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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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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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There were several times during Sunday night’s (Feb. 4) 66th annual Grammy Awards where Oprah Winfrey gave Taylor Swift a run for her money when it came to cameras catching the media mogul jumping out of her seat and singing along enthusiastically to the performances on stage. And on Monday morning (Feb. 5) Winfrey again […]
Justin Timberlake spent four years recording upcoming Everything I Thought It Was album, so it’s no surprise that the “Selfish” singer had some energy to spare when he jumped on the couch on Thursday night’s (Jan. 25) Tonight Show. From his sprinting up to the cheap seats rumba line entrance with old pal host Jimmy Fallon, to a greatest hits run classroom instruments bit, Timberlake seemed eager to kick off his EITIW era after several years of being mostly off the radar.
Introducing JT at the top of the show, Fallon went on an extended news-inspired riff in the opening monologue ticking off just how close the pair are. “He is the Taylor to my Travis,” Fallon joked. “He’s the missing bolt to my Boeing plane… He’s the recall to my exploding Tesla… Yeah, he and I are besties. We got together like a soccer mom and a Stanley tumbler… That’s right, we’re quite a team. Think of us like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but with chemistry… I’m so glad he’s here. Last week when it slowed a little in New York, I looked at the grass and I saw those frosted tips and I thought, ‘I should call Justin.’”
The pair then crammed into the Tonight Show schoolroom for a round of Classroom Instruments, with the Roots gathered around as Timberlake struck a triangle to kick off a funky, unplugged version of his just-released new single, “Selfish.” They only got a verse in, though, before diving into a quick-hit run through JT’s solo catalog of hits, pivoting to a snippet of hip-swiveling “Señorita,” before jumping into “SexyBack,” “My Love,” “Suit & Tie,” “Rock Your Body,” and a raucous “Can’t Stop the Feeling.”
Timberlake, 42, made a proper entrance by roping Fallon into doing a dance up the steps into the audience and then busting some disco moves before hoofing it back down to the stage and declaring himself “exhausted.” Fallon said he’d never seen anyone work harder on anything than Timberlake did on EITIW, describing Timberlake’s work ethic in the studio, while Justin copped to how strange it was to be explaining the new album’s origin to Jimmy, with whom he said he’s already discussed it ad nauseam in private.
“I feel like we’ve already had this conversation, but we have to have it so you guys can hear the story,” Timberlake said, of the difficulty of recording during the pandemic, having his second son, Phinneas, with wife Jessica Biel, and tracking 100 songs over different runs across several years. In describing the sound, Timberlake suggested that the Tonight Show should have a spin-off called Jimmy Fallon Listens to Your Album.
Timberlake then described what a kick he got out of watching Fallon listening to the album. “What was I doing?” Fallon asked in perfect rehearsed confusion. “A lot,” Timberlake laughed, as Jimmy described himself as totally “cool” and “chillin’ out” in the studio. Justin then proceeded to jump on the couch and channel Fallon by shouting “what is this song?!” “OH! What?!,” “OH My GOD!” before busting out some goofy dance moves.
JT also revealed the upcoming Forget Tomorrow World tour, which kicks off April 29th in Vancouver, with stops in Seattle, Phoenix, Fort Worth, Raleigh, Miami and New York, with dates and venues to announced soon.
The segment ended with Fallon recalling an unlikely bunker shot he nailed while playing at Timberlake’s 8AM Golf Invitational tournament last year, where the friends were paired with Kansas City Chiefs dynamic duo Travis Kelce and QB Patrick Mahomes. Jimmy described Timberlake giving him some meticulous swing advice, before cueing up the video of Fallon sinking the shot and getting lifted up into the air by an overjoyed Kelce.
It got better, though. In an extended view of the special moment, after Timberlake sprinted around in circles, he made his way over to congratulate the two and Justin said that was nearly the end of him. “Travis Kelce almost… I saw my life flash before my eyes,” Timberlake said of his abject fear when jumping up to do a hip bump with the 250-pound NFL tight end.
“I was like, ‘he’s doing it! I have to do it!,’” Timberlake recalled thinking, forgetting that the professional baller has about 80 pounds on him. As the tape kept rolling, it showed Kelce hip-checking Timberlake flat onto his sexy back on the green.
Timberlake will be back as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live this weekend and will play a free show at 1,100-capacity Irving Plaza in New York on Jan. 31.
Watch Timberlake on The Tonight Show below.
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