PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Flower-covered floats, marching bands and equestrian units celebrated the New Year on a chilly but dry Monday as the 134th Rose Parade slipped through a gap in California's siege of drenching storms.
Celebrity birthdays for the week of Jan. 8-14:
Jan. 8: Former “Sunday Morning” host Charles Osgood is 90. Singer Shirley Bassey is 86. Game show host Bob Eubanks (“The Newlywed Game”) is 85. Country-gospel singer Cristy Lane is 83.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Anita Pointer, one of four sibling singers who earned pop success and critical acclaim as The Pointer Sisters, died Saturday at the age of 74, her publicist announced.
The Grammy winner passed away while she was with family members, publicist Roger Neal said in a statement.
One would have to go back hundreds of years to find a monarch who reigned longer than Queen Elizabeth II.
In her 70 years on the throne, she helped modernize the monarchy across decades of enormous social change, royal marriages and births, and family scandals.
LONDON (AP) — Queen guitarist Brian May is now a “Sir.”
May, who also has a doctorate in astrophysics and is an animal welfare advocate, received a knighthood Friday as part of the U.K.'s annual New Year's Honors list. The Queen guitarist, who was honored for services to music and charity, said he hopes the knighthood will give him “a little bit more clout.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Sonya Yoncheva, a soprano at the top of her profession, worries about classical music.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sherlock Holmes is finally free to the American public in 2023.
The long-running contested copyright dispute over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of a whipsmart detective — which has even ensnared Enola Holmes — will finally come to an end as the 1927 copyrights expiring Jan.
SAO PAULO (AP) — Whether or not Pelé scored almost 1,300 goals in his professional soccer career, all of his biographers agree that the three-time World Cup champion wrote more than 100 songs and sold more than 100,000 copies of one of his albums.
TORONTO (AP) — Ian Tyson, the Canadian folk singer who wrote the modern standard “Four Strong Winds” as one half of Ian & Sylvia and helped influence such future superstars as Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, died Thursday at age 89.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The family of rapper Theophilus London filed a missing persons report with Los Angeles police this week and are asking for the public's help, saying he hasn't been seen in months.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans music legend Walter “Wolfman” Washington, a cornerstone of the city's musical nightlife for decades, has died of cancer, just days after turning 79.
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) — A monthslong Toni Morrison tribute at Princeton University, where the Nobel laureate taught for 17 years, will range from music created and performed by Grammy-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant to a spring lecture series and three-day symposium featuring author Edwidge Danticat, among others.
Taylor Swift was up. Elon Musk was in, out, in and maybe out again. Tom Cruise was back. BTS stepped aside, and so did Serena Williams, and Tom Brady too — oops, scratch that.
But the slap? The slap was everywhere.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The chorus against Ticketmaster's contentious concert pricing practices is growing, numbering among them Zach Bryan and friends.
The country music artist dropped a live album, “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster,” on Sunday.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Megan Thee Stallion is a three-time Grammy winner and hip-hop superstar, but her success wasn't enough to shield the 27-year-old artist from the power of widespread misinformation and social media vitriol leveled against her after she was shot in 2020.
NEW YORK (AP) — Thom Bell, the Grammy-winning producer, writer and arranger who helped perfect the “Sound of Philadelphia” of the 1970s with the inventive, orchestral settings of such hits as the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” and the Stylistics’ “Betcha by Golly, Wow,” has died at age 79.
Whitney Houston’s voice was one of a kind and the creative team behind a new big-budget biopic of the singer had no choice but to agree.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Chance the Rapper visited West Africa earlier this year, he initially thought his trip with fellow Chicago hip-hop artist Vic Mensa would be just another vacation getaway.
Instead, the Grammy winner connected with Mensa’s father’s family in Ghana and other natives from the Motherland on a deeper level.
LONDON (AP) — Musician Terry Hall, who helped create some of the defining sounds of post-punk Britain as lead singer of The Specials, has died. He was 63.
The band announced late Monday that Hall had died after a brief illness.
Shirley Ann Watts, a former art student and prominent breeder of Arabian horses who met drummer Charlie Watts well before he joined the Rolling Stones and with him formed one of rock's most enduring marriages, has died.
NEW YORK (AP) — To get a sense of Janelle Monáe’s powers of transformation, look no further than her Instagram photos of past Halloweens. Monáe doesn’t just throw something on.
