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It’s safe to say that former Fox News host Megyn Kelly is not a KatyCat. In fact, the conservative podcaster said on an episode of her eponymous podcast this week that she finds Katy Perry‘s music “annoying” before flat-out saying she doesn’t like the pop superstar and claiming she “barely” knows who she is.
The comments came after Perry posted her own edit of Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s controversial May 11 commencement speech at Benedictine College in which the Super Bowl champ attacked LGBTQ rights and slammed what he termed “dangerous gender ideologies.” The 20-minute speech that also included broadsides against abortion, birth control and surrogacy, included Butker suggesting to female students at the private Catholic university in Illinois that they embrace being a “homemaker.”
Perry wasn’t having it and posted her own version on Sunday, writing, “fixed this for my girls, my graduates, and my gays — you can do anything, congratulations and happy pride,” alongside a second draft of the speech that had a much different, more inclusive tone.
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On Tuesday’s episode of her show, Kelly defended Butker’s speech, calling it an “antidote to the general message about stay-at-moms” while denying that the kicker was “condemning working women.”
“Katy Perry is annoying,” Kelly said before cueing up Perry’s edit and loudly huffing over the tape as it played. “She decided to take those comments and switch them around so that he was saying something he never actually said and have him say ‘happy pride.’” Co-host Dave Rubin called the edit “pathetic” and noted that Kelly is an “extremely” successful broadcaster and mother before asking her which title was more important, to which Kelly answered, “there’s no question.”
“But Katy Perry saw her ‘Roar’ moment — which is an annoying song, that’s an annoying song. I don’t like her, I actually don’t think she is a good singer,” Kelly said while mockingly singing Perry’s 2008 breakthrough hit “I Kissed a Girl.” Rubin, meanwhile, claimed he could not even name a single song from the singer who is one of only five artists in history to sell more than 100 million certified units with her digital singles worldwide and who co-hosted American Idol for seven years.
“I barely know who you are,” Kelly added while erroneously saying the singer is married to actor Orlando Bloom ; Perry is engaged to the star, but they are not married though they share a three-year-old daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom. “To manipulate the guy’s remarks is dishonest and petty,” Kelly said before dinging Perry again for closing comments on the post after receiving backlash. “She can’t take it!,” Kelly said as Rubin dubbed the singer’s edit a “leftist 101” move.
At press time a spokesperson for Perry had not returned a request for comment.
Listen to Kelly’s comments on Perry here (beginning at the 1:05:55 mark).
Way back before his shelves were crammed with Grammy Awards for his work with Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and St. Vincent, Jack Antonoff was best known as that guy from fun., or maybe the one who sang in Steel Train.
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But in a new video for Vanity Fair in which former Girls co-stars Allison Williams (M3GAN) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) reunite after seven years to revisit the show that helped launch both of them to stardom, the pair also reveal that some of the mega-cringey songs they crooned together as their characters, Marnie and Desi, were actually written by Antonoff.
And, they noted, the Bleachers singer — who dated the show’s star and creator, Lena Dunham, during the five-year run of the HBO series — originally wrote some of them for a major pop star who rejected the tracks. The volatile on-screen couple often played music together onscreen as they struggled through a tumultuous courtship and brief marriage, with Moss-Bachrach telling VF that he just recently learned that most of their duets were “just discards from Kelly Clarkson.”
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“I like that song,” Moss-Bacharach said of “Breathless,” — which Antonoff reportedly wrote for Clarkson, according to Williams. “It’s a great song, she should’ve done it! But we got it, as a result,” Williams added of the track she performed in the first episode of season four that featured the so-Marnie lyrics, “I don’t wanna dream if dreamin’ is without you/ I don’t wanna run unless I’m runnin’ towards you, every single thing I do is all about you.”
Regardless of whether you kind of disliked Marnie or actively despised her, Williams said she actually thought a lot of the couple’s songs “were really beautiful,” though she copped to the fact that “the lyrics are what made them cringey.” She liked so many of them, but her favorite was “Oaxaca,” the final Marnie-Desi song, which, she again notes, has lyrics that are “so cringey” she hardly wanted to repeat them out loud. Moss-Bachrach, however, insisted that she do so. For example: “Shakin’ my maracas, doin’ what you do/ Yeah, you’ll find me in a dark bar/ Where no gringos are.”
“Marnie singing the word ‘gringo’ should be illegal. I shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Williams laughed, noting that the actors were often were really performing on screen, which was so “nerve-wracking.”
“What was nice that was built in, was that they were supposed to be maybe not so great,” Moss-Bachrach said of the creative release valve that allowed them to lean into the cringe of lyrics he described as often “guileless” and “embarrassing” at best. “Nobody had very high expectations, so that felt very safe to me just go for it.” Williams said that twist made it hard to know how good they should actually try to be, with Moss-Bachrach claiming that he “tried as hard as I could try.”
