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It’s been exactly two years since Adele‘s viral NBA meme was born, and at her residency show in Las Vegas over the weekend, the 35-year-old vocalist finally shared the story behind it.
In a video taken Saturday night (Feb. 17) at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Adele asks her audience, “Do you remember that viral meme of me looking like I don’t give a flying f–k?”
She then recreated the famous video onstage, looking left and right as if to avoid eye contact with her audience — just like she did when faced with a camera Feb. 20, 2022 at that year’s NBA All-Star game, which she attended with her boyfriend, sports agent Rich Paul.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I really don’t like being famous,” the “Easy On Me” singer explained, telling the crowd she felt the need to provide “context” for the video. “Obviously I’m sitting courtside at a basketball game, you’re asking for it, whatever. Rich is working the room, talking to players. And I was fine. I was just there on my own looking for Michael Jordan, if I’m honest.”
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According to Adele, the camera crew at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse had approached her twice while she was sitting by herself to ask whether she was comfortable being filmed, which she politely declined both times. Even so, her image was blasted on the jumbotron at the game — and on national television.
“I was sulking,” she said, adding that she felt extra shy at the time due to the cancellation of her original Vegas residency. “I was like, ‘These motherf–kers have come back and are filming me against my will.”
“Also, my face is just very memeable,” she added. “I can’t help it.”
The Grammy winner has been performing for fans in Vegas on and off since the end of 2022 for her Weekends With Adele” residency, with dates scheduled through June this year. To her point, her shows often spawn funny viral moments — one of the most recent being when the “Rolling in the Deep” musician hilariously slammed critics of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s romance.
“I think I want the Chiefs to win,” she said at the time, the night before the Kansas City team triumphed at the 2024 Super Bowl. “And all of you that are complaining about Taylor being at the game, get a f—ing life. It’s her f—ing boyfriend!”
Watch Adele reflect on her viral NBA meme below.
From his 2009 chart debut with “Best I Ever Had” to his 2023 No. 1 smash “First Person Shooter,” Drake has notched a great many hits on the Billboard Hot 100. In fact, the artist — born Aubrey Graham — has scored the most entries on the 60-plus-year-old tally of any artist in history, with […]
After a four-year hiatus from music marked by persistent speculation surrounding her personal life, the stage was perfectly set for Ariana Grande to make an epic comeback earlier this year. She did just that by releasing “Yes, And?” in January, with the song debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
And now, the 30-year-old star is giving fans a peek into all of the planning that made her comeback possible. In a newly shared behind-the-scenes video, which was filmed prior to the release of “Yes, And?,” Grande meets with her team and explains to them why she believes the house-inspired dance track should be the lead single off her upcoming album Eternal Sunshine, which, at that point, hadn’t been announced yet.
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“The reason why I liked it, it’s an all-encompassing, like, ‘What the f–k?’” the pop star says in the clip, which she shared to Instagram Reels. “Why aren’t we all thinking with the cap of, ‘Everyone’s tired, everyone is healing from someone or something you can’t see on the surface.’ That’s why I kind of liked [‘Yes, And?’] as a, ‘We’re coming back.’”
Then, before playing the track for her team, Grande sets the scene. “Pretend you don’t know the rest,” she said, laughing. “Pretend it’s been three years since Positions. Pretend this is, you’ve been seeing me in a f–king blonde wig on the Daily Mail for the past year.”
For context, the “POV” singer spent much of 2023 playing Glinda in Jon M. Chu’s upcoming live-action Wicked movies, a character for which she went blonde. While she was shooting the films over the summer, her personal life became fodder for celebrity gossip, with fans and tabloids alike meticulously dissecting the timeline of her divorce from Dalton Gomez and the beginning of her rumored relationship with Ethan Slater, one of her Wicked castmates.
Things reached a fever pitch when Slater’s estranged wife, Lilly Jay, told Page Six that their marriage had ended because of Grande. “[Ariana’s] the story, really. Not a girl’s girl,” she said in July. “My family is just collateral damage.”
Both TMZ and People, however, reported that Slater and the Victorious alum started dating after both of their previous relationships had ended.
Months later, Grande seemed to address the controversy with “Yes, And?” “Your business is yours and mine is mine,” she sings during the bridge. “Why do you care so much whose d— I ride?”
The “7 Rings” artist’s new video comes on the heels of her new “Yes, And?” remix, which co-stars Mariah Carey. Eternal Sunshine is set to arrive March 8.
Watch Grande meet with her team about “Yes, And?” below.
It was the performance heard ’round the world. Or rather, not heard, but played on tape. Almost 20 years after the second most-famous lip synch scandal in modern pop history — shout out to Milli Vanilli — Ashlee Simpson dropped by the Broad Ideas with Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen podcast this week to relive that moment in 2004 when her Saturday Night Live debut turned into a car-crash viral moment before such things even existed.
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“I’ve never talked about or said, but it’s like the other thing is, learning as a woman, when you say no, or as an artist or a human or whatever, that day I said ‘I will not go on, I don’t care. I can’t speak,’” Simpson, 39, told the hosts about the night in Oct. 2004 when she was the musical guest on SNL amid serious vocal issues that caused her to lose her voice before showtime.
