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Flying around the world and speaking to hundreds of people? It's a good way to get COVID-19 — which Ariana Grande evidently found out the hard way.

On her Instagram Story on Thursday, Ari posted a screen shot of her appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night, during which she showed off her wand-twirling skills. She captioned the image, "moments before Covid."

Her post followed a whirlwind tour around the globe to promote her new movie, Wicked: For Good, and the New York City premiere. Ari did not walk the red carpet for the premiere in solidarity with co-star Cynthia Erivo, who had lost her voice due to illness.

According to Variety, Ariana has had to pull out of an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show and some upcoming Q&A sessions about the film.

Variety points out that both Ariana and Cynthia contracted COVID-19, though at separate times, when they were filming the Wicked movies over three years ago.

According to Variety, Wicked: For Good is expected to top the box office with a $150 million opening.

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The Kid LAROI has announced a new album — after ditching a previous one.

The new album Before I Forget will be out Jan. 9. You can hear the first single, "A Perfect World," now.

LAROI explains on Instagram that Before I Forget is an album he recorded "in the last 4 months."

"I had a whole other album that was completed but I scrapped it," the Australian artist notes. "[S]tarted again from scratch with the exception of 1 song. it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever made. it’s also the most personal thing I’ve ever made. sorry it’s taken a while. I hope that it resonates with you in some way cause it means a hell of a lot to me. I love you and thank you for supporting me always."

Fans will no doubt interpret the lyrics of "A Perfect World" as a comment on his now-ended relationship with Tate McRae. He sings, "I put you on, I see you got some taste now/ How’d I become somebody that you hate now?/ I was surprised when I heard what you were saying about us."

He also sings, "In a perfect world we'd have it all figured out/ Baby, you would be my girl."

Before announcing this album, LAROI had released a breakup song called "A Cold Play," which seemingly inspired Tate's recent single "Tit for Tat." 

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Lady Gaga and the KPop Demon Hunters team are nominated for Grammys, but they just received some early trophies from a different kind of music awards show.

At the 16th annual Hollywood Music in Media Awards, Gaga's song "The Dead Dance," which she co-wrote and recorded for the Netflix show Wednesday, was named best song from a TV show or limited series. Meanwhile, "Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters was named best song from an animated film.

Other winners included "Dear Me," a song sung by Kesha and written by Diane Warren for the documentary about her, Diane Warren: Relentless. It was named best song from a documentary film.

The NBC special Wicked: One Wonderful Night, starring Ariana Grande and other members of the film's cast, was named best music performance/special program, while Wicked: For Good was named best music-themed film, biopic or musical.

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The Weeknd is now the $1 billion man.

The singer's ongoing After Hours Til Dawn Tour just put tickets on sale for 2026 dates in Mexico, Brazil, Europe and the U.K., bringing the trek's overall gross to more than $1 billion across 153 shows since 2022. As it made its way through North America twice, as well as Europe, the U.K., Latin America and Australia, it's sold 7.5 million tickets.

All that means that the tour is now the top-earning trek by a male solo artist in history. It's just the latest milestone for the run, which had already broken records for attendance and number of shows in multiple cities.

The tour has also benefitted a variety of causes. The Weeknd has donated proceeds — more than $8.5 million so far — to his XO Humanitarian Fund and Global Citizen.

The stadium tour is set to wrap up in Portugal in September.

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Charli XCX has given us our first look at The Moment, a kind of alternative history of the release and promotion of her world-beating 2024 album, Brat, based on her own original idea.

At first glance, the newly released teaser trailer looks like a regular documentary, as we see Charli designing her tour, going on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, trying on outfits, performing and meeting fans — but she seems uncomfortable throughout it all. As Charli told Vanity Fair recently, she plays "sort of a hell version of myself" in The Moment. "It’s fiction, but it’s the realest depiction of the music industry that I’ve ever seen.”

In one scene, Charli and her team are getting ready for a performance when a dummy with long dark hair falls from the ceiling and crashes to the floor, breaking into pieces. "Is that me?" she asks. "That's supposed to be you, yeah," she's told.

In another scene, a member of her team tells her, "You're not gonna die after an album cycle." Charli responds, "I might!"

The Moment director Aidan Zamiri told Vanity Fair that the film is what would have happened if Charli had made "entirely different choices" during her Brat era. It co-stars Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Kylie Jenner, Rachel Sennott and Alexander Skarsgård, and arrives in theaters Jan. 20.

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One ongoing gag in the new Disney+/Hulu film A Very Jonas Christmas Movie is that Kevin Jonas keeps telling his brothers that he wants to sing lead on a song. Now, his dream has come true in real life.

Kevin has finally released "Changing," his first official solo single, after debuting it live at Boston's Fenway Park back in August. In a statement about the song, Kevin says, "To me, it’s evocative of going through the motions with life and continuously trying to improve yourself. Life keeps changing, and the song is a positive reinforcement of that idea."

Kevin sings in the song, "This coffee's cold like these same old conversations/So I keep on changing, oh, I keep on changing/Maybe I'm jaded/Maybe I'm chasing the highs to escape/So I keep changing."

