In the six years since a teenage gunman murdered 14 students and three faculty members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the school’s bullet-pocked freshman wing has been documented by … Click to Continue »
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Spring is here! With a new season comes a lighter color scheme, and switching up nail color is an easy way to change your aesthetic for the new season.
Whether you’re the type to change your nails as often as your outfits, a casual collector who can’t turn down a sweet deal on nail polish, or anyone searching for shade inspiration, we’ve put together a list of nail polishes that are perfect for spring and summer.
Below, find a roundup of pastels, neutrals and a few bolder colors to help your nails transition from one season to the next.
Essie expressie, Quick-Dry Nail Polish, 8-Free Vegan, Bright Lilac, Sk8 With Destiny, 0.33 fl oz
When it comes to pastels, you can’t go wrong with lilac. This quick-dry nail polish from Essie’s Expressie collection blends lilac polish with blue undertones and a cream finish. The full collection features 10 different colors including orange, yellow, burgundy, blue, pink and green.
Londontown Amalfi Love Nail Polish
Feeling blue? Lighter blues are said to evoke feelings of tranquility. This gorgeous, ocean-blue shade of long-wear, chip-resistant, fast drying, high-gloss nail enamel will turn heads. And according to hundreds of customer reviews, you’ll love the shade.
Go green for spring! Tyler, the Creator’s Gold le FLEUR* nail polishes is available in blonde, pink and black, but we’re partial to the shade “Jade” for spring.
Pastel pink polish good to have in your collection, and not just for spring. Essie’s nail polish in dozens of colors, including multiple shades of pink.
Keep is neutral for spring. Similar to pastel pink, neutral shades can be worn all year long.
Crushin’ on coral? If you want to get a little bold with your color choice, coral is a fun and flirty shade for spring and summer.
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Nail Polish, Streak-Free, Shiny Finish, Long-Lasting Nail Color, Daisy Dukes
Don’t knock a classic. Sally Hansen’s Xtreme Wear polish is an affordable, long-wear nail paint with a decent shade range. And the bright yellow will help you bring a little sunshine to your fingertips this spring.
Turquoise brings the good vibes. Whether you’re prepping for spring or summer, this stunning colors will Tk.
Some people like to tone it down for spring but there’s no need to wait until summer to dip into the brighter side of the color wheel. This OPI nail lacquer is a top seller in the shade Strawberry Margarita, and 16% off during Amazon’s Big Spring Sale.
On Kenny Chesney‘s new studio album Born, out today (March 22) via Blue Chair Records/Warner Music Nashville, he continues his reputation for recording songs that both elevate the spirit and cut to the bone.
Landing nearly four years after his 2020 album Here and Now, Chesney’s latest revels in both taking risks and taking in every moment life gives you. Chesney included more songs than ever on his new project, clocking in at 15 tracks, each one mining universal truths and detailing yearnings for love, freedom and connection.
He works once again with his longtime producer Buddy Cannon, crafting an album that is a patchwork of songs, musical commemorations of a myriad of life moments, drawing on spontaneous road trips and dive-bars filled with the scent of ocean breezes, as well as high-octane instances of embracing wide-open independence, and tempered by more contemplative spaces accepting how time refines lives, both healing hurts and spilling heartbreaks, etching memories firmly into consciousness. Some songs, such as “Take Her Home,” touch on lasting love, while “Guilty Pleasure” centers on passion in the moment. A feeling of gratitude for the full spectrum of life courses through the album.
“There was no theme we’re singing about that holds it together,” the eight-time entertainer of the year winner said in a statement regarding the album. “But if you listen to all 15 songs, you’ll get the high energy fun, chasing adventures, don’t let people get you down piece and you’ll get the more reflective thinking about someone who’s died, the person you know you shouldn’t call emotions that have always been in the music, too.”
Perhaps a line in one of the album’s tracks, “Few Good Stories,” sums it up best: “When it’s all said and done, I’ll know I lived it well If I ain’t got nothing but a few good stories to tell.”
Here’s a look at Billboard‘s ranking of the album’s 15 tracks:
Several assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing at least 40 people, injuring more than 100 and setting fire to the venue in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media, which couldn’t be independently verified. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attackers after the raid, which state investigators were investigating as terrorism.
The attack, which left the concert hall in flames with a collapsing roof, was the deadliest in Russia in years and came as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid a “huge tragedy.”
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The Kremlin said Putin was informed minutes after the assailants burst into Crocus City Hall, a large music venue on Moscow’s western edge that can accommodate 6,200 people.
