If she were still alive, the country legend whose biggest hit was “It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” would be turning 102 years old today. At birth, she was named Ellen Muriel Deason, but you're probably more familiar with her stage name. Do you know who she was? ANSWER: Kitty Wells.
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Ida weakened to a tropical storm early Monday over southwestern Mississippi, after battering southern Louisiana on Sunday as a Category 4 storm with winds of 150 miles per hour. In a 4 a.m. CDT update, the National Hurricane Center (“NHC”) said Ida had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, and was located 90 miles south-southwest of Jackson, Miss., and 50 miles north-northeast of Baton Rouge, La. Ida was moving north at 13 mph.
Ida strengthened from a Category 2 to a Category 4 within two hours on Sunday morning. By late Sunday, it was back to a Category 2. Despite the drop in strength, however, the NHC said portions of southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi will continue to experience a “dangerous storm surge, damaging winds and flash flooding.” A storm surge warning was in effect from Grand Isle, La., to the Alabama-Florida border while a tropical storm warning was active for the same region including Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas and Metropolitan New Orleans.Ida is forecast to travel inland over portions of Louisiana and western Mississippi on Monday and Monday night. The highest rainfall total was recorded in LaPlace, Louisiana, which received 15 inches. 16 states from Mississippi to New Jersey are on alert for flash flooding, from the Gulf Coast to New Jersey. Ida is forecast to weaken more over the next day or so, becoming a tropical depression by Monday evening.
As of early Monday, more than 1 million Louisiana utility customers are without power, according to PowerOutage.us. On Sunday evening, New Orleans said the entire city lost power after “catastrophic transmission damage.” Ida made landfall on Sunday on the anniversary of Katrina, the Category 3 storm that devastated Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years ago.
Before this summer, the most you’d probably heard about Walker Hayes was with his 2017 top-ten hit, “You Broke Up with Me.” But now, he’s “Fancy Like That.”
If you’ve missed it, “Fancy” is the rap-influenced, country-flavored earworm that extols the virtues of a girl who “wanna dip me like them fries in her Frosty” at Wendy’s, and get the “Bourbon Street steak with the Oreo shake” from “Applebee’s on a date night.”
And it was all fueled by a video Walker made with his 15-year-old daughter.
“Lela and I did the dance on Sunday afternoon,” Walker explains. “She said, ‘Hey Dad, “Fancy Like” doesn’t have a dance. We need to do one.'”
“We kinda created it together,” he continues. “She made up most of the moves. I made sure most of the moves could be done, even if you weren’t a great dancer — like me.”
“We popped it off in two takes… And the rest is history,” he reveals. “We pretty much knew hours later, we had accidentally done something — odd.”
Since then, at least one of the restaurants Walker name-dropped has come calling.
“Within days, people began to predict ‘song of the summer,’ how viral it would go, things like that,” he tells ABC Audio. “I don’t necessarily say I believed ’em, but here we are.”
“There’s an Applebee’s commercial,” he points out. “The Oreo shake is back on the menu thanks to the power of a song.”
“And millions of people have done this dance,” he marvels. “And the song continues to climb all charts, all genres. It’s mind-blowing. It’s absolutely mind-blowing.”
Sure enough, “Fancy Like” has already spent six weeks atop Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs ranking, while sitting at #12 on the pop-oriented Hot 100 as well.
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On Sunday, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden attended the dignified transfer of the 13 American service members killed in a pair of explosions near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The president and first lady flew in Air Force One to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware where they met with some of the families of the 13 service members killed in the attack. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley were also present for the transfer.
Biden said in a written statement: “The 13 service members that we lost were heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our highest American ideals and while saving the lives of others. Their bravery and selflessness has enabled more than 117,000 people at risk to reach safety thus far. May God protect our troops and all those standing watch in these dangerous days.”
The families of 11 of the service members killed in the attack by the terror group known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province allowed media to document the event while the remains of the other two service members were transferred out of public view. The 13 service members killed included 11 Marines, one Army soldier and one Navy corpsman, ranging in age from 20 to 31.
On Sunday, the United States launched a defensive drone strike on a suspected car bomb. Biden said in a statement that the strike wouldn’t be the last and U.S. forces “will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”
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As the release of his next album, Same Truck, nears, Scotty McCreery has shared another new song off the project, called “Carolina to Me.”
Randy Travis shared a from-the-vault, never-before-heard song called “Ain't No Use” on Friday. The song arrives ahead of his upcoming Storms of Life (35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) album, which is available to pre-order now.
Rising artist Mackenzie Porter, who most recently collaborated with Dustin Lynch for his “Thinking Bout You” radio single, has shared an Amazon Original cover of Natalie Imbruglia's 1997 classic “Torn.”
