the late show
Billie Eilish is not what you think she is. Except now, she told Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night’s (May 21) The Late Show, she finally is what she’s always wanted to be. “I think that with Hit Me Hard and Soft it’s like the first time since I’ve been an adult and maybe ever in my kind of creative life… it truly is the most genuine thing I’ve ever made,” she said of her just released third studio album.
“It feels very, very me and it feels like all of the music is exactly who I am, all the visuals are exactly who I am and that’s honestly terrifying and that’s why I’m literally shaking right now,” she told Colbert, who parried back that exposing yourself like that requires vulnerability and removing the mask from the character you’re created to protect you.
Asked what she meant in a recent Rolling Stone cover story in which she said up until now she felt like she was playing a character, Eilish said after putting out her first songs as a “very young” teenager, she felt like audiences thought of her as “one thing,” leaving her little room to do anything but what people thought she was.
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She called her previous album, 2021’s Happier Than Ever, a “reaction of, ‘you can’t tell me what to do! I’m gonna do whatever I want to do and here it is!’ And I think I may have gone a little… I really wanted to prove a point and so I think I went so far, but that’s kind of what I needed to do. I needed to play this whole thing of, ‘I’m not what you think I am.’ I thought at the time that it was very me and I realized in hindsight I was just trying to be seen and express myself and show that people can be multi-faceted and I am one of those people.”
Eilish also noted that she’s willing to suffer for her art, describing waking up at 7 a.m. the day after the most recent Grammy awards and driving to some “random” place in Santa Clarita to spend six hours inside a 10-foot deep water tank, fully clothed, to shoot the cover of the album. “Dude, I was wearing big, long pants, like giant Pro Club shorts. I was wearing a thermal long sleeve, a button-up flannel, a tie, rings, arm warmers, bracelet and a weight. I had a weight strapped to me,” she said, proudly affirming that it was all her idea.
In another segment, Eilish had a laugh when Colbert asked about a quote from her 2021 doc, The World’s a Little Blurry in which she described her family as “a song” in painting her musical upbringing. “Dude, my family is so musical and we always have been, and we remain that way,” Eilish said. “I grew up thinking that every family was like that. I thought that everyone was singing all the time and playing music with their family.”
When the audience chuckled, Eilish turned to them and swore that she actually thought all families were like that. “We’re big fans. Our whole family, we are music fans,” she said. “We love music and I think that’s really what it all stems from.” The night before, she noted, the whole fam sat around singing and playing guitar while harmonizing to the Beatles. “That’s what it’s always been and it’s so wonderful.”
Colbert also mentioned that Lana Del Rey introduced Eilish at Coachella last month, calling the 22-year-old singer “the voice of our generation. No pressure. How did it feel to have an artist you admire describe you that way?” he asked.
Eilish said it was “ridiculous,” returning the compliment by calling LDR the voice of her own generation, doubling-down by saying that Del Rey is one of the “top three reasons” that she is the person and artist that she is, as well as the reason she started making music to begin with. “It was crazy to hear her say that,” Eilish said. “I love her so much.” Then, while ticking off her early musical inspirations — which included such throwback legends Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Julie London and Johnny Mathis — Colbert asked if Eilish would ever consider recording a standards album and she lit up with a sly smile.
“Yeah, yeah, I would love to do that some day,” Eilish said with a happy grin.
When Colbert asked what song she was planning to perform that night, Eilish blushed a bit, laughed and said she would be performing “Lunch.” She then closed out the night with brother/producer Finneas and her band, singing the homage to sapphic love on a dark stage lit by strobing lights while rocking a backwards plaid cap, oversized baseball jersey and striped tie and plaid culottes.
Watch Eilish perform “Lunch” and talk about her new album below.
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Maren Morris visited The Late Show on Tuesday night (April 9) to promote her new children’s book and sit on the couch to chat with host Stephen Colbert for the first time after several earlier performances on the show. But the “Circles Around This Town” singer ended up singing anyway after she told Colbert about one of the weirdest gigs she had as a child star.
Considering the 34-year-old has been performing since she was 10, Morris said she has definitely had a “few weirdo ones,” including a number of chili cook-off shows and a weekly Saturday gig during high school singing the National Anthem at amateur wrestling bouts for $100 a shot. “That takes about 90 seconds, so the rest of the night my friends in high school would watch and cheer on these wrestlers,” she said.
“I had the most fun and it was a fun way to make money and be patriotic,” she added. After Morris explained that she did the Anthem a cappella, Colbert asked if they could perform an impromptu duet on the notoriously hard-to-sing “Star-Spangled Banner” sometime. Morris agreed to the request, even as Colbert admitted he only knows the bassline of the song, but cannot sing the melody.
