Beyoncé was not nominated for a single CMA Award, but her efforts didn’t go totally unnoticed thanks to her Cowboy Carter collaborator Shaboozey. Shaboozey, whose breakout single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” topped the charts in August, was nominated for two awards: best new artist and single of the year. In acknowledging his nominations — and, seemingly, Beyoncé’s snub — he addressed the opportunities created by the Renaissance singer, even if she didn’t get to enjoy the benefits herself.
“That goes without saying,” he wrote on Twitter (never calling it “X”). “Thank you @Beyonce for opening a door for us, starting a conversation, and giving us one of the most innovative country albums of all time!”
That goes without saying. Thank you @Beyonce for opening a door for us, starting a conversation, and giving us one of the most innovative country albums of all time!
In explaining the inspiration behind Cowboy Carter ahead of its release, Beyoncé shared her intention to create space for Black artists after being made to feel unwelcome at the 2016 CMA Awards. “This album has been over five years in the making,” she wrote. “It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.”
There’s little doubt which experience she referred to, and Beyoncé herself is probably unsurprised by the snub, as she signed off the above message by noting, “This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” The “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer likely knew exactly how her latest project would be received — or not — by the country establishment. But it looks like they can’t keep her out completely, thanks to Shaboozey.
On Monday morning, September 9, Redken announced Carpenter as the brand’s first-ever Celebrity Ambassador. The first ad spot shows Carpenter brushing her hair, smirking, and asking, “Are you ready for a big bang?”
Redken’s official YouTube description reads, “‘Beauty and especially my hair is a big part of my identity…’ says Carpenter. The destined collaboration was born and bred in the salon throughout Sabrina’s rise to fame. She has been a longtime lover of the esteemed professional haircare brand, attributing her signature blonde exclusively to Redken’s Shades EQ, the #1 demi-permanent hair gloss worldwide. Sabrina’s blonde bangs and bouncy style have captivated consumers around the globe, a trade secret her longtime hairstylist, Scott King, and colorist, Laurie Heaps, both credit to Redken.”
According to a press release, Carpenter’s debut Redken campaign for Acidic Bonding Concentrate will launch on September 19, “with additional campaigns spanning both customer and salon professionals to come.”
The Boys‘ fourth season introduced two members of The Seven to replace departing Supes. Fortunately, Annie January/Starlight was still onscreen for plenty of time on the vigilante side (and Erin Moriarty killed as the Shifter). Filling the onscreen void left by Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), however, was no small feat, but Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) and Firecracker (Valorie Curry) held their own while heading straight to the dark side. In particular, Firecracker (who Eric Kripke based on a certain congresswoman) is utterly reprehensible and will stop at nothing to earn Homelander’s favor.
As Firecracker even admitted, she would do “anything” for Antony Starr’s character, and that seems to be the basis of what Curry was hinting at when she described a European Comic-Con incident, in which a fan or fans were (presumably) dressed like Homelander and decided to “demand” certain acts of Curry. She alluded to the incident, thereby becoming the latest public figure who sadly needed to set real boundaries regarding “fans” who don’t know when to stop. Here’s how Curry described this issue via an Instagram story:
“Just got back from the first day of Comic-Con in Northern Ireland in Belfast, and by and large, everyone was fantastic… everyone for the most part has been so kind and so lovely. It’s really been wonderful. But we do need to talk about boundaries and what is appropriate in terms of behavior. I know people saw a character that I played do some pretty extreme things on The Boys. And I don’t care if you’re in costume, I don’t care if you’re in character, it’s not okay and it’s not funny to demand those things from me in person at my booth. It’s not okay.”
Curry didn’t elaborate on what acts were demanded of her, but in all likelihood, this refers to a Season 4, Episode 6 scene in which Firecracker reveals to Homelander that she took a dangerous drug cocktail in order to satisfy his milk fetish. This was the “anything” that Firecracker had suggestively alluded to, and indeed, this is one of the more extreme things that The Boys includes as satire on television. This is also nothing that it is appropriate to ask a celebrity to do, joke or not.