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Garth Brooks cancelled his scheduled stadium concert events for 2021 due to the surge in COVID-19 cases earlier this week, but has unveiled plans to return to the road in the fall playing dive bars. Brooks provided details on his ‘Inside Studio G’ Facebook Live series, and said the ‘dive bar’ shows will require all attendees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Said Brooks: “This fall, dive bars. Because you can fully vaccinate dive bars. People have got to have their card to even get in. The only way to get in through dive bars [is] country radio, your local country station.” Regarding his recent decision to cancel the Stadium Tour, Brooks said, “It boils down to one thing: it was the right decision to make, even though it was not my favorite decision.”
Brooks added about the dive tour: “I’m vaccinated, 100% vaccinated. Everybody on the freakin’ tour, vaccinated,” however, “I cannot make you get vaccinated. Until it becomes a law, it is a choice. And people, when things are a choice, you have to understand and respect that we’re all going to make our own choices.”
Brooks has previously played venues on the ‘dive bar’ jaunt such as Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, California, and Chicago’s Joe’s on Weed Street. As Brooks noted during his livestream, tickets are only made available from local radio stations when the dive bar shows are announced.
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Chris Stapleton and wife Morgane have donated $10,000 to help a family grieving the death of their twin babies who were lost after the devastating flooding in Tennessee. A GoFundMe for the twins parents, Danielle Hall and her husband Matt, set a modest goal of $5,000, but donations quickly exceeded that figure and as of Wednesday night, more than $100,000 had been raised. The Halls also lost their house during the flood that killed 20 people. More than 17 inches of rain drenched Waverly, Tenn., in Humphreys County on Saturday.
The twins’ mother said that she left to find help when the water started to flood their home, leaving their father with the babies and their two older siblings. Seven-month-old Ryan and Riliegh Hall were swept away by the waters, but their father was able to save his 5-year-old and 19-month-old children.
The Stapletons are parents to their own 3-year-old twin boys; they also share a 2-year-old son and two older children.
Chris & Morgane Stapleton Donate $10,000 To Family Who Lost Infant Twins In Tennessee Floods
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Liam Payne will release the single “Sunshine,” featured in the upcoming Disney film ‘Ron’s Gone Wrong,’ which is set to hit theaters this fall. In addition to being featured on the film’s soundtrack, Payne voices a character in the film. Payne shared in a statement: “I am such a big fan of Disney, so to be working on this is a dream come true. I can’t wait for you all to hear ‘Sunshine’ and to see “Ron’s Gone Wrong.” It has been a lot of fun!” Check out the trailer for “Ron’s Gone Wrong” – here.
Ron’s Gone Wrong follows the story of a socially awkward schoolboy named Barney and Ron, a walking and talking digital device designed to be its owner’s best friend with the occasional malfunction. The former One Direction member joins a star-studded cast which also features Zach Galifianakis, Jack Dylan Grazer, Olivia Colman, Ed Helms, Justice Smith, Rob Delaney, Kylie Cantrall, Ricardo Hurtado, Marcus Scribner, and Thomas Barbusca.
To pre-order Payne’s single ‘Sunshine’ head here.
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Disney+ released a new trailer for Billie Eilish’s upcoming concert special Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles. This will be Eilish’s second film of the year, following Apple TV+’s documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry.
In this official trailer, Eilish can be seen performing her new album Happier Than Ever in full at the Hollywood Bowl with help from her brother and collaborator Finneas, the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic as conducted by Gustavo Dudaeml and Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo.
Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles was co-directed by Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids) and Oscar-winner Patrick Osborne (Wreck-It-Ralph, Bolt). Eilish will perform renditions of her Happier Than Ever hits like “NDA,” “my future,” “Your Power,” “Therefore I Am,” and “Lost Cause.”
Check out the trailer for Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles – here.
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On Friday, rapper Nelly did something he's been hoping to do for about 16 or 17 years: He released a country-flavored album.
That's his new project Heartland, a collaborations-packed collection of songs that the singer says he's been wanting to make ever since he first dabbled in the country genre, releasing his 2004 duet with Tim McGraw.
“The idea of the project has been ever since Over and Over' – so since 2004, 2005, after seeing that success,” Nelly tells Billboard. “But the only reason I even thought that I could have success with Over and Over' was because, even when we dropped Country Grammar, we were getting so much love from this community.”
Released in 2000, Country Grammar is Nelly's full-length studio debut. Though it was a hip hop album, the singer realized from the very start that his music was resonating with a country fan base, too.
But it took him a while to get around to formally venturing into country music, in part because he was “doing my homework,” Nelly explains. “To get more familiar with Nashville and everything. It became a lot easier to know how to navigate and create this project, to bring it to fruition.”
Heartland features duets with the likes of Kane Brown, Florida Georgia Line, Darius Rucker and Jimmie Allen. It's leading single is Nelly's FGL duet, “Lil Bit.“
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