Ariana DeBose is mourning the death of her mother, Gina Michelle DeBose, who died on Aug. 17 at age 57 after battling Stage 3 ovarian cancer.

In a touching post on Instagram on Tuesday (Aug. 19), DeBose wrote: “At 10:28 am on August 17th my gorgeous, hilarious, outspoken, warrior queen Mother – Gina Michelle DeBose – passed away due to complications with stage 3 ovarian cancer. I couldn’t be more proud of her and how she fought this insidious disease over the past 3 years. She was 57 years young.

“She was my favorite person, my biggest fan and toughest critic. My best friend. She was my date to every important moment in my professional and personal life – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It had always been the two of us for as long as I can remember. Through lean times, and there were many of those & green times. She fought like hell to give me a good life, a good education and every opportunity in the world. I wouldn’t be where I am without her. I meant it when I said my Oscar “is just as much hers as it is mine.”

DeBose did just say that when she won an Oscar for best supporting actress in 2022 for her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s reboot of West Side Story. “I’m gonna wrap this up and talk about my family. My mother, who is here tonight. Mama, I love you with my whole heart, and this is as much yours as it is mine.”

DeBose had earlier received a Tony nomination for playing “Disco Donna” in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical in 2018. She also hosted the Tony Awards three years running from 2022-24. She was the first person of color to host three times in the show’s history, which dates to 1947.

In her post, Ariana DeBose, 34, said her mom’s “life’s purpose, aside from being my mom, was educating young people. She passed just shy of delivering 30 years of service as a public school teacher (most currently 8th grade social studies). And, my god, did she thrive in a classroom. Her creativity knew no bounds. She was beloved and incredibly respected by her colleagues and students alike.”

DeBose concluded her salute by saying: “For the record: my greatest and most proud achievement will always be to have made her proud. I love you mommy. Now travel amongst the seas, the winds and the angels as I know you always loved to do.”

Global dance music production company Insomniac Events claims in a bombshell new lawsuit that a trio of Miami club operators is trying to “bully” its way into total control of two of the city’s dance venues — including by threatening to launch a “smear campaign” against Insomniac CEO Pasquale Rotella.  
 
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 4 in Florida federal court, targets promoters David Sinopoli, Davide L. Danese and Jose Gabriel Coloma Cano. The three men, referred to in the lawsuit as “CDD,” are longstanding figures in Miami nightlife who assumed control of the city’s famed Club Space in 2016. They are also half of a now-soured partnership with Insomniac for the joint operation of the Club Space venue and upstart club Factory Town. At the heart of the lawsuit are allegations that the trio failed to meet agreed-upon obligations regarding the operation of Factory Town — claims the trio refutes.

“This is not a case of how David stood against Goliath. Rather, it is a case about how no good deed goes unpunished,” Insomniac’s lawyers wrote in the legal complaint. “Insomniac invested in and elevated the enterprise of three relatively unknown event promoters, and, after making millions of dollars, those three promoters simply got too big for their britches.”

But speaking to Billboard on Tuesday (Aug. 19), a person with an interest in Club Space says it’s actually Insomniac that soured the partnership, by changing the terms of the Factory Town deal. CDD is now preparing a counter-lawsuit against Insomniac, this person says.  
 
“Insomniac is not acting like a partner that you can do business with,” this person continues. “The things that they are doing at this business don’t make sense for anyone other than Insomniac. CDD are good stewards of capital, and they don’t want to do things that are going to harm Club Space. And it seems like Insomniac is prioritizing itself over Space, over basically everything.” 
 
Insomniac’s lawsuit alleges that before the company got involved in Club Space in 2019, CDD was “cruising in mediocrity” and operating the legendary Miami venue “on a whim without so much as an ownership interest in the very name and brand that the business relied upon for its success.” 
 
Insomniac, a company in which Live Nation has a 50% ownership stake, says it rescued CDD by buying a majority stake in Club Space in 2019, licensing these important IP rights and negotiating a long-term lease with the venue’s landlord. Club Space’s revenue increased by 700% over the next six years, according to the lawsuit.  
 