Following her initial post, Curry updated the situation in another Instagram story, in which she wrote, “Thank you to everyone who reached out after my post yesterday, and especially to @comicconnorthernireland for taking it so seriously.” Fingers crossed that Curry won’t be subject to this treatment anymore, and if anybody that you know was responsible for this mess, here’s some advice that might prompt some reflection.
The Olympics are over, but if there were an event called “missing the point,” you can go ahead and give the entire Country Music Association a gold medal for it.
Maybe their fee-fees were hurt by being called out for snubbing Beyoncé at the 2016 CMA Awards ahead of Cowboy Carter‘s release. In a statement on her social media, Beyoncé revealed the album was inspired by “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t.”
It wasn’t hard for music listeners to put two and two together and figure out that the experience in question was Bey’s foray into Nashville to perform her Lemonade song “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks (then called Dixie Chicks); while the performance was well-received on some corners of the internet but hated in others, the CMA was accused of scrubbing the performance from its social media accounts after racist backlash (some of the posts were later restored after fans called out the CMA).
Of course, the CMA will issue its usual mealy-mouthed response about Beyoncé not being a “traditional country artist,” and the world will keep spinning. By the way, Post Malone, who started his music career in cornrows and a gold grill, is nominated for four awards, while Jelly Roll, who most extensively collaborated with Lil Wyte, Haystak, and Tech N9ne before switching to crooning less than three years ago, is nominated for three. On the bright side, Beyoncé collaborator Shaboozey’s nominated for two.
The CMA Awards will be on November 20 and air on ABC at 8 PM PT/ET — two weeks later due to the election.
There are a lot of words you could use to describe Ron Howard as a director: steady, good with actors, journeyman, etc. But “weird” is not one of them. However, six decades into his second career as a filmmaker, it sounds like Howard has finally let his freak flag fly with Eden.
The survival thriller stars Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby as Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dora Strauch, a married couple in the 1920s who escape to a quiet life on the island of Floreana in the Galápagos. But their peaceful oasis is interrupted by the arrival of a very pregnant Margaret (Sydney Sweeney) and her husband Heinz (Daniel Brühl), and later, Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas) and her two “crazy threesome” male companions (Felix Kammerer and Toby Wallace). Will they be able to co-exist on the island together?
We’ll have to wait until Eden is released to find out, but the film had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, and the reviews are all over the place. One critic praised Howard for allowing himself “to lose his mind,” while another called Eden “a movie that makes you want to get off that island and go back to a place where the people are sane.” The closest thing to a consensus among reviewers is that Sweeney gives the best performance.
Below, you’ll find what critics are saying about Eden.
Though built around an excellent ensemble cast of Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, and Ana de Armas, it’s Sydney Sweeney who runs away with the whole thing. She doesn’t always give the loudest performance of the bunch, though it’s her subtle looks and a growing agency that turns Eden into something more. Also, if you thought you would never again see a movie where Sweeney plays a character going through the most hellish pregnancy imaginable after this year’s magnificent horror Immaculate, think again. This and every moment with her at the forefront is Eden at its best.
Eden, which is based on events that unfolded 100 years ago on one of the Galápagós Islands, is a difficult movie to characterize. It’s been labeled as a “thriller,” but I would describe it as a misanthropic survivalist Robinson Crusoe meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with deranged footnotes by Friedrich Nietzsche. For Howard, the film sure is different (it has sex, murder, and animal slaughter). Yet there’s another word for it — the word is terrible.
But for as much fun as Eden does eventually become, it’s still a mostly uneven thriller that doesn’t really take off until it embraces its darkness. While Eden seems to be attempting a story that shows normal people (well, 1920s Germans who decided to live on a desert island) fighting against fascism after running away from the world, that mostly gets lost to dive into the more base desires of these characters.
