Yesterday was Camila Cabello’s 25th birthday and she really made it count. She kicked things off by revealing the release date of her upcoming album Familia (out April 8), and later, she released her new Ed Sheeran collaboration “Bam Bam.” Also yesterday, she gave the song its television debut with a Late Late Show performance.
She also sat down for an interview on the program and said of the meaning of the song, “It’s something that my mom has always said to me. […] The song is about the cycles of falling in love, falling out of love; life has its ups and downs. You gotta roll with the punches, you gotta keep dancing.” She also noted of working with Sheeran on it, “It was great. I’ve been such a huge fan of Ed’s for such a long time and it was such a full-circle moment, getting to be in the studio [with him].
Meanwhile, Nathan Lane, the episode’s other guest alongside Cabello, is starring with Megan Thee Stallion and others in the upcoming movie F*cking Identical Twins. He described the film by taking a dig at Sam Elliott, who recently expressed dissatisfaction with Power Of The Dog and its “allusions of homosexuality.” Lane said, “It’s the gayest movie ever made. Sam Elliott could never see this film. If Power Of The Dog upset him, this would kill him. It’s a satirical, absurdist, R-rated queer musical based on The Parent Trap.”
Watch Cabello’s “Bam Bam” performance and other Late Late Show clips above and below.
Roger Stone, a longtime ally of the former president and a political lobbyist with ties to Nixon, invited a documentary crew to film him over the course of two years — a time period that overlapped with the Stop the Steal campaign and the riots on Capitol Hill. Stone, who was instrumental in getting Trump elected and who’s already been the subject of one documentary, secretly advised the president during his final days in office, drafting up something he called the “Stone Plan” that would ensure blanket presidential pardons for Trump’s closest allies before President Joe Biden took office. Stone — who was scheduled to attend the president’s rally early on Jan. 6th but backed out at the last minute after VIP accommodations couldn’t be met — wanted Trump to issue pardons for a number of associates including members of Congress like Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, his friends in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers movements, Capitol Hill insurrectionists, and imprisoned mobsters.
According to The Post, Stone’s pardon plan was ultimately thwarted by White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
“Clearly, Cipollone f—ed everybody,” Stone told another friend in prison in footage reviewed by the paper. In a text message he wrote later that same day, Stone told another Trump supporter, “See you in prison.”
Though Stone denied any involvement in the Jan. 6th insurrection, he attended a rally the night before urging protestors to prepare for a fight, and his game plan to instill doubt in the 2020 Presidential Election results was the foundation for Trump’s Stop The Steal campaign. Despite all of that, Trump refused to issue pardons to his friend and instead, chose to pardon Steve Bannon — something filmmakers said enraged Stone and prompted him to publicly threaten both Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
“In two weeks he’s moving to Miami,” Stone was caught ranting while hooked up to a mic for the documentary. He was referring to Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s planned move to Florida after the election was certified. “He’s going to get a beating. He needs to have a beating. And needs to be told, ‘This time we’re just beating you. Next time we’re killing you.’ ” When an associate realized Stone was still being recorded he urged him to say he was just joking to which Stone replied, “No, no, it isn’t joking. Not joking. It’s not a joke.”
Later Stone would turn on Trump himself, raging about how he’d betrayed his friends and disgraced the movement saying Trump was, “the greatest single mistake in American history.” He then referenced the ongoing federal investigation in New York.
“A good, long sentence in prison will give him a chance to think about it, because the Southern District is coming for him, and he did nothing,” Stone said.
And, despite issuing public support for another Trump presidential campaign a few months later, on Inauguration Day Stone laughed at the idea his old friend could win again. “Run again! You’ll get your f—ing brains beat in,” he said.
In a miraculous combination of fasting acting and medical know-how, three nurses rushed to the rescue in a rather unlikely place.
A 42-year-old business coach, Sharell Weeams, was swaying and spinning on the dance floor, when her heart suddenly stopped. A wave of blackness rushed over her and she collapsed. Her partner caught her just before she hit the floor.
Cedars Sinai labels these as common symptoms of cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is closely linked with a heart attack. However, they are not the same. A heart attack is a circulatory problem blocking blood flow and oxygen. Symptoms start slow and persist for hours or even weeks. And yet, the heart does continue to beat.
Cardiac arrest, however, indicates an electrical malfunction triggered by a disruption to the rhythm of a heartbeat. And, most important of all, it can cause death within minutes. This is what made Williams’ situation incredibly dire.
