Chynna Phillips and J.R. Martinez tie for top score on season 13 premiere. By Kelley L. Carter Kristin Cavallari Photo: ABC Networks In a brand-new ballroom, the 13th season of “Dancing With the Stars” kicked off Monday night (September 19). The newest stars walked down a new, elegant series of stars to the ballroom and waved at the crowd in the ornate — and significantly larger — ballroom and shimmied as live singers hummed the reality-show competition’s now-familiar theme song. The mix of reality stars, athletes, actors, TV journalists and talk-show hosts took to the dance floor to attempt to impress the judges and legions of TV fans who will be tuning in to vote to keep them dancing week-after-week. To the scores! Ron Artest and Peta Murgatroyd A newly blond Artest (though we may soon be calling him Metta World Peace, the name he legally adopted last week) failed to impress the judges. “It’s a new season, we’ve got a new set, but it’s the same old shimmying-about stuff,” head judge Len Goodman told the Lakers star. “Your footwork was atrocious. It was all sizzle, no sausage. It was … not my cup of tea.” His comments were booed by the audience (Artest’s teammate Lamar Odom was in the audience with wife Khlo
JT ‘might write songs about putting things in boxes,’ but ‘he … definitely doesn’t make a habit of taking any photos of them,’ co-stars’ statement reads. By Jocelyn Vena Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in “Friends With Benefits” Photo: Glen Wilson/ Sony Pictures Last week, the Internet was buzzing with news that nude photos of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis had leaked. Although the reportedly scandalous four photos never actually hit the Net, one was said to feature Kunis in a bathtub, while Timberlake appeared in another two. The “Friends With Benefits” co-stars, however, are laughing it all off. “At no time did Mr. Timberlake and Ms. Kunis exchange inappropriate texts or emails. … The insistence that there is any inappropriate correspondence between the two parties is entirely false, ” a lengthy statement to People reads. The co-stars go on to add, “We would like to confirm that the photo addressed in the media of Ms. Kunis was in fact not from any phone but from an inactive email account that has not existed in three years. In regards to the other photos in question, they were never exchanged between the two parties.” Like Scarlett Johansson, whose private nude pics recently hit the Net, the actors are working with authorities to nail down the hackers who gained possession of their personal photos. But Kunis and Timberlake also showed they have a sense of humor, writing, “In closing, Mr. Timberlake would like us to make it clear that while he might write songs about putting things in boxes, he never has and definitely doesn’t make a habit of taking any photos of them and sending them,” referring to Timberlake ‘s hit “Saturday Night Live” sketch “D— in a Box.” Ms. Kunis would like us to add that while she is a fan of the song, she does not have nor has ever had photos of any male parts in her possession.” In the 2006 “SNL” sketch, Justin joins castmember Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island crew for a song about giving their loved ones the gift of “themselves” for the holidays. Related Artists Justin Timberlake
Cee Lo Green, Chiddy Bang and many others also featured at weekend’s Austin City Limits Festival. By Gil Kaufman Kanye West performs at ACL on Friday Photo: Flanigan/ Getty Images AUSTIN, Texas — It was a weekend of epic beginnings and endings at the 10th annual Austin City Limits Festival, among them: Kanye West shut the lid on the operatic My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy tour (http://www.mtv.com/news/articles//kanye-west-essence-festival-performance.jhtml), Coldplay played one of the final American festival dates in the run-up to the release next month of Mylo Xyloto and perhaps most importantly for locals, Texans danced in ecstasy as the worst drought in Lone Star history got a brief reprieve thanks to some intermittent showers. Yes, there were three days of amazing music, ranging from folk to house, blues, rock, soul and hip-hop, but along with crowd-pleasing headline sets from such legends as Stevie Wonder and rockers My Morning Jacket and festival-closers Arcade Fire , what a lot of people will remember is the blessed rain. Friday The weekend got kicked off in style on Friday with electro rapper Theophilus London , who charmed the early afternoon crowd with the rolling pop