The attack took place as crowds gathered for a performance by the Russian rock band Picnic. As Russia’s Federal Security Service reported 40 dead and over 100 injured, some Russian news reports suggested that more could have been trapped by the blaze that erupted after the assailants threw explosives. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured — 115 of them hospitalized, including five children.
Video showed the building on fire, with a huge cloud of smoke rising through the night sky. The street was lit up by the blinking blue lights of dozens of firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, as fire helicopters buzzed overhead to dump water on the blaze that took hours to contain.
The prosecutor’s office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired on concertgoers.
Repeated volleys of gunfire could be heard in videos posted by Russian media and on Telegram channels. One showed two men with rifles moving through the venue. Another showed a man in the auditorium saying the assailants had set it on fire, as gunshots rang out incessantly in the background.
Others showed up to four attackers, armed with assault rifles and wearing caps, shooting screaming people at point-blank range.
Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian news outlets suggested the assailants fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Reports said police patrols were looking for several vehicles the attackers could have used to escape.
In a statement posted by its Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State group said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk on Moscow’s outskirts, killing and wounding hundreds. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.
Noting that the IS statement cast its claim as an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “striking wherever they can as part of a global ‘fight the infidels and apostates everywhere.’”
On March 7, Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. A few days earlier, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia in Russia’s volatile Caucasus region.
It was not clear why the group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, would stage an attack in Russia at this time. Over the years, the extremist group recruited fighters from the former Soviet Union who fought for the group in Syria and Iraq and has claimed several past attacks in the Caucasus and other Russian regions.
As the blaze raged, statements of outrage, shock and support for those affected streamed in from around the world.
Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how authorities, who relentlessly surveil and pressure Kremlin critics, failed to identify the threat and prevent the attack.
Russian officials said security has been tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor canceled all mass gatherings, and theaters and museums shut for the weekend. Other Russian regions also tightened security.
The Kremlin didn’t immediately blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to accuse Ukraine and called for ramping up strikes. Hours before the attack, the Russian military l aunched a sweeping barrage on Ukraine’s power system, crippling the country’s biggest hydroelectric plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without electricity.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said that if Ukraine involvement in the attack is proven, all those involved “must be tracked down and killed without mercy, including officials of the state that committed such outrage.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukraine involvement.
“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”
John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said that he couldn’t yet speak about the details but “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”
“Our thoughts are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack,” Kirby said.
The attack followed a statement earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged Americans to avoid crowded places in the Russian capital in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings, including concerts. The warning, issued hours after Russia’s top security agency said it busted a cell of the Islamic State group preparing an attack on a synagogue, was repeated by several other Western embassies.
Asked about the embassy’s March 7 notice, Kirby referred the question to the State Department, adding: “I don’t think that was related to this specific attack.”
Responding to a question about whether Washington had any prior information about the assault, Kirby responded: “I’m not aware of any advance knowledge that we had of this terrible attack.”
Putin, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in this week’s presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “All that resembles open blackmail and an attempt to frighten and destabilize our society,” he said earlier this week.
Russia was shaken by a series of deadly terror attacks in the early 2000s during the fighting with separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.
In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters died, most of them from effects of narcotic gas Russian forces use to subdue the attackers.
And in September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia taking hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were killed.
Music stocks’ performance this week was a microcosm of the entertainment industry this decade, with streaming companies making up the top four performers while legacy broadcasting stocks finished at the bottom of the heap.
Chinese music streaming company Tencent Music Entertainment rose 6.0% to $10.95 following the company’s encouraging full-year earnings results on Tuesday (Mar. 19). Although total revenue declined 2.1%, the online music part of the business is booming. Subscription revenue from QQ Music, Kuwo Music and Kugou Music increased 39.1% to $1.7 billion while the number of subscribers grew by 18.2 million to 106.7 million. Tencent Music shares reached a 52-week high of $11.80 on Thursday (Mar. 21) but dropped 4% on Friday (Mar. 22) following news that Zhenyu Xie, president/chief technology officer, tendered his resignation. Xie will be replaced on the board of directors by CFO Shirley Hu.
Spotify gained 3.9% to $264.95, bringing its year-to-date improvement to 41.0%. On Tuesday, the streaming company released its fourth annual Loud & Clear report, a breakdown of the prior year’s royalty payouts. In 2023, the number of artists who received at least $10,000 from Spotify increased 16% to 66,000 — 2.7 times more than the number who received that much in 2017. The number of artists who earned $1 million or more from Spotify rose 18% to 1,250.