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“I think you and I could rock it,” he assured her. Morris was up to the challenge, offering Colbert the sage advice that you need to “start low” or else your voice will run out of road by the sky-high ending. Morris then began singing, with Colbert adding the low notes as they sang directly to each other, with the host leaning into the rumbly bass part as the singer’s voice jumped up during the “rockets’ red glare” portion and Colbert holding a killer from-the-bottom note that made her crack up.
With some gentle acoustic guitar accompaniment from the house band, the pair made it to the end impressively as Morris asked in wonder, “Where did that come from?” Colbert loved it so much he proposed that they do it again at an amateur wrestling match some day, suggesting they could split the $100 fee.
South Carolina-bred Colbert also couldn’t resist talking Southern cuisine with Texas-born Morris, asking the singer if she misses the tastes and smells of home after living in Nashville for 11 years. “That’s South, but they have not figured out Tex-Mex food,” Morris lamented about her adopted home town, saying Music City has great food and culture, but not a hint of her favorite Lone Star flavors.
Morris joked that opening a Tex-Mex joint in Nashville could be next move, though her dream has always been to have her own bar in town called “My Church,” which would, of course, be housed in an old church. The singer also stuck around to promote her new children’s book, Addie Ant Goes on an Adventure, which she co-wrote wit her best friend, Karina Argow.
Watch Morris on The Late Show below.
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The Late Show‘s Stephen Colbert paid emotional tribute to his longtime friend country singer Toby Keith on Tuesday night (Feb. 6), describing the long arc of their relationship and sharing a special memento he keeps in his office to remind him of the man he affectionately referred to as “Big Dog.”
“I was shocked and saddened when I saw the news this morning,” Colbert said of announcement that the 62-year-old “Red Solo Cup” singer had died following a two-year battle with stomach cancer. Colbert said he knew the singer had been fighting the disease, but he’d held out hope that they would see each other again and that Keith would return to touring as footage of the star’s previous performances on The Late Show played behind him.
“I was lucky enough to become friends with Toby over the years, as improbable as that seems,” said Colbert, whose laser-sharp daggers of commentary are often aimed at bloviating right wing politicians and media figures — as well as other know-nothings from any side — suggesting that viewers might not have expected him to befriend a singer whose often jingoistic, red meat patriotic anthems seemed at odds with the host’s more liberal-leaning point of view.
Colbert said they met back in 2006 when Keith appeared on Colbert’s funhouse mirror “conservative” Colbert Report Comedy Central late night series. “Back then there was a not-so helpful legend that I had knives out for some of my guests,” said Colbert, admitting that he sometimes did. He recalled having “some kind of plan” to skewer Keith in a bid to send up the singer’s “boot in your ass” line from one of his most famous songs, 2002’s flag-waving, “Courtesy of the Red, White And Blue (The Angry American).”
“Right before I went on stage I remember vividly looking down at my shoes and saying, ‘What are you doing? You’re a host. He’s your guest. Make him feel welcome, see who he is,’” Colbert said he chided himself at the time. “And what do you know? We hit it off like a house afire. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed talking to Toby Keith.”
Colbert said it seemed like Keith enjoyed the chat as well, because after the appearance, as they passed each other in the hall and Toby was headed out the stage door, he turned to Colbert and said, “‘Hey man, you do a great job. Whatever the f–k it is you do.’ And I took that as the greatest compliment,” the host said. Such a high honor, in fact, that his then-head writer had the comment stitched onto a small pillow as a Christmas present, which Colbert keeps in his office until this day.
“That day, Toby taught me to not prejudge a guest,” Colbert said of the country singer whose politics and persona were complicated and, friends and colleagues said in remembering him, more nuanced than they appeared. “And to have my intention, but to keep my eyes open to the reality of who they are. And for that lesson, and for a lot of other things, I’m always going to be grateful.” Later in the segment, Colbert hinted at Keith’s hard-to-pin-down persona by showing footage of the country star giving President Obama a standing ovation at the former commander-in-chief’s Nobel Peace Prize speech in 2009.
Colbert paid homage to that complexity, calling Keith a great performer, unapologetically patriotic, as well as an “opinionated, brash, often controversial” figure who bonded with his many fans by “writing their lives in a very real and entertaining way.” The host then ran down tape of Keith’s many appearances on his show, including a 2015 spot where Toby handed over one of his acoustic guitars, which Colbert said his son plays to this day. The package also included tape of a cowboy hat-wearing Colbert inducting Keith into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June 2015, singing a “As Good As I Once Was,” a song Colbert said he used to listen to every night before going on stage.
