State Champ Radio Pop
Page: 630
Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time” tops multiple Billboard charts more than 50 years after its release, thanks to its inclusion in a recent episode of HBO’s The Last of Us.
“Time,” originally released on Ronstadt’s 1970 album Silk Purse, bows at No. 1 on the Rock Digital Song Sales, LyricFind U.S. and LyricFind Global rankings dated Feb. 11.
The LyricFind Global and LyricFind U.S. charts rank the fastest momentum-gaining tracks in lyric-search queries and usages globally and in the U.S., respectively, provided by LyricFind. The Global chart includes queries from all countries, including the U.S. The company is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics, with data provided by more than 5,000 publishers and utilized by more than 100 services, including Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, SoundHound and iHeartRadio.
After its synch in the Jan. 29 episode of the show, “Time” garnered lyric search and usage increases of 3,013% in the U.S and 2,074% globally in the Jan. 30-Feb. 5 tracking week, according to LyricFind.
Additionally, in the tracking period running Jan. 27-Feb. 2, the song earned 6,000 downloads in the U.S., according to Luminate, enough to place it atop the Rock Digital Song Sales ranking. Its jump was 11,181% from a negligible amount the prior week.
As previously reported, “Time” also appears at No. 6 on the Hot Trending Songs chart, powered by Twitter, for Feb. 11.
Its gains weren’t limited to sales, social media chatter and lyric usages. In the U.S., “Time” saw a 1,042% lift in official streams in the Jan. 27-Feb. 2 frame, to 903,000 streams from 79,000 the previous period.
The No. 1s mark the first rule on a Billboard chart for “Time,” which peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1970.
Its parent album, Silk Purse, also peaked at No. 103 on the Billboard 200 in November of that year.
It’s the second synch success for The Last of Us on the Billboard charts, following Depeche Mode‘s “Never Let Me Down Again,” which returned to multiple rankings after being heard in the series premiere two weeks prior.
After years of touring around the globe, Bob the Drag Queen is gearing up for her biggest tour yet — and this time, it’s with pop icon Madonna.
In a new interview with Billboard, the drag superstar dishes on her upcoming special guest slot on Madonna’s 40 year-retrospective world trek, the Celebration Tour. “You ever think about how lucky you are to be alive at the same time as someone else?” Bob says. “We get to be alive at the same time as Madonna.”
The pair were first introduced when Bob served as host for Madonna’s New York Pride show at Terminal 5 in 2022. “Her daughter recommended me to host, and Madonna just really took a liking to me after that,” she says. “She sang me ‘Happy Birthday,’ she’s bought me cupcakes, I talk with her kids, and we just became really fast pals.”
It wasn’t until November of last year that Madonna officially asked Bob to join her on her expansive tour — or at least, Madonna thought she was officially asking Bob. “She DM’d my mom on Instagram, because she thought it was my Instagram,” Bob says with a laugh. “My mom texted me like, ‘Madonna wants to work with me!’ I was like, ‘Mom, I’m pretty sure she thinks you’re me.’ It came so close to being my mom on tour with Madonna instead of me.”
The RuPaul’s Drag Race season eight winner teased that fans can expect “a journey through four decades of the top-selling woman in the history of music,” with the queen “there to help facilitate the journey” throughout the show’s run.
Fans spotted Bob in Madonna’s tour announcement video, in which the star had a series of her celebrity friends — including Diplo, Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow, Jack Black and Lil Wayne — join her for a game of Truth or Dare. As Bob tells it, no one in the video knew what was supposed to happen until the cameras started rolling.
“I was the first one there, and then all of these people began streaming in. I was like, ‘Wait, Amy Schumer? Jack Black? What is going on?’” Bob recalls. “We all thought that we were individually going to be taking some photos with Madonna, none of us knew about this. Only Madonna could get us all to show up like that.”
When it comes to personal impact, Bob says she’s been moved by Madonna’s grace and trust in her. “She respects me in a way that doesn’t feel like a novelty,” she says. “Obviously, what matters most is how I feel about myself, but still, a stamp of approval from Madonna is just like … ‘What?!’”
The Celebration Tour kicks off July 15 in Vancouver, B.C. Get your tickets to see Bob and Madonna on tour here.
