Kelly Clarkson Sings Her First ‘Kellyoke’ Cover Entirely in Spanish

During the Kellyoke segment on her daytime talk show, Kelly Clarkson often proves the vocal heights and emotional depths she’s capable of reaching with her incredible instrument. And she proved yet another new musical skill on Thursday’s (Sept. 15) episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, singing her first-ever Kellyoke cover entirely in Spanish.

To celebrate the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, the American Idol alum tackled Silvana Estrada‘s “Mas o Menos Antes,” from the 25-year-old Mexican singer/songwriter’s most recent album Marchita, released in January. Clarkson was accompanied by just an acoustic guitar, played by Jaco Caraco, for the stirring rendition.

Last year, Clarkson told Luis Fonsi when he helped her out as an adviser on The Voice that he had “the one song in history I’m afraid to cover: ‘Despacito.’”

“I have practiced so hard, because I love singing in Spanish as well, or just in different languages,” Clarkson told Fonsi. “And it’s, like, the biggest song of all time. You’re kind of like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna leave that alone,’” she laughed.

It looks like she practiced her Spanish singing enough to face that fear, so maybe a “Despacito” Kellyoke cover will be next.

Estrada was Billboard‘s Latin Artist on the Rise back in January, when she told us just how important making Marchita was to her. “Releasing this really special album is, to-date, my biggest accomplishment,” Estrada said.

Watch Clarkson sing “Mas o Menos Antes” – which translates to “More or Less Before” – below:

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Bang Energy’s TikTok Videos Infringed Sony’s Copyrights, Judge Says

A federal judge says that drink maker Bang Energy infringed Sony Music’s copyrights by using songs from Britney Spears, Harry Styles and others in hundreds of social media ads, a ruling that came two months after Universal Music Group won a similar decision against the beverage company.

In a decision issued Wednesday, Judge William P. Dimitrouleas rejected various defenses from Bang Energy for its conduct, calling them “a boilerplate list” that was “unaccompanied by any effort at developing an argument.”

“It is undisputed that defendants directly posted approximately 286 social media videos utilizing portions of plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, works neither defendants nor the social media platforms were authorized to use for commercial purposes.”

Combined with Judge Dimitrouleas’ ruling in July against Bang Energy over hundreds of songs owned by UMG, the two decisions potentially put the drink company on the hook for many millions of dollars in damages. Such damages will be decided in future proceedings.

Both Sony and UMG sued Bang Energy last year for using copyrighted music in social media posts without permission. The cases highlighted an important distinction: The sweeping music licenses signed by platforms like TikTok and Instagram, which allow users to feature snippets of copyrighted music in their posts, do not apply to commercial content posted by brands.

Faced with those lawsuits, Bang Energy argued that it didn’t know it wasn’t allowed to use the music in ads. They cited the fact that TikTok and Instagram make it easy to do, and claimed a TikTok rep even told them they could.

“At the time Bang Energy posted videos on TikTok, no warning was provided that the songs TikTok provided could not be used in videos posted by businesses,” the company’s lawyers wrote earlier this summer in Sony’s lawsuit. “Energy used TikTok as it was intended, posting videos utilizing the music that TikTok provided.”

But Sony argued back that a misunderstanding was not a real defense, and certainly not for a “sophisticated” company like Bang Energy. “The Platforms’ terms could not have been clearer regarding the prohibition on using copyrighted content without permission,” the label’s lawyers wrote, “and that the use of any music available on the Platforms was limited to personal, non-commercial purposes.”

On Wednesday, Judge Dimitrouleas sided definitively with Sony, saying it was very clear that Bang had not been entitled to use the music: “There are no licenses from Plaintiffs to Defendants to commercially use the recordings [nor] from Plaintiffs to any of the platforms that would permit end users of any of the platforms to use the recordings for commercial purposes.”

The judge also rejected Bang Energy’s argument that its use of the songs was a legal “fair use” of Sony’s music.

An attorney for Bang Energy did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision.

