Lainey Wilson to Be Celebrated as Top Breakout Artist for CMT’s Artists of the Year Special (EXCLUSIVE)

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Jordan Klepper’s latest half-hour “The Daily Show” special, “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Midterms – America Unfollows Democracy,” is set to bow on Nov. 1 at 11:30 p.m. ET, Comedy Central is set to announce on Tuesday. The new special will follow “Daily Show” contributor Klepper as he interviews Republican voters who have fallen under the spell of 2020 election deniers and who now plan to vote for candidates who threaten to subvert the entire election process. The result is a “quest to figure out if America is ghosting democracy.” “Jordan Klepper Fingers the Midterms — America Unfollows Democracy” will also be available on Paramount+, the Daily Show YouTube channel, CC.com, video on demand and Comedy Central apps starting Nov. 2.

Kelsea Ballerini, Carly Pearce and Jessie James Decker wore super bright colors on the red carpet for the 2022 CMT Artists Of The Year!

Jenna Andrews but you know her work as a songwriter, a producer and publisher, and A&R executive working with the likes of BTS, Jennifer Lopez and Ed Sheeran. MORE: All the show-stopping red carpet looks from the 2022 MTV VMAsBorn in Canada, Jenna signed with Def Jam Records before turning her energy towards other artists, and now she's also working on her own podcast, The Green Room, giving artists a safe space to share the importance of being vulnerable. Jenna spoke with HELLO! about learning from K-Pop icons over WhatsApp, Dixie D'Amelio's debut album and J-Lo's smash movie Marry Me...

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It wasn’t quite a proper Spinal Tap reunion, but there was some implicit history happening Tuesday night at Largo in Los Angeles as Michael McKean and Christopher Guest joined Loudon Wainwright III, the headliner for the latest in a series of Judd Apatow-hosted “Juddapalooza” benefit concerts at Largo. Besides going back together about five and a half decades as friends on the musical-comedy scene, Wainwright, as hardcore fans will know, was seen as a member of Spinal Tap in a cameo in the very first filmed comedy sketch featuring the faux group in the late ’70s. Tuesday’s Largo show featured a healthy intermingling of Wainwright performing songs from his new album, “Lifetime Achievement,” and Guest and McKean bringing back some of the very earliest Spinal Tap “hits,” along with some folk-scene collaborations. Also on tap as unadvertised guests: Beck, who sang a few of his own songs and Neil Young’s “Old Man” along with assisting others in the hootenanny, and top producer Greg Kurstin, who proved game for completely unrehearsed piano contributions and even solos over the course of the two hours-plus.

HARDY, country star and songwriter for some of the biggest names in country music like Morgan Wallen and Blake Shelton has announced the release of his upcoming album "the mockingbird & THE CROW" and a 2023 tour.  "the mockingbird & THE CROW" is an album that mixes up genres with both country and rock music.The new album comes after HARDY's 2020 album "A Rock."  The album will release on January 20, 2023.Three of the songs off the new album, the five-minute title track "the mockingbird & THE CROW," TRUCK BED" and "here lies country music" have already been released. HARDY announced the release of his new album "the mockingbird & THE CROW" and followed up the news with a 2023 tour announcement.  (Terry Wyatt) The album will also include "Wait In The Truck," a duet previously released featuring Lainey Wilson and HARDY's singles "Jack" and "Sold Out." "the mockingbird & THE CROW" will also include a Wallen collaboration with the song "Red."  A day after announcing the new album, HARDY kept the news coming with his 2023 tour with Jameson Rodgers and Blame My Youth.  HARDY's "the mockingbird & THE CROW" tour will kick off in February 2023 in Indianapolis, Indiana and wrap up in April in Irving, Texas.  The album and tour announcement comes shortly after HARDY was in a tour bus accident that left the four on the bus with significant injuries.  The new HARDY album includes the song, "Red" featuring Morgan Wallen.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If Kid Cudi is indeed retiring his rapper persona, as strongly indicated in recent interviews, Monday night might have served as an early farewell party of sorts.  At a special screening at the Netflix Tudum Theater in Hollywood, the star was all smiles as he answered questions and celebrated the release of “Entergalactic,” the new animated Netflix special that serves as a kind of filmic companion piece to Cudi’s new album of the same name.  “I’m just overwhelmed, you know?” Cudi, who created, starred in, and executive-produced the project, said immediately after the screening, sitting next to the film’s director, Fletcher Moules. “The past week has been really exciting to see the reviews, see the response. We’ve been working on this thing for three years, man.” 

countdown to CMT Artists of the Year is on — and this year's performers have just been unveiled. When fans tune in to the annual event on Friday, viewers will get to see a lineup of country music's brightest stars grace the stage at Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Included in the 2022 roster of performers are honorees Alan Jackson, Carly Pearce, Cody Johnson, Kane Brown and Lainey Wilson.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic California is in the house, and will be for the next three years, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. A major exhibition, “Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock,” has just opened and will run through 2025. The must-see walk-through traces a history of roots music in L.A. rock that expands to include the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Michael Nesmith in the 1960s; the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris in the ’70s; and Dwight Yoakam, Lone Justice and Los Lobos in the ’80s, among many other influential and sometimes commercially impactful figures. Variety recently visited the museum and spoke with co-curators Michael Gray, the facility’s executive senior director of editorial and interpretation, and Michael McCall, the museum’s senior editor, about why the ’60s through ’80s were a golden age for country-inflected rock in Los Angeles. The two curators also spoke about a number of the artifacts on display, from numerous Nudie’s-tailored jackets that set the visual tone for the era to key musical instruments to handwritten scores and setlists and even band flyers — see the gallery of photos below.

