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The 1975 returned to Saturday Night Live on March 11, rocking Studio 8H with a pair of songs from their fifth album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language.
Led by charismatic frontman Matt Healy, the British alternative rock outfit took a brief break from touring to light up the stage with performances of “I’m in Love With You” and “Oh Caroline.” Both tracks appear on the band’s Jack Antonoff-produced album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, which debuted and peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 in October 2022.
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This marked The 1975’s second musical guest appearance on SNL. Healy and Co. first appeared on the iconic sketch comedy show in 2016 to promote their second album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware.
Later this month, The 1975 will play Lalapalooza in Argentina and Chile before embarking on dates in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe and the United Kingdom.
Saturday’s episode of SNL was hosted by Wednesday star Jenna Ortega.
Watch The 1975’s SNL performances below. For those without cable, the broadcast streams on Peacock, which you can sign up for at the link here. Having a Peacock account also gives fans access to previous SNL episodes as well.
Shakira and Bizarrap brought their chart-topping collab to The Tonight Show.
The Colombian star and Argentine DJ paid a visit to Jimmy Fallon on Friday (March 10) to promote their global hit “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” which has officially broken 14 Guinness World Records.
Prior to giving a sensational live performance of the dis track, which peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, Shakira sat down with Fallon and recalled hearing Bizarrap’s “Vol. 53” beat for the first time in Barcelona.
“It reminded me of Depeche Mode,” the 46-year-old songstress remembered. “The song, if you listen to it, it’s got a little bit of that sort of, like, cool, dark undertone. I love Depeche Mode. It’s my favorite.”
The superstar added that she immediately knew the song would be a hit.
“I started to feel it in my body, you know. I usually have this visceral sort of physical reaction to music,” Shak explained. “If you see me, you know, two-stepping, things are not right. You know? I know when a song works because then I suddenly start moving, like, getting these small contractions from my tailbone to my iliac bone, and then it just results into, you know, hip movements.”
In “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” which also reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, Shakira is more unapologetic and empowered than ever, spitting diss verses to ex-boyfriend Gerard Piqué and even throwing a jab at his new love interest.
Watch Shakira and Bizarrap’s Tonight Show appearance in the videos below.
Hello…you. The season 4 finale of Netflix’s You contained an epic needle drop of Taylor Swift‘s “Anti-Hero,” and now the show’s creator is dishing on how she nabbed the song.
“We had finished most of the episodes and sent them off to Netflix,” Sera Gamble, who also serves as You‘s showrunner, told E! News on Friday (March 10), “and then we needed this last big song at the end of the final episode and we had one in that was different.” (Don’t worry, no spoilers going forward about the second batch of season 4 episodes, which just premiered on the streamer.)
At first, the thriller’s music team was planning to use one of several “really iconic British songs,” given the season’s London setting, but Gamble changed her mind the moment Swift dropped her 10th album Midnights and its lead single — with its self-loathing refrain of “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me” — back in October. “I was like, ‘I feel like it’s almost too good what she’s saying and we have to at least try to get this song in.’ Because really, what is You but a Taylor Swift fan love letter disguised as a show?”
There’s no word yet on whether Swift has binged Joe Goldberg’s murderous antics on the latest season of the Netflix hit, but it’s safe to say she’s probably been a bit busy prepping for The Eras Tour, which kicks off on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) at Glendale, Ariz.’s State Farm Stadium.
To celebrate the musical mastermind’s arrival, Glendale Mayor Jerry P. Weiers announced earlier this week that the town will temporarily be changing its name through her second show on Saturday, March 18.
Selena Gomez sat down for the newest episode of the Apple TV+ series Dear… on Friday (March 10) to discuss her experience with lupus and body-shaming trolls.
The superstar explained that after she was first diagnosed with the disease, she “didn’t quite understand what that meant” at the time. “I knew I had an autoimmune disease, it was just my body fighting itself on the inside,” she said. “And that was the most surreal part because I had never felt fatigue, I was young, I felt completely fine. So hearing from a doctor that, ‘Oh, you could’ve had a stroke onstage, you could’ve died,’ it was a lot.”
As a side effect of the medications she was prescribed for lupus, Gomez’s weight would often fluctuate, and she found herself being attacked online over her body and physical appearance. “It was like they couldn’t wait to find a thing to bring me down,” she said. “I lied. I would go online and post a picture of myself and I would say, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not accepting what you’re saying,’ all the while being in the room posting that crying my eyes out, ’cause nobody deserves to hear those things.”