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Miami school district says it denied Pulitzer play due to racy scenes. Others say censorship

Days after the Miami-Dade County School District denied students from attending Miami New Drama’s production of Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Anna in the Tropics,” school officials pointed to lines … Click to Continue »
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Seatrade global cruise event leaving Miami Beach for Fort Lauderdale in 2023

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Henry Fuhrmann, LA Times editor and ‘word nerd’ who fought for fairness in grammar, dies at 65

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State senator named to lead Florida’s university system as chancellor

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YUNGBLUD Scores First Top 10 on Billboard’s Album Sales Chart

YUNGBLUD lands his first top 10 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated Sept. 17) – and his best sales week yet – as his self-titled third studio album debuts at No. 3 with 13,000 copies sold in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 8, according to Luminate.

The set also makes a splash across further Billboard album charts, bowing in the top 10 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Alternative Albums, Top Current Album Sales, Tastemaker Albums and Vinyl Albums.

Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums rank the week’s most popular rock and alternative, rock, and alternative releases, respectively, by equivalent album units. Top Current Albums lists the week’s top-selling current albums (excluding older albums, referred to as catalog). Tastemaker Albums ranks the best-selling albums at independent and small chain record stores.

Of YUNGBLUD’s 13,000 copies sold in its first week, physical sales comprise 12,000 (6,500 on vinyl; 5,500 on CD and a negligible sum on cassette) and digital downloads comprise 1,000.

YUNGBLUD sold well at independent record stores, as the album debuts at No. 2 on the Tastemakers Albums chart, with nearly 5,000 sold via indie retailers. (Tastemakers ranks the top-selling albums of the week at indie stores.) The album’s sales were bolstered at indies by eight in-store performances during the tracking week by YUNGBLUD (dubbed by the artist as the American as F**k In-Store Tour).

Additionally, the set also bows at No. 2 on the Vinyl Albums chart, with 6,500 sold via vinyl LP (50% of the album’s overall first week sales).

Megadeth’s The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! arrives at No. 1 on Top Album Sales with 45,000 sold – marking the first chart-topper for the rock band on the 31-year-old chart. The act had previously gone as high as No. 2, twice, with Countdown to Extinction in 1992 and Dystopia in 2016. The new album also opens at No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Hard Rock Albums, Top Current Album Sales and Tastemaker Albums.

TWICE’s Between 1&2: 11th Mini Album falls 1-2 in its second week on Top Album Sales (24,000; down 74%). Silk Sonic – the duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak – dips 3-4 with its An Evening With Silk Sonic (10,000; down 73%), Harry Styles’ chart-topping Harry’s House rises 8-5 (8,000; up 10%), Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers falls 2-6 (nearly 8,000; down 80%) and ENHYPEN’s former leader Manifesto: Day 1 is a non-mover at No. 7 (7,000; down 11%).

Jon Pardi clocks his third top 10 on Top Album Sales as Mr. Saturday Night starts at No. 8 with 5,000 sold. SEVENTEEN’s former No. 1 SEVENTEEN 4th Album Repackage: Sector 17 rises 14-9 with nearly 5,000 (down 5%).

King’s X closes out the new top 10 as the rock band’s first studio album in 14 years, Three Sides of One, debuts at No. 10 with 4,000 sold. It’s the first top 10 on the 31-year-old tally for the act.

In the week ending Sept. 8, there were 1.658 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 5.7% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.292 million (down 6.5%) and digital albums comprised 367,000 (down 2.6%).

There were 606,000 CD albums sold in the week ending Sept. 8 (down 9.4% week-over-week) and 677,000 vinyl albums sold (down 3.5%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 23.476 million (down 8.5% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 26.545 million (up 0.2%).

Overall year-to-date album sales total 64.543 million (down 8.2% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 50.377 million (down 4%) and digital album sales total 14.166 million (down 20.6%).

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Mel C Reveals She Was Sexually Assaulted Night Before First Spice Girls Performance

Melanie Chisholm, also known as “Mel C” and Sporty Spice from the Spice Girls, is opening up about a night she alleges she was sexually assaulted prior to her first performance as a Spice Girl.

In an interview on Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast ahead of the Sept. 15 release of her forthcoming memoir Who I Am, the Spice Girl shared that she was sexually assaulted by a massage therapist at a spa in an Istanbul, Turkey, hotel in 1997. Chisholm was staying in the hotel the night before the girl group was about to have their first live performance.

