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All Mariah Carey wants for Christmas is a certain yuletide tune. In her Wednesday (Nov. 15) appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show, the 54-year-old singer revealed what her personal favorite holiday song is — and no, it’s not her own bestselling 1994 hit. “I have to say,” began the Queen of Christmas, “my favorite all-time […]

11/10/2023

From practical everyday items to smile-inducing finds, these stocking stuffers will make the holidays extra delightful.

11/10/2023

iHeartMedia is getting in the festive mood with the return of the iHeartRadio Holiday Special, which will take over AC and Classic Hits stations nationwide and the iHeartRadio app on Nov. 22.
Hosted by Mario Lopez, the two-hour special event will feature interviews with Cher, Elton John, Train, David Foster and Katharine McPhee, Meghan Trainor, Rob Thomas, and Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic discussing their favorite holiday songs and traditions. 

The announcement comes Friday (Nov. 10), which marks iHeartRadio’s annual flip to holiday music on more than 85 stations across the country.

“Listeners look forward to that special day when we convert so many of our stations to Christmas music because it means that the holiday season has really started,” said Tom Poleman, chief programming officer for iHeartMedia, in a press statement. “To celebrate we are bringing back the iHeartRadio Holiday Special with Cher, David Foster and Katharine McPhee, Elton John, Meghan Trainor, Rob Thomas, Ryan Tedder and Train who will be sharing their personal holiday memories.”

It’s no surprise that Cher will make an iconic appearance during the special, as she’s fresh off the release of her first holiday album, Christmas, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Holiday Albums chart last month. Produced by her longtime producer Mark Taylor, the set includes the legend’s interpretations of “Santa Baby,” “Run Rudolph Run” and “Please Come Home For Christmas.”

Cher recently told Billboard that she “had no intention of doing a Christmas album. But [Warner Records] said, ‘Why don’t you do a Christmas album, Cher?’ and I said if I can do my version I’ll do it, and they were very pleasant.”

Elton John is celebrating 50 years of his jingly single “Step Into Christmas,” which so far peaked at No. 84 on Billboard‘s Holiday 100 chart in 2017.

Listeners can hear holiday music across the iHeartRadio app on stations including iHeartChristmas, playing all the holiday favorites; North Pole Radio, hosted by Santa Claus and featuring a message line where kids can leave Christmas wishes for the big man himself; iHeartChristmas Classics, the place to hear all the timeless holiday classics; or holiday channels playing all kinds of music, including iHeartCountry Christmas, iHeartChristmas Jazz, iHeartChristmas R&B, iHeartChristmas Rock, Holiday Season Radio and more. Search “iHeart Holiday” in the app to find all the Christmas music options.

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
The holiday shopping hustle has arrived, and Walmart wants to help you get your shopping done at an affordable price. 

Whether you’re shopping for stocking stuffers or other gifts for the holidays, Walmart is serving up great deals that you can enjoy before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. From toys and tech to fashion and home items, there’s something for everyone on your list.

Walmart’s holiday deals will go live online on Nov. 8 at 3 p.m. and in stores on Nov. 10 at 6 a.m. local time (Walmart+ subscribers get early access to epic deals. Join today for 50% off).

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But it’s not just about finding the perfect present: Save on essentials to help you welcome the holidays in style, including budget-friendly and splurge-worthy items; seasonal must-haves like sherpa boots, cozy sweaters, hats, gloves and Reebok activewear for the whole family, plus designer handbags and accessories for less.

Find gifts for her, gifts for him and gifts for the little ones from brands like Disney, Marvel, Scoop, Free Assembly, Michael Kors, Coach, Chaps, Crocs, Skechers, Justice, Celebrity Pink, Madden NY, Portland Boot, Love & Sports, No Boundaries, Joyspun, Justice, Time & Tru, Wonder Nation and Garanimals.  

And the savings don’t end there: Walmart’s Holiday Big Meal — featuring Kraft, Del Monte, French’s and more — will be cheaper this year. Shop for holiday parties, potlucks, cookie exchanges, gingerbread house competitions, ugly sweater parties, hot cocoa parties, or White Elephant, Secret Santa and other gift exchanges. 