Luckily, Weeams had three guardian angels that night—three fellow dancers, who happened to be registered nurses.
Allie Herrera, Nickie Taylor and Natasha Veal immediately went to work. Detecting no pulse from Weeams, they began CPR. Though the actual dancing might have been interrupted, there was definitely some intricate choreography going on, as each woman quickly took on specific roles.
Taylor told NBCDFW “Allie’s like, Nickie, start CPR. And I was like starting chest compressions. And that’s when I kind of went out of dance mode into my ER nurse mode,” Taylor explained.
Veal added, “And she was like, who’s gonna breathe for her and I was like I am,” describing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The team effort was a success. After performing CPR and using an AED, their efforts ensured that Weeams survived. And now she is using her second chance at life to educate others about heart health.
Weeam’s shared how she aims to help others learn from her mistakes. “I’m open with people and say, like, look, I messed up, you know, I missed some of the signs that I should have listened to, I should have gone to the doctor sooner, I didn’t always prescribe, you know, refill my prescription, you know, fast enough,” she said, regarding getting off her medication for high cholesterol too early.
She also added that several of her family members suffered from heart attacks, and even her father passed away after going into cardiac arrest—at age 42, the same age Williams is now, no less. While this is important information to note, it isn’t necessarily a death sentence, and could be mitigated by positive lifestyle choices. According to a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine, even those at high genetic risk of heart disease can lower their risk of a cardiac event by nearly half (46%) by adhering to at least three of the four components of a healthy lifestyle: which include no smoking, avoiding obesity, regular physical activity and sticking to a healthy diet.
For all of February, Weeams has filled her Instagram with educational information about heart health, inspiring others to find better ways to take care of themselves.
Her posts are simple and bite-sized, like the infographic below that shows easy ways of going from sedentary to active.
“During the pandemic, I was sedentary, you know, I sat on my butt for a good year without doing any form of exercise. And that’s where I really feel like things kind of accelerated. So I’m really talking to people about all of the mistakes and things that I made so that hopefully they don’t have to make it,” Weeams reflected.
#relatable
As for the life-saving nurses—they continue to incorporate a passion for dance into their medical pursuits, and even formed a group called Swing Saves Lives, which hosts fundraising events for life-saving medical equipment.
This is certainly one of those times when something life-threatening becomes life-changing in the most positive way.
The Los Angeles Lakers suffered their fourth loss in a row on Friday night. This time around, the team suffered a 132-111 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, handing their fellow Crypto.com Arena residents a 4-0 season sweep. The Clippers were led by a monster performance from starting point guard Reggie Jackson, who went for 36 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists in the win.
As for the Lakers’ starting point guard, Russell Westbrook wasn’t quite as impactful on the evening — 17 points, eight rebounds, and three assists in 29 minutes of work. It was the latest performance in what has been an underwhelming season for Westbrook, who came to Los Angeles with much fanfare but has struggled to make the kind of impact that justifies the lofty price the team paid to acquire him.
After the game, Westbrook shed some light on what’s been going on this season. While stressing that he has no intention of doing everything he can to win, the former league MVP explained that he’s struggled to have a consistent role.
“My role and what I’m doing has changed every single night,” Westbrook said, per Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN. “So I’m just trying to figure that out as I’m playing and to be able to benefit and help my team.
“But my expectations are still the same,” he continued. “I’m not a quitter. It’s not in my genes. I don’t quit, regardless of what the hell is going on. I’m going to fight to the end, and if it don’t work, that’s cool, too. I can live with the results. But I’m never going to give up or give in because of a little struggle that’s happening this time of the year.”
As for whether or not Westbrook’s role can seriously change by being brought off the bench — he has started all 61 games in which he’s appeared, the most on the team — Lakers coach Frank Vogel suggested it is a possibility, telling the press that “we’ve talked about everything.”
Omeretta The Great’s new song “Sorry Not Sorry” stirred up some trouble in the Atlanta area, prompting responses from the likes of both Latto and T.I., as well as a social media debate about which residents of the surrounding areas get to claim the city. Incidentally, when Latto chimed in, she was apparently already in the studio with Omeretta, recording her verse for the song’s remix — a verse that has since sparked a new round of debate thanks to Latto name-checking a number of artists who claim Atlanta but aren’t technically from the city proper.