Kylie Minogue and Olivia Newton-John are among the stars who laid bare their hearts and souls when they were diagnosed with breast cancer.EXCLUSIVE: Remembering Olivia Newton-John - Her family, Dolly Parton, Sir Cliff and more share memoriesIn our Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue, HELLO! celebrates the legacy of Olivia Newton-John and her celebrity friends share their special memories of her exclusively with us. Here are five powerful quotes we love from celebrities who have a positive message for women who have breast cancer..."Having had cancer, one important thing to know is you're still the same person at the end."You're stripped down to near zero. But most people come out the other end feeling more like themselves than ever before."WATCH: Olivia Newton-John's best moments"My cancer scare changed my life.

New Music Friday! It's every audiophile's favorite day of the week, and some of our favorite artists from all different genres have blessed us with new tunes.Migos' Quavo and Takeoff paired for their new album, Charlie Puth dropped his new album, Carly Rae Jepsen and Rufus Wainwright teamed up for «The Loneliest Time,» and Ozuna shared his fifth studio album, . Ed Sheeran also officially announced the North American leg of his “+ — = ÷ x Tour,” which kicks off May 6, 2023, in Arlington, Texas.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift kept the “Midnights” oil burning later than usual late Thursday night and early Friday morning, revealing not just the name of one song at midnight, as has been her custom in the buildup to the Oct. 21 album release, but all five of the remaining mystery track titles, one per hour, until she finally reached a grand finale at 4 a.m. ET. And that final track reveal had — as she promised — “QUITE the twist of an ending,” with Lana Del Rey being revealed as making the only featured appearance by a guest on the album. Del Rey will make her cameo on a song titled “Snow on the Beach,” which will be track 4 on “Midnights.” The other four tracks whose titles were revealed over the course of the wee hours were “Lavender Haze,” set to be the first track on the album; “You’re on Your Own,” track 5; “Labyrinth,” track 10; and “Sweet Nothing,” track 12.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Feeling like you’re having a hard time keeping up with all the new music that’s coming out? You’re not alone — even if you are, say, a computer and not just a mere mortal. Stats now show that an average of more than 100,000 songs are being uploaded to digital service providers every day. So don’t feel bad about not staying on top of things. If each of those 100K tunes lasted just three minutes (a conservative estimate by most standards), it would take over 30 years for one person to listen through all of the music released to and through DSPs in a day. New Music Friday? It’s more like New Music Nanosecond. The 100,000 daily figure was cited by the CEOs for both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group at industry events in September, according to Music Business Worldwide, which used the staggering number as its Stat of the Week on Thursday.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Loretta Lynn died Tuesday at age 90. Todd Snider is a singer-songwriter who collaborated on writing songs with Lynn, including “Don’t Tempt Me,” which he recorded, and “Everything It Takes,” which appeared on her “Full Circle” album. Lynn penned the forward for a biography of Snider that will be published in 2023, writing in part, “”Todd Snider is a flat-out musical genius. I’ve been around a pretty good while, and there are a very few singer-songwriters who I would say that about, but Todd is one of them.” He wrote down thoughts about his working friendship with Lynn for Variety: I knew Loretta through her daughter Peggy. She is married to one of my oldest and closest friends, Mark Marchetti, and because of them Loretta knew of me.

EXCLUSIVE: When a network starts releasing the statistics on views for a trailer, then you know anticipation for a show is pretty freaking big. That’s what the Paramount Network experienced with the release of the season 5 teaser for Yellowstone, which begins with John Dutton (Kevin Costner) swearing in as Montana’s governor. Watch it above.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The question is no longer just what Bob Dylan will have to say about Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” or the Clash’s “London Calling” when he writes about them in his new book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” Now we can wonder how Helen Mirren or Renée Zellweger will sound giving voice to Dylan’s prose as they read those chapters, respectively, in the audiobook version, which, like the hardback, arrives Nov. 1. Variety previously reported the titles of the historical songs Dylan has written essays about for the tome, followed by the the names of the actors enlisted to read individual chapters for the audiobook, but those two lists hadn’t been paired up till now. A look at the list below, being revealed for the first time today, shows that all of the stars involved have been given multiple assignments, including Jeff Bridges, Oscar Isaac, Rita Moreno, Jeffrey Wright, Sissy Spacek, John Goodman, Alfre Woodard and Steve Buscemi as well as Mirren and Zellweger.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The family of John Prine has signed a partnership deal with RadicalMedia (“Summer of Soul”) to develop two documentaries about the life and work about the life and work of the late singer-songwriter, the company has announced. Filming will be well underway this weekend as RadicalMedia plans to shoot the week-long series of tribute concerts taking place in Nashville under the banner of “You Got Gold,” including shows at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday and at the Ryman Auditorium Sunday and Monday. The all-star lineup for these shows is not being publicly revealed in advance. Footage for the “You Got Gold” concerts is being directed by Michael John Warren, who recently helmed the HBO documentary “Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known” for RadicalMedia.