On a tighter budget? Don’t blow the bank this holiday season! Shop and save at Walmart. The retailer offers a variety of gifts under $25. 

Find for Less: Holiday Gifts Under $25

Finding a great gift that fits your budget can be challenging, but Walmart makes it easy to shop from a large selection of must-haves for less than $25. You’ll find an assortment of items from top brands like LEGO, Barbie, Melissa & Doug, Better Homes & Gardens, Beautifully by Drew Barrymore, Mainstays, Cirkul, and Simple Modern. 

With the weather getting cooler, it’s the perfect time for plush blankets, delicious fragrances, stylish cookware, scented candles, and other everyday essentials such as tumblers and travel mugs under $25.

Holiday shoppers will also find Walmart private-label brands such as Great Value, Marketside, Pen+ Gear, Prime Della, Sam’s Choice, Better Homes & Garden, Equate, Free Assembly and The Home Edit.

Stock up on home essentials such as the Beautiful 3 Qt. Air Fryer ($29.96), Keurig K-Iced Essentials Coffee Maker ($69), KitchenAid Deluxe Duo Mixer ($259), and Flash Furniture Duncan Oversized Furry Bean Bag Chair ($112.56).

Pick up seasonal toys and decorations like Snoop-on-a-Stoop ($24.98), Disney Wish Poseable Asha Doll ($13.97), Melissa & Doug Wooden Play Set ($7.88), Mini Bratz x Kylie Collectibles ($9.97), Trolls 3 Band Together Hair Pop Dolls ($9.97) and LEGO Friends Play Day Gift Set ($19.97).

Walmart also has music fans covered with releases from Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo Tomorrow x Together, Metallica, Seventeen, Jung Kook, Stray Kids and more, including Walmart-exclusive releases.

Need a gift for tech lovers? Shop gaming and tech gifts like the all-new Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Launch Edition – Playstation 5 ($69.99), Super Mario Bros. Wonder + Exclusive Trading Card Pack ($59.99), Super Mario Bros. Wonder ($59.99), Meta Quest 3 – 128GB –Breakthrough Mixed Reality Powerful Performance Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle ($499), and Meta Quest 3 – 512GB Breakthrough Mixed Reality Powerful Performance Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle ($649).  

Ready to slay the holidays? Check below to unwrap Walmart’s holiday tech deals and popular picks to gift this holiday season.

15 Walmart Tech Deals to Shop Right Now

Walmart

Nintendo Switch Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle

Walmart

SAMSUNG Galaxy Tab A7 Lite, 8.7″ Tablet 32GB (Wi-Fi), Dark Gray

Walmart

SAMSUNG Galaxy Tab A8, 10.5″ Tablet 32GB (Wi-Fi), Dark Gray

$129

$179

28% off

Walmart

Audio-Technica AT-LPGO-BT Wireless Turntable

Walmart

onn. 8″ Kids Tablet, 32GB, (2021 Model)

$79

$99

20% off

Walmart

ASUS ROG Strix G17 (2023) 17.3” QHD 240Hz Gaming Laptop

Walmart

Fujifilm INSTAX Mini 7+ Exclusive Blister Bundle with Bonus Pack of Film (10-pack Mini Film)

$49

$67

27% off

Walmart

EB Polaroid Now Gen 2 Black & White – B&W Bundle

Walmart

VANKYO Leisure 3 Pro Native 1080P Projector, Full HD 5G Wifi Projector with LCD Display

Walmart

Minecraft Green Creeper 9 Can Mini Fridge 6.7L 1 Door Ambient Lighting 10.4 in H 10 in W 10 in D

$49.88

$68

27% off

Walmart

Minecraft Red TNT x9 Can Mini Fridge 6.7L x1 Door Ambient LED Lighting 10.4 in H 10 in W 10 in D

$49.88

$98

49% off

Walmart

GT Player Gaming Chair with Footrest and Ergonomic Lumbar Massage Pillow

$99.99

$249.99

60% off

Walmart

Altec Lansing HydraMini Everythingproof Wireless Portable Bluetooth Speaker,

$19.99

$29.88

33% off

Walmart

Core Innovations Wireless Bluetooth Karaoke Microphone with Built-in Speakers + HD Recording