That “ishnot Alanna” TikTok that Shaderoom posted I had just sent the verse back to Retta & we was watching y’all eat it up in the comments check the background I was literally at the studio lol
Latto apparently noticed some chatter on Twitter claiming that she was dissing artists like 21 Savage, Ciara, Ludacris, and Migos, saying that they aren’t really from Atlanta — even though she freely admits her own hometown in Clayton County isn’t within city limits either. She addressed the controversy head-on, tweeting, “Y’all I’m not dissing the people I named on the verse!!! I’m saying so Migos is not Atlanta?? 21, Ciara, Ludacris etc because they technically not from the city but helped make it is what it is!”
Y’all I’m not dissing the people I named on the verse!!! I’m saying so Migos is not Atlanta?? 21, Ciara, Ludacris etc because they technically not from the city but helped make it is what it is!
Despite Latto’s verse technically refuting the claims Omeretta makes on the original song, the upstart rapper praised her collaborator, telling followers on Twitter, “When Latto sent the verse back I couldn’t even text no mo I had to call like girl wtf why u do that track like that.”
When Latto sent the verse back I couldn’t even text no mo I had to call like girl wtf why u do that track like that
Perhaps Latto’s verse will finally settle the debate after she pointed out the contributions of so many “out-of-towners” in helping grow the city’s rap footprint into what it is today. You can check out her verse below.
“I have always considered myself an American, a proud American. I love everything that this country has done for myself and my family, but today I have never been more proud to be a Ukrainian,” the Family Guy actress, who was born in the Ukraine before moving to the United States when she was seven years old, said in the video above. From ABC News:
The couple said that the money they are seeking to raise will go to relief that will have “an immediate impact in supplying much-needed refugee and humanitarian aid to the area.” Donations raised through the GoFundMe page they set up will go to Airbnb.org and Flexport.org, which are providing free, short-term housing and organizing supply shipments to refugee sites.
Kunis and Kutcher vowed to match up to $3 million in donations to the Stand With Ukraine fund — in less than 20 hours, the GoFundMe page is already up $3.3 million. “The people of Ukraine are strong and brave, but being strong and brave doesn’t mean you’re not worthy of support,” Kunis said. “We need to support the people of Ukraine. Please help us.” You can donate to Stand with Ukraine here.
Last month, folk/rock sensation Kurt Vile announced his next album Watch My Moves, the follow-up to 2018’s Bottle It In. He also released the synthy, laid-back lead single “Like Exploding Stones,” and now he’s back with the next single, “Hey Like A Child.” The track abides by his signature style, which is unhurried, mellow, and full of twang and poetic lyrics sung with playful pronunciations: “In a dream I drew my blueprint / And it was you on every page that I drew there.”
The album is self-produced alongside Rob Schnapf, who’s known for working with monumental artists like Elliott Smith and Beck, and it was recorded predominantly in Vile’s home studio in Philadelphia. He invited his longtime band The Violators but also a throng of collaborators including Chastity Belt, Cate Le Bon, and notable percussionists Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) and Sarah Jones. The album features 14 original songs and a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Wages Of Sin.” Vile will be heading out on several tours this spring in the US and in Europe alongside acts like Chastity Belt, Natural Information Society, and Sun Ra Arkestra.
Listen to “Hey Like A Child” above. Watch My Moves is out 4/15 via Verve. Pre-order it here.
To promote the return his new Apple TV+ series, Jon Stewart stopped by Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast for a lengthy and fascinating interview where he tackled everything from his recent remarks on Joe Rogan to Russia invading Ukraine. The latter of which prompted Stewart to tear into Fox News host Tucker Carlson who, up until very recently, had been airing impassioned defenses of Vladimir Putin on the air.
After calling Carlson a “dishonest propagandist,” Stewart cut right to the heart of the issue: Nothing Carlson says it’s real, and the incendiary Fox News host has admitted as much. Stewart also called out Rupert Murdoch for putting a “sh*thead” like Carlson on the air and “trying to destroy the fabric of this country.” Via HuffPost:
“There’s nothing you can take out of context” with people like Carlson “because none of it is real,” comedian Stewart said on the latest episode of New York Times reporter Kara Swisher’s “Sway” podcast released Thursday.
“You know, he’s admitted when he’s cornered, he lies. It’s all a game and a performance,” Stewart continued. “I mean, honestly, I have no idea what the f*ck that guy believes, truly.”
In addition, Stewart was surprisingly active on Twitter on Thursday where he promoted the newest episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart and took another shot at Carlson in the process.
