Billy Joel cancels tour after being diagnosed with a brain disorder
US singer-songwriter Billy Joel has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, affecting his hearing, vision and balance.
It has caused him to cancel his already rescheduled tour dates in the US, Canada and United Kingdom.
The 76-year-old is undergoing physical therapy and has been advised not to perform as he recovers.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Sydney Sweeney discusses collapse of her engagement
The 27-year-old Euphoria star had been engaged to longtime partner Jonathan Davino, 41, for three years before they abruptly split earlier this year. The TV star has been reasonably tight-lipped over the end of her relationship but has now given a very to-the-point response when discussing her romantic life. Opening up to The Sunday Times, Sweeney was asked if she was still planning her wedding - and she bluntly replied, "No." Delicately pressing on, the interviewer then asked the actress if she was single, and she confirmed her status by responding, "Yes."
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Fears for Kelly Clarkson over ‘painful' personal issues
Kelly Clarkson has experienced a clear-minded 'moment of clarity' following the personal issues that saw her abruptly leave her talk show, sources tell Page Six. The 43-year-old singer left the set of The Kelly Clarkson Show for almost two weeks back in March but has yet to discuss the reasons why publicly. Fans were told only that she was dealing with a 'private matter,' and have been left baffled since. 'This has all been very painful for her,' revealed an industry insider who has worked closely with Clarkson. 'The difficulty is that Kelly, like all of us, wants to be liked, and she had to deal with this new moment in her life. She knew she had to step down for a minute.' A host of stars were quickly drafted in to cover for the star, ranging from Andy Cohen to Wanda Sykes and Brooke Shields, as the insider told Page Six, 'She has her priorities, and her family comes first, but I think she's been humbled by the whole situation … what has happened has given her a moment of clarity, I think. The turmoil came after things seemed to be finally settling back down in Clarkson's life following her very public divorce from ex-husband Brandon Blackstock, with whom she shares daughter River Rose, 10, and son Remy, 8. 'Kelly grew up without a father, and she had an incredible love story with Brandon,' added a friend. 'She is a compassionate and caring person, and what has happened [recently] has helped her to move beyond the divorce.' Clarkson has been candid about just how much the 2020 split after seven years of marriage and following legal battle took out of her, telling Apple Music in 2023, 'Just to be brutally honest, I did not handle [the divorce] well.' Things were made more difficult as Blackstock, 48 — stepson of country music star Reba McEntire — was also his spouse's manager and one of the architects of her fortune. Indeed, as Page Six previously reported, he masterminded her multi-million TV deal with NBC. The star was paid in the range of $10 million per season as a coach on The Voice, we're told, and is believed to get even more for hosting her show — a deal also brokered by Blackstock. 'The irony is that he's had a very positive influence on her life; he made these phenomenal deals for her, and she wouldn't be here without him. But it's hard to be a manager and a husband,' said the industry insider, 'At the time, she greatly appreciated what he had done for her career.' Clarkson abruptly left her show on March 3 and returned on March 18. Two days later, on the show's 1,000th episode, she was close to tears as she celebrated, telling viewers, 'We've created a community and supported each other through a lot of ups and downs … A lot of ups and downs personally as well.' America took down-home Clarkson from Fort Worth, TX, to its collective heart from the minute she stepped into the audition room to sing for Simon Cowell on the debut season of 'American Idol' in 2002. She ended up winning the whole show, beating curly-haired runner-up Justin Guarini. Clarkson went on to sell over 28 million albums and become one of the most successful singers of her generation, before turning her sights to daytime TV in 2019. Her genuine warmth and friendliness have grown a loyal audience season after season. 'She is immensely talented and good at what she does, but she definitely had opinions about the music she sang, the music her contestants sang, she kept in touch with every single contestant, she took it very seriously, she had a relationship with each of them. 'She is totally invested, whether it was wardrobe or music or promo,' said an industry insider. During the show's run, viewers have noticed Clarkson undergo a physical transformation, losing a huge amount of weight since moving her kids' home base from Tennessee to NYC, where she tapes the show. Clarkson, who is 5'3″, told guest Whoopi Goldberg last May she had weighed 203 pounds and admitted using a weight loss medication – not Ozempic – after her doctor 'chased me down for two years' about it, because her blood work was bad, revealing she was pre-diabetic. She's also been working with celebrity stylist Micaela Erlanger. Alongside the daytime show, Clarkson this year launched her own music label, High Road Records, and is set to embark on a Las Vegas residency, Kelly Clarkson: Studio Sessions, kicking off at Caesars Palace on July 4. She will sing 18 performances and finish on November 15. All of this – and dealing with her personal issues – means questions are abounding about how much longer she will host her talk show. As we previously revealed, she plans to call it a day when her contract runs out in 2026, at the end of Season 7. It may seem strange as The Kelly Clarkson Show averages a million viewers per day — an increase from fall 2023 — and consistently ranks as one of the nation's top syndicated talk shows. Despite this, a TV source said the show is expensive to produce. 'It's a tough job and profit margins are low,' they said. NBC, meanwhile, wants to ensure Clarkson isn't burned out or bummed out by the network and still available to host holiday specials like Christmas in Rockefeller Center. 'She knows her limits, even on 'The Voice', when she was working so hard, she knew when she needed a refresh – that's what you're seeing now,' said the industry insider. 'She is a very feeling, sensitive person, as you see on the talk show, and that's both in her personal and professional life.