$21.10

$24.88

15% off

Walmart

Roku Smart Home Smart Light Strip SE 16.4 Foot with 16 Million Color Options

  

The Philadelphia Eagles are getting into the holiday spirit! The NFL team’s Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson teamed up this year for their second festive album, A Philly Special Christmas Special, which features a freshly dropped rendition of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The album is out December 1, and […]

Mariah Carey is the Queen of Christmas… pranks. The singer has now officially joined the list of A-list singers (Rihanna, Britney Spears, Dua Lipa) who’ve participated in the time-honored tradition of scaring the bejeezus out of Jimmy Kimmel in the middle of the night for our amusement.
On Thursday night’s (Nov. 2) Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Carey and her Christmas minions — including accomplices dressed as elves and Santa — snuck into Kimmel’s house in the middle of the night and gently roused the late night host. “Jimmy, I didn’t mean to wake you up, but it’s time!” Carey whispered sweetly as a confused Kimmel was woken from a deep sleep.

“What time is it?” he gurgled. “Hit it!” Carey replied as her holiday staple “All I Want For Christmas Is You” blasted out and the tinsel intruders began throwing fake snow and ringing sleigh bells as lights flashed and Kimmel’s wife Molly danced in glee at her husband’s annoyance. The bit ended with a barefoot Kimmel — wearing Molly’s robe and still rocking his mouth guard — accepted a piece of Carey’s new “It’s Time!” Christmas merch before groggily going off to bed, again.

Carey was in the studio for some couch time as well, laughing about her love of prank calls as a child and revealing that the police got involved one time after the then-11-year-old MC relentlessly called a girl who bullied her as a child. They also, of course, talked about how “All I Want” has become a perennial holiday No. 1, a development that Carey said is “bananas” because it was the first-ever Christmas song she ever wrote.

“I just wanted it to sound like a classic because that’s the kind of Christmas song I want… I just wanted it to be timeless,” she said. The singer said she “hopes” her 12-year-year-old twins, Monroe and Moroccan, like her signature song, but either way the kids will be along for the sleigh ride when Carey embarks on her 13-date Merry Christmas One and All! tour, which begins on Nov. 15 in Highland, CA.

“I’m putting them on my tour, which is coming up soon,” she said. “They’re gonna do various moments of music-making and merriment.” She also pushed back on Kimmel’s questions about whether it really is “time” to start thinking about the holidays when we still have Thanksgiving to get through, a push-back against the Christmas creep that Carey helped pioneer with her “It’s Time!” stunts.

“It’s the season, darling,” she assured Kimmel, but adding, “We have to have Thanksgiving. It’s the holidays, is it not?” Frankly, MC said, she doesn’t disagree with Jimmy that Thanksgiving has become a bit of a “speed bump” on the way to Santa season. “But I had to just go with the flow because everybody was rushing the holiday season and they started playing my song, so I kept being like, ‘not yet, don’t play it yet, why are we playing Christmas songs?’”

So, what was a joke at first became a lean-in with her funny “it’s time” videos over the past two seasons.

The singer also talked about making a cameo in Britney Spears’ best-selling tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me. “I heard something about it,” she said of her mentions in the book, as Kimmel noted that Britney said she loves Mariah, with Carey saying she loves her right back. He then read an excerpt in which Britney wrote about being at an awards show and knocking on Mariah’s dressing room door and being confronted with a “beautiful, otherworldly light,” 20 years before ring lights were a thing.

“Of course I had a ring light [in 2003],” the always perfectly-lit singer said. “By the way, that was super sweet what Britney said about me.”

Watch Carey on Kimmel below.

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The Queen of Christmas has officially declared that “it’s time” for the holiday season, and she’s now celebrating with some new merch. Mariah Carey took to social media on Thursday (Nov. 2) to share a photo of her 12-year-old twins, daughter Monroe and son Moroccan, whom she affectionately calls “dem babies,” posing in Carey’s new […]

A songwriter named Vince Vance is once again suing Mariah Carey over accusations that she stole her perennially-chart-topping “All I Want for Christmas is You” from his earlier song, a year after he dropped a previous lawsuit making the same allegations.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Nov. 1) in Los Angeles federal court, Vance (real name Andy Stone) made the same basic accusations as he did in his last lawsuit: that Carey’s 1994 holiday blockbuster infringed the copyrights to his 1989 song of the exact same name. That’s no small claim: Carey’s “All I Want” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during each of the past four holiday seasons.