To put a finer point on it, Moss-Bachrach said the lyrics were often so bad, “Leonard Cohen could sing them and they would still suck.” At press time it did not appear as if Antonoff had responded to the video.
Speaking of mortifying, Williams brought up the absolute peak Marnie moment when her character sang a cover of Kanye West’s “Stronger” as a torch ballad at a party to the stunned mortification of the entire room, including her friends. “It was quiet, except for my voice,” she said of the ninth episode from season two. “There’s no more vulnerable experience than a room full of background, silent and just your little voice in the room echoing against nothing else, singing, ‘I’ll be your white Kate Moss tonight,’” Williams said.
Watch Williams and Moss-Bachrach break down their Girls musical chemistry below (music talk begins at 1:20 mark).
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Spoiler alert: This story contains the identity of the winner and runner-up unmasked on Wednesday night’s (May 22) season finale of The Masked Singer.
It was a fierce scramble for the golden mask on Wednesday’s (May 22) season 11 Masked Singer finale in an action-packed battle that pitted powerhouse male vocalist Gumball against season-long favorite Goldfish.
When the confetti fell at the end of the night, though, it was veteran singer/actress Vanessa Hudgens who triumphed over her former Bandslam co-star Scott Porter (aka Friday Night Lights‘ Jason Street).
To recap, former High School Musical movie star Hudgens got her perfect run off to a killer start early on in the season with a fierce take on fellow High School Musical universe alum Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire,” throwing down the gauntlet that this was a performer with killer pipes and casually cool stage moves. The singer, who released two albums on Hollywood Records early in her career, showed off her performance chops throughout by expertly ruling the stage in the peach-colored costume with a towering mohawk and diaphanous gills.
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She continued to swim upstream all season with a smooth-as-butter cover of Player’s 1977 AM radio classic “Baby Come Back” and further proved her arena-ready bona fides with a Broadway-worthy take on Queen’s “The Show Must Go On.”
The flawless march kept going with a showstopping run through Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” — which again showed off her impressive range — as well as last week’s fierce rumble through Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” that had Robin Thicke jumping on the judges’ table for a standing ovation.
On Wednesday, before her reveal, Hudgens, 27, confessed that she was never good at expressing herself as a young girl, but has lately been on a “journey of self-discovery” that allowed her to express herself “so freely” on the show. And while she said music has taken a “back seat” as she’s focused on film for the past 15-plus years — appearing in Second Act, Bad Boys for Life and Tick, Tick… Boom!, as well as the upcoming Bad Boys: Ride or Die — her victory-sealing covers of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” proved her pipes are as strong as ever.
The judges were close in their guesses but didn’t quite nail it, with Rita Ora suggesting former Glee star Lea Michele or Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev; Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg guessing Selena Gomez, Vampire Academy star Sarah Hyland or Julianne Hough; and Thicke going with Hilary Duff. Always-wrong Ken Jeong missed it by a mile once again, tossing out such wildly disparate suggestions as Carly Rae Jepsen, Kristen Stewart and former panelist Nicole Scherzinger.
Billboard spoke to Hudgens before her elimination about why this was the right time to dip back into singing, how she managed to move like such a pro in her costume, and why her “witch” powers were the key to giving the expectant first-time mom something special to share with her baby. Check out her answers below.
You’ve been a guest judge on So You Think You Can Dance and RuPaul’s Drag Race, but never really a contestant on a singing show. Why now?
This opportunity came up at a really interesting time when we [actors] were on strike and this was a category I could actually work in and my fans had been asking for more music, more singing, anything of that sort. I was like, “This would be a really fun and interesting opportunity to give my fans what they want and see who the real ones are.”
People complain about the size and sweatiness of the costumes, but you seemed to be able to move with no problems. What was your secret?
Reckless abandonment? [Laughs] It definitely had its own challenges because I couldn’t see straight ahead because the eyeholes were so far apart. If I wanted to see straight ahead, I had to turn my head one way or another and I was really using a live mic and holding it up to the little opening in my mask. So I had to split my vision and look sideways out of one eye and then look down with the other in the mic hole to see the ground. I just went for it and left it all out there. They would be like, “You’re kind of here and then walk over there and if you want to maybe do a verse there and move over here.” I just really let it fly and they gave me the freedom to play, and play I did.
Which performance meant the most to you and why?
I feel so lucky in that I got to work really closely with my producer and pick songs that meant something to me, from the cheeky nod to High School Musical singing “Vampire” by Olivia Rodrigo to “Baby Come Back,” which I sang at 16 as a cover song for my first single [2006’s “Come Back to Me”]. “The Show Must Go On” for a vulnerable, special performance to “Unforgettable,” which I’d wanted to sing from jump because I just want to sing jazz all the time, to a female empowerment moment with Alanis Morissette.
