Latest news with #Wind&Fire
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
These Are the 5 Most Successful Touring Comedians of 2025 (So Far)
Last month, Billboard Boxscore revealed its midyear touring recap, dominated by Coldplay, K-pop and Las Vegas' Sphere. With the launch of Billboard's comedy hub, we're taking a closer look at the top-grossing comedy acts at the midyear mark. More from Billboard How to Secure Affordable Tickets to Earth, Wind & Fire on StubHub 'Something Very Simple, But Intense': How Gesaffelstein & His Team Made One of the Best Electronic Shows On the Road Barry Manilow on His Farewell Concerts ('It Is Goodbye') & Why Today's Lyrics Sound Like a 'Run-On Sentence' The 2025 midyear recap provides a switch-up at the top of the list. Kevin Hart led the pack for 2022 at year-end and in 2023 at both midyear and at the end of the year. Nate Bargatze took the mantle for midyear and year-end in 2024. Both of them were on the road during the '25 tracking period, and one of them even cracks the top five — but there's a new voice atop the heap. While most of the top comedians at midyear spent their time primarily in theaters, the No. 1 act filled arenas, selling out 30 shows in the U.S. and Canada across the six-month period. By playing to larger crowds, the leading comic could afford to play fewer shows; 30 is the smallest show count among the top five, though it's still a busy calendar. Among the top 100 touring artists at midyear, including musicians across all genres, the average show count was 20. By stark contrast, the top five comedy acts averaged 48. Multiple shows per night and low production overhead usually keeps these jokesters moving quicker than pop stars and bands. Keep scrolling for a detailed breakdown of the top five grossing touring comedians of the midyear period – Oct. 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025 – by the numbers. Midyear charts are based on figures reported to Billboard $13.4MTickets: 214KNumber of Shows: 47All-Genre Rank: N/A The ventriloquist act kicked off the midyear period in Columbia, S.C. on Oct. 17, and played throughout the U.S. before ending in Manchester, N.H on March 21. He broke the top five via consistency – he played no fewer than five shows per month across the half-year $14.6MTickets: 204KNumber of Shows: 53All-Genre Rank: N/A Koy kept it moving, playing 53 shows in 49 cities. His biggest stop was in Hawaii, playing three shows at Honolulu's Neal S. Blaisdell Center from Nov. 29-Dec. 1. That run brought in $1.2 million and sold 16,300 $20MTickets: 275KNumber of Shows: 50All-Genre Rank: N/A Iglesias, also known as 'Fluffy,' toured all throughout the United States, with three stops into Canada. Seven of his shows sold more than 10,000 tickets, while just one broke the $1 million mark – a March 15 date at Chicago's United $28.3MTickets: 216KNumber of Shows: 61All-Genre Rank: No. 32 On the Acting My Age tour, Hart didn't just play more shows than the other acts in the top five – he played more than any soloist on the all-genre 50-position midyear Top Tours chart. With multiple shows at most of the theaters on his schedule, his most extended stay was a five-show run at Philadelphia's The Met (Dec. 4-8).Gross: $35.5MTickets: 361KNumber of Shows: 30All-Genre Rank: No. 25 After kicking off last year, Maniscalco's It Ain't Right Tour continues to fill arenas in North America. His five shows at Madison Square Garden were last September and counted toward the 2024 rankings, but double-headers in Boston, Chicago, and Toronto earned more than $3 million each. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Four Decades of 'Madonna': A Look Back at the Queen of Pop's Debut Album on the Charts Chart Rewind: In 1990, Madonna Was in 'Vogue' Atop the Hot 100
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Inside Allee Willis' fabulously kitsch party house that inspired a pop-up book
