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Harry Connick Jr. Honors Workers During Pandemic Road Trip
Singer and actor Harry Connick Jr. has spent a lot of his life on tour buses and traveling from city to city, but even when the pandemic shut down the country, he couldn’t sit still. With the help of his daughter, Georgia Connick, who is a filmmaker, and a bunch of GoPro cameras, he embarked on a pandemic road trip to meet essential workers around the country who were risking their lives during the pandemic. United We Sing: A Grammy Tribute to the Unsung Heroes, a TV special that airs on CBS on Sunday (June 21) at 8 p.m. ET/PT, highlights the everyday heroes along his journey to New Orleans, with help from Connick’s celebrity pals including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Sandra Bullock and Renee Zellweger. The show also features musical performances from Jamie Foxx, Cyndi Lauper, Branford and W...
Kurt Cobain ‘MTV Unplugged’ Guitar Sells for Sky-High $6 Million
Grunge became gold Saturday (June 20) as the guitar Kurt Cobain played on Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged performance sold for an eye-popping $6 million at auction. The 1959 Martin D-18E that Cobain played in the band’s rare acoustic performance and subsequent live album was sold to Australian Peter Freedman, owner of Røde Microphones, at the Music Icons event run by Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, California. The bids opened at $1 million for the sale that ended up breaking several world records. Cobain used it to play tunes including “About a Girl” and “All Apologies” at the Nov. 18, 1993, show in New York that came less than five months before the singer and songwriter died at age 27. A day earlier at the same auction event, a custom guitar played by Prince at the height of his stardom...
Father’s Day 2020: ‘Mi Viejo,’ ‘Algo Le Pasa A Mi Heroe’ & More Latin Songs For Dad
With Father’s Day in full swing (June 21), we’ve put together a list of sweet dad-related Latin songs you can dedicate to your papá on this special occasion. The heartfelt list includes Vicente Fernández‘s ranchera version of the father anthem “Mi Viejo” to the surprising bolero “Flor” by Los Rivera Destino featuring Benito Martinez a.k.a Bad Bunny, and beyond. In celebration of Father’s Day, Victor Manuelle revamped his tune “Algo le pasa a mi héroe,” dedicated to his father who suffered and passed away from Alzheimer’s in 2018. The new version heard below features Kany Garcia, Tommy Torres, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Pedro Capo, and Noel Schajris. “June is a very important month for ...
Public Enemy Returns With Anti-Trump ‘State of the Union (STFU)’ Song: Watch
Public Enemy has returned with a fiery new protest song called “State of the Union (STFU).” The iconic hip-hop group commemorated Juneteenth on Friday (June 19) by dropping the explosive anti-Trump song and accompanying video, which features recent footage from nationwide protests in response to the killings of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. “Our collective voices keep getting louder. The rest of the planet is on our side. But it’s not enough to talk about change. You have to show up and demand change,” frontman Chuck D said in a statement. “Folks gotta vote like their lives depend on it, ‘cause it does.” Produced by DJ Premier, the fiery “State of the Union (STFU)” finds Chuck D and Flavor Flav clearly stating their distaste for the current White House administr...
Prince’s Custom Guitar From the 1980s Brings Big Dollars at Auction
NEWS 6/20/2020 by Associated Press A custom guitar played by Prince at the height of his stardom in the 1980s and 1990s has sold for a staggering $563,500 at auction. The “Blue Angel” Cloud 2 electric guitar skyrocketed beyond the estimate of $100,000 to $200,000 it was expected to fetch at the Music Icons sale run by Julien’s Auctions on Friday (June 19) and Saturday in Beverly Hills. Prince played the blindingly blue guitar with the artist’s “love” symbol on its neck beginning on the 1984 Purple Rain Tour, on the classic albums Lovesexy and Sign O’ The Times. He used it into the early 1990s. Archivists going through Prince’s possessions at his Paisley Park home and musical headquarters in Minnesota recently found the guitar that was thought to be lost during the four years since his deat...
Luke Bryan Debuts ‘Build Me a Daddy’ Live on ‘The Tonight Show’: Watch
Luke Bryan pulled on heartstrings with a performance of “Build Me a Daddy” just in time for Father’s Day weekend. The country star offered a live take of the new song with a poignant, socially distanced performance for The Tonight Show Thursday night (June 18). “A boy walks past a window of a glowing ‘open’ sign/ Full of wooden toys and trucks and painted trains/ Rings a bell up on the counter, hands a picture to the man/ Of a kid beside a soldier smilin’ away/ Said, ‘Sir, I’ve heard you can build anything’/ ‘Could you build me a daddy?'” Bryan asks in the first verse of the emotional ballad, from the perspective of a child who’s lost his father. “Strong as Superman/ Make him ten feet tall with a south...