But the new case includes far more detailed — and far more personal — allegations against Carey, including that she made up the story of how she wrote the song, and that her own co-writer, Walter Afanasieff, has disputed that story.

“Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance’s new lawyers wrote in the re-filed complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun. This is simply a case of actionable infringement.”

Notably, Vance is now represented by Gerard P. Fox, the same attorney who represented two songwriters who accused Taylor Swift of stealing the lyrics to “Shake It Off.” That case went on for more than five years of litigation before it ended in December 2022 with a confidential settlement.

Just like his first lawsuit, Vance’s new complaint claims his own “All I Want for Christmas is You” was recorded by his Vince Vance and the Valiants in 1989 and had received “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season — a year before Carey released her better-known song under the same name.

But his new lawsuit includes new details about the success of his earlier song, calling it a “a country music hit” that peaked at No. 31 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and later reached No. 23 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart (re-named the Radio Songs chart in 2014.) He’s also now joined as a plaintiff by Troy Powers, who claims to have co-written the earlier song.

The new version of the lawsuit also makes more detailed allegations about the similarities between the two songs, delving into the “unique linguistic structure” and musical elements that Carey allegedly copied in her song.

“The phrase ‘all I want for Christmas is you’ may seem like a common parlance today, in 1988 it was, in context, distinctive,” Vance’s new lawyers write. “Moreover, the combination of the specific chord progression in the melody paired with the verbatim hook was a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.”

Notably, the new complaint lawsuit also mentions Love Actually, the 2003 Christmas movie that skyrocketed Carey’s song even further into the holiday canon. The lawsuit notes that Carey’s song appears in “a featured performance scene in the penultimate act in the mega hit film.”

A rep for Carey did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday evening.

High School Musical star Drew Seeley and American Idol season 19 finalist Grace Kinstler lead this year’s cast for “Love Actually Live,” the Broadway-style show that combines songs inspired by the hit holiday film with scenes from the movie itself, for a one-of-a-kind musical and cinematic experience.

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Seeley and Kinstler will be joined on stage by America’s Got Talent Season 17 Golden Buzzer winner, Madison Taylor Baez; The Voice finalist and viral YouTube star, Chris Mann; Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies actress, Cheyenne Isabel Wells; and Nina Nelson, from girl group, Citizen Queen, in addition to an ensemble cast of stage and screen veterans.

This year’s show celebrates the 20th anniversary of Love Actually, the star-studded romantic comedy that has become a festive favorite for the holidays. It’s been five years, meantime, since production company For the Record launched “Love Actually Live,” with the show once again returning to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles.

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As scenes from the movie air on a big screen, the cast of singers will be joined by a live band on stage, to deliver Christmas classics and songs from the Love Actually soundtrack, like “Christmas Is All Around,” Kelly Clarkson’s “The Trouble with Love Is,” and Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” Organizers say to expect a “multimedia concert celebration” of the film, that “transforms the Wallis’ Bram Goldsmith Theater into a giant, immersive cinema for the modern day.”

Co-produced by Shane Scheel and The Wallis, “Love Actually Live” has played to nearly 45,000 people since its first run in 2018, with celebs like Demi Moore, Catherine O’Hara, Tom Hanks and Halle Bailey spotted in the audience.

Tickets for the show are available at TheWallis.org, with prices ranging from $69 to $119 for previews November 22 to November 28, and $79 to $139 for all performances November 29 to December 30.

Amazon

As for the original movie? Love Actually is currently available on Blu-ray/DVD on Amazon starting at just $7.99 (as of this writing). You can also watch Love Actually online by renting it on Prime Video.

There are good reasons why Mariah Carey is considered the Queen of Christmas. One of them is her punctuality. MC wasted exactly zero minutes getting into the holiday spirit in what has become her annual ritual of warning the Lambily that Christmas is coming, but they should not jump the gun and start stringing lights […]