When you walk into Willis Wonderland, your eye doesn't know where to land. The North Hollywood house, which songwriter Allee Willis first purchased in 1980 and turned into a living ode to all things kitsch, is awash in trinkets and tchotchkes. But also in coveted art pieces and stylish furnishings. The living room alone features a lavender Plycraft chair and a Sputnik chandelier as well as a Weltron Space Ball Retro stereo boasting an Earth, Wind & Fire 8-Track and a 'Sock It To Me' squished beer ashtray. It's all just the way Willis had it before she died in 2019 at 72. And now, for those who have always wished they could tour this most fabulous of L.A. houses where everyone from Lily Tomlin, Paul Reubens and Cassandra Peterson once partied, comes a new pop-up book that brings it into your own, likely less fantastical, home. 'Willis Wonderland: The Legendary House of Atomic Kitsch' was written by Willis' friend Hillary Carlip and Trudi Roth, designed by Carlip, illustrated by Neal McCullough and paper-engineered by Mike Malkovas. And, like the house it hopes to capture and mythologize in equal measure, the pop-up book is a celebration of Willis' own 'more is more' sensibility. 'When you walk in, it's full of surprises,' Carlip tells me as we walk around the house on a sunny Friday morning and admire the Jason Mecier portrait of Willis made of trash trinkets. 'You keep finding new things. I've been here hundreds of times, and I saw something today I hadn't seen before. I wanted to do that with the pop-up book. To have easter eggs and things where you pull and spin and open and that kind of thing. I just think the interactivity, where you really immerse yourself in it, is really important now, especially since so much is digital.' The tactility of the book encourages you to explore every nook and cranny of the house, which does already feel like a museum of sorts. Of kitsch, perhaps, but also of Willis herself. The more you get to learn both about this well-kept building (once rumored to be an MGM party house), you also learn more about Willis' extraordinary career. Willis is perhaps best known as the songwriter behind such hits as Earth, Wind & Fire's 'September' and 'Boogie Wonderland.' But over her four-decade career, she also co-wrote the songs for Broadway musical 'The Color Purple'; penned a Grammy-winning tune for 'Beverly Hills Cop'; and worked with acts as varied as the Pet Shop Boys, Dusty Springfield, Patti LaBelle, Cyndi Lauper and Taylor Dayne. But she was also a visual artist, a designer, a sculptor and an avid collector. With her signature asymmetrical haircut, her loud, fashionable outfits and a penchant for all things off-kilter, the Detroit-born artist made little distinction between her work and her life. It makes sense her abode, a pink William Kesling single-family house (one of only 15 built in the Los Angeles area in the 1930s) dotted with bowling balls and palm trees, would serve as a continuation of her wild, wondrous aesthetic. When Willis died, the question of what to do with her Willis Wonderland was entangled with how to further cement her legacy. Her partner, animator and producer Prudence Fenton, knew the famed house would need to be cared for. And, perhaps more importantly, memorialized. When Fenton and Vincent Beggs — the executive director of the Willis Wonderland Foundation, launched in 2022 — came up with the idea of a book about the house, they knew it couldn't be just any kind of book. They toyed with a sleek coffee table book with gorgeous photos of the house. But that would've been too sterile. Too staid. Willis, they knew, deserved something bolder. The pop-up book offers as immersive a tour of the house as you can dream of. The scene at the so-called 'kitsch-en,' for instance, wonderfully captures Willis' commitment to playfulness as a central design conceit — something all too rare in a world often dressed in basic neutrals. A pink-leather dinette anchors a space that's all but drowning in tiki mugs, salt and pepper shakers and adorned with artworks (including a collection of Zel caricatures). Willis' humor is clearly prevalent throughout. That's nowhere more obvious than in her 'Rec Room.' A blue-hued linoleum floor made to look like an aquarium, replete with singing fish and turtles, brightens the dark-wooded downstairs space and echoes the nautical elements Kesling introduced into his Streamline Moderne homes. Here, this underwater space serves as a repository for 'Allee's Legendary Landfill of Esthetic Essentials.' The shelves, as the book shows, are filled to the brim with collectibles, many of them part of the collection of Black culture, which her friend James Brown first helped her curate. Lunchboxes, magazines, records, action figures and sculptures all but beg you to spend hours upon hours examining each and every one of them. This is thrifting as cultural history. Kitsch as historical remembrance. In Carlip's pop-up version of this room, you can see, among many other things, a crowned Miss America Vanessa Williams Corn Flakes box, a slew of Afro picks ready for the taking, a Harlem Globetrotters coloring book, a Diana Ross doll and a Chubby Checker Twister game. 