One of the most accomplished pop music composers of the 20th century, Burt Bacharach, has died at age 94. The musical maestro behind 52 top 40 hits including “Alfie,” “Walk on By,” “Promises, Promises,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “What the World Needs Now is Love” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?,” Bacharach had an untouchable run in the 1960s and 1970s with a wide range of pop, R&B and soul artists. According to the Associated Press, Bacharach died on Wednesday (Feb. 9) at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Working with lyricist partner Hal David, Bacharach and David were dubbed the “Rodgers & Hart” of the ’60s, with a unique style featuring instantly hummable melodies and atypical arrangements that folded in everything from jazz and pop to Brazilian grooves and rock.
Many of their songs were popularized by Dionne Warwick, whose singing style inspired Bacharach to experiment with new rhythms and harmonies, composing such innovative melodies as “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “I Say a Little Prayer.”
Bacharach’s music cut across age lines, appealing to teens as well as an older generation who could appreciate the Tin Pan Alley feel of some of David’s lyrics. His fresh style could keep the listener offbalance but was intensely moving, defying convention with uplifting melodies that contrasted the often bittersweet lyrics.
His songs were sung by such major artists as Dusty Springfield, Gene Pitney, Tom Jones, the Carpenters and B.J. Thomas, as well as hundreds of others. His first No. 1 on a Billboard chart came in a genre not typically associated with the dextrous composer: country. Bacharach/David’s “The Story of My Life,” recorded by Marty Robbins, topped the Hot Country Songs chart in 1958. That same year, Perry Como took the duo’s “Magic Moments” to No. 4 on Billboard‘s Most Played by Disk Jockeys chart, a pre-cursor to the Hot 100.
Bacharach ventured into motion picture songwriting, creating indelible soundtrack songs such as “The Look of Love” and the Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” during this fertile period (he also scored a pre-acclaim Hot 100 entry with the titular theme song to the Steve McQueen horror flick The Blob in 1958, with The Five Blobs’ “The Blob” hitting No. 33). The Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid theme song “Raindrops” earned Bacharach two Oscars (best score and best theme song) as well as a Grammy for best score.
He also won an Oscar for Best Song for “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do),” which he shared with Carole Bayer Sager, Peter Allen and singer Christopher Cross. Bacharach’s compositions received three other Oscar nominations: for “What’s New Pussycat?,” (from the movie of the same name in 1965) “Alfie,” (movie of the same name 1966) and “The Look of Love” (from Casino Royale, 1967)
Bacharach and David team scored films as well in the ’70s, doing the music for “Lost Horizon” and “Howard the Duck,” after which they separated for a short duration.
Handsome and suave, Bacharach was somewhat of a matinee idol. Sammy Cahn dubbed him the only composer who didn’t look like a dentist. His longtime marriage to actress Angie Dickinson fueled that “hip” image. He was also known for his ownership and breeding of thoroughbred race horses for more than 30 years and his frequent attendance at the Kentucky Derby. One of his horses, Burt’s Heartlight No. One (named for a top 5 1982 hit collaboration with Neil Diamond), was a champion in 1983 and another, Soul of the Matter, was a Breeder’s cup starter in 1994 and 1995.
Mike Myers spoofed Bacharach’s ladies man/raconteur reputation in the first Austin Powers movie, in which the composer had a cameo. He collaborated with Elvis Costello on a version of “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” on the soundtrack to the 1999 Powers sequel, The Spy Who Shagged Me (also appearing in the film) and, in 2002, he was featured in the credit roll of the third Powers film, which also had a remake of “Alfie” as “Austin,” sung by the Bangles‘ Susanna Hoffs.
Burt Freeman Bacharach was born in Kansas City, MO on May 12, 1928. His father was on the staff of Colliers magazine, where he was a nationally syndicated columnist. Dreaming of becoming a football player, Bacharach acquiesced to his mother’s wishes that he take piano lessons and playing piano in a high school band.
After discovering bop music, Bacharach attended Montreal’s McGill University, where he earned a B.A. in music in 1948. He was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and was shipped off to Germany, where he met singer Vic Damone and toured the First Army area as a “concert pianist.”
After the service, he moved to New York and played in clubs. He met David while both were working in the legendary songwriting mecca the Brill Building.
In the ’60s, he stretched pop music compositions beyond the norm with more sophisticated chord progressions and melodies that alighted in non-standard time signatures: instead of the typical 4/4, they often bounded in 5/4 or 7/8. He broke the rules but remained steadfast to one principle: the melody must be acceptable to the average listener. His musical heroes included Harry James and Dizzy Gillespie, who he used a fake ID to see at a 52nd Street nightclub as a teen. Later, he would headline in Las Vegas at Harrah’s Club and the Riviera Hotel and co-host TV variety shows including The Hollywood Palace with Angie Dickinson.