In the wake of this success, Insomniac and CDD decided to work together on a second Miami venue: Factory Town. That’s when the trouble allegedly began. Insomniac says it committed $40 million in funding to the Factory Town project, only for CDD to back out in 2024 and start making “outrageous demands” for millions of dollars and increased ownership percentages. (The person with an interest in Club Space refutes these claims, saying that Insomniac attempted to go behind the back of CDD and independently negotiate a long-term lease with the Factory Town landlord.)
 
“Tellingly, the CDD parties did not raise any credible misconduct or violations of contract, common law or statute as the basis for their demands,” reads the complaint. “Instead, CDD threatened to file a lawsuit containing a thirty-page smear campaign against Insomniac’s CEO and founder — Pasquale Rotella — along with a pre-planned press campaign to go with it.” 
 
Insomniac and CDD took their contract dispute to private mediation, which also quickly soured, according to the lawsuit. Insomniac alleges that CDD then falsely started telling industry players — such as a “reputable promoter” in Ibiza — that they had “won their lawsuit against Insomniac” and now had exclusive control over Factory Town.  
 
According to the lawsuit, CDD is now trying to wrest control of two upcoming Miami events — the Halloween party Hocus Pocus and programming during Art Basel Miami in early December — from Insomniac. The company says it has the contractual right to spearhead these events, but CDD has been selling tickets and making offers to talent without its approval.  
 
“What has become evidently clear is that CDD’s intentions throughout the dispute were never to find a resolution,” write Insomniac’s lawyers. “Instead, CDD has been working to bully Insomniac and push it out of the parties’ partnership.” 
 
Insomniac’s exact legal claims against CDD are redacted, as is much of the publicly filed complaint. But the company says it’s bringing the lawsuit to protect its operations at Club Space and Factory Town and get recourse for “millions of dollars in damages and irreparable harm to its business.”
 

Luke Combs once got a pretty special thank you gift from fellow country star Garth Brooks. On an episode of Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard, Combs recalled being surprised with a new vehicle after performing at an event that was honoring Brooks.

“This was last Christmas and my wife was out somewhere. I was feeding my son at the dinner table in our house, and I can see like the gate,” Combs said during the interview. “And my manager’s pulling up in this Bronco. It’s just the same as his, this blue — the Raptor package. And he would never show up at my house unannounced, so I was like, ‘Man, this is kind of weird that he would show up.’ So he walks in and I’m like, ‘Well, I guess he’s giving me a Christmas present…’ So he comes in and he throws me the keys to this thing and I’m like, ‘Are you giving me your car, dude?’ Like, ‘What is this?’

“He’s like, ‘No, man, Garth [Brooks] bought you this,’” Combs recalled. “I was like, ‘What?’” Combs says, at the time, he didn’t know Brooks very well. “This is like a $90,000 car, dude!” Combs said.

In 2022, Brooks was honored by the Nashville Songwriter Awards during a ceremony held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. During that event, Combs had taken the stage to honor Brooks with a performance of Brooks’ 1995 hit “Beaches of Cheyenne.”

“His team asked me to come and be one of the people that sang a song at this thing. Mine was actually ‘The Beaches of Cheyenne,’ which it was a hit, but it wasn’t like a superhit. So, he was like, ‘Yeah, this is for you coming and singing that one song.’ … I guess he had called my manager the following week, or his manager or something, [and asked] ‘What does Luke like?’ And he’s like ‘Oh, he likes cars…he has a Bronco and he likes Fords and stuff.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I’m gonna order him a Bronco Raptor.’ Well, I guess they were on hold or something, so it took like a year to get it in. So I didn’t talk to him from that night until that thing showed up at my house. Obviously, I called him and then I had it painted.”