'It's a funny thing, because Mike, the paper engineer, who's done many other books and clients and everything, kept saying, 'You can't have so much detail. You have to edit,'' Carlip shares. 'And I was like, 'Nope.' I just stood my ground. I was like, 'It's Allee. It's all got to be in there.' But then I finally relented and said, 'How about there's a downloadable poster where people can get descriptions of items and see them up close?'' In that poster, you can see 'Libby the Lovely Liberated Lady' doll, a Women's Liberation toy that's as hilarious as she sounds (you're encouraged to pull her skirt for a surprise). And you can also see a photo of the famed Riverside Market sign that adorns the house's outdoor pool next to a portable bar Willis had hand-sculpted from Motor City-found items. As the future of the house as it stands remains up in the air, with Carlip unsure what the Foundation has planned for it, the pop-up book (like last year's 'The World According To Allee Willis' documentary) hopes to make sure Willis' artistry is preserved in ways she would most enjoy. 'I just think it really captures her whimsy, her thoughtfulness, her creativity and the joy,' Carlip adds, about the house and book alike. 'Everything she created had so much joy in it. I think when people come into this house, they feel all those things, they're inspired to create. I think just the breadth of her creativity is infectious. You cannot help but be inspired by being in here.' Carlip points to a painting that sits atop the fireplace right above a Sascha Brastoff gold ceramic bull. The piece features a blue-hued woman whose irregular features (bold neon lips, perky colorful nipples) are intentionally meant to evoke a certain famed artist. It is signed 'P. Picasso.' 'People would always ask her, 'Is this …?'' Carlip recalls with a laugh. 'It's not. I mean, it's called 'Girl with Blue Period.''
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
50 Years Ago, Elton John Became First Artist to Enter Billboard 200 at No. 1 – Just How ‘Fantastic' Was the Feat?
Fifty years ago, in the Billboard issue dated June 7, 1975, Elton John did something no one had ever done before: He entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1. He achieved the feat with his ninth studio album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. The album dislodged Earth, Wind & Fire's That's the Way of the World, which had spent the three previous weeks at No. 1. It was potent enough to hold Wings' Venus and Mars – the band's follow-up to its classic album Band on the Run – to the No. 2 spot for four consecutive weeks before Wings finally moved up to No. 1 for one week. More from Billboard Elton John's 'Yellow Brick Road' Journey in Billboard's Back Pages: From 'Silly' Upstart to Undeniable Icon Queens of the Stone Age Couldn't 'Over-Rehearse' for Paris Catacombs Concert Film: 'You Go Down There & All the Plans Are Off' Billboard & Global Venture Partners Launch Billboard Africa In the nearly two decades between the introduction of the Billboard 200 in March 1956 and Captain Fantastic's history-making accomplishment, the highest any album had entered the Billboard 200 was No. 2. Van Cliburn's Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 debuted in the runner-up spot in the issue dated Aug. 4, 1958 (which, coincidentally, was the same week the Hot 100 debuted, with Ricky Nelson's 'Poor Little Fool' as the inaugural leader). How was a classical album able to get off to such a fast start? Cliburn had achieved global fame when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 near the height of the Cold War. A cover story in TIME (May 19, 1958) proclaimed him 'The Texan Who Conquered Russia.' His album topped the Billboard 200 for seven weeks, won a Grammy for best classical performance – instrumentalist and received an album of the year nod. Since the Cliburn album was a little far afield, let's go deeper. The highest that a contemporary pop or rock album had debuted prior to Captain Fantastic was No. 3. That was the debut position for The Beatles' Hey Jude (March 21, 1970) and a pair of Led Zeppelin albums: Led Zeppelin III (Oct. 24, 1970) and Physical Graffiti (March 15, 1975). Three more contemporary pop or rock albums had debuted in the top five prior to Captain Fantastic: the Woodstock soundtrack (No. 4, June 6, 1970), George