During his early years, A&R people would criticize his work as not being danceable. Bacharach became a producer and arranger out of self defense, he admitted. “His songs are a lot more musical than the stuff we write and a lot more technical,” Paul McCartney told Newsweek in 1965.
His work has been reissued in a number of sets, including What the World Needs Now: Burt Bacharach Classics, as well as a three-disc box set of his songs entitled The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection and 2013’s 6-disc collection Anyone Who Had a Heart — The Art of the Songwriter.
Bacharach wrote and produced a string of hit songs with his third wife, songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, including: “Making Love,” as well as “Romantic Song,” which was a hit for Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson. They also wrote and produced “They Don’t Make Them like They Used To,” recorded by Kenny Rogers for Tough Guys, and the theme from the film Baby Boom.
Bacharach and Sager won a Grammy Award for song of the year for Dionne Warwick and Friends’ 1985 AIDS research charity smash “That’s What Friends Are For,” and were nominated for the R&B song “On My Own,” recorded by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald. They made record history by having two songs top three of pop music’s yearend record lists. More recently, he collaborated on a 1999 Grammy-winning collaborative album with Elvis Costello entitled Painted From Memory. In 2002, a musical based on the Bacharach/David canon entitled What the World Needs Now opened in Sydney, Australia.
The 2000s opened with collaborations on hit songs for British Pop Idol winner Will Young (2002’s “What’s in Goodbye”), a 2003 joint album with R&B icon Ronald Isley, Isley Meets Bacharach: Here I Am and the 2005 solo album, At This Time, which featured guests including Costello and Rufus Wainwright; the album, the first under his solo name in 26 years and the first to feature lyrics written by Bacharach, won a Grammy for best pop instrumental. Just six months before his death at age 91, David was on hand to receive the 2012 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, marking the first time a songwriting team had been honored with the prize.
He published his autobiography, Anyone Who Had a Heart, in 2013.
Far from retiring, the eight-time Grammy winner performed at the 2015 Glastonbury Festival in the UK, played with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra in March 2016 and was slated to perform for an intimate audience at the June 2016 Caudwell Children Butterfly Ball fundraiser in London. His 2016 tour schedule included a variety of other high-profile gigs, including stops at Vienna’s Jazz Fest Wien, the Monte Carlo Sporting Summer Festival, Copenhagen Jazz Festival and the Curacao North Sea Jazz Festival in the Dutch Antilles in September.
Bacharach made a rare foray into political commentary in 2018 with “Live to See Another Day,” a song dedicated to the survivors of school gun violence, whose proceeds were earmarked for the Sandy Hook Promise charity. His final released musical composition was a joint 2020 EP with songwriter and performer Daniel Tashian, Blue Umbrella, which earned the pair a Grammy nomination for best traditional pop vocal album.
Bacharach is survived by his adopted son, Christopher, as well as two children with his fourth wife, Jane Hansen, Oliver and daughter Raleigh.
Graham Nash suspects that David Crosby knew he was dying and wanted to make amends before it was too late. Nash said the former Crosby, Stills & Nash bandmates — who were famously estranged for years before Crosby passed last month at 81 — were in the midst of a rapprochement just before Crosby died of unknown causes on January 18.
“The fact is that we were getting a little closer at the end. He had sent me a voicemail saying that he wanted to talk to apologize, and could we set up a time to talk,” Nash told AARP magazine. “I emailed him back and said, ‘Okay, call me at eleven o’clock tomorrow your time, which is two o’clock on the East Coast.’ He never called, and then he was gone.”
It was a painful ending to a half century friendship and musical partnership that produced some of the indelible folk rock of the 20th century. But Nash said he is trying to focus on the love, and music, they shared. “I think one of the only things that we can do, particularly me, is only try to remember the good times,” Nash said. “Try to remember the great music that we made. I’m only going to be interested in the good times, because if I concentrate on the bad times, it gets too weird for me.”
Nash said Crosby reached out to him shortly before he died and he suspects the singer may have known the end was near. “Since his liver transplant and all his stents. He had seven stents. His body was really failing,” Nash said of Crosby, who was open about his long struggle with drug addiction. “But once again, I can only try to remember the good times, because we had many of them.”