of “Why Even Try,” the hard-spitting “Last Name London” and a brand-new trunk-rattler, “Big Spender.” Most fans show up to a festival like ACL looking to rock, but fey British ambient/dubstep king James Blake made them take a chill pill, sitting at his electric piano and keyboards and crooning wordless sounds amid droney synth washes and minimal, machine beats. Just after parched, wildfire-licked Austin got its first taste of rain in as long as anyone can remember, the Smith Westerns played some mellow humidity rock, with just enough energy to make you sway and bounce so a trickle of perspiration drips down your back during tunes like “End of the Night.” Outkast’s Big Boi had no such problem, fronting a 10-piece ATL soul rap revue that got asses shaking to “Rosa Parks,” a Parliament-Funkadelic-thick “Ms. Jackson,” and the triple-time sprints of “Ghetto Musick” and “B.O.B.” A short time later, dynamic duo Nas and Damian Marley wound up their main-stage set with a dancehall-spiced take on papa Bob’s iconic “Could You Be Loved,” which spread some loving vibes as the sun finally began to set. And with a psychedelic, pulsing cityscape backdrop, DJ Pretty Lights dropped some gut-shaking deep bass samples, mixing in stoned reggae beats and looped blues wailing for a soul-soothing set of head-bobbing “dance” music you didn’t have to sweat to. Kanye didn’t disappoint either, holding down the stage during all three parts of his relationship power-play ballet. He commanded the dramatically lit stage for 90 minutes, tearing through a roster of hits including “Runaway,” “Power,” “Jesus Walks,” “Monster,” Flashing Lights” and “Good Life,” occasionally joined by a troupe of ballet dancers, but mostly stalking the boards alone. Saturday Day two dawned hazy and new wave with New York band Twin Shadow’s guitar-heavy New Romantic psychedelia. VMA performers Young the Giant got an extra dose of energy from above when the skies opened up for a brief, torrential sun storm, making the most of it by pumping out their radio-friendly, impassioned rockers “Guns Out” and “Cough Syrup” to the soaked audience’s delight. Los Angeles’ Fitz and the Tantrums kept the sweaty audience raindancing during such Motown-esque jams as “Rich Girls” and “Don’t Gotta Work It Out,” and the gut-quaking bass of wildly popular DJ Skrillex sounded like thunder across the way, as he shouted along to the party-pumping refrain of his signature tune, “My Name Is Skrillex,” while mixing in bits of Robyn and Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock. Cee Lo Green, known for his outrageous stage costumes, kept it tame, dressing down in a black Adidas track suit with red piping while his all-female band modeled skintight red jumpsuits and minidresses. He didn’t dial down the funk, though, blasting through “Bright Lights, Big City” and “Freak” as the setting sun blazed away on the main stage. He also did some gender reassignment with the Pussycat Dolls’ signature hit “Don’t Cha,” dedicated “Satisfied” to the victims of the recent Texas wildfires and played a slow, beat- and turntable-heavy version of the Gnarls Barkley hit “Crazy.” Elastic talkbox freak funkers Chromeo dedicated “I Am Somebody” to their recently passed collaborator, DJ Mehdi . And with a large portion of the sold-out crowd down at the other end for a rare festival set from soul icon Wonder, My Morning Jacket cranked their energy up a notch, blasting off with the slowly building “Victory Dance,” then segueing into the fierce reggae rock jam “Off the Record” and the majestic interstellar overdrive anthem “Gideon.” As usual, lead singer Jim James was in fine falsetto wailing voice, working the whole stage as he shook his mound of neon-lit curly hair. The fierce Southern gospel rock set included such favorites as “Wordless Chorus” and ended with a three-song mini-set featuring former tourmates New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band. One of the givens at ACL is that you will get a chance to see a legend (or two), and this year’s Hall of Famer was Wonder, who soothed an exhausted crowd’s mind with a velvety lounge take on “Ribbon in the Sky” and a slow-dance grand piano stroll through “Overjoyed.” Then he picked it up like nobody can, pivoting into the sing-along “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” and the rubbery disco groove of “Sir Duke,” his keening vocals seemingly unchanged after half a century. They boogied hard to “Do I Do” and “My Cherie Amour” and lost their minds when he busted out the harmonica during “For Once