Our attention is still secured by some of the performances – a fully naked and fully toothless Law and an underused yet alluring Kirby are magnetic throughout – and their bizarre, shaky accents and also by our desire to see just how far Howard will go with the material. At points, he goes further than we might expect with some moments of wince-inducing violence (no spoilers, but scenes involving a placenta, an infected tooth and a side-stab all provoked loud reactions at the premiere), but it’s all too silly and the writing too hokey for us to keep up and by the end, truly care about who survives or not.
But what we do get from Howard’s latest is a strong reminder of his handle on not just craft and casting, but also story and tone. No film about the utter demise of a supposed utopia — a real one, to boot! — and the utter infallibility of human beings should be this fun, but we’re lucky this one is. It helps the hard truths go down easier, especially about who we all are as people (you know, hellish).
Margret is young and impressionable (Dore calls her “a child bride” at first, erroneously) but she’s also pregnant, and watching her raw, snarling instincts start to take over the course of the film is one of Eden’s great pleasures. Sweeney, who was already put through the tortures of the damned in Immaculate earlier this year, again gets to play an innocent who discovers inner, almost mythical reserves of survival. She gets the film’s most gruesome, most intense set piece, about which the less said right now, the better.
But Selena Gomez does not have it all because she is human, and no human has ever had it all.
On Monday morning, September 9, Vanity Fair unveiled Gomez as its October 2024 cover star. The accompanying profile, written by Yohana Desta, contains several revelations about Gomez’s relationship with acting, Benny Blanco, music, and social media, but none more vulnerable than the below.
“I haven’t ever said this, but I unfortunately can’t carry my own children,” Gomez told the publication. “I have a lot of medical issues that would put my life and the baby’s in jeopardy. That was something I had to grieve for a while.”
Gomez continued, “It’s not necessarily the way I envisioned it. I thought it would happen the way it happens for everyone. [But] I’m in a much better place with that. I find it a blessing that there are wonderful people willing to do surrogacy or adoption, which are both huge possibilities for me. It made me really thankful for the other outlets for people who are dying to be moms. I’m one of those people. I’m excited for what that journey will look like, but it’ll look a little different. At the end of the day, I don’t care. It’ll be mine. It’ll be my baby.”
“I was alone for five years, and I got really used to it,” Gomez told Time earlier this year. “A lot of people are afraid of being alone, and I probably tortured myself in my head for like two years being alone, and then I kind of accepted it. Then I came up with my plan, which was I was going to adopt at 35 if I had not met anyone.”
Gomez and Blanco publicly confirmed their relationship last December. Back with Vanity Fair, Gomez shared, “I’ve never been loved this way. He’s just been a light. A complete light in my life. He’s my best friend. I love telling him everything.”
Eminem is tied for the most MTV Video Music Awards in the show’s history (bet you can’t name who he shares the honor with… it’s Peter Gabriel!). This year, he’ll not only seek to get the record all to himself, he’ll also open the show.
The “Somebody Save Me” rapper will kick off the 2024 VMAs with the first TV show performance from his 12th studio album, The Death Of Slim Shady. It’s the first time Eminem has opened the VMAs since 2010, when he performed “Not Afraid,” followed by a duet with Rihanna for “Love The Way You Lie.” No word on whether the Hawk Tuah Girl will make a cameo.
Eminem landed eight nominations this year, including Artist Of The Year and Video Of The Year, Best Hip-Hop, Best Direction, and Best Visual Effects, all for “Houdini.” He’s also up for VMAs Most Iconic Performance for his “The Real Slim Shady” / “The Way I Am” medley at the 2000 ceremony.
You can find the full list of performers at this year’s VMAs below.