During the episode, the Selena + Chef star also looked back on her 2017 kidney transplant, which she received from her best friend Francia Rasia. “I will never, ever, ever be more in debt to a person than Francia,” she said. “The idea of someone not even second-guessing to be a donor was unbelievably overwhelming. … I think it had to happen the way that it did. In order for me to get to where I am, I was meant to go through it to do something for others.”
Gomez just returned to social media this week after taking a brief break in the wake of perceived drama with Hailey Bieber. “Please, please be kinder and consider others’ mental health,” she shared on TikTok. “My heart has been heavy and I only want good for everyone. All my love.”
The singer’s episode of Dear… is now streaming on Apple TV+.
U2‘s Bono and The Edge took David Letterman on a musical and personal journey around their hometown of Dublin, Ireland, for the upcoming Disney+ documentary Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman.
The film, advertised as “part concert movie, part travel adventure plus a whole lot of Bono and The Edge, with Dave’s humor throughout,” does exactly that, as Letterman navigates the origins and cultural impact of U2.
Directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville, the documentary will debut March 17 on Disney+ and showcase Bono and The Edge‘s special concert performance in Dublin.
Billboard checked out the heartwarming documentary, and we’ve compiled some of the best, most impactful moments from Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman. See them below, and be sure to sign up for Disney+ here before the film’s release.
The Original Band Name & Where the Nicknames Came From
Before U2, there was Lypton Village, and The Edge admitted that he “can’t remember” why he and his group of friends named themselves that. One of the main characteristics of the band, however, was that every member was given a nickname, which is where The Edge (real name David Howell Evans) was given his alter ego.
“Bono’s Village name was Bono Vox of O’Connell Street,” The Edge said of his bandmate (born Paul David Hewson), before Letterman noted that Bono was nicknamed after a hearing aid store.
“It was part of a pushback against the conservative society that we were a part of,” The Edge explained, before joking that U2 members Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. weren’t given the best nicknames, and that’s why they ultimately decided to move forward with their real names. Clayton was “Mrs. Burns” and Mullen was “The Jam Jar.”
“My nickname is ‘Dumba–,’” Letterman joked.
“Sunday Bloody Sunday”
A lesser known fact among younger U2 fans is just how much the religious turmoil of Ireland inspired the band. Bono and The Edge delved into the history of tension between the Catholics and Protestants in their home country and how it inspired their War hit “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” written by The Edge.
“On one particular day, this rage poured out. This frustration at not being able to write, not knowing if I should be in a rock n’ roll band, what the future might hold,” The Edge said of his 21-year-old self, who felt as though he had to chose between his faith and his love for music.
“This was alchemy,” Bono said of the song’s creation. “I was watching it. I was standing beside it. I saw this transformation of internal rage to external. I was like, ‘Phew, that’s why I’m in a band. That’s why I’m with this dude.’ It was a way to feel our music could mean something outside of just itself.”
Super Bowl XXXVI Halftime Show
At one point in the documentary, Bono touched on his decision to honor the names of those who died in the 2001 9/11 attacks during U2’s Super Bowl Halftime show performance, which came just six months after the devastating tragedy.
“I recall grappling with the concept of America, and what it meant to me and what it might mean around the world, and that this is a fragile moment,” he shared. “I wanted to use some exhortation, taking away normal spectacle and turning it into a monument of rolling names. Super Bowl Halftimes are a spectacle, but the greatest spectacles are emotions.”
Watch the moving tribute during the “Where the Streets Have No Name” performance here.
Panti Bliss Talks U2 & Homosexuality in Ireland
As the future of drag in the United States is currently in danger, thanks to the recent wave of anti-drag and anti-trans legislation introduced by Republican lawmakers in the U.S., it felt important to see how strongly U2 supports the rights of people of all sexualities — particularly drag queens.
Letterman sat down with drag star and marriage equality advocate Panti Bliss — who once joined U2 onstage in Dublin back in 2015 — to discuss how she initially had misconceptions about the band. “I grew up in a country that would absolutely repress any hint of sexuality. Dublin, all through the ‘80s, was this gray, aggressively normal kind of place. Homosexuality wasn’t even heard of,” she explained.