in My Life.” Sunday Graffiti6 had the unenviable task of opening the final day, trying to draw a crowd with their Maroon 5-meets-Crosby, Stills and Nash blue-eyed acoustic pop soul, while downtown punkers-turned-rancheros Mariachi El Bronx cooked up some authentic really down South jams on tunes like “Cellmates.” But with their embroidered black suits, they won the race for the weekend’s most weather-unfriendly stage wear. Festival vets the Airborne Toxic Event pumped out muscular arena rock, including fiddle-assisted covers of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” and the Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law.” Philly’s Chiddy Bang proved their freestyle skills once again, as rapper Chidera “Chiddy” Anamege took requests from the audience and strung together verses about Texas, “Saved by the Bell” and, shockingly, weed. Canadian collective Broken Social Scene just had to play their syncopated rocker “Texico Bitches,” but the weekend’s most intense visual spectacle was courtesy of Australia’s Empire of the Sun. Lead singer Luke Temple emerged in a blue glittery tunic and towering feathered headdress, along with four dancers in pink catsuits and frilled masks accented by oversize light-up cardboard guitars. Pounding new-wave dance rock tunes like “Standing on the Shore” amid multiple increasingly outrageous costume changes, the set felt like the sexy psychedelic space musical Duran Duran never mounted. Like a lot of bands, Canada’s Arcade Fire said Austin is their second home, and they were welcomed to the festival’s closing spot like favorite sons and daughters by a massive crowd that seemed to spread to the horizon. Their cinematic tour through the stations of teenage rebellion — complete with movie theater marquee showing black-and-white flicks — included stops at such ravers as “Ready to Start,” “No Cars Go,” the widescreen shout-along rouser “Wake Up!” and the live rarity, “Speaking in Tongues.” They were not going to send them home gently into that good night, though, instead charging through “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” as a goodbye memento worth keeping more than that wicked farmer’s tan and nasty heat headache. Beginnings, endings and one hell of a middle, ACL had plenty of all three. Related Artists Kanye West Arcade Fire
Sinead O’Connor made some disturbing disclosures about suicidal thoughts on Twitter that shocked and worried her fans – but was she even being serious? Yes … but only to a point. After posting a series of thoughts such as “now I wish I was dead, no hope,” and the Irish singer has responded to the backlash. Her core message, in an open letter posted this morning, is that you don’t have to hide your feelings, even those that come from a dark, disturbed place. At the same time? Please don’t off yourself. “Open letter to all people in who occassionally feel suicidal, think, or have acted suicidally, including that really annoying Sinead woman that won’t just shut the f–k up and stop making people feel uncomfortable,” she rambled. “Why would ‘God’ want u to beat urself up for wanting to die? Don’t allow anyone near u who, when ur with them u feel bad about u. U haven’t died. That’s what matters to God. God is close to the broken hearted. And ‘God’ doesn’t judge.” “Its ok to FEEL suicidal. That is most definately neither a sin nor a sign necessarily, of madness. Its quite normal to feel that way sometimes. And its not only ok but MANDATORY u SAY when u feel suicidal and ask for help.” “Anyone who criticises u can f–k off and is only afraid of their own ‘madness.'” O’Connor went on to ponder about spirituality and clarified that while she believes it’s OK to feel suicidal, people shouldn’t take their feelings any further. She noted that despite her rant this week, in which she told followers that she would kill herself if there was a way to do so without her children finding out her death was due to suicide, she certainly wasn’t encouraging that. (Why write it on Twitter then? Legitimate question.) “I do believe suicide is a sin,” O’Connor said. “Because u may as well have murdered every one who loves u even remotely. Including ‘God’.” “And we all have people who adore us.. Even if we think we don’t. Its a lie too, suicide. It doesn’t solve your problems. It only makes them infinately, un-countably worse. Its a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” “Which brings u a whole rake of new karmic problems. ” “Its selfish. And s–t. So… Let’s not do it.” Nice. Got it. We’re good then, Sinead?