“I think he enjoyed how unlikely a pair we seemed. I sure did,” Colbert said, comparing them to meme videos of horse and duck besties. “Toby taught me not to judge people too quickly. And with his passing, I gonna try to remember that again. It’s something we all need to remember.”
Colbert ended with a plea for patience and an attempt to understand each other during these highly divisive times, promising to meet anyone, no matter who they are, “at this place. I will meet you at being broken-hearted that Toby Keith is gone. Thank you Big Dog.”
Check out Colbert’s tribute to Keith below (begins at 1:00 mark).
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As Stephen Colbert often says on The Late Show, if you want to truly, deeply peer into the soul of an artist the best way to do it is via his show’s signature “Colbert Questionert” probing list of queries. Nicki Minaj found that out on Tuesday night (Jan. 16) when she sat for the pre-taped segment in which the Pink Friday 2 MC revealed the burning answers behind such soul-searching questions as: “what is the best sandwich?”
There are no wrong answers, even though Minaj’s response was definitely far from standard. “Turkey, cheese, lettuce, tomato, salt and pepper, oil and vinegar, jalapeños, mayonnaise, mustard, toasted, hero,” Minaj told her old pal Colbert in her signature rapid-fire cadence.
Her next answer, however, was even more unique. Asked about her first concert, Minaj recalled going to the Hot 97 Summer Jam in 2001 when Jay-Z shocked the crowd by bringing out surprise guest Michael Jackson. “Many, many years ago… and Michael Jackson came out. Yes,” she recalled, rolling her eyes when Colbert asked what MJ sang. “He didn’t perform, he came out of this box and the people went crazy.”
The “Anaconda” rapper also, of course, said the snake is the scariest animal and that the apple is superior to the orange, because it could help feed her and her infant son, affectionately known as “Papa Bear.” In an answer that certainly pleased observant Catholic Colbert, Minaj opined that when we die, the good go to heaven and the bad go to hell, naturally. “Pearly gates, fiery pit, what more do you need to know?” Colbert said.
Nicki added that her favorite action movie is a tie between Gladiator and Black Panther, that she would never be caught dead in an aisle seat on a plane — she doesn’t worry about climbing over someone to get to the bathroom because she “doesn’t fly on those kind of planes” — and her least favorite smell is when the garbage piles up on the streets of New York.
She also noted that her earliest memory is of wanting to go to a chain called Burger Boys in her native Trinidad and when asked which song she could listen to on repeat for eternity, Minaj chose the Whitney Houston classic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
Check out all of Minaj’s answers below.
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Pink is back in business with Trustfall, an album that’s at or en route to the top of the charts around the globe. And when she hits the road in support of it, you’ll know about it.
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Everything in Alecia Moore’s world, it seems, is shiny and large, colorful. Pink, even. The Philly native is a total drawcard.
Her ninth and latest album, however, explores some of the tougher angles of life.
On Tuesday night (Feb. 21), Pink stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, for an exploration of her music, family, courage and more.
Of her new LP and its title, she explains: “I feel like all of us are walking around sort of with this low level of trauma in our bodies and it takes a lot of trust to be human being these days, to get out of bed in the morning, go to work, and drop your kids off at school, and go to public places and participate in elections and have a vagina. It just takes a lot of trust.”
Not everything is shiny and colorful. “I know a lot of teenagers, also, I think a lot of people have anxiety, a lot of kids have anxiety, and a lot of us feel like we’re falling backwards. And we don’t know where the ground is now,” she says. “That’s a trustfall…you have to ask yourself, what’s worth falling for and who’s supposed to catch you, can you catch yourself.”
The pop superstar also discussed reuniting with Chris Stapleton on “Just Say I’m Sorry” (“it sounds dumb, but I just called him up. I am a fan”), collaborating with her own kids (no, they don’t want to follow her lead into showbiz), and the music industry (“I hate people who gave advice”).
And she shared her origin tale of the music biz, which began in the 1990s when Moore signed as a 16-year-old as part of an “absolutely terrible” group. The band was eventually shelved, but the fearless singer stepped up and out, signed a new contract at 17 and eventually released her own music to the world at age 20. “The business is very different now,” she explains.
Pink also performed “When I Get There,” lifted from Trustfall (Feb. 17), which dropped last Friday through RCA. Her Summer Carnival 2023 jaunt kicking off in late July followed by the TRUSTFALL arena tour starting Oct. 12 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, Calif.
Watch below:
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