“I unfairly maligned U2 because, to me, at that time, they were part and parcel of this culture, this sort of straight-boy rock culture that I felt absolutely rejected by,” Panti continued. “So I left, I went to Japan to live and work and do [drag]. While I was living there, U2 came to perform and I started to see, ‘Oh actually, this U2 is not the U2 that I unfairly maligned.’ What I saw onstage in Tokyo was outward-looking, you know? It was sexy and fun. Maybe I’m overselling it, but they were part of the reason then in the end that I ended up coming back eventually.”
On how U2 impacted the movement of equality in Ireland, Panti noted, ” U2 was part of what allowed Ireland to stand on its own two feet and have our own thing. I appreciated that at the time and I still do now.”
A Sweet Moment of Friendship
It’s rare to see a band maintain a close friendship after 50 years of working together, but Bono and The Edge took a moment during their concert performance at Dublin’s Ambassador Theatre to shower each other with love.
“The thing I don’t like about Edge is that he doesn’t need me. He could be doing all of this, writing, singing, performing, playing, producing on his own. But he doesn’t,” Bono shared, looking at his old pal.
“Because it’s not as much fun,” The Edge sweetly replied.
Tearing up, Bono added, “Your best friends are the ones that you can have the best arguments with. I’ve got pretty much the best argument you could ever find right here. I would trust the Edge with my life. In fact, I have trusted him with my life.”
David Letterman’s Personal U2 Song
The late night talk show icon was taken aback at perhaps one of the most heartwarming parts of the documentary, when he found out that The Edge and Bono had spent the morning writing a song about him, inspired by Letterman’s trip to Ireland’s Forty Foot.
“We come to love this Forty Foot man / He keeps on doing the best that he can / We almost lost him there on Sandymount Strand / Being swept away was part of his plan / You can laugh nervously / That’s how we see underneath,” the duo sing, before Letterman puts his hands on his head in disbelief.
“Many nice things have happened to me for my life. This would be right at the top of that list,” he shared.
Jimmy Fallon, The Roots and the cast of Super Mario Bros. Movie just one-upped the game franchise’s original theme song.
In celebration of March 10 — aka “MAR10 Day” — Chris Pratt, Jack Black, Seth Rogen, Anya Taylor-Joy, Fred Armisen, Keegan-Michael Key and Charlie Day joined Fallon and his in-house band for a special Tonight Show video, singing a choral rendition of the instantly recognizable video game’s theme song. The actors make up the main voice cast of the upcoming animated Super Mario Bros. Movie, which hits theaters April 5.
In the video, Fallon and the actors take turns taking center stage as Questlove and other members of The Roots add layers of suave harmony. All the while, the singers are edited into the pixelated landscape of the Mario universe, where they pop in and out of green pipes and send shells flying at one another.
Then, Nintendo legend and Mario game creator Shigeru Miyamoto makes an appearance, and even has a little solo at the very end of the video.
Fans in the comments absolutely loved the creative take on the Mario music. “Broooo… This is so awesome!” wrote one. “Just to see the voice cast of The Super Mario Bros Movie and even seeing Miyamoto singing in acappella cover of the iconic Super Mario tracks is just phenomenal to watch.”
“The ending was a masterpiece in every way,” added another.
Watch Jimmy Fallon, The Roots and the Super Mario Bros. cast perform their elevated take on the film’s theme song above.
Wednesday and Scream VI star Jenna Ortega is one of the hottest young actresses in the game. Which might explain why Saturday Night Live oldster Bowen Yang just can’t understand all her youthful wordplay in the latest promo for this weekend’s show.
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After Ortega gives the basic rundown of the episode’s lineup — she’s hosting, The 1975 are the musical guest — a befuddled Yang is like, “what?,” clearly confused by all the millennial jargon she’s slanging at him. “I’m hosting SNL with musical guest The 1975,” the 20-year-old actress repeats as the band silently bracket her and Yang.
“I feel so old, I don’t understand any of your generation’s slang,” Yang, 33, complains. “Are you guys getting any of this?,” he asks the band, as shades-wearing singer Matty Healy mumbles, “none of it.”
In the second bit, Ortega flips her Wednesday character’s frown upside down and gives the camera some double espresso high school pep squad energy, which again totally confuses Yang. “What are you doing?” he wonders as Ortega shakes her shoulders and smiles brightly.
“I’m being upbeat, you know I don’t want people to think I’m like my character Wednesday,” she explains. “Well, cool it, you’re freaking people out!,” Yang admonishes the star, asking the band if they too are wondering what is going on. “We’re freaked,” they all murmur half-heartedly.
