Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires Talk New HBO Doc, ‘Running With Our Eyes Closed,’ at Grammy Museum Premiere

Fashion experts! Celebrity stylists Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo exclusively gave Us the low-down on styling their A-list clientele — which includes Kourtney Kardashian, Olivia Rodrigo, Addison Rae and more.

It’s over. Jimmie Allen and his wife, Alexis Gale, announced they are calling it quits after three years of marriage — while revealing they are expecting their third child.

Over it. Love Is Blind’s Alexa Lemieux slammed body-shamers after attending Khloé Kardashian’s Good American event earlier this week.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor The voice of “Wall-E,” the lightsaber sounds from “Star Wars” and Darth Vader’s breathing are just a fraction of what sound mixer, designer and editor Ben Burtt has contributed to the world of cinema. This weekend, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will celebrate his body of work with a special conversation and installation titled “Behold.” Though the two-time Oscar winner has over 122 credits to his name, this will be the first time he’s going to be on stage alone. “Every time I’ve been on stage, it’s been to present something or I’ve been part of a team,” Burtt tells Variety over Zoom ahead of the conversation. 1977’s “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” was one of the first films he worked on. It was Burtt who created the lightsaber’s famous hum, which he says came from a broken TV set and a film projector.

A popular Virginia mom is facing felony charges after a shocking FBI sting led her right to the police’s front door… According to official docs, the

's Nick Thompson announced he started a nonprofit to help reality TV stars in the wake of allegations of mistreatment on the hit Netflix show.Thompson, who appeared on season 2 of and married before divorcing co-star Danielle Ruhl, took to Instagram on Thursday and announced he's a founding board member and executive director of outreach for the UCAN Foundation, which aims to «provide mental health and legal support to past, current, and future reality TV contestants.»Thompson explained in a lengthy caption that, no, he and fellow reality TV stars didn't sign up to be food and water-deprived, allegations made by several of his co-stars, including his ex.  «I signed up for a 'psychologically-based' love experiment sold as 'different from other reality shows,'» he wrote in his caption. «Love is Blind S1 made a believer out of me, and I thought the experience could work for me if I went with good intentions and stayed true to myself.»Thompson went on to say that the «vetting» process «included psych tests and evaluations, background checks, and assurances the cast members selected is 'ready for marriage.'» He also claimed being told that the psychologist that conducted his evaluation spoke to his therapist to verity the ethics and conditions of the show out of concern it would diminish his progress.

Will no one shed a tear for the ultra beautiful? The ones who are the wrong type of gorgeous for their preferred profession?

As you may have heard, Ryan Edwards is going to prison.

Tom Schwartz had some suspicions about Raquel Leviss…

Helen Mirren was in quite the tantalizing on-set situation with Harrison Ford.

Chet Hanks gave himself a good talking to.

Julian Lennon is using his critically acclaimed platform to speak out against alleged “abuse” within the music industry.

