Halsey Stardust: Singer dons drag for latest album countdown impersonation

Columbia Records

For the last few days, Halsey has been counting down to her new album, The Great Impersonator, by dressing up as various music icons, each of whom she credits with inspiring a different track on the album. After dressing like Dolly Parton, PJ Harvey, Kate Bush and Cher, Halsey donned drag for her Oct. 11 impersonation.

Halsey dressed like David Bowie, mimicking a photo shoot in which the late rock icon posed wearing a yellow suit, with red hair in a quasi-pompadour, a cigarette between his lips. Halsey copied every detail, right down to the fact that Bowie had two different colored eyes.

In her caption, Halsey noted that Bowie was one of the O.G. great impersonators of music, having created various personas throughout his storied career.

“Ziggy Stardust, The Starman, The Thin White Duke, The Picasso of Pop, Major Tom, The Master of Reinvention and The Chameleon of Rock… DAVID BOWIE,” she wrote. She also said the song that Bowie inspired is called “Darwinism.”

And for any fans who are wondering who’s been in charge of creating the makeup that’s been transforming Halsey into all these icons, she wrote on X, “It’s me.”

Halsey teased in her Instagram Story that she’s “thinking about doing some events during album release week,” asking fans to sign up for her Text/What’s App group to be notified of said events before anyone else. The Great Impersonator is out Oct. 25.

Billie Eilish isn’t threatened by other pop girls: “I’m so happy for these b******”

Disney/Randy Holmes

Billie Eilish is only 22, but at this point she’s a music industry veteran, even if she doesn’t entirely feel like an adult.

“I’m finding I’m having kind of a hard, weird time being in my 20s,” she tells the Los Angeles Times. “I just didn’t ever think about how I wouldn’t be the youngest person in the room forever. At the same time, fame really stunts you. So I find myself acting like a kid sometimes because I’m like, ‘Yeah, I got frozen in time.'”

“I’m a different person – I just didn’t really grow,” she adds. “I didn’t really become an adult.”

That may be true, but Billie is certainly mature enough not to feel threatened by the other pop girls who’ve broken through this year: Chappell Roan, Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter. Asked about that by the paper, she says, “Are you kidding me? I’m so happy for these b******.”

“It’s a crazy world when you get to the level they’re experiencing right now, and they’re doing great,” she adds. “Fans are drawn to them because they’re f****** awesome.”

And they’re all fans of each other, too. After all, Charli invited Billie to jump on the remix of “Guess.” Speaking to the Times, Charli says, “Billie knows herself – that’s rare. The music we make is very different, but I think we approach writing in a really similar way in that there’s a level of honesty and directness.”

“She’s only doing something if she truly feels it,” the “Apple” singer adds. “I respect that, and that’s a hard quality to hold onto when you’re being pulled in a million different directions.”

Coldplay earns 10th #1 UK album with ’Moon Music’

Parlophone Records/Atlantic

Coldplay keeps their streak of #1 albums across the pond going with Moon Music.

The latest effort from Chris Martin and company debuts at the top of the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart, giving them 10 straight number ones in their home country, dating back to their 2000 debut, Parachutes.

With a total of 237,000 chart units, Moon Music earns the biggest week for a British artist since Adele‘s 30, which was released in 2021. It also marks the second-biggest Official Albums Chart debut for any artist of 2024, behind only Taylor Swift‘s The Tortured Poets Department.

Moon Music, Coldplay’s 10th album, was released Oct. 4. It includes the lead single “feelslikeimfallinginlove.”

Coldplay will launch a U.S. tour in support of Moon Music in May 2025.

‘Freakier Friday’ gets summer 2025 release date

Andrew Eccles/Walt Disney Enterprises

Freakier Friday has a release date.

On Friday, Walt Disney Studios announced that the highly anticipated sequel to Freaky Friday will arrive in theaters on Aug. 8, 2025.

Disney also shared an image from the film of Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as Tess and Anna Coleman in what appears to be a scene of them finding out that they’ve switched bodies, as they did in the first film.