Harrison's All Things Must Pass (No. 5, Dec. 19, 1970) and Elton's previous studio album Caribou (No. 5, July 6, 1974). Captain Fantastic was Elton's sixth No. 1 album in less than three years. His 1972 album Honky Chateau reached No. 1 in its fifth chart week. A pair of 1973 albums – Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – both reached No. 1 in their fourth weeks. A pair of 1974 albums – Caribou and Greatest Hits – both reached the top spot in their second weeks. Elton was steadily getting hotter year-by-year, as you can see. Captain Fantastic's debut at No. 1 received considerable media attention and contributed to Elton's status as the Greatest Pop Star of the Year – years before Billboard officially recognized such a thing. In calendar year 1975, Elton had three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 (one a carryover from 1974) and three No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 (plus an uncredited, but prominent, featured role on a fourth – Neil Sedaka's 'Bad Blood'); had a cameo as The Pinball Wizard in the hit movie adaptation of The Who's Tommy; made the cover of TIME (the inevitable cover line: 'Rock's Captain Fantastic'); and became the first artist since The Beatles to play a concert (two, actually) at Dodger Stadium. Since Elton's through-the-roof 1975, we've seen such artists as the Bee Gees (1978), Michael Jackson (1983-84) and Taylor Swift (2023-24) experience this same 'how-much-hotter-can-they-get' phenomenon. Captain Fantastic was a loosely autobiographical concept album about the struggles that John (Captain Fantastic) and his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin (the Brown Dirt Cowboy) experienced in the early years of their careers in London from 1967 to 1969, leading up to John's eventual breakthrough in 1970. Captain Fantastic spent its first six weeks at No. 1 before yielding the top spot to Wings' Venus and Mars and then Eagles' One of These Nights (which had five weeks on top). In late August, Captain Fantastic returned for a seventh week at No. 1. Only two other John albums ever logged seven or more weeks at No. 1: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (eight weeks on top in 1973) and Greatest Hits (10 weeks on top in 1974-75). Captain Fantastic received two Grammy nominations: album of the year (John's third in that category, following Elton John and Caribou) and best pop vocal performance, male. He lost both awards to Paul Simon for Still Crazy After All These Years. (Fun Fact: Simon had also won album of the year, in tandem with Art Garfunkel, for Bridge Over Troubled Water five years earlier, when the Elton John album was nominated.) Gus Dudgeon, who produced John's album, received a Grammy nod for producer of the year, non-classical. (He lost to Arif Mardin.) Just one single was released from Captain Fantastic: 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight.' Despite its length and somber tone, the song reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, a reflection of Elton's popularity at the time. Clocking in at 6:45, 'Someone Saved' was the longest song to crack the top five on the Hot 100 since The Temptations' symphonic soul smash 'Papa Was a Rollin' Stone' (6:53), a No. 1 hit in December 1972. Of course, even though just one single was released from Captain Fantastic, Elton was blanketing pop radio at the time. The week Captain Fantastic debuted, John's previous single, the marvelous, disco-accented 'Philadelphia Freedom,' rebounded to No. 10 on the Hot 100, having reached No. 1 in April. And though it was never released as a single, John's rendition of 'Pinball Wizard' from the Tommy soundtrack was played on many pop radio stations with the frequency of a hit single. The Billboard staff included three songs from Captain Fantastic on its 2022 list of the 75 Best Elton John Songs, timed to coincide with the star's 75th birthday. 