2024 MTV Video Music Awards Performers
Eminem
Chappell Roan
Sabrina Carpenter
Camila Cabello
GloRilla
Rauw Alejandro
Lisa
Halsey
Benson Boone
Lenny Kravitz
Anitta ft. Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, Tiago PZK
KAROL G
LL COOL J
Shawn Mendes
Megan Thee Stallion
Katy Perry (Video Vanguard Award)
The 2024 MTV Music Video Awards air on Wednesday, September 11, at 8 p.m. ET.
A pair of players were sent to the locker room early after a fight during Sunday afternoon’s game between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Las Vegas Raiders. The pair of AFC West opponents played a testy game in Week 1 — their first since an emphatic Raiders win late last season that led to Brandon Staley getting fired — and late in the fourth quarter, tension boiled over.
Justin Herbert found rookie wide receiver Ladd McConkey for a touchdown to make it 22-10, and the Chargers decided to go for two. Their effort was stuffed, but while that was happening, things spilled out into the back of the end zone, where players for both teams got into it with one another. And despite the fact that the referees tried to break things up, there was plenty of pushing and shoving between the two sides.
After the officials took some time to review what happened, Raiders cornerback Jack Jones and Chargers receiver Josh Palmer were hit with offsetting unsportsmanlike penalties and ejected. As for how the remainder of the game went, the Raiders threw an interception on the ensuing possession, which led to Herbert taking knees to run down the clock and Jim Harbaugh moving to 1-0 in his return to the NFL.
The Golden State Warriors lost a member of their core this offseason when Klay Thompson left the team to join the Dallas Mavericks. Thompson spent last year playing on an expiring contract, and upon hitting free agency, he agreed to a deal with Dallas and joined the franchise via a sign-and-trade.
It’s such a strange thing to imagine — the thought of Thompson suiting up for anyone other than the Warriors is pretty weird — but sooner rather than later, we’ll see Thompson take the floor alongside Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, and co. In the meantime, Thompson is getting to know another one of his new teammates, as he took in Sunday’s New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces game with Dereck Lively. The catch: Steph Curry was also at this game, and when the three ran into one another, Curry gave Thompson a bit of a hard time.
Steph’s “ew” at Klay chillin’ with Dereck Lively
All in good fun as the former teammates enjoy the game
Curry is, of course, doing this lovingly, but he does a very good job making the disgust in his voice seem real as he goes “eew!” In fairness, if Curry is simply unable to wrap his mind around the fact that Thompson is on the Mavs now, well, I can’t blame him one bit.
Apple Music Super Bowl 2025 Halftime Show is already facing backlash. Today (September 8), Kendrick Lamar was announced as the show’s featured performer. Given the chart-topping year Kendrick has had and his victory in the Drake beef, you’d think the public would rally behind the choice. However, this not the case for one understandable reason—its location.
Next year, the big game is heading to New Orleans. Based on the alone hip-hop heads assumed Lil Wayne was a sure in, which included his longtime engineer Fabian Marasciullo. Well, not Jay-Z. Thanks to his role as the NFL’s music strategist and the Roc Nation partnership with the league, he’s opinion far outweighs the public. In a statement, Jay-Z stood by Kendrick Lamar’s selection.
“Kendrick Lamar is truly a once-in-a-generation artist and performer,” he said. “His deep love for hip-hop and culture informs his artistic vision. He has an unparalleled ability to define and influence culture globally. Kendrick’s work transcends music, and his impact will be felt for years to come.”
Jay-Z isn’t alone. Former Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show headliner, Rihanna, subtly showed her support by liking Kendrick’s reveal post on Instagram.
Contrarily, Master P agreed with users online’s sentiments urging that Lil Wayne be considered for the slot.
“As Ambassador of Entertainment in the City of New Orleans I have to agree with the fans that Lil Wayne should be a part of this celebration as well,” he wrote. “He’s one of the greatest hip-hop artists alive, still relevant and he’s a New Orleans native. Let’s not miss this cultural moment in the South. Life is too short! We have to give our legends their flowers while they are here.”
The show isn’t set until February 2025, so this saga is far from over.
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