The Freaky Friday sequel was announced in June as filming for the project had begun. At the time, Disney released a fun photo of Curtis and Lohan sitting outside each other’s trailers on set.

In August at D23 in Anaheim, California, the duo announced that Freakier Friday would be the official title for the film.

They told Good Morning America in an interview that the sequel is “freakier.”

“The switches, the music, comedy,” Lohan said.

“The emotion,” Curtis added. “You now have a grandparent and a grandchild. We can’t tell you much, but Lindsay has her own 15-year-old in the movie, which makes me, then, the grandma. So there’s just more emotion.”

Curtis also described the film as a “love letter to mommies.”

“It’s a love letter to mommies and daughters and families,” Curtis said. “This is a love letter to them to just being mothers and the beauty of it all.”

In addition to Curtis and Lohan, Chad Michael Murray will return as Jake, who was Anna Coleman’s crush in the first film.

Mark Harmon, Christina Vidal, Haley Hudson, Lucille Soong, Stephen Tobolowsky and Rosalind Chao will also return in the film.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

“Art the Clown ruins Christmas”: Director Damien Leone talks just-opened ‘Terrifier 3’

ABC Audio

The third film in the growing Terrifier slasher series is now in theaters.

The franchise that centers on masked killer Art the Clown had humble beginnings: its 2018 original was made for $34,000, but went on to earn 10 times that.

Director Damien Leone tells ABC Audio he hoped to raise $50,000 for a sequel, and fans on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo ponied up a quarter of a million dollars instead. The 2022 film was a smash, making nearly $16 million.

“Every time I make something new with this character, the fan base grows just a little more,” Leone tells ABC Audio. “And we were always surprised with just how much it has grown.”

“This time,” Leone adds with a laugh, “Art the Clown ruins Christmas.”

The lifelong horror fan explains he has always loved the “Christmas-horror subgenre,” adding, “To me, there’s nothing creepier and cozier than a maniac dressed as Santa Claus trying to break into your house on Christmas and chop you up with an ax.”

Admitting the evil Santa Claus “trope has been done a million times,” the filmmaker adds, “now that I could put Art the Clown in a maniac Santa Claus getup, it makes the ‘maniac Santa Claus’ fresh, and it makes Art the Clown fresh.”

Leone notes, “I always say, as extreme as these movies are and as violent as they are, we always remind the audience, especially with this character, that this should be a fun experience. … It’s a fun roller-coaster ride that you shouldn’t take too seriously.”

Again starring David Howard Thornton as Art, Terrifier 3 also stars Lauren LaVera, Chris Jericho and The Lost Boys vet Jason Patric.

Sabrina Carpenter’s got a “Taste” for #1, makes UK chart history

Courtesy Sabrina Carpenter

Sabrina Carpenter‘s got a real “Taste” for the #1 spot.

As her song “Taste” scored a seventh straight week on top of the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart, the Short n’ Sweet star has made history: She’s now the female artist with the most weeks ever at #1 in a single year.

Sabrina has spent a total of 19 weeks on top of that chart in 2024: seven with “Taste,” seven with “Espresso” and five with “Please Please Please.”

Sabrina takes over the record from the late Olivia Newton-John, who spent 16 weeks on top in 1978. Among all artists, she’s tied with Ed Sheeran, who in 2021 spent 19 weeks on top with four different songs.

“Taste” is also tied for the title of the U.K.’s longest-running #1 of the year with Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.”

According to Page Six, when Sabrina sang “Espresso” at the Time100 Next Gala on Oct. 9, she told the crowd, “If you’re sick of it, I’m sorry. If not, sing along!”

Companies weighing how to delete now-defunct Redbox’s DVD vending machines

A Redbox machine in 2009 – Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The DVD rental company Redbox is no more — but unfortunately, its more than 20,000 DVD vending machines still are, and that’s causing a pricey problem for the stores in front of which they’re parked.

At issue: The 890-pound, movies-stuffed boxes aren’t easy to remove.

