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Pres. Joe Biden gets it. The commander-in-chief stopped by Late Night With Seth Meyers on Monday night (Feb. 26) to help the show’s host celebrate his show’s 10th anniversary, and to keep stoking the fires of right-wingnut conspiracy theories about his alleged devious plot to secure the most important endorsement in this year’s presidential campaign.
“Can you confirm or deny that there is an active conspiracy between you and Miss Swift?,” Meyers asked Biden about the allegations from conservatives that the President is working behind the scenes with Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce to boost his campaign against expected challenger Donald Trump by locking in the power couple’s endorsement.
“Where are you getting this information? It’s classified. That’s classified information,” Biden said with a smile in a rare late night appearance. “But I will tell you, she did endorse me in 2020.”
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Meyers was as relentless as a White House pool reporter in his questioning, wondering if the Swift thumbs up might “come around again.” Biden still wouldn’t bite, joking, “I told you it’s classified.”
Before this month’s Super Bowl, conservatives got spun up about a made-up theory that Swift and Kelce had cooked up a plot with the White House to have the pair officially endorse Biden after Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII. The visit by Biden — his first as a sitting president — marked the 10th anniversary of the launch of Late Night. Biden, then Vice President, and the night’s other guest, Amy Poehler, were the inaugural guests on Meyers’ first broadcast on Feb. 24, 2014.
Biden, 81, also had jokes, noting that Trump, 77, is “about as old as I am but he can’t even remember his wife’s name,” in response to a question about concerns related to his age; Biden is the oldest sitting president and would be the oldest president to ever serve if he wins a second term. “It’s about how old your ideas are,” he added about Trump, the twice-indicted, one-term president who is facing 91 felony counts in four different cases as he mounts his third run for the White House. “This about a guy who wants to take us back, he wants to take us back on Roe V. Wade, he wants to take us back on a whole range of issues that for 50-60 years they have been solid American positions.”
The president — who was sporting a flag pin on his lapel featuring the American and Ukrainian flags in the midst of a fight in Congress over further funding for the war in Ukraine — also sat on the couch with Poehler to reminisce about his guest spot on Parks and Recreation. Meyers asked Biden about his seemingly playful adoption of the “Dark Brandon” right-wing meme, to which Biden responded, “no, I resent the hell out of it,” as he slipped on DB’s signature dark aviator shades to wild applause from the studio audience.
Check out Biden on Late Night below.
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It’s been a minute since former Destiny’s Child member Kelly Rowland released a full-length pop album. Way more than a minute, actually, more like over a decade. But on the Kelly Clarkson Show on Friday (Feb. 23) “Kisses Down Low” singer explained her long absence from the studio and why she’s gearing up to get back to it.
When Clarkson asked if there was any new music on the horizon, Rowland coyly answered, “coming… later,” as the host and audience broke out into applause about the tease of the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Talk a Good Game LP.
“I’m finally inspired,” Rowland explained. “I’m finally inspired, you can’t just be like writing about anything and I don’t want just another sexy song. I want to talk about so many different things and I’m really excited about the topic this album [unintelligible].”
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The singer was on the show to promote her co-starring role in the new Tyler Perry Netflix legal thriller Mea Culpa alongside Trevante Rhodes (Birdbox), and she agreed with Clarkson’s riff about the need to “break up the monotony” of the music industry grind to keep your inspiration and passion burning. That might explain why Rowland, 43, who also co-produced the film, has been off the music radar for a bit.
After releasing her debut solo album, Simply Deep, in 2002 and launching the No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 single “Dilemma” (feat. Nelly) and the singles “Stole” and “Can’t Nobody,” Rowland has been ping-ponging between music and film in the years since. She appeared in 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, 2012’s Think Like a Man, 2020’s Bad Hair and 2022’s The Curse of Bridge Hollow, while also dabbling in reality TV mentoring on Clash of the Choirs, X Factor UK (and U.S.), The Voice Australia and a guest spot on ABC sitcom Grown-Ish as Edie last year.
She followed up her solo debut with 2007’s Ms. Kelly and 2011’s Here I Am and then Talk a Good Game, on which she co-wrote all but one of the 12 tracks. Though her solo album output has slowed, Rowland has continued to drop one-off singles over the past decade, including “Conceited” (2016), “Crown” (2019), “Crazy” (2020) and “Black Magic” (2021).
Watch Rowland on the Kelly Clarkson Show below.
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Lil Jon is known for his exuberant nature, but the “Turn Down For What” rapper was uncharacteristically quiet when he sat down on the couch at the Jennifer Hudson Show on Thursday (Feb. 22) to talk about his role in Usher‘s halftime show during Super Bowl LVIII earlier this month.
“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy to be a part of something like that,” he said of his spot joining Ush for a run through their hit 2004 hype-up anthem “Yeah!” during the musical break in the most-watched Super Bowl ever, for which he also served as musical director.
The low-key MC said none of it made him nervous because he turns those butterflies into energy he uses to bring in new fans, though he did cop to the preparation being “a lot of hard work… putting the show together was really hard because it’s Usher’s biggest show of his career.” In addition to Jon, the performance featured cameos from Alicia Keys, H.E.R., Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri and Will.i.am.