“We were in Istanbul. We did two shows over there and we’d never done a full-length concert before, so obviously we’d rehearsed for weeks ahead, costume fittings, makeup, hair, everything was leading to towards the pinnacle of everything I ever wanted to do, and ever wanted to be,” Chisholm recalled. “What drives me is being on stage, being a performer, so here we were, the eve of the first-ever Spice Girls show, so I treat myself to a massage in the hotel.”

She continued, “And what happened to me — I kind of buried, immediately, because there were other things to focus on. I didn’t want to make a fuss but also I didn’t have time to deal with it.” She added that because she “didn’t deal with it at the time,” she has since realized that that allowed for that night to be “buried for years and years and years.”

She said that the she didn’t think about the incident until writing about it for her memoir: “It came to me in a dream, or I kind of woke up and it was in my mind. And I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I haven’t even thought about having that in the book.’ Then, of course, I had to think, ‘Well, do I want to reveal this?’ And I just thought, actually, I think it’s really important for me to say it, and to finally deal with it and process it.”

“Terrible things happen all the time and this situation wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been,” she said. Though she didn’t share further details of the assault, she described her experience as a “mild version” of sexual assault. “But I felt violated. I felt very vulnerable. I felt embarrassed. And then I felt unsure — have I got this right? What’s going on? I was in an environment where you take your clothes off with this professional person.”

Chisholm went on to say that there were “so many thoughts and feelings” about that moment in her life, but she ultimately wanted to share and talk about it because of the impact it had on her: “It has affected me. But I’d buried it, and I’m sure … lots of people do.”

This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.

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(G)I-DLE Announce New Mini-Album ‘I Love,’ Release Date

(G)I-DLE is back, revealing on Wednesday (Sept. 14) that their highly anticipated fifth mini-album, I Love, is coming next month.

The group unveiled a teaser for the release, which features a beating heart animation with sound effects for 10 minutes before revealing the mini-album’s title.

(G)I-DLE also shared a poster-inspired photo to Twitter, announcing that I Love will be arriving on October 17. The release comes just months after the group released their debut studio album, I Never Die, in April.

“We believe every group is unique in their own way. For us, we believe that our music and our music videos leave a strong impact because we want to do something that expresses us well and in an honest way,” (G)I-DLE’s Soyeon told Billboard of the K-pop power players in 2020, following the release of their third EP, I Trust.

“Soyeon’s been writing for us since debut, and she knows us really well, each of our members,” Yuqi added. “She knows which parts suit us. I think we all trust her a lot. And the songs are good! So we just follow her. Whenever I listen to her songs for the first time, I really think, “Oh, this song is going to be on point.” [Laughs] The songs just hit me. I never thought that a K-pop girl group could do this before. I just love it so much. In my opinion, it’s my style. “oh my god” is really my style, I love it so much. I want to perform it for our fans as soon as possible.

See the I Love announcement below.

 

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Ozzy Osbourne Wants to Tour Again Despite Health Scares: ‘It’s Where I Belong’

Ozzy Osbourne has dealt with a number of health emergencies over the years, but that’s not going to stop him from performing for fans.

“It’s where I belong,” he recently told People of being on the road. “The relationship I have with my audience is the biggest love affair of my life.”

Between surgeries to treat a staph infection in 2018, the reveal of his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in 2019, a pneumonia battle that was followed by a fall at home in 2020 as well as a major neck surgery in June and a positive COVID-19 diagnosis this year, the Blizzard of Ozz has been dealing with continuous health issues.

“That’s the only thing that reminds me I’m getting older: things going wrong and not working anymore,” he told the publication. “But I still feel young at heart.”

Osbourne however, is not going to “retire” any time soon. “I am determined to get back on stage even if I have to be nailed to a board and wheeled on,” he said. “Survival is my legacy.”

Ozzy unveiled his 13th solo album, Patient Number 9, just last week (Sept. 9), which features an all-star guest list that includes Iommi, Zakk Wylde, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan and the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, among others.

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