Comparing his friend’s passing to an “earthquake,” Nash described the death setting off a series of smaller temblors, saying it took several days for the reality to really set in. “Crosby was my dear friend, my best friend for over 50 years. I can only concentrate on the good stuff,” he said, brushing aside the rifts that had grown between them over the years due to Crosby’s sometimes pointed comments about his former CSN (and CSN&Y) bandmates; in 2021, Crosby said in a scathing interview that he hadn’t spoken to Nash, or Neil Young, in years and didn’t plan to anytime soon.
“But if he was willing to call me and apologize for what he had done and how he had hurt me, it made his death a little easier for me to accept,” Nash said.
Asked what made Crosby’s musical style so singular Nash pointed to the singer’s “unbelievable uniqueness” as a musician, pointing to a jazz influence in David’s early days and “very strange” tunings he played in that made for a one-of-a-kind sound. “He really was in many ways the heartbeat of this band,” Nash said. “I mean, he was incredibly talented and unique as a musician. That’s what he brought… I have never heard anybody with the same brilliant sense of music and harmony that David had.”
Read the full interview here (requires log-in).
Louis Tomlinson announced Wednesday (Feb. 8) that he’s prepping the release of his new documentary All of Those Voices.
In partnership with 78 Productions, Trafalgar Releasing is set to premiere the music film in theaters nationwide on March 22 for a limited time. Tickets will go on sale exactly one month prior to the release date on Feb. 22, with specific theater listings also being unveiled that day.
A release for All of Those Voices promises that the film will allow fans an “intimate and unvarnished view” of the former One Directioner’s life and career through the process of creating and releasing his second solo album, Faith in the Future.
“From the highs of superstardom to the lows of personal tragedy, Louis’ story is one of resilience and determination,” the tease continues, adding that “the film shows a side of Louis that fans have never seen before, as he grapples with the pressures of fame and the weight of his own voice.”
“This has been something I’ve been working on for years,” Tomlinson said in a statement. “I’m really excited to finally put it out into the world. I’ve said it a million times but I’m lucky enough to have the greatest fans an artist could wish for, and as they always go above and beyond for me, I wanted to share my story ‘in my own words.’”
Released back in late November, Tomlinson’s latest studio effort became his first top five hit on the Billboard 200 when it bowed at No. 5. The LP also landed at No. 2 on the Top Album Sales chart after notching the singer a career-best sales week of 37,000 copies.
Last week, Tomlinson also announced the dates of his upcoming tour of Asia, which kicks off in Japan on April 17 in support of Faith in the Future.
Beyoncé is the most awarded artist in Grammy history as of Sunday (Feb. 5), and she’s taking a moment to celebrate. As she should.
In a triumphant video posted to her Instagram Wednesday morning (Feb. 8) that features a remix of her song “Cuff It,” the 41-year-old record-setter poses with the four Grammys she picked up over the weekend for best dance recording, best dance album, best traditional R&B vocal performance and best R&B song. Stunning in form-fitted black gown with matching opera gloves, she dances hand-in-hand with Jay-Z and a group of friends.
In another clip, Bey holds hands with her husband as she and her team appear to be leaving the ceremony, victoriously pumping her fist. The video also features shots of the “Break My Soul” singer accepting her historic 32nd Grammy award, tearing up onstage as she surpassed Sir Georg Solti’s 31 trophies and became the top Grammy winner of all time.
Bey previously celebrated her wins on Instagram right after awards night, sharing photos with her new trophies, wearing a matching gold headpiece, and writing, “To my Hive, thank y’all so much for all of your love and loyalty… I feel very grateful and filled with joy!”
She isn’t the only one who’s pumped up over her big night. Lizzo and Adele — both documented Bey superfans — posed for a selfie together with the “Formation” musician onstage in the background giving her thank you speech. “Selfie as Beyoncé casually makes herstory,” Lizzo captioned the snaps, posting them to Twitter.
Watch Beyoncé celebrate her historic Grammy wins below:
The Jonas Brothers look back on their 2013 breakup in a new interview with IMPACT x Nightline, and Billboard has an exclusive first look at the sit-down.
Admitting that the rift between himself and his brothers reached a point where they were communicating solely through their father, Joe Jonas now sees that their time apart was necessary in the long run. “We needed it creatively,” he told ABC News and Nightline‘s Juju Chang as Nick Jonas and Kevin Jonas nodded along on either side of him. “We needed it emotionally … probably therapy.”
“We didn’t want the band to end when it did,” added Kevin, “but we all really needed that time. The Band-Aid had needed to be ripped off.”
