Lainey Wilson Hosts ‘The 59th Annual CMA Awards’ live from Nashville airing November 19 on ABC; streaming next day on Hulu. (Disney/Michael Le Brecht)
Amazon Music has released its annual year in review, including a list of the most-streamed tracks by users in 2025, and plenty of country hits made the cut.
Amazon Music customers in the U.S. were streaming multiple Morgan Wallen tracks this past year, including the Tate McRae duet “What I Want,” “Just In Case” and “I’m the Problem.” Other favorites featured on the list are Shaboozey tracks “Good News” and “Amen” featuring Jelly Roll, as well as Riley Green‘s “Worst Way.”
Amazon subscribers were also playing the following country hits in 2025: Jelly Roll and Brandon Lake‘s “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” Lainey Wilson‘s “Somewhere Over Laredo,” Russell Dickerson‘s “Happen to Me,” Hudson Westbrook‘s “House Again,” Tucker Wetmore‘s “Wind Up Missin’ You” and Bailey Zimmerman and Luke Combs‘ “Backup Plan.”
Apple Music has come out with its own Top Songs of 2025 list, but the only three country artists on that list are Morgan Wallen, Shaboozey and Luke Combs. Luke and Shaboozey have one song each — “Fast Car” and “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” respectively — while Morgan has 12, including his Post Malone feature, “I Had Some Help.”
Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea will release a new solo album in 2026.
The currently-untitled record sees Flea, as a press release puts it, “returning to his first instrument and musical love, the trumpet.”
The first preview of the album, a seven-minute track called “A Plea,” is out now. It features Flea on trumpet, electric bass and vocals, alongside an ensemble of jazz instrumentalists and vocalists.
Flea describes “A Plea” as a “yearning for a place beyond, a place of love, for me to speak my mind and be myself.”
“I’m always just trying to be myself,” Flea says. “I don’t care about the act of politics. I think there is a much more transcendent place above it where there’s discourse to be had that can actually help humanity, and actually help us all to live harmoniously and productively in a way that’s healthy for the world. There’s a place where we meet, and it’s love.”
You can watch the video for “A Plea,” which was directed by Flea’s daughter, Clara Balzary, streaming now on YouTube.
The most recent Chili Peppers album is 2022’s Return of the Dream Canteen, which marked their second record of that year, following Unlimited Love.
Rockers Led Zeppelin were celebrated as Kennedy Center Honorees at a ceremony held in Washington, D.C.
Jack Black handled the intro, calling the band — made up of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and the late John Bonham — “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band of all time.”
The tribute also featured several performances, including the standout “Stairway to Heaven” by Heart‘s Ann and Nancy Wilson, with Bonham’s son, Jason Bonham, behind the drum kit.
Also celebrating Led Zeppelin were Foo Fighters, who performed “Rock and Roll”; Kid Rock, who performed “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” and “Ramble On”; and Lenny Kravitz, who performed “Whole Lotta Love.”
KISS is among the 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees and will be honored at a ceremony on Dec. 7.
(NEW YORK) — A winter storm brought the first big batch of snow and ice to parts of the Midwest and South on Monday, and now that same storm is bringing ice to parts of Appalachia and heavy snow to the inland Northeast on Tuesday.
On Monday, the Kansas City area saw 3 to 5 inches of snow, while Louisville recorded around 3 inches of snow. St. Louis, Missouri, and Indianapolis both recorded about 2 to 4 inches of snow.
A glaze of ice wreaked havoc on roads in places like Oklahoma and Arkansas on Monday, and on Tuesday, that ice will be a major threat for cities including Boone, North Carolina, and Roanoke, Virginia.
On Tuesday, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and western New York could see 2 to 4 inches of snow.
Winter weather advisories are in place in northern Pennsylvania and central New York, where 4 to 6 inches of snow is possible.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency in several counties.
“With snow and rain in the forecast, we urge all New Jerseyans to be cautious of icy roads and walkways,” he warned on social media on Tuesday.
Cities directly along the East Coast will be warmer and will likely only get rain, but there is a brief chance for a morning wintry mix around Washington, D.C., that could cause disruption on roads.
A winter storm warning is in place from northeast Pennsylvania to central Maine, where more than 6 inches of snow is in the forecast. Some spots could even see snow totals of 9 to 12 inches.
By Tuesday night, the rain will be ending in New York City but ongoing in Boston, while snow will still falling from Albany, New York, through Maine.
‘Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show’ on Disney+ (Courtesy Disney+)
We’ve got our first look at the end of the “most thrilling chapter of my life to date,” as Taylor Swift describes it.
A trailer for the upcoming Disney+ specialTaylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show has dropped, and it documents the last show of Taylor’s record-breaking tour, in Vancouver, British Columbia, in December of 2024. The trailer focuses heavily on a part of the tour production that not every fan got to see: The Tortured Poets Department sequence, which Taylor added after she released the album in 2024.
The trailer opens with Taylor singing “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” but you also get to see the staging for most of the sequence, including a spaceship that hovers over the stage during “Down Bad.” The rest of the trailer is set to “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” as we see the other segments of the show flash by.
The trailer ends with Taylor playing her “Surprise Songs” set on the piano and fittingly, changing a lyric in “Long Live” to, “It was the end of an era/ but the start of an age.”
Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show streams on Dec. 12 on Disney+; that same day, The End of an Era, a 6-episode docuseries about the tour, hits the platform. If you don’t have Disney+, ABC will air episode 1 of The End of an Era and a one-hour version of the concert special at 8 p.m. ET on Dec. 12.