"It says, ‘Don’t let things get stale,’ which is embodied in the ‘coffee’s cold’ line," Kevin notes in his statement. "You need to know when to move onto the next thing and you also need to keep moving no matter what the situation or relationship is.”

He adds on Instagram, "My first solo single is finally here. Words can’t describe how much this song means to me. Being able to share it with you all now has never felt more right. I’m so grateful to everyone who helped bring this song to life and to all of you for listening, supporting, and being part of this journey with me."

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David Archuleta was busy this year, releasing a bunch of music, going on tour and prepping his memoir, Devout, for a February release. He's also just released a new Christmas EP, My Only Wish, and scheduled LA and New York residencies to promote it. Why put himself through all of that?

"Cause I'm crazy," David jokes. "My manager was like, 'What if we wait 'til next year so that we can properly set it up?' At the time I was like, 'No, I want to do it this year because I'm in the mood now.'"

He laughs, "But now it's like, sometimes you give yourself too much work to do."

One track on the EP, "Wish at the Top of My List," teams David with another American Idol alum, Jordin Sparks, for a collaboration that's been a long time coming.

"We've been talking for over a decade to do a duet," David says. "To hear her singing on a song that I wrote, like, singing with me ... it just made me feel so good."

And there's another song of David's out there you may have heard: He co-wrote "Wish That You Were Me," sung by Beanie Feldstein's pop star character THĒ in season 5 of Only Murders in the Building. David's friend John Hoffman, the OMITB showrunner, is a fan of David's song "Crème Brûlée" and asked him to write a similar song for the show.

David says John told him the synopsis of the season, the character they were developing and the kind of song they needed. 

"And I'd never written, really, to fit another character," David says. "And I was like, 'That sounds fun.'"

"I was kind of like creating this little bit of a sassier character in my own music with 'Crème Brûlée,'" he explains. "So it was just fun to channel a little more extreme version of that." 

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No more complaints from fans that Olivia Rodrigo is "anywhere but the studio." In an Instagram dump of photos captioned "November," Liv is very clearly in the studio: She's seen standing in front of a microphone in a vocal booth and pouting. Fans were thrilled, writing in the comments, "OR3 IS COMINGGGG" and "OR3 IS CLOSER THAN WE THINK."

AIR Shop is offering BLACKPINK fans the chance to win two tickets to see the K-pop superstars at the Tokyo Dome in January. If you sign up for a free membership on the platform, which offers more than 40 million concert, sports and theater tickets worldwide, you can be one of five fans to win tickets to one of the group's shows on Jan. 16, 17 or 18. You have until Dec. 13 to enter, but travel and hotel aren't included.

John Rzeznik of Goo Goo Dolls has joined the lineup of Freezingman 2026, a two-night benefit held Jan. 9-10 in Madison, Wisconsin. The benefit, which will also feature members of The Go-Go's, Portugal. The Man, The Bangles and many others, raises money for epilepsy research and children with special needs.

Victoria Beckham may not be interested in doing a Spice Girls reunion, but she doesn't mind singing her group's hits with her son. Cruz Beckham posted a video of himself playing the Spice Girls hit "Viva Forever" on acoustic guitar as Victoria sings along with him. Fans were thrilled, with one commenting, "omg Cruz thank you for bringing mom back to singing." Another wrote, "I love this so much. See, Posh CAN sing!"

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This album will be "Popular" with parents of crying babies.

Lullaby Renditions of Ariana Grande is coming out Nov. 21 from Rockabye Baby, the world's leading lullaby brand. It features 13 of Ari's biggest hits transformed into gentle instrumental tracks played on glockenspiel, xylophone and vibraphones. They're all designed to send your little one off to sleep and have you saying, "thank u, next."

You can watch an adorable animated video for the lullaby version of "7 rings" now.

Here's the track list:

"7 rings"
"thank u, next"
"One Last Time"
"Into You"
"Popular"
"Love Me Harder"
"Santa Tell Me"
"no tears left to cry"
"God is a woman"
"break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored"
"Dangerous Woman"
"Positions"
"we can’t be friends (wait for your love)" 

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Demi Lovato married musician Jordan "Jutes" Lutes in May, and she credits the universe for bringing them together -- sort of.

Speaking to Who What Wear, Demi explains, "I had been in past relationships where I thought, 'Oh, this is the long game!' But I hadn't taken care of myself yet. The universe rewards you when you do the therapeutic work on yourself, [and] I had to do the work."

"Because of that, the universe provided," she adds. "I got myself ready for a life by myself, and then I was able to share it with somebody else."

Demi met Jutes while she was making her 2022 rock album, Holy Fvck, which she says was a low point for her emotionally.

"I opened up to him because I was going through a really rough time when I made Holy Fvck. I had just come out of treatment, and I was newly sober and raw with my emotions," she says. "I had nothing to medicate with. He was there for me as a friend, helping me get through this deep depression I was in."

She said after they co-wrote her "vulnerable" song "Happy Ending," she realized she felt "safe" with him, even though at that point they were still friends.  Eventually they began dating, and after two years together, he proposed in December 2023.

"I'm really happy. I told my husband today, 'I've never been more in love with you. I didn't know my love could grow for you more so than it already has,'" Demi shares. "The timing was perfect."

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