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After rehearsing the day before, Simpson said she woke up and realized she “couldn’t speak,” because, her doctor told her, she had two nodules on her vocal cords that were “beating against each other.” She explained her dilemma to the SNL team in a handwritten note, but despite telling producers the show could not go on, Simpson said she was asked to perform to pre-recorded vocals. “My band has never practiced this, this is not going to go well,” she said she thought at the time. “I can’t do this.”
Simpson, of course, did perform that night, first coming out to sing the single “Pieces of Me,” which went well. But when she came back to play the title track from her Autobiography album, someone cued up the vocal track from “Pieces” by mistake. Simpson busted out some stilted dance moves and when she was caught with the mic by her side, she and the band looked around confused for several awkward seconds while the singer did a silly shuffle and then walked off stage as the group continued to play the instrumental track and the show cut to commercial. Simpson came back later for the closing credits and said, “My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn’t know what to do, so I thought I’d do a hoedown. I’m sorry. This is live TV. These things happen!”
The mortifying moment taught Simpson the “power of my no,” she told the podcast hosts, as well as “the power of me saying absolutely not… that’s what I would go back and say.” To be sure, Simpson said it was a “humbling” incident for her at a time when she had a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart and a top five single with “Pieces of Me.”
“It was like everything was about to go somewhere and then it was just like, whoa, the humility of not even understanding what grown-ass people would say about you… awful, awful things,” Simpson said of the first, and only, time a musical guest had walked off SNL during a performance. Through that trial-by-fire, though, Simpson said she learned to tune all the noise out and find her strength and move on, while, luckily, also avoiding throat surgery thanks to a vocal coach who “saved my life.”
The clip went so viral at the time, though, that one of the friends who was with Simpson that night — and who joined her on the podcast — said when they visited a New York deli the next day in the midst of the Iraq war “everyone around us was talking about it… it was so surreal and such a ginormous moment.” Though she released two more albums, 2005’s I Am Me and 2008’s Bittersweet World, and starred as Roxie Hart in three different productions of the musical Chicago in 2006, 2009 and 2013, Simpson’s musical career never regained that initial peak following the SNL fiasco.
To this day, Simpson said people still ask her about it and she can’t forget the important lesson she learned that night. “I think having to find at a young age that strength to be like, ‘I am good at this and I will keep going, and I will keep fighting,’” she said, noting that she came back to SNL a second time a year later and she can’t find the video. “I’ve searched and searched for that performance. I was really nervous when I was on there and I can’t find it anywhere,” she said.
Though she’s been off the music radar for years, the singer recently told US that she’s starting to work on the re-release of her debut album and may fill it out with additional tracks. “I’m going to celebrate that album,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go in and redo some of the songs, but I’m definitely going to do a performance around the anniversary.”
Watch Simpson discuss her SNL incident below (beginning at 45:00 mark).
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Between her blockbuster 2024 Super Bowl commercial with Verizon and her brand new “Texas Hold ‘Em”-led country era, Beyoncé has been the talk of the town — and she hasn’t even revealed all of her cards yet. On Tuesday (Feb. 20), in conjunction with the official launch of her new haircare line, Cécred, Queen Bey announced a $500,000 cosmetology school scholarship fund through her BeyGOOD charity.
“Hairstylists have an immense impact on the people in their chairs,” reads a statement on on BeyGOOD’s website. “They create a sacred space where we can show up how we want and express ourselves through our hair. We’re honored to give back to this amazing community.”
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“Fostering talent, promoting professionalism, and supporting entrepreneurship within the hair industry is deeply important to us,” the message continues. “The Cécred x BeyGOOD Fund … celebrates the influence professional stylists have on hair health and the critical importance of advocating for the salon community. An annual $500,000 will fund cosmetology school scholarships and salon business grants across five cities chosen for their large, diverse community of hair stylists: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New Jersey.”
The cosmetology schools in each of the five communities must have “inclusive curriculums” to qualify for the fund; they will receive $250,000 to be used toward financial aid student scholarships. Cécred x BeyGOOD-awarded institutions include Beaver Beauty Academy in Atlanta, Trenz Beauty Academy in Chicago, Universal College of Beauty in Los Angeles, Franklin Institute in Houston and Janas Cosmetology Academy in New Jersey.
The other half of the Cécred x BeyGOOD fund will be awarded annually to “qualifying salon business owners” in the same five areas. “We recognize running your own business is difficult, no matter if you rent a booth, operate a salon, or work out of your home,” the statement reads. “Each year, 25 $10,000 grants will be awarded to qualifying salon business owners in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and New Jersey so they can continue their transformative impact in the community.”
No stranger to giving back, the new Cécred x BeyGOOD fund echoes the Black Parade Route that accompanied her historic Renaissance World Tour. Initially launched back in 2020, the Black Parade Route dispersed more than $1 million “to celebrate people, communities, and small businesses impacted by economic inequities worldwide” during the sold-out stadium tour.