'Tower of Babel' ranked No. 73, 'Curtains' was No. 29, and 'Someone Saved' was way up at No. 3, with Billboard's Melinda Newman saying of the latter song, 'The song has more drama than a made-for-Lifetime movie, including allusions to John's first suicide attempt in 1968. With a heavy, slow, and instantly unforgettable piano-pounding melody that matches the theatrical storytelling … 'Someone' is like slowly walking through molasses in the best possible way, Sugar Bear.' In November 1975, just five months after Captain Fantastic became the first album to debut at No. 1, Elton's follow-up album, Rock of the Westies, became the second. Unlike Captain Fantastic, Rock was led by a highly commercial single, the zesty funk-reggae smash 'Island Girl,' which topped the Hot 100 for three weeks. In October 1976, Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life became the third album to debut at No. 1. No other albums debuted in the top spot for a little more than a decade, until Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's Live/1975-85 achieved the feat in November 1986. The following year, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson started on top with their hit-laden albums Whitney and Bad, respectively. In May 1991, Billboard began compiling the Billboard 200 based on actual units sold. As a result, No. 1 debuts became much more common. Between June and December 1991, seven albums entered the chart at No. 1 – slightly more than the six albums that had achieved the feat over the previous 16 years. (Since December 2014, the chart has ranked titles by equivalent album units, incorporating streaming and sales, with albums continuing to regularly soar in at No. 1.) In 2006, John recorded a sequel of sorts to Captain Fantastic. That album, The Captain & the Kid, reached No. 18 on the Billboard 200. Two songs from Captain Fantastic were featured on the 2018 tribute album, Revamp: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin. Mumford and Sons covered 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight.' Coldplay took on 'We All Fall in Love Sometimes.' That album reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Four Decades of 'Madonna': A Look Back at the Queen of Pop's Debut Album on the Charts Chart Rewind: In 1990, Madonna Was in 'Vogue' Atop the Hot 100
Los Angeles Times
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
How Questlove uncovered those culture-shifting moments in his ‘SNL' music doc
Like the DJ he is, Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson is highly adept at keeping a lot of things spinning. Before the pandemic, he juggled '14 to 16 jobs,' most notably as the drummer and focal performer for the Roots, the house band for 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.' But since then, Thompson says he's stopped using 'work, and overworking, as an excuse not to do the life work.' He discovered he likes naps and going to the movies with his girlfriend. And trimming his résumé. 'Now I'm sitting at six [jobs]. My goal is by the end of this year … that I get down to four.' One of those will continue to be as an Oscar-winning filmmaker, thanks to his 2021 documentary debut, 'Summer of Soul.' The prolific artist already dropped two new docs this year. 'Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music' is a compendium of culture-shaking highlights and behind-the-scenes revelations from 'Saturday Night Live,' while 'Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)' explores funk pioneer Sly Stone's 1970s descent from the top of the charts into a druggy twilight zone, and its broader cultural implications. Thompson is checking in over Zoom from a Los Angeles hotel room, visiting the city during a short 'Tonight Show' hiatus to spend some time with Stevie Wonder as he works on his next feature project, about 1970s R&B supergroup Earth, Wind & Fire. As he explains it, he's obsessed with the idea of 'penultimates,' the moment right before an artist's breakthrough. It was the key that helped Thompson resolve the task of compressing a half-century of archival 'SNL' footage into a two-hour history that's a lot more than a greatest-hits reel. 'Each story that's told starts with an obstacle … and kind of either getting over a fear of failure or [artists] getting over themselves, and then taking a step forward, doing it, only to realize that that's going to be a paradigm shift, game-changing moment,' he says. 'I can't imagine Eddie Murphy saying, 'No way I'm going to do James Brown, I'll look like a fool.' Or Jimmy Fallon being afraid to knock on Mick Jagger's door. Or, the reluctance of having John Belushi invite these people called slam dancers to a gig. Should we have Rage Against the Machine with Steve Forbes together? Like every story has a connecting resistance or fear. Hopefully, that's what I want people to learn.' Thompson and fellow director Oz Rodriguez miraculously touch on dozens of the music-related moments — not just the celebrated (and controversial) live performances that became pivotal for everything from hip-hop to punk but sketches, guest appearances by stars and the cast's own formidable inventions like the Blues Brothers — while mining anecdotal gold from the NBC archives and interviews. The film leads off with a nod to 'SNL's' signature cold open with a seven-minute blowout of clips that mashes up artists in surprising juxtapositions, most sensationally a sequence that features Queen, Vanilla Ice, the Dave Matthews Band, Fine Young Cannibals and Michael Bolton. 