The Wall Street Journal reports the 24,000 machines that can still be found in front of Walgreens, 7-Elevens and myriad other stores across the country have become a headache. Not only are they heavy, but in many cases, they’re bolted to the concrete and hard-wired into the store’s electricity. They also contain coolant that has to be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

The paper reports that Walgreens, for example, is still shelling out $184,000 a month to keep its nearly 5,400 machines powered up — even though you can’t rent anything from them — because they’re connected to their stores’ power supply.

The stores also need permission from the bankruptcy court to spend hundreds of dollars to have them disconnected and carted off.

Once they are disconnected, what to do? In most cases, the machines are being scrapped. However, one enterprising person is ditching the DVDs and figuring out how to dispense cannabis from it.

Another got lucky and struck a deal with someone hired to cart one of the boxes off. Nineteen-year-old Jacob Helton plans to donate its 500 movies and use the machine to display his own collection. “I wanted a Redbox machine because I felt like Redbox is important in the history of American media,” he says. “Its collapse marks the end of the video rental era.”

The Weeknd’s record Spotify monthly listener number gets even bigger

XO/Republic

The Weeknd‘s new music has increased his record number of Spotify monthly listeners to never-before-seen heights.

The Canadian star became the first artist to reach 100 million monthly listeners on the platform in February 2023, and he’s held the record ever since then, except for one month when Billie Eilish took over. But now he boasts more than 120.5 million monthly listeners.

That puts him way ahead of the next artist on the list: Bruno Mars, who has over 109 million. Billie is now third, with just under 108 million listeners, followed by Lady Gaga with 105 million and Taylor Swift with 93 million monthly listeners.

The Weeknd’s latest single, “Timeless,” produced by Pharrell Williams, debuted at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. It and his other release, “Dancing in the Flames,” are from his eagerly anticipated new album Hurry Up Tomorrow, which currently does not have a release date.

Rihanna shares Halloween plans: “I built up the nerve to do trick or treating”

DAMEBK/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

You wouldn’t think that Rihanna — a woman who’s performed for an audience of billions at the Super Bowl and regularly poses in skimpy outfits — would lack the courage to do anything, but it turns out that celebrating Halloween is something she had to psych herself up for.

Speaking to E!, Rihanna says, “I built up the nerve to do trick or treating at strangers’ houses. I’m doing the whole thing. I’m actually going to learn to bake cookies, because I want to make ghost cookies. If I get through that, I’ll feel like I won for October.”

As for her costume, Rihanna says, “I want to be a cute little ghost. I really want to do something. I think that’s the easiest thing. I could literally make that costume.” She didn’t mention what her sons RZA and Riot would be for Halloween, though.

And after Halloween, Rihanna, her partner, A$AP Rocky, and the kids will visit family. She tells E!, “Next is Thanksgiving with my in-laws, because that’s not a thing in Barbados. And then Christmas is a very, very big thing for us. So we’re going to do it out — all the things.”

“Motherhood, wifehood-ish, just being a homebody — I love it,” she tells E! “I love to be a homemaker. I just like to be exciting and celebrate things. I’m trying to build new traditions for our little family that we built.”

Maybe one of those traditions could be releasing a new album more frequently than once a decade?

Hugh Jackman takes to Instagram to help in the search for missing Broadway dancer

Bruce Glikas/Getty Images

Two-time Tony winner Hugh Jackman is using his social media presence to help in the search for a fellow Broadway veteran.

According to ABC News’ South Carolina affiliate WOLO-TV, 28-year-old Hamilton dancer Zelig Williams was last seen on Oct. 3, according to his family, who reported him missing.

In an Instagram Story, Jackman posted a photo of Williams, noting, “Please, if anyone has information as to the whereabouts of Zelig Williams, please reach out to the local authorities.”

He continued, “ZELIG we love you and are praying for your safe return. Please pass this message on!!!”

According to the authorities, the dancer was last seen driving in the area of the Congaree State Park in South Carolina; officials say his vehicle was later discovered near the 500-mile-long Palmetto Trail.

His family says it is out of character for Williams to not contact them; a statement from the Richland County Sheriff’s Office says a family member received an SOS message from his phone the day he was last seen.

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