Floyd Mayweather may have knocked out Victor Ortiz last night, but he was apparently still itching for a fight afterward … with sportscaster Larry Merchant. During the post-fight interview, Floyd started absolutely screaming at HBO’s 80-year-old ringside reporter, yelling, “You never give me a fair shake.” “HBO need to fire you,” the fighter continued, all up in Merchant’s grill. “You don’t know $h!t about boxing. You ain’t $h!t! You’re not $h!t!” Yikes. See below. Floyd Mayweather Rant Larry Merchant didn’t back down, barely even flinching at the outburst and telling the champ: “I wish I was 50 years younger and I’d kick your a$$.” Damn, Mayweather . Who knew, you won by KO, but you still got served. At least he didn’t bring up Floyd’s apparent history of wailing on women .
Heidi Montag marked her 25th plastic surgery last week. One-half of The Hills’ gruesome twosome, Heidi marked the occasion with her husband Spencer Pratt and several friends, which apparently they have, in Las Vegas. Here she is at the nightclub at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on Friday to host a birthday bash for herself, which presumably someone paid her to do. Amazing. Speidi tours their future home. [Photo: PacificCoastNewsOnline.com] Once on top of the world, now disfigured and broke as a joke , this is the last you’ll see of Heidi for awhile. She and Spencer have gone downhill fast in life. Now, they’re basically just normal people. G-cup boobs aside. Here’s a photo tribute to Heidi Montag we put together in honor of her special day! Click to enlarge the nauseating (and in some cases quite NSFW) images:
Jennifer Aniston, 42, and Justin Theroux, 40, only stayed for approximately 30 minutes, but the insider says while they were there, the actress “was really so lovely.” “She was really low maintenance,” the source adds. “[The couple] walked in together and left together … and were so relaxed.” But the outing did not end there. The duo then made their way to Il Mulino where they dined with a group of ten. “They looked happy and were always smiling,” a restaurant source tells us. “She looked [ve
The filing comes after Tareq reported his wife – a former castmember on The Real Housewives of D.C. – missing to authorities. But it turned out she was safe and sound with Journey guitarist Neal Schon in Tennessee, where the band has a gig with Foreigner. The man known primarily for gatecrashing the White House, Tareq Salahi, has filed for divorce from his runaway wife Michaele, according to reports. Tareq claims the pair have humiliated him, going so far as to accuse Schon of sending him a p
‘There is still more work for us to do,’ the band says in a statement. By Jocelyn Vena No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images Considering how long No Doubt fans have been waiting for the release of their next album, it should come as no surprise that they’ll have to wait a little longer. The group took to their official site this week to let fans know it’s going to take a little longer than planned before they drop anything new. “Ideally our new record would be coming out this year but it’s just not ready yet,” the statement reads. “We don’t want to rush this album just to get it out. This collection of songs means everything to us and our only priority right now is to make sure that it’s the best album we can possibly make. There is still more work for us to do. …” The band noted that while no new music will be coming out in 2011, it’s been a big year for them in other ways. “The past twelve months have been eventful; we performed for Paul McCartney and President Obama at the Kennedy Center Honors, three beautiful new No Doubt babies were born, and we’ve recorded in studios all over Los Angeles.” They added at the end of the statement that the delay will actually benefit fans. “We love our fans and are doing this for your ears and want you to know how much we appreciate your patience and support,” they wrote. “There have been some stories circulating about us collaborating with outside producers and artists. Please don’t believe anything you hear unless it comes from us.” The group has been keeping fans up-to-date on the progress of the album through interviews and on Twitter . It will be their first studio release since 2001’s Rock Steady . Related Artists No Doubt