However, Joe also pointed out that, at the end of the day, the primary concern of Paul Jonas Sr. was never the band or his sons’ status as hit-making superstars. “Just like any parent would want, you want your kids to just get along,” he said.
It’s a sentiment each member of the JoBros most likely understands now that they’ve all become fathers in recent years. While Kevin’s girls — Valentina and Alena — with wife Danielle Jonas are now 9 and 6, respectively, Nick’s daughter with wife Priyanka Chopra, baby Malti, just rang in her first birthday. Meanwhile, Joe has two girls of his own with wife Sophie Turner. Older daughter Willa was born in July 2020, but the couple has yet to publicly reveal their younger daughter’s name or face.
Since the band got back together in 2019, they’ve landed their first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Sucker,” and just received their very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. During the Jan. 30 ceremony, the brothers announced their upcoming sixth studio set, The Album, which will be released May 5 via Republic Records. The Jonas Brothers’ interview with IMPACT x Nightline will also include scenes from the recording studio where they worked on The Album, discussion of their evolution from pop stars to family men, and more.
Watch Billboard‘s exclusive first look at the Jonas Brothers’ interview with IMPACT x Nightline above. The full episode arrives Thursday, Feb. 9, on Hulu.
Duran Duran announced the dates for their upcoming 2023 North American Future Past arena tour on Wednesday (Feb. 8), a 26-date outing that is slated to kick off on May 28 in San Jose, California and keep the new wave legends on the road through a Sept. 19 gig in Toronto.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
They will be joined on all the dates by rockers Bastille as well as R&B icons Nile Rodgers & Chic. Presale tickets for the Live Nation-promoted tour will roll out on Monday (Feb. 13) beginning at 10 a.m. local time, with the band’s VIP members getting a first shot at seats; VIPs and prospective VIPs can click here for more information. Citi members will have access to a presale beginning on Monday as well, beginning at 2 p.m. local time until Feb. 15 at 10 p.m. local time. Additional presales will be added on Feb. 14 and end on Feb. 15 at 10 p.m. local time. General public tickets will go on sale on Feb. 15 at 10 a.m. local time.
“It’s remarkable to me that as a band, we are still hitting new milestones, and introducing the sound of DD to new generations of music lovers,” said singer Simon LeBon in a statement. “We are truly grateful that we get to do what we do on a daily basis, and that we still love our job as much as we did when we started out some four decades ago.”
The band released a 2LP deluxe edition of their 15th album, Future Past, in November, which includes all 15 original album tracks as well as a cover of David Bowie’s “Five Years.”
Check out the dates for the Future Past 2023 North American tour below.
May 27 – Napa Valley, CA @ Bottlerock Festival*
May 28 – San Jose, CA @ SAP Center
May 31 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
June 1 – Portland, OR @ Moda Center
June 3 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Vivint Arena
June 6 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center
June 7 – New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
June 9 – The Woodlands, TX @ The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
June 10 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
June 13 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
June 15 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
June 17 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
June 18 – Sunrise, FL @ FLA Live Arena
August 24 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center
August 26 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
August 28 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Augusts 29 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
August 31 – St. Paul, MN @ Minnesota State Fair
Sept. 1 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
Sept. 3 – Canandaigua, NY @ CMAC
Sept. 6 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
Sept. 7 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
Sept. 9 – Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena
Sept. 10 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
Sept. 13 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
Sept. 16 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
Sept. 19 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena*Festival show
Missy Elliott and Jack Harlow had a blast filming their Doritos Super Bowl LVII commercial. But according to the “Work It” legend, the hilarious 90-second spot just scratches the surface of the belly laughs they shared on set during their first-ever in-person meeting.
OK, sorry, that’s not true.
Missy realized while speaking to Billboard this week that they actually (almost) met before, but she just forgot. “I never met Jack before. Wait … lies,” Elliott laughed while recalling that she thought they had never crossed paths, but that Harlow reminded her on set that they were in the same studio years ago when he was an up-and-comer. While they didn’t connect then, she was blown away by how “sweet and kind” Harlow was during the shoot.
In a teaser ad released last week, Elliott chilled at her studio as Harlow called up looking for a collab, though Missy shot down the idea of a “love triangle” with the incredulous, “I don’t know about that.” Though the love triangle bit isn’t in the in the final cut, Missy said they “laughed as if we had met years back, especially when we had to keep doing those lines. It would be fun to do those bloopers of us doing the skit.”