They all hang around for a few more bits, which come on top of this week’s first ad, during which Ortega reluctantly did her viral Wednesday “Bloody Mary” dance one more time to please the Please Don’t Destroy guys, who came dressed in their finest Wednesday Addams cosplay.
Saturday Night Live airs on NBC at 11:30 p.m. ET and streams later on Peacock.
Check out Ortega’s SNL promo below.
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Miley Cyrus will perform new songs from her new album in the Disney+ special, Miley Cyrus — Endless Summer Vacation (Backyard Sessions), premiering on Friday (March 10).
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The performance event coincides with the release of Cyrus’ eighth studio album, Endless Summer Vacation, also out Friday.
Cyrus is set to perform eight songs from the new set, including her smash hit “Flowers,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks.
The intimate concert special, executive produced by Cyrus, will feature a special performance with Rufus Wainwright along with exclusive interviews inside the former Los Angeles home of Frank Sinatra, where Cyrus shot the music video for “Flowers.”
Miley Cyrus — Endless Summer Vacation (Backyard Sessions) is directed by Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter, and produced by RadicalMedia, Cyrus, HopeTown Entertainment, Crush Management and Columbia Records.
How to Stream Miley Cyrus’ Performance Special for Free
Miley Cyrus — Endless Summer Vacation (Backyard Sessions) drops on Friday at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on Disney+. Once the special premieres, Disney+ subscribers can begin streaming at no additional charge.
Not subscribed? Disney+ is $7.99/month or $79.99/year for the ad-supported package. To stream without ads, subscribe to Disney Premium for $10.99/month or $109 for the annual plan.
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$7.99/month
Disney+ no longer offers free trials, but there are ways to save some cash, such as subscribing to an annual plan and bundles such as the Disney+ Duo Basic Bundle with Hulu for $9.99/month and the Trio Basic Bundle (Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+) starting at $12.99/month.
How do you get free Disney+? Your best bet is to go through a third party.
Right now, Verizon is offering free, six-month subscriptions to Disney+ and the Disney+ bundle with select Unlimited plans. American Express offers entertainment credits for customers, which is another way to potentially save on Disney+.
You can access Disney+ on a smart TV, laptop, smartphone, tablet and other devices via the Disney+ app or at Disneyplus.com.
What else is streaming on Disney+? The list of Disney+ Originals includes Andor, Willow, The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, The Prouder Family: Louder & Prouder, Hawkeye, WandaVision, Loki, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Dancing With the Stars and movie exclusives such as Wakanda Forever, Turning Red and the upcoming Peter Pan & Wendy film premiering on April 28.
Music lovers can binge hours of concert specials and documentaries such as The Beatles: Get Back, BTS: Permission to Dance on Stage: LA, J-Hope: In the Box, Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles, Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U and Elton John: Live From Dodger Stadium.
Watch the trailer for Miley Cyrus — Endless Summer Vacation (Backyard Sessions) below.
Last year, all four of the actors who won Oscars – Will Smith and Jessica Chastain in the lead categories, and Troy Kotsur and Ariana DeBose in the supporting races — had won in those same categories at the Screen Actors Guild Awards one month earlier. Their Oscar coronations were not quite foregone conclusions, but nearly so.
It’s very different this year. Only one of the actors who won at the SAG Awards on Feb. 26 seems certain of also winning an Oscar on Sunday, March 12. That’s Ke Huy Quan for his supporting role in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Michelle Yeoh, who won the SAG Award for her leading role in that same film, is probably the front-runner to also win the Oscar, but Cate Blanchett can’t be counted out for her acclaimed performance in Tár. Blanchett has already won two Oscars, which may work against her here.
Brendan Fraser, who won at the SAG Awards for his lead performance in The Whale, is a serious contender for the Oscar, but Austin Butler (for Elvis) and Colin Farrell (for The Banshees of Inisherin) could just as easily take it. This one is too close to call.
So is the race for best supporting actress. Jamie Lee Curtis won at the SAG Awards for her supporting turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and gave a great, self-deprecating speech, referring to herself a “nepo baby.” (Curtis is the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, two of the top Hollywood stars of their era.) She could easily also win the Oscar – in the same category where her mom was nominated (and lost) for her unforgettable performance in Psycho.
But many will want to see the Oscar go to Angela Bassett for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, particularly after two other Black actresses — Viola Davis (for The Woman King) and Danielle Deadwyler (for Till) — were passed over for Oscar nods for best actress. This race, too, is too close to call.