Two smaller companies posted even larger gains. Anghami shares rocketed 56.8% to $1.74 this week and reached as high as $2.20 after a regulatory filing revealed that Saudi media company MBC Group had amassed nearly a 14% stake in the Abu Dhabi-based music streamer. The investment helped give Anghami some breathing room after the Nasdaq warned in October that the stock faced delisting for closing under $1 for the prior 30 days. Anghami closed below $1 from Feb. 1 to Mar. 7 but has closed above $1 since Mar. 15.
LiveOne jumped 10.9% to $2.04 after announcing on Monday (Mar. 18) that it expects record quarterly revenue with the help of increased Tesla sales, 30 new podcasts and more than $2 million in monthly recurring revenue from clients in its B2B streaming business. Additionally, the company revealed that it repurchased $250,000 worth of stock in the previous 30 days and extinguished $3 million of payables of PodcastOne, the podcast company it spun off in September 2023.
Streaming companies’ gains helped the Billboard Global Music Index rise 1.3% to a record 1,719.66 this week, breaking a two-week skid and topping the previous record of 1,715.81 set the week ended Mar. 1. The 20-company index had an even number of winners and losers.
Major indexes rose to new heights after the U.S. Federal Reserve indicated the central bank still expected three interest rate cuts in 2024 despite a recent increase in inflation. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 2.9% to 16,428.82, a new closing high, and reached an intraday high on Thursday. The S&P 500 finished the week up 2.3% to 5,234.18, even after falling 0.1% on Friday. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 gained 2.6% to 7,930.92. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index rose 3.1% to 2,748.56. China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.2% to 3,048.03.
Broadcasters were at the opposite end of the spectrum. The index’s biggest decliner was iHeartMedia, which fell 7.7% to $1.91. After a sluggish year for national advertising, iHeartMedia executives have predicted 2024 will be “a recovery year” and first-quarter revenue decline will be less severe than previous quarters. Maybe so, but investors have dropped its stock 28.5% year to date.
Two other radio companies were among the bottom four stocks. Cumulus Media shares fell 6.6% to $3.41 and are down 35.9% in the first 12 weeks of the year. Cumulus’ revenue was down 11.4% in 2023, and CEO Mary Berner warned investors in February that “choppy” ad demand limited its ability to forecast in 2024.
SiriusXM, which is optimistic about its redesigned streaming app, dropped 4.2% to $3.88 and has fallen 29.1% this year. Liberty Media, which owns 84% of SiriusXM’s outstanding shares, plans to merge the SiriusXM stock with the Liberty SiriusXM track stock later this year.
Today, Billboard, in partnership with Honda, announced the release of a new song from Grammy Nominee Davido and internationally acclaimed songbird Lila Iké titled “Flex My Soul.” The release celebrates the 5-year anniversary of Billboard and Honda’s collaboration on Honda Stage, the music platform offering unique, behind-the-music storytelling and celebrating the journeys of established and up-and-coming artists.
In partnership with Billboard, Honda Stage provides breakthrough and established artists a platform to share their stories and connect with music fans through docu-style video content. The latest, “Flex My Soul,”is inspired by living in the moment, chasing your dreams, and acknowledging life’s blessings.
Davido is a Nigerian singer, songwriter, and record producer regarded as one of the most important Afrobeat artists of the 21st century. Lila Iké is a Jamaican-born songstress known for her distinctive delivery, old-school sensibilities, and modern-day swagger with her unique fusion of contemporary reggae with soul, hip-hop, and dancehall elements.
“The first time I heard this song and heard what Davido was saying, I was inspired to speak on the topic,” said Lila Iké. “To me, the song speaks about being happy, living your dream, and staying positive while celebrating life with people you care about. I decided to continue on that wavelength of feeling blessed, driven, and in a celebratory spirit for all the blessings that have been manifesting in my life.”
Honda Stage celebrates music’s breakout stars on the verge of global notoriety. Each featured Honda Stage artist has a unique story hinged on their dreams to succeed in the industry and their determination to make their dreams a reality. Past Honda Stage featured artists, in partnership with Billboard, include Roaslía, Bad Bunny, Natti Natasha, Normani, and many others.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled about our partnership with Honda,” says Dana Droppo, Billboard’s Chief Brand Officer. Together, we’ve pioneered new avenues of creativity to drive innovative content that resonates with music audiences worldwide.”
The State Department flew more than 60 U.S. citizens trapped in Haiti into Miami International Airport on Thursday, the second evacuation flight to South Florida this week as extreme gang … Click to Continue »
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