In addition, the trek also boasted the Renaissance Scholarship Fund, which granted $100,000 to 10 colleges and universities along the production’s route. In 2021, Queen Bey teamed up with husband Jay-Z for a collaboration among BeyGOOD, the Shawn Carter Foundation and Tiffany & Co.; together, the three cultural giants pledged $2 million in scholarship funds for arts students at five select historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Cécred, Beyoncé’s latest venture, is now live. Featuring a hydrating shampoo and a fermented rice & rose protein ritual, the new haircare line is infused with patent-pending technology and the legacy of Beyoncé and mother Tina Knowles.
“I have vivid memories of my mother working as a hairstylist right from our home. She built a small salon at the back of our house,” the “16 Carriages” singer told Essence. “So much of the fabric of who I am came from her salon. It is something that just connects to all of my senses, and it’s a beautiful place to grow up.”
See the announcement posted on BeyGOOD’s Instagram account:
Justin Timberlake is looking to make waves with his new single “Drown,” which he announced on Instagram Monday (Feb. 19).
Sharing a video of himself performing a snippet of the song’s emotional lyrics while playing piano, Timberlake confirmed that his new track will drop Friday (Feb. 23). “Showed me exactly who you are and I should’ve believed it/ Leave me alone out in the dark with all of the demons,” he sings in the clip. “Should’ve never followed you this far, now I’m in the deep end.”
“Made it out to London, still recovering from this flu,” the “SexyBack” singer captioned the post. “But trying to power through. So excited for new music and everything coming this week…”
“Drown” will mark the Trolls star’s second single release ahead of his sixth studio album Everything I Thought It Was, which arrives March 15. In January, he dropped “Selfish,” earning his highest debut on the Billboard Hot 100 in six years (No. 19).
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In addition to fans and the charts, the track was also well-received by Britney Spears. The pop star said on Instagram that she was “in love” with her famous ex’s new song just days after “Selfish” dropped, then issued a blanket apology to anyone she may have “offended” with her The Woman in Me memoir, in which Timberlake was mentioned many times, and not always in a flattering light.
That moment of hatchet-burying was seemingly short-lived, however. At his Memphis concert shortly afterward, the “Cry Me a River” musician declared, “I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to absolutely f—king nobody,” which many interpreted as being a dig at Spears.
Timberlake has been doing a handful of one-night-only concerts in the lead-up to his new album — which will mark his first since 2018’s Man of the Woods — starting with his hometown show in Memphis before performing in New York City. Next up, fans can catch him at the Roundhouse in London Friday (Feb. 23), the same date “Drown” is set to arrive.
In April, he’ll kick off the North American leg of his Forget Tomorrow World Tour.
See Timberlake’s “Drown” announcement below.
Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (1917, Spectre) has gotten the green light to begin work on four separate feature films that will tell the individual stories of all four Beatles. According to a release from Sony Pictures Entertainment announcing the project on Tuesday morning (Feb. 20), Mendes will direct the films focused on George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr due out in 2027.
The project will mark the first time the band’s Apple Corps Ltd. and the group — McCartney and Starr and the families of Harrison and Lennon — have given full access to life story and music rights for a scripted film. “I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” said Mendes in a statement.
Mendes will direct the four stand-alone theatrical movies — with each one told from one band member’s point of view — as well as intersecting to tell the full story of the Fab Four. SPE, which will finance and distribute the movies conceived by Mendes, will share the details of the roll-out, which it promised will be “innovative and groundbreaking.”
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The director’s Neal Street Productions partner, Pippa Harris, added, “We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time. To have The Beatles’ and Apple Corps’ blessing to do this is an immense privilege. From our first meeting with Tom Rothman and Elizabeth Gabler, it was clear that they shared both our passion and ambition for this project, and we can’t think of a more perfect home than Sony Pictures.”
One of the most scrutinized and studied groups in popular music history, the Fab Four have been the subjects of hundreds of books and docs, including Peter Jackson’s acclaimed 2021 four-part documentary series, Get Back, which incorporated previously unseen and unheard audio and video.
Apple Corps Ltd. CEO Jeff Jones said the company is “delighted to collaborate with Sam, Pippa and Julie to explore each Beatle’s unique story and to bring them together in a suitably captivating and innovative way. Sony Pictures’ enthusiastic support, championing the project’s scope and creative vision from the start, has been invaluable for all of us.”
While today (Feb. 20) is officially Olivia Rodrigo‘s 21st birthday, the singer jokingly celebrated her milestone bday a day earlier with friends in an Instagram post on Monday in which she joked, “Today is my last day of being able to under age drink (hypothetically) !!!!” The series of snaps included Rodrigo rocking a plunging […]
Beyoncé was ready for her renaissance back in 2013 when she chopped off her long locks for a stylish pixie cut, and now, she’s explaining why she made the major hair transformation at the time. “I remember the day I decided to just cut all my hair off. I didn’t have a particular style in […]
Forget like a virgin — more like a queen! Madonna not only lived to tell, she lived to laugh it off and recover like the pro that she is after taking a tumble on stage during her Sunday (Feb. 18) show at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena. In multiple fan-captured videos shared online, the Queen of […]