“Herbert” by Ab-Soul (Top Dawg Entertainment)
Ab-Soul’s “Herbert" is peppered with messages — a voicemail from his praying grandma, snippets of encouragement from his inner circle and so on. But it’s the rapper’s reflections on himself and his life that define his latest project, making it the lauded lyricist’s most beautifully vulnerable set yet.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— At long last, “Top Gun: Maverick” is coming to a streaming hub.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Megan Thee Stallion 's former close friend and assistant said in a recorded interview played for jurors Friday that she saw rapper Tory Lanez fire a gun at Megan's feet.
NEW YORK (AP) — Tobe Nwigwe didn’t expect to be nominated for best new artist after he submitted his music to the Grammys, but he’s learned to embrace the unexpected.
“I felt like it was going to add to our underdog story,” explained the Houston emcee.
LONDON (AP) — Three people remained hospitalized in critical condition on Friday after hundreds of people forced their way into a London concert venue during a performance by Nigerian Afrobeats star Asake.
NEW YORK (AP) — Ryan Seacrest will usher in 2023 on “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” from Times Square, with iconic bands from the 1980s and 1990s as well as a member of BTS and a TikTok sensation.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The burly, bearded men belting out holiday classics have made the night before Christmas more than just a time this year to watch the Philadelphia Eagles try and slay the competition.
NEW YORK (AP) — Unemployment didn't last long for Trevor Noah — he's hosting the Grammy Awards in early 2023.
The comedian who recently left his post as host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central has been asked to be master of ceremonies on Feb.
Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the longtime and beloved dancing DJ on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and a former contestant on “So You Think You Can Dance,” has died at the age of 40.
“It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to share my husband Stephen has left us,” his wife Allison Holker Boss said in a statement to People magazine.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president made a public request Wednesday to Puerto Rican reggaeton star Bad Bunny to play a free concert in Mexico City, to make up for a fake ticket scandal that left thousands frustrated outside his sold-out appearance Friday.
ATLANTA (AP) — Rapper Gunna, who was arrested earlier this year along with fellow rapper Young Thug and more than two dozen other people, on Wednesday pleaded guilty in Atlanta to a racketeering conspiracy charge, according to a statement released by his attorneys.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Megan Thee Stallion took the stand in a Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday and told jurors that rapper Tory Lanez fired five shots at her feet, yelled at her to dance and wounded her as she tried to walk away from him in the Hollywood Hills more than two years ago.
Ten of the best albums of the year, as selected by The Associated Press entertainment journalists.
BEYONCÉ, “RENAISSANCE”
Few would be shocked that Beyoncé's “Renaissance” would makes our top albums list, but just because it’s low hanging fruit doesn’t negate how delicious it is.
Ten of the best songs of the year, as selected by Associated Press entertainment journalists.
STEVE LACY, “BAD HABIT”
It took nearly three months, but Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart and has continued to thrive.
NEW YORK (AP) — Dusting off old musical instruments, appreciating the outdoors more meaningfully, dumping the hair dye and letting the gray fly forever.
The pandemic disrupted our traditions, practices and pursuits, how we mark milestones, what we do with our time, what's important in routines.
NEW YORK (AP) — We first see Juliet in the Capulet tomb, devastated. She's wakes up to see her Romeo dead. But before she plunges a dagger into her heart, she starts ... singing. What comes out is, improbably, a Britney Spears hit.
“Live From Finsbury Park" and “Seventeen Going Under Deluxe Edition" by Sam Fender (Geffen)
It's an interesting play to release a live album just as you're emerging as an artist of arena rock stature.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music and video game platforms this week.
MOVIES
— In “The Banshees of Inisherin,” director Martin McDonagh reteams with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, the stars of the playwright’s feature debut, 2008′s “In Bruges.” The results are just as good.
Angelo Badalamenti, the composer best known for creating otherworldly scores for many David Lynch productions, from “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” to “Mulholland Drive,” has died. He was 85.
He died of natural causes on Sunday, his family said in a statement.
Celebrity birthdays for the week of Dec. 18-24:
Dec. 18: Guitarist Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones is 79. Director Steven Spielberg is 76. Movie critic Leonard Maltin is 72. Guitarist Elliot Easton of The Cars is 69.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Nominees for the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards, which were announced Monday by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
ROME (AP) — Two European aid groups docked their rescue vessels in Italian ports on Sunday and some 500 would-be refugees disembarked, even as the government insisted it wasn’t backing down on its hard line against migrant smuggling operations from North Africa.