“My last tweet pester of the day (most likely) join us tonight. Watch the episode and then twitter space it… and bring your LSAT scores… because that matters…” Stewart tweeted in an obvious jab at Carlson’s recent demand to know SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson‘s LSAT scores.
My last tweet pester of the day (most likely) join us tonight. Watch the episode and then twitter space it…and bring your LSAT scores…because that matters… https://t.co/kgfqbGZduO
By 1972, when he finally reached that pinnacle, he was already a legend. His early singles like “Maybellene,” “Too Much Monkey Business,” and “Johnny B. Goode” had stormed the R&B charts and came tantalizingly close to hitting the top of what was previously called the “Top Sellers In Stores” chart. He had been covered by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Wanda Jackson, and Jimi Hendrix. As Bob Dylan put it in an email he wrote when Berry was handed one of the first PEN New England’s Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Awards in 2012, “If Beethoven hadn’t rolled over, there’d be no room for any of us.”
Berry knew how highly he was esteemed. So much so that, starting around the mid-to-late ’60s, he would go on tour all alone, playing with whatever pickup bands were available at the time and trusting that they knew his music well enough to follow his lead.
That was the case when Berry, in early 1972, played at the Lanchester Arts Festival about 90 miles outside of London. Joining him onstage were a quartet of seasoned players including future Average White Band guitarist Onnie Owen McIntyre and pianist Dave Kaffinetti, aka Viv Savage of Spinal Tap — who had come of musical age listening to Berry’s hits. As heard on the three live recordings plucked from that performance included on The London Chuck Berry Sessions, the 1972 album that yielded Berry’s sole No. 1 pop hit, they settle into the grooves of “Reelin’ And Rockin’” and “Johnny B. Goode” with a studied ease.
Strangely, it was the other live cut from that album that took Berry to the top of the pops in both the U.S. and U.K. For as powerful an impact as Berry had, and continues to have, on the world of music, his biggest commercial hit was, of all songs, “My Ding-a-Ling.”
If you know the song, you likely have the nursery rhyme-like chorus of “My Ding-a-Ling” jingling through your mental jukebox right now or are chuckling quietly about the novelty song’s puerile lyrics. If you’re unfamiliar, it hopefully won’t take you long to catch on that, while Berry starts off singing about the “silver bells hangin’ on a string” bequeathed to him by his grandmother, the “ding-a-ling” quickly devolves into pure innuendo. “I remember the girl next door / We used to play house on the kitchen floor,” Berry sings, “She’d be the queen, I’d be the king / Together we’d play with my ding-a-ling-a-ling.”
While “My Ding-a-Ling” will never be what Berry is most remembered for and only came up in passing in the memorials and obituaries written about him when he died in March 2017, the song’s success is such a strange footnote to his illustrious career. So much so that, after I decided to write this piece, I reached out to my colleague Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior pop editor for AllMusic and noted Chuck Berry obsessive, to get his thoughts on the matter.
“I’d never claim it’s among Berry’s very best records… but I do think its success was earned,” Erlewine said, via email. “That it became a smash is somewhat bizarre to me because it’s such a spare recording and it doesn’t sound like anything else on radio in 1972. That just makes its success more impressive: the old huckster figured out a way to sidestep the rock revival fad and contemporary music and land his only number one. Even if you don’t like the single, it’s hard not to admire that trick.”
So, how did “My Ding-a-Ling” manage to hit the pop pinnacle that “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “School Days” couldn’t? The “rock revival fad” that Erlewine refers to surely played a part. There was a renewed interest in the early days of rock, fueled by the arrival of oldies radio in 1971 and the success of the Broadway musical Grease the next year. Berry happily took advantage of the rising tide, leading to his notorious appearance with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on The Mike Douglas Show in early ’72 and the Lanchester Arts Festival gig where he was booked along with Pink Floyd (who performed all of Dark Side of the Moon), Slade, and Billy Preston.
Helping the cause of “My Ding-a-Ling” was that the song appeared during a particularly fallow time in radio pop. While great strides were being made in worlds of soul, glam, and heavy rock in 1972 — the year of “School’s Out,” “Let’s Stay Together,” and “Supernaut” — it seemed that a healthy number of record buyers were seeking out musical comfort food in a post-Pentagon Papers, post-U.K. Immigration Act world. 1972 was also the year that cutesy fare like Donny Osmond’s “Puppy Love,” Hot Butter’s “Popcorn,” and The New Seekers’ “I’d Like to Teach The World To Sing” cracked the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic. “My Ding-a-Ling” was a comfortable fit for radio playlists of the time.