How closely have the SAG Awards winners aligned with the Oscar winners in the four acting categories? Pretty closely, but not well enough for SAG winners to get overly confident.
Since the SAG Awards began in 1995 (honoring films released in 1994), all four SAG winners went on to win Oscars nine times. Three of the four went on to win Oscars 11 times. Let’s pause here: The SAG winners aligned with the Oscar winners in at least three of the four categories 20 times in the past 28 years – an impressive rate of agreement.
That leaves eight years where the agreement was less impressive. Just two of the four SAG winners went on to win Oscars six times. Just one of the four went on to win the Oscar twice. Those two years where the two voting bodies were far apart were 2001 and 2002, where they agreed only on Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball (2001) and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago (2002).
The rate of agreement between the two shows has increased over time. In the SAG Awards’ first 14 years, they agreed on all four winners just twice. In the last 14 years, they have agreed seven times.
Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) and Kate Winslet (The Reader) were winners at both shows, but in different categories. Del Toro won the SAG Award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role, but he went on to win the Oscar for best supporting actor. It worked the other way around for Winslet, who won the SAG Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role, but went on to win the Oscar for best actress. (Since they both won at both shows, we counted them as in agreement.)
The SAG Awards have had one tie in a Big Four acting category. In 1997, Kim Basinger (L.A. Confidential) tied for outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role with Gloria Stuart (Titanic). Basinger went on to win the Oscar. (Since at least one of the SAG winners went on to win at the Oscars, we counted that as being in agreement too.)
The SAG Awards have presented two of their marquee film acting awards posthumously, to Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight and Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Only Ledger went on to win the Oscar.
It’s not about the pasta, but it is about Raquel! James Kennedy compared the ongoing drama from Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules to one of Taylor Swift’s signature moves in a social media post on Wednesday night (March 8).
“It’s safe to say that this season of Vanderpump Rules has turned into a Taylor Swift album,” the DJ told his nearly 600,000 Instagram followers in a hilarious Story. “There’s easter eggs left and right, you’ve got to come find your easter eggs! You know, or should we start a sticker album book everyone can put their little stickers in? ‘Oh, found another one, found another easter egg.’”
Easter eggs, as Swifties know, are something that the pop superstar likes to leave for her eagle-eyed fans to discover in many of her projects. The hidden clues have been found in her music videos, TikTok clips, carefully chosen outfits and more.
Kennedy isn’t wrong about the easter eggs on the show: Watching back the current season of the reality hit certainly became a whole different experience for Bravoholics in the wake of the cheating bombshell that ripped through the Bravoverse on March 3. In case you’re somehow not caught up on the gossip, that’s the day news came that Tom Sandoval, one of the show’s original stars, had been cheating on Ariana Madix, his girlfriend of nine years and a perennial fan favorite, with their castmate and close friend Raquel Leviss — who just so happens to be Kennedy’s ex-fiancée — allegedly for the past seven or so months. (Both Sandoval and Leviss have since issued apologies for hurting Madix.)
As that stunning revelation set SUR, TomTom, Schwartz & Sandy’s, Los Angeles’ Valley Village and the entirety of the Bravo-related social media ecosystem ablaze, the network scrambled to put the show back into production to capture the fallout — all as PR-crafted apologies were released by Sandoval and Leviss, long-gone cast members came out of the woodwork to offer their hot takes on the drama (Hi, Kristen Doute!), restraining orders were filed and more.
While the exact timeline of the affair has yet to be fully verified, Leviss (whose real name is Rachel) has already found herself in hot water on screen for setting her sights on the other Tom in the group, Tom Schwartz, who’s not-even-quite divorced yet from his wife of five years, Katie Maloney. (Accused of being a “home-wrecker” on the show for openly admitting to Maloney on a recent episode that she was considering hooking up with Katie’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Leviss simply asked, “How am I a home-wrecker? There is no home to wreck.”)
And in case you thought the twisted #Scandoval couldn’t possibly get any more diabolical, fans have now started questioning whether Raquel’s professed interest in Schwartz was all just a cover-up for the sordid affair happening behind closed doors between her and Sandoval. Coachella is involved; trust me, it’s a whole thing …
Now that you’ve gotten a crash course on all the Pump Rules drama, raise your glass, put on a #TeamAriana shirt and check out DJ James Kennedy’s hilarious Instagram Story below.