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
U2 singer Bono lays his life bare in one-man stage show Stories of Surrender
"All this saving the world, is it really service, duty, righteous anger, or is it just a childlike desire to be at the centre of the action?" Bono wonders backstage at his sold-out, one-man show at New York's Beacon Theater in 2023. "Desire and virtue is a whole dance." What: U2 singer Bono lays bare his life and career in a one-man stage show, part spoken-word and part solo music performance. Starring: Bono Director: Andrew Dominik Where: Streaming now on Apple TV+ Likely to make you feel: Like falling in love with U2 again — if you're a fan Across a 45-year career as a globe-straddling superstar and activist, the U2 singer has danced the fine line between rock 'n' roll icon and enduring public nuisance. He's been both the voice of one of the biggest bands of the late 20th-century and — to some, at least — a blowhard palling around with celebrities and world leaders. But as the new movie Bono: Stories of Surrender shows, there's a complicated, endearingly contradictory man behind the often-outsized public profile; one whose idealism is frequently troubled by self-doubt, and whose pursuit of stardom stems from a past steeped in loss. Filmed over several nights of his New York residency, Stories of Surrender vividly captures Bono's one-man adaptation of his best-selling 2022 memoir, Surrender, translating the book's revealing candour to the stage with the singer's typically self-reflexive humour. As he quipped to Jimmy Kimmel recently: "I play an aging rock star on a massive ego trip." There are no mirror-balls or giant lemons or jumbotrons broadcasting prank calls to The White House, just a starkly lit stage and a few empty pieces of furniture to stand in for key figures in his life — including the rest of U2, who are nowhere to be found. It begins, as many such stories do, with a health scare that prompts a crisis of faith and life evaluation. "How did I get here?" Bono asks, echoing the words of his contemporary David Byrne, after an operation on his "eccentric" heart in 2016. Still, it's hardly a sombre opening: the star is in full-tilt carnival-barker mode, part preacher, part game-show host, a pair of wraparound shades short of his Zoo TV MacPhisto. Bono's brand of ironic bravado, in which every sincere moment is inevitably chased by a self-deprecating shot, will do little to convince detractors who regard him as the epitome of anti-cool. For U2 fans, however, it's a wonderful reminder of just how adept he is with a pithy turn of phrase or ready-made pop graffiti — he's perhaps the only songwriter to land the line "you're turning tricks with your crucifix" on a major motion picture soundtrack aimed at children. Much of Bono's humour appears to originate from his late father, Bob Hewson, a man who looms over the show despite appearing only as an empty chair and a glass of Black Bush whiskey. Playing both father and son, Bono recreates infrequent pub meetings with his Da, who remains hilariously unimpressed with his kid's success (labelling him "a baritone who thinks he's a tenor"), nor his phone calls from Pavarotti (Bono's impression of the Italian opera giant is among the film's funniest moments). Their relationship was complex. After a 14-year-old Bono lost his mother, who collapsed at his grandfather's funeral ("It sounds almost too Irish, I know," he jokes), his father never spoke of her again. Her death haunted almost every aspect of the rocker's life and career. At the very same time, he would meet his future wife, Ali, and the musicians — The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr, and Adam Clayton — with whom he'd rocket to mulleted 80s stardom. The stories of U2's early adventures are invariably charming, as the teenage band fumbles about to land on their signature sound — at one point Bono urging The Edge to make his guitar "sound like an electric drill into the ear". It's Bono's reckoning with fame that proves to be the real revelation, however, as he and his band mates wrestle with their spiritual beliefs in the wake of new-found celebrity. "Fame is currency," Bono reasons. "You wouldn't need charity if the world was just, so — get the cheque." If the humanitarian act borders on Vegas schtick, Bono is the first to admit it. "I am an over-paid, over-regarded, over-rewarded, over-fed rock 'n' roll star," he says in voiceover, commenting on the action. And whenever the self-therapy pauses for a burst of music, it's hard to resist those soaring pipes, still stirring after all these years and audible wear and tear. 'With Or Without You', delivered here in thorny tribute to his wife, remains as sad and gorgeous as ever, while 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' takes on a new, ghostly power in a stripped back, slowed down performance. Meanwhile, U2's 1988 hit 'Desire' emerges as both a pivotal point in the band's career and a key text in Bono's life, tapping into the tension between the sacred and the profane that the band would toy with on 90s highlights Achtung Baby and Zooropa. "For love or money, money, money," Bono sings, throwing theatrical shapes and channelling late-period Elvis. Even 'Beautiful Day' — arguably the beginning of U2's long decline into musical irrelevance — becomes a moving elegy for the dead, as Bono teases out the melancholy beneath the song's radio-friendly chorus. It's a lovely moment, a tribute to those we've lost and to all the strange little things that somehow keep us going along the way. Haters will burn with renewed fire, but if you've ever had a soft spot for U2, Stories of Surrender may just make you fall in love with them all over again.