'I wish the world could see our 'CSI' outline — literally, like a yarn — trying to figure it out,' Thompson says. 'For me, the rule of DJing is knowing five songs that go perfectly with the song you're playing right now.' The montage took 10 months to create and one more, according to the filmmaker, to convince 14 holdouts to be part of it. 'I had to physically go, iPhone in hand, and be like, 'Come on, you don't want to get left out of history now, do you?'' Thompson's fascination with Sly Stone began as a 2-year-old. 'I'm probably the one person who didn't salivate over the arrival of 'There's a Riot Goin' on,'' he says, referencing the 1971 bummer classic. 'I'm almost certain it's because 'Riot' was possibly my first memory in life.' It's a very traumatic one. He was getting a shampoo from his mother and sister when a container of bathroom cleanser spilled and some of it got into his eyes. 'I'm in screaming pain. Four people are trying to 'Clockwork Orange' my eyes out, and 'Just Like a Baby' by Sly and the Family Stone was playing in the background. Why is this the second song on that album? I'll never get it, like, it's just the scariest, most mournful haunting sound ever.' Thompson made the documentary to explore those feelings and solve a riddle that the music posed. 'Soul music is releasing a demon that turns into a beautiful, cathartic exercise,' he says. 'We never just see it as 'I'm watching someone go through therapy.'' The process led to a personal revelation. 'My mom joked that, 'You say you're making this for Lauryn [Hill], and D'Angelo, and Frank Ocean and Kanye and whoever right now is sort of the modern version of Sly. You made that for you.' And when I thought about it, I was like, 'You're right.' 'Only time will tell,' he says 'if I had to make the Sly story to save my own life.'
The Star
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Lauren Sanchez has bachelorette with Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry ahead of wedding
(From left) Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner at the party in Paris. Photo: Lauren Sanchez/Instagram Lauren Sanchez is getting pampered and primed for marriage in Paris, where she's been enjoying a star-studded Bachelorette getaway ahead of her upcoming nuptials to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The festivities started off on May 15 with dinner at the historic Lafayette's restaurant, and it came complete with personalised menus, glamorous outfits and even more glamorous guests. 'It was a pre-wedding all-girl party for 13,' a source told People . They all drank 'espresso martinis and everybody got up and danced when Lauren asked for Earth, Wind & Fire ,' the source added, calling it a 'very relaxed and very Parisian' event. Their meal also concluded with a surprise vanilla meringue cake for Sanchez. Sanchez took to Instagram to share photos of her bride tribe, including a black and white image of the group – among them Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry – posing on on the rooftop of the Cheval Blanc hotel in Paris, Vogue reported. It comes after the California Girls singer embarked on a flight to space with the future Mrs Bezos as part of an all-female expedition that was widely mocked across the internet. 'Forever starts with friendship, surrounded by the women who've lifted me up, illuminated my path in dark times, and shaped my heart along the way,' she captioned the post The post also included several other snaps from her pre-wedding celebrations with additional guests including, Eva Longoria, Elsa Marie Collins, Natasha Poonawalla, October Gonzalez, Veronica Grazer, and Charissa Thompson. The next day, the group reportedly had lunch at L'Avenue, a swanky brasserie that Goop once described as 'an absolute scene.' Sanchez, a former news anchor, and Bezos went public with their relationship in 2019. The couple were reportedly travelling in the south of France when the billionaire proposed. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
