the same name, recently had a sold-out limited theatrical run in IMAX theaters. It features the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross-produced album as its soundtrack and follows the story of the young and pregnant Queen Lila, played by Halsey.
Directed by Colin Tilley and written and produced by Halsey, the film is described as an “evocative, horror-tinged fairytale” that “explores the labyrinth of sexuality and birth.”
If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power hits HBO Max on October 7.
(NEW YORK) — Holiday shopping season has kicked off earlier than ever.
Amazon announced Monday it is offering “Black Friday-worthy deals” and early access to deep discounts across every category.
Target launched its own “Deal Days” promotion from Oct. 10 – 12 that boasts savings on thousands of items online, through their app and in nearly 2,000 stores. The major retailer also launched a holiday price match guarantee, according to its website.
Jennifer Smith, a logistics and supply chain reporter for the Wall Street Journal said retailers are in a unique position this holiday shopping season.
“They’re balancing, on the one hand, the need to make sure they have items in stock when people do start shopping with wanting to make sure that they have plenty of time to get them because it could take a little bit longer, particularly for e-commerce, for things to arrive at your home,” she told Good Morning America.
October typically marks the busiest shopping month of the year as retailers stock up for Black Friday, but with just three months ahead of Christmas, the supply chain in the U.S. has faced massive pandemic-related shipping issues, shortages and delays.
Microsoft reported issues getting parts needed to build its new Xbox consoles.
“There are multiple kind of pinch points in that process. And I think regretfully it’s going to be with us for months and months, definitely through the end of this calendar year,” XBOX’s head of gaming Phil Spencer said in a statement.
Nike has felt the recent supply crunch and as first reported by NBC, is working to shift footwear production out of Vietnam where factories remain closed due to COVID restrictions to places like China and Indonesia in an attempt to prevent further delays.
Fast fashion clothing companies like H&M and BooHoo said their profits are likely to suffer because of rising supply chain costs and bottlenecks in major ports coast to coast.
Other retailers have attempted to alleviate product shortages by flying in goods by air freight, while Target, Walmart and Home Depot have chartered their own ships to avoid backlogged ports and to make sure they’re stocked for holidays.
The CEO of MGA Entertainment Inc., one of the world’s largest toymakers, said supply issues are the worst he’s seen in over 40 years.
“You have the jams you have all the backlog, logistic problems and inflation, they’re all gathered up,” Isaac Larian told GMA. “So it’s going to be a tough couple of years, in my opinion.”
Like many other experts have urged, Larian added, “my kind of advice is — please shop early.”