How P!nk Got Through Coronavirus Panic Attacks Over ‘Wondering If I Was Gonna Die’
P!nk addressed her family’s struggle with coronavirus once more in a candid live chat about mental health with Vanessa Inn. The pop star — who previously said she and her 3-year-old son, Jameson, had tested positive and recovered from COVID-19 — welcomed Inn, who she said has been “guiding me for 20 years,” to an Instagram Live session Friday (June 19). “The idea came to me sort of when quarantine started, when this whole COVID-19 thing started, because mental health is always on my radar,” P!nk explained while waiting for Inn to join in. “You can’t run from yourself in quarantine,” she pointed out. “You can’t run from your family.” In their discussion, P!nk recalled how she and her son “got really sic...
Evanescence’s Amy Lee Reveals How She Once Burned a Hole in Mickey Mouse’s Heart: Exclusive
Ouch! Things took a bit of a dark turn when Amy Lee, the frontwoman of Evanescence, showed off her home studio in an exclusive video on Billboard’s Instagram Saturday (June 20). As part of Billboard‘s “My Top 10” series, the rock vocalist shared some of the favorite things she keeps around when she’s making music, and quite a few were throwback items to her youth. As she kicked off the at-home tour, Lee pointed out that what’s in her creative space is “part audio gear and part ’80s toy collection, because that’s who I am and that’s how I roll.” Among the fancy equipment and instruments was a Mickey Mouse lamp from her childhood bedroom minus the lampshade — and his heart. “I had forgotten there was this other lig...
Beyonce Proves Why Black Is Beautiful With New TIDAL Playlist ‘Motherland Drip’
After releasing her surprise extended track “Black Parade,” Beyonce continues to celebrate Juneteenth with her new TIDAL playlist, “Motherland Drip” featuring James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Jay-Z, Nipsey Hussle and more. The multi-track collection includes a fistful of records from Queen Bey herself, including her Homecoming remake of “Before I Let Go” and The Lion King: Gift Soundtrack favorite “Brown Skin Girl.” The outro from Bey’s “Motherland Drip” playlist ends on a promising note, as she chose Dr. Martin Luther King’s “We Shall Overcome” speech to conclude her roundup. On Friday night (June 19), Beyonce shared “Black Parade” as an ode to Juneteenth. &#...
Selena Gomez Shows Gratitude to Black Leaders Who Took Over Her Instagram
Selena Gomez is showing gratitude to the numerous Black leaders who took over her Instagram page over the past two weeks. The 27-year-old pop star returned to Instagram Thursday (June 18) to share a heartfelt message of thanks to the 12 “inspiring” activists and authors for educating her 180 million followers. The singer also encouraged her fans to continue educating themselves and to enact change through voting. “I want to thank all of the amazing people that took the time to speak to us directly,” Gomez began her note, which included photos of the dozen individuals. “I am blown away with your knowledge, eagerness to teach and commitment to ensuring Black voices are not silenced. Educating ourselves is the first step if we hope to make any progress in bringin...
Rapper Hurricane Chris Arrested for Murder in Louisiana
Hurricane Chris, known for the song “A Bay Bay,” has been arrested on a murder charge in Louisiana. The rapper, whose real name is Christopher Dooley Jr., was arrested early Friday (June 19) on one count each of second-degree murder and illegal possession of stolen things, Shreveport Police said in a news release. Dooley, 31, of Shreveport, was being held without bond at the city jail. Online jail records did not indicate if he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. Police responded shortly after 1 a.m. Friday to a reported shooting at a gas station in Shreveport, news outlets reported. Officers found one person suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Dooley, who had gone into the gas station’s store, initially told police that he had shot a ma...
Bandcamp Pledges to Donate Its Share of Music Sales to NAACP
Online music service Bandcamp is celebrating Juneteenth and honoring the Black Lives Matter movement by donating 100 percent of its music sale profits to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. According to NPR, Bandcamp usually collects 15 percent of digital music sales and 10 percent of the sales from physical products. “We stand with those rightfully demanding justice, equality, and change, and people of color everywhere who live with racism every single day, including many of our fellow employees and artists and fans in the Bandcamp community,” the company wrote in a statement announcing the donation on its website. Bandcamp also will be “allocating an additional $30,000 per year to partner with organizations that fight for racial justice and create opportunities...