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And while he was in charge of shaping the 13-minute flight through Usher’s catalog, Lil Jon said he had to listen to the singer’s suggestions about which songs would make the cut, which was the “hardest part” of the process. “We narrowed it down and then he made changes to the very end,” Jon laughed, noting that, unlike Usher, you won’t find him on roller skates anytime soon.
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Confessions hit “Yeah!,” Jon recounted how he leaked the last song recorded for Usher’s multi-platinum LP — “Burn” was already tapped as the lead single — after talking to producer Jermaine Dupri, who told Jon to “do what you do.” Though Usher’s record company sent out a cease-and-desist to stations playing “Yeah!” at the time, a DJ at New York’s Hot 97, knowing it was a smash, resisted, kept playing it and framed the letter on her wall as a memento.
Elsewhere in the interview, Jon talked about his new Total Meditation album and his renewed focus on guided meditation and prioritizing his mental, and physical, health. “You turn up, but then you gotta turn down!” Jon said.
Watch Lil Jon on Hudson’s show below.
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LeAnn Rimes is doubling down on her role as a coach on two international versions of The Voice. The Grammy-winning country singer is currently in Sydney, Australia filming her role as a coach on the upcoming season of The Voice Australia and on Wednesday (Feb. 21) it was announced that she will also serve the […]
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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Sometimes the stars align and magic happens. But this leap year, the heavens have misaligned and robbed St. Patrick’s Day revelers of the first chance in six years to paint the town green on a Saturday because of the leap year.
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So when a nation needs brave heroes to do the right thing and save them from having to shake their shamrocks on a Sunday, Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” co-anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost have bravely stepped up to the challenge with a brand-new holiday celebration.
“We’re not making up a holiday, this is a freak occurrence,” Che explains about the decision by the duo to team up with Jameson Irish Whiskey to create a new, totally fabricated holiday they’re calling “Jameson St. Patrick’s Eve.” The faux festival will take place on March 16, complete with a St. Patrick’s Eve countdown in New York’s Times Square hosted by the duo.
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“Why not St. Patrick’s Eve? You’ve got Christmas Eve, you’ve got New Year’s Eve,” Che says. While acknowledging that New Yorkers don’t really need an excuse to start the party before 10 a.m., Che says he and Jost are not recommending that revelers start that early, but “we do recommend you have one or two at, say 10:30 a.m.,” with Jost adding, “if you work until 9 a.m. it’s a very reasonable time to have a drink… [like if you’re a ] longshoremen.”
“Or short shoremen,” Che quipped, with Jost chiming in, “yeah, we don’t discriminate… I’ve always through I really want to start a religion for tax purposes, so starting a holiday is a first step.” The pair, both native New Yorkers, say they take their St. Patrick’s day celebrations very seriously, with the always-on-message Che noting that the holiday reminds him of “friendship, fellowship, and of course, Jameson.”
“When Leap Year skipped over a Saturday St. Patrick’s Day, we did exactly what a Jameson would do: we created a completely new holiday so people can start celebrating St. Patrick’s Day a little early,” says the brand’s VP of marketing Johan Radojewski in a statement announcing the hokum holiday party that will also include a guest appearance from an as-yet-unnamed DJ. “We teamed up with Colin Jost and Michael Che to help us seize this moment and encourage everyone to embrace St. Patrick’s Eve, because they’re a duo who appreciates a smooth Irish Whiskey, good company, and a brand-new holiday – just like any Jameson would.”
The St. Patrick’s Eve party Times Square takeover will also feature the first-of-its-kind “rock drop,” Jameson’s spin on the famous New Year’s eve ball drop, which will take place at 8 p.m. ET (midnight in Ireland). Che says he’s so excited about the party, in fact, that he’s considering his first stage dive. “I’ve been saving it, now is the time I feel,” he says, with Jost, as usual, perfectly yes-anding his co-anchor’s bit by comparing the scene he expects to the one in The Thomas Crown Affair “where they’re all walking around in bowler hats at the end? Except it will be a sea of green plastic hats.”
The real holiday evokes fond memories for Jost, who often marched with firefighters in two St. Patrick’s Day parades as a kid, in Manhattan and Staten Island, alongside his mother and grandfather, both of whom worked for the fire department. Che, on the other hand, jokes that he doesn’t have any specific memories of the holiday, because “it’s St. Patrick’s day and if you have memories after St. Patrick’s Day you’re doing it wrong.”
The one thing the “Update” anchors could not reveal was the name of the DJ, though Che teases that “no it’s not a British guy name ‘Prize’ who was knighted. It’s a surprise!”
Starting today, fans can enter a chance to get a spot on the guest list for the Jameson St. Patrick’s Eve party and anyone 21+ can check out a livestream of the rock drop here. The party will take place between 43rd and 44th Streets from 6-10 p.m. EST. In addition, Jameson will light up the Sphere in Las Vegas in Jameson green, wrap ferries and water taxies in the dyed-green Chicago River and do a digital takeover at L.A. Live to mark the holiday.