“I called him and was like, ‘You didn’t have to do this, dude,’” Combs said, adding, “I drove 20 minutes and was there for less than an hour, dude. But he was like, ‘Yeah, but you could’ve went out and booked your own show that night and made this much money’ … and I was just kinda floored by that.”

Shortly after that event in September 2022, Brooks stated on Twitter (now X), “I never felt like a songwriter until tonight when Luke Combs sang the sh$@t out of Beaches of Cheyenne! Thank you @NSAIofficial for yet another unforgettable moment in my life and career!! love, g.”

Earlier this year, Brooks appeared at one of Luke Combs’s performances, joining Combs at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival to perform Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places.”

By now, you’ve heard about the five artists who are slated to receive Kennedy Center Honors in December – Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor, KISS, Sylvester Stallone and George Strait. At a press conference announcing the honorees, President Trump said he was “98% involved” in the selections and that he’ll host the televised ceremony on which these artists are saluted.

While Trump’s involvement will make many view these selections through a partisan lens, we’re asking you to put that aside and simply tell us what’s your favorite song associated with this year’s honorees. We give you two choices for each honoree.

For Crawford, the Tony-winning star of The Phantom of the Opera, you can choose between his two most famous solos in that show: “The Music of the Night” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”

For Gaynor, you can choose between her two top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: her discofied remake of The Jackson 5’s “Never Can Say Goodbye” and her Grammy-winning No. 1 smash “I Will Survive.”

For KISS, you can choose between their rock anthem “Rock and Roll All Nite” and their image-broadening ballad “Beth,” the band’s first top 10 hit on the Hot 100.

For Stallone, you can choose between Hot 100-topping hits from two of his Rocky movies: Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” Both songs were Oscar-nominated for best original song. (Fun Fact: Stallone is this year’s only Kennedy Center Honors recipient who is associated with two No. 1 Hot 100 hits.)

For Strait, you can choose between “Amarillo by Morning,” a 1983 hit that has long been a fan favorite, and “Check Yes or No,” one of his record 44 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.

What’s your favorite of these 10 songs associated with this year’s Kennedy Center Honorees? Vote!

JADE isn’t holding back when it comes to speaking up about her beliefs — and that includes calling out those who choose not to do the same about important issues.

In an interview with The Guardian, the former Little Mix star shared her belief that it’s impossible to separate pop music from social and political developments. In her case, that’s meant standing up for the LGBTQ community and advocating for Palestinian people who have been suffering for years amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, to name a couple of the causes she’s championed.

“I don’t think you can be a pop artist and cover your eyes,” she told the publication, before name-checking another star whose approach she disagrees with. “I saw Matty Healy say that he doesn’t want to be political, which I found disappointing.”

The piece comes a couple of months after The 1975 frontman made headlines for his comments during the band’s 2025 Glastonbury set. Though Healy has previously referenced politics in songs such as 2018’s “Love It If We Made It,” the rocker had told his crowd at the time, “We honestly don’t want our legacy to be one of politics … You can go out into the world and there’s loads of politics everywhere. We don’t need more politics. We need more love and friendship.”

JADE, however, thinks that Healy needs to re-examine why he’s able to make such a statement in the first place. “It’s very easy for someone who’s white and straight and very privileged to say that,” she added to the publication. “Good for you, hun!”

The now soloist is currently gearing up to release That’s Showbiz Baby!, her long-awaited debut album about the highs and lows of finding global fame on The X Factor all the way back in 2011. JADE’s brazenness concerning the issues she’s passionate about translates into the songs on the album; on one track, “IT girl,” she gets brutally honest about how restricted she felt by the music industry during her time with Little Mix.

“We all know what it’s about,” she recently told Billboard of the track. “It’s got a certain cheekiness — I’m a laugh-at-my-trauma kind of girl, and I really enjoy writing music that ruffles people’s feathers because that’s what art should do. Those are my experiences, and now that I’m on my own, there’s nothing holding me back from telling that truth.”

That’s Showbiz Baby! arrives Sept. 12.