The late-night television sector will be the first to get hit if there’s a writers’ strike and its stars are bracing themselves for impact.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The verdicts on the new Broadway musical-comedy “Shucked” are in, and the critics have asked you to lend them your ears — so to speak — as they’ve cobbled together their reactions to the possible sleeper hit. (Sorry, but once you’ve seen the production, it may take you six months or longer to stop speaking in puns.) Variety’s critic wrote that “with its exuberance, heart and non-stop yucks, ‘Shucked’ is the surprise delight of the Broadway season.” The New York Post’s notice trumpeted it as “Broadways’s best and funniest new musical.” Time Out said the show leaves theatergoers “gorged to satisfaction on a big, tasty bag of Broadway puff.” Entertainment Weekly wrote that “its refreshing embrace of diversity and unapologetically corny sincerity can definitely put a smile on your face.” Even one of the minority that was harder on it, the New York Times’ Jesse Green, begrudgingly admitted of the parade of laughs: “forced into submission,,” he wrote, “you eventually give in.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic During the opening monolog at Sunday night’s CMT Music Awards, broadcast from Austin on CBS, there was a comedic bit in which Kelsea Ballerini and Kane Brown exchanged anniversary presents to celebrate their cohosting of the show for the third consecutive time. Brown gave Ballerini a cowboy hat, and she reciprocated by giving him a pink hat to put on in return. At least a few audience members shared a joke about the exchange: By wearing pink, would Brown be breaking Tennessee’s recently passed law that some believe would ban most drag performances in the state, if they were back home? Viewers whose minds went there during that silly opening were just kidding — but Ballerini really went there later in the three-hour telecast, when she chose four “RuPaul’s Drag Race” queens to perform with her as she sang “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too).” That song, off her 2022 album “Subject to Change,” is Ballerini’s anthem of female friendship — and, with the way the CMT Awards routine played out, she very much seemed to be counting drag performers as among those friends. The performance was playful and ostensibly non-political, and in a different year might not have raised very many shaved or unshaved eyebrows. In spring 2023, it was hard to read it as anything other than a statement of: If drag queens are brought down, the rest of us will be dragged down with them.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic BMI has prevailed in a New York court in a dispute with Live Nation and AEG over collections of songwriting revenue from live concerts, earning a judgment the performing rights organization said would earn its affiliates 138% higher than the historical rate. Louis L. Stanton of the Southern District of New York issued the ruling giving songwriters and publishers the raise on live revenue. BMI said that as a result of the judgment, that extra money will also come from tickets sold on the secondary market, service fees and VIP packages. BMI president-CEO Mike O’Neill expressed the org’s delight with the court victory, while still throwing shade at the two concert promoters and the North American Concert Promoters Association (NACPA) for years of opposition to carving out a boost in songwriter revenue.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Madonna is adding eight extra dates to the second leg of her U.S. tour this coming winter. The additional shows were revealed in an announcement that put a special emphasis on a show she’s added for Nashville on Dec. 22, where she plans to put the spotlight on the state of Tennessee’s recent wave of LGBTQ+-targeted bills. The additional dates announced for this coming December and January represent a mixture of Madonna returning to cities where she already is playing concerts earlier in 2023, like New York City and Los Angeles, along with a few cities that are completely fresh additions to the “Celebration Tour” routing, like Nashville, Philadelphia, Palm Springs and Sacramento.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When it comes to the surprise-songs portion of each night’s show on the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift fans probably should have seen one of Friday night’s two picks coming. Of course she was going to honor the opening day of release for her friend Lana Del Rey’s new album by performing the song that the two of them wrote together for Swift’s most recent album. But before she did that, Swift gave Del Rey’s Friday release, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” all the “promo” that a fellow artist could ask for, calling it “brilliant” and urging the approximately 60,000 fans gathered at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium to stream or buy the new album.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Your eyes have deceived you if you ever took too quick a look at a passing reference to one of the great singer-songwriters of our day and mistook Brandy Clark for Brandi Carlile or vice versa. But those same eyes will not be seeing double if, in the very near future, you end up seeing both those names in close conjunction, a lot. Clark recently completed her fourth album — a self-titled one — for Warner Records, and the just-announced May 19 release is produced by possibly her biggest fan: Carlile. Their occasionally confused monograms are among the least of the things the two have in common, since both have enjoyed years of mutual acclaim among music fans who are partial to top-flight Americana or country sounds, or simply the classic singer-songwriter style. Beyond that, there are even more borderline-spooky commonalities that make it seem like they were both born under a good sign. “We’re both from Washington State; we’re both gay — we have a lot in common,” says Clark, picking out some of the obvious shared bio points. “And then a lot not in common. But Brandi is amazing, is how much she wants to prop other artists up. It’s a pretty big, generous gift.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Before anything else is said about Lana Del Rey’s new album, let it be noted that however well the record came out, it was foreordained to come in second among her artistic works of the past year. Because absolutely nothing could surpass the mic drop of her placing the sole billboard announcing the new project in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the hometown of a fairly recent ex-boyfriend, in what could only be seen as a clever combination of extreme advertising narrowcasting and baller performance art. But if “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.” had to come in as a runner-up to that, it’s a very, very, very close second. It might even count as her masterpiece to date, among her non-billboard-related work. The word “might” is advisable because claims to that kind of superiority can only be made after a lot of time and repeat listens have passed, of course, and “Ocean Blvd.” is such a dense set of songs to take in that your immediate response to its 16 songs might be to rise for a standing ovation… and then think that maybe you’ll need a week to rest before you settle in for a second and third listen, this time with a whole Internet’s worth of Cliff Notes. The album is likely to wear you out — at least it will if you’re consuming it as confessional songwriting, in bulk, and not just aural wallpaper — but it’s a happy exhaustion.

While he started out as a member of the alt-country group Drive-By Truckers for six years, American singer-songwriter Jason Isbell has now won four Grammy Awards and become a beloved star in his own right. Isbell is famous for a lot of things, but maybe in the movie world, you may know him for writing the soulful, melancholy ballad “Maybe It’s Time” from the “A Star Is Born,” movie and soundtrack where it was performed by actor Bradley Cooper‘s character, Jackson Maine.