None of that is to say that everyone adored the tune. With lyrics as knowingly juvenile as “Every time the bell would ring / They’d catch me playin’ with my ding a ling,” complaints were sure to follow. In the U.S., some radio programmers refused to play the song, even as it climbed the charts in Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 program.
In England, the song raised the hackles of Mary Whitehouse, the conservative activist who waged a campaign against the country’s supposedly overly permissive broadcast standards. In early 1973, Whitehouse wrote a letter to Charles Curran, then-director general of the BBC, to complain about “My Ding-a-Ling” being presented on Top Of The Pops, the weekly TV show celebrating the hits of the day. According to her missive, parents and teachers alike were aghast at what the song was bringing out of the poor innocent youngsters. “One teacher told us of how she found a class of small boys with their trousers undone, singing the song and giving it the indecent interpretation which… is so obvious,” she wrote. “Parents too were very upset by the stories their children were bringing home about the actions which were accompanying the singing of this song amongst their friends.”
As unintentionally hilarious as the letter is, Whitehouse was probably telling the truth. Of course, young snickering schoolchildren were going to love the heck out of that song. And Berry knew that inside all of the adults that came to see him tear into his classic repertoire was a little bit of that immaturity. That’s why he was attracted to the song in the first place.
“My Ding-a-Ling” was originally written and recorded in 1952 by Dave Bartholomew, the New Orleans jump blues artist who co-wrote dozens of songs for Fats Domino, and it was even more direct in its earliest incarnation: “Have a li’l girl, her name is Sing / She like to play with my ding-a-ling / My ding-a-ling is the cutest thing / When Sing plays with my ding-a-ling.” By the time Berry got around to recording a version of it in 1968, he hedged his bets, re-writing the lyrics to be about “My Tambourine.”
When he brought it into his setlists in the early ’70s, Berry made no bones about what he was really singing about. That’s as clear as anything in the full 11-minute version of the song on The London Chuck Berry Sessions. He introduces the song to the rowdy British audience as a “4th grade ditty” and a “beautiful song about togetherness, and believe me, I do mean togetherness,” and walks them through helping him sing the chorus with plenty of bawdy asides and winking double entendres. “It’s all about Chuck Berry telling dirty jokes,” Erlewine writes. “It’s a stand-up gig as much as a performance, a dumb playground joke that works because the old pro knows how to land the laughs.”
Ultimately, that’s really why the song drew people in when Boston DJ Jim Connors put it in heavy rotation on WMEX in 1971 and it began its slow spread onto stations throughout the U.S. and beyond. It’s dumb and pointless and infantile, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun to sing along with. You can hear that every time the English concert crowd shouts out the chorus — the girls on the “my,” the guys on the “ding-a-ling.” No matter how many times they sing it, they sound like they’re having a blast.
For as much as Berry’s death in 2017 was lamented by top-tier musicians like Bruno Mars and Questlove, his true impact can be felt in the work of underground punk and garage rockers like Shannon and the Clams and Ty Segall. Those artists and their contemporaries continue to embody a lesson that Berry continues to impart: rock, at its core, and sometimes at its best, is a ribald, absurd, racy, and boisterous enterprise that should be undertaken with a sure hand and a light touch whether you’re singing about a little country boy with a guitar in a gunny sack or your ding-a-ling-a-ling.
According to documents filed in court Thursday, “Not all of the videos and posts containing the defamatory statements have been removed from defendants’ social media accounts… Despite the overwhelming evidence entered at trial and a unanimous jury verdict against (Kebe and her company) on all of plaintiff’s claims, they continue to insinuate that the defamatory statements are true. Plaintiff is only seeking to require defendants to remove any videos and posts that contain the defamatory Statements from their social media accounts and to enjoin defendants from republishing those same statements.”
The request also notes that trial transcripts even show that Tasha K, real name Latasha Kebe, verbally refused to do so. Rolling Stone quotes the transcript:
“So the only way at this point these videos are ever going to come down is if this court forces you to [remove them]. Is that right?” the lawyer pressed.
“That is correct,” Kebe replied.
“Are you essentially saying that to stop you from calling my client ‘Cold Sore B,’ my client needs to get a gag order?” the lawyer asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kebe replied.
Tasha promised to appeal the court’s decision and even bragged on social media about her inability to actually pay the $4 million.
Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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check the background I was literally at the studio lol
(@Latto) 
(@omeretta4l) 