When No Doubt take the stage together at Coachella in April for their first show in nine years Gwen Stefani predicts it will be “crazy.” The band’s singer and solo star told Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night (Feb. 14) that she’s really looking forward to reuniting with her old mates bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom […]
The all-star cast of season 3 of The White Lotus has added some musical heft in the form of BLACKPINK‘s Lisa. According to Variety, the K-pop star will be credited on the show under her real name, Lalisa Manobal, when production is slated to begin this month in and around Koh Samui, Phuket and Bangkok, Thailand.
At press time a spokesperson for BLACKPINK did not return Billboard‘s request for confirmation on the casting and HBO has not officially confirmed the addition to the show’s ensemble or any production details; a spokesperson for HBO had also not returned a request for comment at press time.
As with the previous two seasons, the upcoming White Lotus series is expected to follow a new group of guests staying at a resort property, with another wide-ranging cast that will include: Leslie Bibb, Dom Hetrakul, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Parker Posey, Tayme Thapthimthong, Christian Friedel, Julian Kostov, Morgana O’Reilly, Lek Patravadi, Shalini Peiris, Carrie Coon, Scott Glenn, Francesca Corney, Nicholas Duvernay, Arnas Fedaravičius, Natasha Rothwell, Walton Goggins, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Aimee Lou Wood, Sarah Catherine Hook, and Sam Nivola.
The White Lotus booking represents Lisa’s first official acting gig, following on the heels of bandmate Jennie — credited as Jennie Ruby Jane — stealing scenes in her acting debut on the critically panned HBO music drama from The Weeknd, The Idol, last summer.
Back in December, the members of BLACKPINK, Jennie, Jisoo and Rosé, split with YG Entertainment for all solo endeavors, while signing an extension of their contract with the management group for their group activities. In September, Lisa’s solo single “Money” broke a Guinness World Record after it hit 1 billion Spotify streams, making it the first K-pop solo track to hit that peak.
Whether it was the Taylor Swift effect or not, Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII made history. Only the second overtime championship game ever, it delivered one of the biggest ratings in history. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 victory over the San Francisco 49ers averaged 120 million viewers on CBS. Add in […]
André 3000 is an enigma. The reclusive former OutKast MC has kept a low profile for much of the past 20 years, popping up for an occasional guest verse or movie role when he’s not wandering the Earth playing one of his arsenal of flutes.
But on The Late Show on Thursday night (Feb. 8), the rapper-turned-jazzer hung around to take the “Colbert Questionert,” the random series of queries from host Stephen Colbert meant to delve into the unexplored recesses of the enigmatic flautist’s soul.
As always, Colbert opened with the easiest question: what is the best sandwich? In the perfect response, 3000 offered up “a friend bologna sandwich,” adding some crucial cooking tips, including cutting slits into the lunch meat so it doesn’t bubble up in the pan.
As for his first concert, of course André — currently on tour promoting his first new solo album in more than two decades, the rap-less, all-instrumental flute jazz collection New Blue Sun — had the coolest answer: a Fresh Fest hip-hip jam in his hometown of Atlanta featuring Public Enemy, LL Cool J and Whodini. “My mama took me,” Dre bragged, as Colbert tried to earn cool points by revealing that his mother had also taken him to his first show, the slightly less hip Captain & Tennille.
Colbert quickly corrected himself, though, a remembered that it was actually 1970s/1980s fluglehorn/trumpet giant Chuck Mangione. That selection that clearly appealed to the host’s woodwind-loving guest, who then scatted along with Colbert on a duet of Mangione’s signature 1978 jazz-pop classic “Feels So Good.”
3000 ran through a series of other provocative answers to questions such as “What is the scariest animal?”(humans), the requisite “Apples or Oranges?” (oranges) and “What do you think happens when we die,” which was more complicated. “We just kind of transfer to another body… the energy doesn’t go anywhere,” André said. “These are just kind of space suits, or Earth suits we walk around in… I think that energy goes into something else or to another we can’t even imagine.”
As for why he has never appeared in any of the Fast & Furious movies, veteran actor 3000 joked he would have “but I think Ludacris took the role!” Turns out he wasn’t joking. He said he did audition for a spot in the long-running, rubber-burning franchise, but was aced out by his fellow A-town MC Luda. He’d still come back for a later chapter, perhaps for the as-yet-unwritten one Colbert suggested: Too Fast, Too Flute.
The sire of Stankonia then proclaimed that his favorite smell is a baby’s breath, “when they’re new and it don’t stink yet,” while dubbing cigarette smoke his least favorite odor. Also, for the record, André is not a cat or dog person, but that’s just because he’s hardly ever home. Plus, if you heard how badly he screwed up the ant farm he got when he was a kid you’d understand why that is.
And finally, asked to name the one song he’d want to listen to on an endless loop, Three Stacks thought long and hard and said “something by [John] Coltrane.” He kind of punted on summing up the rest of his life in five words, though, grinning as he rambled, “somewhere doing something with my hands, building something, drawing something, sculpting something, chiseling something… in a workshop somewhere… making physical things that will last 1,000 years.”
Watch André answer the Questionert below.
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