The final product, though, has plenty of twists and surprises. Harlow said it was an honor to finally meet Elliott in person, describing her as someone who is “very special to me … super special. And, not for nothing, “completely down to Earth and an open book … she left me inspired.” He said they joked and laughed their way through the script about Jack discovering that the magic element his music is missing is a tasty triangle.
Of course that triangle looks like a Doritos chip, but in Jack’s mind, it’s transformed into a musical triangle, and when he threatens to quit hip-hop to pursue triangle greatness, Missy warns him that it’s a fool’s errand. “I gotta do me, Missy,” Harlow tells her in the ad titled “Jack’s New Angle.” Cut to Jack rocking an arena while hitting the ‘angle, teaching a room full of prodigies how to correctly strike the three-sided instrument and budding triangalists mobbing a music store that is suddenly sold out of the least respected percussion piece of an orchestra.
Thanks to Harlow, triangles become a worldwide phenomenon, and though he’s the pioneer, in the end Harlow loses out to none other than Sir Elton John — in a surprise cameo — for Triangle Player of the Year.
Harlow said it’s a “big honor” to be part of the big game for the first time, especially partnering with the maker of his favorite childhood snack on the ad. When reminded that Elliott played halftime with Katy Perry and Lenny Kravitz in 2015 and then went on to star in a 2020 Pepsi SB ad, Harlow said he would feel “blessed” if he could pull a reverse Missy and play the halftime show in the future. “I look up to her so much, so it was very special to me,” he said of their collab.
“We were laughing and joking and having a good time, but I also just wanted to hear stories about some of the things she did and where her head was at when she was making music early in her career,” he said of the between-shots chatter; Elliott said their downtime also included discussions of possibly getting together to work on another project in the future. As for the surprise John cameo, Harlow called it the “cherry on top … that’s an icon that reaches everyone and adds even more legitimacy to the ad. He’s so iconic and accomplished, a genius. I was thrilled that he a part of it.”
Though they did not meet in person, Harlow said being in an ad with John was “a nice start” and he’s confident they’ll meet in the future IRL. Harlow, who will make his big screen acting debut in the upcoming reboot of White Men Can’t Jump, said he was challenged at times to come up with some “different energy” on the shoot promoting the sweet and tangy BBQ Doritos line, but he appreciated the challenge.
Neither would reveal their pick to win the game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, with Harlow saying he’s “messy” and just loves “drama,” so he would like to see a thrilling, overtime game. Elliott added that she doesn’t “want to get on nobody’s bad side,” so she’s keeping her pick mum and just gearing up to watch the game, and the commercial, of course.
“I will be up early to watch [the commercial],” Elliott said of her plans for Wednesday (Feb. 8), when the full spot drops. “I don’t think there’s a bigger platform of people that are watching you.”
Check out the full ad that will air on Sunday (Feb. 12) during the big game at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., above.
With his stout heart and love of an ale or two, Ed Sheeran fit right in when he played an impromptu gig at Hobbiton.
The English singer and songwriter made a detour from his current tour of New Zealand for a visit to Hobbiton, the outdoor movie set that appears in Peter Jackson’s legendary Lord of the Rings films and its Hobbit prequels.
In a clip doing the rounds of TikTok, Sheeran swung a guitar at the final stop of the LOTR tour, the Green Dragon Inn, for a performance of his 2013 single “I See Fire,” the soundtrack to Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“We had an unexpected guest at The Green Dragon Inn tonight,” notes the tour guides, which host thousands of guests each year at the set in Waikato on New Zealand’s north Island, a spot known to millions as the home village of Frodo, Samwise and scores of nuggety halflings.
The surprises didn’t stop there. Sheeran stopped by Kōwhai Intermediate and Manurewa Intermediate schools in Auckland for surprise performances, footage of which can be seen here.
Sheeran completes the New Zealand leg of + – = ÷ x Tour (pronounced “The Mathematics Tour”) on Saturday (Feb. 11) at Eden Park, Auckland. He then heads west for his Australian stadium tour, also produced by Frontier Touring and kicking off next Friday, Feb. 17 at Suncorp Stadium.
The Brit is a touring juggernaut in these parts. With his 2017 Divide tour of Australia, Sheeran sold upwards of 1 million tickets, breaking the all-time record for a single tour set by Dire Straits in the 1980s. His latest tour of these parts is slated to wrap March 12 at Optus Stadium, Perth.
Watch his performance at Hobbiton below.