Did singing “Vampire” make you long for the good old days?
I just think [Rodrigo]’s really great and I really vibe with her. It’s always great to support a fellow Filipina, and it was just a cute, cheeky nod to how things always end up being connected.
It looked like you came to play from jump. How badly did you want to win the golden mask?
You know, it wasn’t really about winning, honestly. I am my own worst critic and I will always be my hardest critic in the room at all times. I just wanted to have fun, and it was a really freeing experience for me to be anonymous and have nothing to do with my name or fame or celebrity. It was a really special experience.
You said your run surprised you and allowed people to really see you for who you are and what you do. Might you go back to music after this?
No. I always say life is about priorities, and that is not a priority right now. I feel like it’s something I will always have in my back pocket.
You said winning would be the “ultimate pat on the back” and really mean a lot to you because you always thought of yourself as an actor first and singer second. Did you give people the “music moment” you hope for?
I think I got to give myself the music moment I was hoping for and in turn my supportive fans got to enjoy it as well. I got to show up every day and put my best foot forward, and I was so uplifted and supported by such an amazing team over there and I got to work on my voice every day with someone who helped me expand my horizons.
On tonight’s show, you said you couldn’t wait to have kids so you could tell them, “Look at mommy go!” Did you know when you taped the show that you were expecting? [Hudgens revealed in March on the Oscars red carpet that she’s expecting her first child.]
No! I’m just a witch! [Laughs] I’ve always worked in a way that kept people guessing and gave me something to show my kids at every stage of my life. That’s always been important to me.
Stars: they’re just like us. In that we all have old social posts that we would probably like the world to forget, especially when they resurface at the worst possible time. That was the dilemma faced by award-winning The Bear star Ayo Edebiri, who found herself in hot water earlier this year when, on the eve of her first hosting gig on Saturday Night Live, some unflattering comments she’d made four years earlier about the night’s musical guest, Jennifer Lopez, were revived to her mortification.
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The Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning Bottoms actress addresses the rumors of tension on the set during the February episode in a new Vanity Fair cover story in which she throws cold water on the suggestion that her years-old Lopez diss caused issues on the episode. “That would be like Mr. Bean and Mick Jagger beefing,” Edebiri told the magazine about the power imbalance between her and the global pop superstar/actress. “And I’m obviously Mr. Bean. She’s J.Lo!”
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For a refresher, the former stand-up comedian said, “I was actually thinking about one of my favorite scams of all time because J.Lo is performing at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Her whole career is one long scam,” during an episode of the 2020 Scam Goddess podcast. To prove there was no ill-ill, she made fun of the dug-up comment that night on SNL in a sketch.
“It’s wrong to leave mean comments or post comments just for clout — or run your mouth on a podcast and you don’t consider the impact because you’re 24 and stupid,” Edebiri joked in the bit titled “Why’d You Say It.”
“She was very chill and nice about it,” Edebiri told VF.
In a Variety story a few days after SNL, Lopez laughed the whole thing off, saying, “I’ve heard similar things said about me throughout my career, so it really didn’t affect me.”
Lopez told a reporter that the actor had apologized before the episode, adding that Edebiri was, “mortified and very sweet. She came to my dressing room and apologized with tears in her eyes, saying how terrible it was that she had said those things. She felt really badly and loved my performance because we had just done my soundcheck and she actually got to hear me perform. She was just like, ‘I’m so f–king sorry; it was so awful of me.’”
Though it likely made for an awkward week, Edebiri told VF that it didn’t ruin her long-held dream of taking her place on the SNL stage. “SNL is something that in my bones, I dreamed of as a comedian, as a young kid. That to me is a pinnacle of success,” she said.
Pitbull is always up for a party, especially if it involves people getting down to his music. That’s why Mr. 305 couldn’t help commenting when the new season of Bridgerton used one of its signature instrumental classical takes on his iconic 2011 hit “Give Me Everything” to score a window-fogging make-out carriage scene between Colin […]
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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Like a lot of celebrity couples, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom have made a point of keeping their family life private, which so far has meant that the world has not gotten many glimpses of their three-year-old daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom. But on Sunday night (May 12), the adorable toddler made a brief appearance on […]
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JoJo Siwa proved she totally gets the joke on Monday morning (May 6) when she posted her reaction to a hilarious bit from this weekend’s “Weekend Update” in SNL where cast member Chloe Fineman tried to channel the off-the-charts energy of Siwa’s latest transformation. In a since timed-out Instagram Story post, Siwa, 20, gushed about […]
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