The upcoming Tomb Raider live-action series has added another main character. Variety reports that MartinBobb-Semple has joined star Sophie Turner in the new show based on the popular video game. While Bobb-Semple’s role is being kept under wraps, the outlet reports he will be a series regular and a major character. Turner leads as Lara Croft, while Phoebe Waller-Bridge is set as creator, writer and executive producer on the show …
Happy holidays from Fraggle Rock. Apple TV has debuted its trailer for the holiday special The First Snow of Fraggle Rock. The program will premiere on the streaming service on Dec. 5. It features an appearance from internet personality Lele Pons, and follows the story of the first snow of the season and all the holiday traditions that come along with it …
Amanda Seyfried is set to be honored with a Desert Palm Achievement Award at this year’s Palm Springs International Film Awards. Variety reports the ceremony will take place on Jan. 3. Seyfried is being honored for her performance in director Mona Fastvold‘s film The Testament of Ann Lee …
(NEW YORK) — Children who have smartphones by age 12 are at higher risk of lack of sleep, obesity and depression, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
What’s more, researchers found that the earlier a child received a smartphone, the greater their risk of developing these conditions.
Dr. Ran Barzilay, lead author of the study and a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told ABC News that many experts suggest parents should postpone the age at which children receive their first smartphone.
Barzilay said he and his colleagues wanted to examine whether not delaying smartphone use by children would lead to negative health outcomes. He also had a personal motivation behind the study.
“I have a nine-year-old who wants a phone, and I think [whether to get them a smartphone] is a question that is relevant for every parent of a kid going into adolescence, even before adolescence,” said Barzilay, who’s also an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The study team – comprised of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania; University of California, Berkeley; and Columbia University – looked at data from more than 10,500 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which is an ongoing study assessing brain development in children throughout adolescence.
Researchers analyzed data on children between ages 9 and 16, collected from 2016 to 2022, to test how smartphone ownership and the age at which a child or teen received their first smartphone affected their health outcomes.
The team found that compared to 12-year-olds who didn’t own a smartphone, those who did had a 1.3 times higher risk of depression, a 1.4 times higher risk of obesity, and a 1.6 times higher risk of insufficient sleep.
Additionally, the earlier the age at which a child received a smartphone, the greater the risk of developing the problems increased – by about 10% for each year earlier in age, starting as young as age 4 – compared to kids who received a device later or not at all.
The study also found that children aged 13 who did not have a smartphone at age 12 but acquired one within the last year also had worse mental health outcomes and poor sleep. This held true even when the researchers controlled for those factors.
“This was quite surprising, I must say,” Barzilay said. “I mean, we designed the study with a question in mind to try and test it, but to find it was quite compelling.”
Barzilay said that while the study only proves association, not causation, it adds to a growing body of evidence linking smartphone use among children to adverse health outcomes.
In a longitudinal review of studies by the American Psychological Association, the emphasis is not only to cut down on screentime – which is linked to socioemotional problems in children – but also to improve the quality and social interactions through screentime.
The team behind the new study, published in Pediatric,s recommended that parents, children and pediatricians have a thoughtful discussion to determine whether children are ready for a phone.
Barzilay said the study results aren’t meant to put blame on parents who gave their kids smartphones at age 12 or younger, noting that his older two children received smartphones prior to age 12.
He added that smartphones do have some benefits, such as increasing connectivity and access to information. However, Barzilay said parents can implement some rules to limit the potential harm smartphone use can cause. Those rules could include not allowing kids to use them in their bedroom at night, and making sure that their children participate in activities that do not require phone use.
As for Barzilay’s nine-year-old who wants a phone, he said they’re “not getting a phone anytime soon. Clear decision.”
If you think the world couldn’t possibly need another version of the Irving Berlin classic “White Christmas,” Scotty McCreery humbly asks that you let him plead his case.
You see, Scotty’s take on the much-recorded tune takes inspiration from both The Drifters and Elvis Presley.
“I was almost nervous to record the song because I love it so much during Christmastime,” he tells ABC Audio. “And I had this version in my head that I’ll sing out loud in the shower, I’ll sing when I’m doing dishes, and I didn’t want to lose that version in my head in the recording process and not get it [recorded].”
“But I went in there and I just sang it for the band: ‘This is what’s in my head. Let’s make the music around this,'” he explains. “And the band crushed it.”
“And I know it’s another version of ‘White Christmas,’ but it’s my version,” he adds. “I hope you like it.”
The new recording joins 2023’s “Feel Like the Holidays” in Scotty’s collection of yuletide recordings that started with 2011’s Christmas with Scotty McCreery.
Charlie Puth to sing national anthem at Super Bowl LX (Courtesy NFL/(Lindsay Ellary)
Charlie Puth wants you to know that he’s well aware that his performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the upcoming Super Bowl LX won’t be as good as Whitney Houston‘s — but he’s going for it anyway.
When it was announced that Charlie would be singing the national anthem at this year’s big game, TikTok creator and self-described political commentator Link Laurentweeted, “Man we’ve fallen from when Whitney Houston sang at the Super Bowl. Charlie Puth? He’s not gonna give us vocals I’m afraid.”
Charlie responded, “I’ll never claim to be as good of a singer as Whitney Houston ever was. But I assure you we’re putting a really special arrangement together- in D major. It’ll be one of my best vocal performances.”
Fun fact: “The Star-Spangled Banner” was originally written in B-flat major; Whitney sang her version in A-flat major.
Whitney’s version of the anthem, which she performed in 1991 at Super Bowl XXV, is often cited as one of the best renditions ever. It was even released as a single amid the Gulf War and reached #20 on the Billboard Hot 100. Rereleased to capture the patriotic spirit after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it reached #6 and was RIAA-certified Platinum.