Ballad ‘Up in Flames’ is the final song the band recorded for their upcoming album Mylo Xyloto. By Gil Kaufman Chris Martin Photo: Joe Fox/ WireImage AUSTIN, Texas — For any English band, playing this Texas hipster mecca’s long-running PBS music show “Austin City Limits” is a big checkmark on the rock-and-roll bucket list. Coldplay got their second hash mark on Thursday night, taping a 90-minute special edition of the 37-year-old show just 24 hours before they take the stage for a much bigger crowd just around the corner at Zilker Park as part of the three-day Austin City Limits festival. Like plugging in at New York’s Radio City or Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, it’s the kind of honor that most bands would kill for just once. Only this time, unlike their 2005 appearance, there was also some “Masterpiece Theater”-style acting involved, as they were taping a show intended to air on New Year’s Eve. That time-travel twist required a bit of cold-weather thinking in the midst of one of the hottest summers in Lone Star State history. As they’ve done all year at other festival appearances, the band mixed such crowd favorites as “The Scientist” with half a dozen new songs, including one singer Chris Martin said they just finished last month. (And, as they’ve been doing on this tour, this was all after they walked out to the theme from “Back to the Future”; see above time-travel reference.) Martin started the night at the piano for the album’s gentle coda, which segued right into the driving, triumphant “Hurts Like Heaven,” during which the room filled with candy-colored laser blasts from a pair of neon target set pieces at the back of the stage. The new downtown 2,700-capacity “Limits” studio was decked out like a neon blacklight wonderland, with audience members handed paint-splashed T-shirts as they walked in, which were to be kept under wraps until a big reveal later in the show. The band’s gear was also colorized, with brightly hued chalk-like scribblings covering their amps, piano and drums. It’s hard to describe the rush of watching a band that plays to tens of thousands on stages so tall you have to crane your neck to see them from the front row as they plug in and play just a few feet off the ground, easily within arm’s reach. And if you thought “Yellow” sounded huge in a field with 30,000 of your closest friends, imagine what it’s like when you can count the veins popping on Martin’s forehead. For the new, ripping, U2-esque “Major Minor,” I took a trip up to the control room and watched as the show’s director called out rapid-fire cues while watching a bank of 28 monitors. You can’t get a better feel for the band’s subtle, easy dynamic than watching isolated hi-def close-ups of all four members loping their way through “Lost!” and observing the unspoken internal rhythm that makes their shows so seamless. Drummer Will Champion cranked it up for “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” whip-cracking his kit with abandon as if for a moment he thought he was in the Foo Fighters. Ever polite, Martin apologized for being so sweaty — joking that his profuse perspiration is the very thing keeping his band off “The Bachelor” — before he unwrapped the world debut of the final song they finished for their upcoming album Mylo Xyloto . He said the gentle ballad “Up in Flames” — which features a memorable falsetto chorus and hypnotic tick-tock rhythm — was completed just five weeks earlier, just in the nick of time to make the cut. That tune moved into another new mellow one, the acoustic “Us Against the World,” which Martin started over again after dropping a barrage of not-safe-for-PBS f-bombs following a guitar mishap. The second time he got it right, as Champion joined him in perfect harmony on the line “slow it down,” with guitarist Jonny Buckland adding in some tasteful, sustained-note Morse code soloing. It wasn’t quiet for long, though, as “Politik” exploded with driving drums and piano. By the time Martin tinkled out the first notes of “Viva La Vida” on the piano, the audience was already whoa-oh-oooh-ing along. As it cranked up, they were on their feet, ecstatically clapping and singing along as the song built to its familiar crescendo. When the whoa-ooohs really kicked in, Martin jumped up on the drum riser and bounced on his toes, his arms held up like a triumphant prizefighter. With the crowd decked out in their paint-splashed T-shirts, Martin counted down to midnight, pretending it was cold outside, even though everyone in the chilly studio knew 85-degree nighttime swelter shortly awaited them. Confetti canons shot out paper butterflies and three screens covered the Day-Glo toys that descended for the new tune “Charlie Brown,” whose final line, fittingly, is about glowing in the dark. The set crashed to a close with another fresh track, the dark, funky “Paradise,” which seems ripe for a beat-heavy remix (perhaps with a hip-hop break from pal Jay-Z?). The encore rolled out the driving 1-2-3 punch of the swelling “Clocks,” slow-burn epic “Fix You” and recent uplifting single “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall,” which had Martin pogoing along with, and for a brief moment in the middle of, the ecstatic audience. It was one of those special nights when a band with a major arsenal finds a way to take its giant energy and squeeze it down into a much smaller space, without losing any of their arena-packing magic. Related Artists Coldplay
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