Elton's Farewell
Elton John is ending his touring career with a bang! The Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour has officially become the highest-grossing concert tour ever. It first kicked off in 2018 and has since grossed $817.9 million after performing in 278 shows, according to Billboard. John surpassed Ed Sheeran's 2019 The Divide Tour, which raked in $776.4 million. But it's not over yet, as the shows will continue through July 2023.
Lil Wayne on Road
Also in touring news, Lil Wayne announced a slate of shows set for Spring 2023. The Welcome to Tha Carter tour is set to kick off in Minneapolis in April and will run through May with the final show in Los Angeles. The news comes days after the Recording Academy revealed that Wayne would be one of four recipients of its Global Impact Award at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
DC Cinematic Universe
The DC Universe is kicking it into high gear with a newly announced full slate of films and shows. DC Studios heads James Gunn, co-CEO with Peter Safran, unveiled the 10 projects in a new first chapter which he called "Gods and Monsters," with the titles being connected to each other in the same universe (unless otherwise labeled like Matt Reeves' The Batman). Some of the new titles revealed include the film Superman: Legacy, to be written by Gunn and slated for a July 2025 release, and TV projects Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Lanterns.
The make-or-break holiday shopping season was off to a strong start as of Black Friday, according to early online data and interviews with several analysts and early online statistics. On Thanksgiving day alone, consumers nationwide spent $1.75 billion online ー a striking increase of nearly 30 percent over last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics. The latest numbers are an indication that what was once a day-long Black Friday event, that then extended into a long weekend capped by Cyber Monday, has morphed into something altogether different.
Sandwiched between the massive Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday is a day for mom-and-pop shops to take a slice of holiday revenue from the retail giants. Walter Frye, a vice president at American Express, sat down with Cheddar to discuss how his company is working to raise awareness about the importance of shopping small. When a shopper spends one dollar at a small business, 67 percent of that dollar stays in the local community, he told Cheddar.
Amazon's decision to bring an HQ2 to Queens, N.Y., was met by considerable backlash. According to the director of the city's Riders Alliance, the frustration is largely about the subway's reliability ー or lack thereof. "We have enough space on our trains, but they're not reliable," Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director of the Riders Alliance, told Cheddar Wednesday.
Airports nationwide are gearing up for one of the busiest holiday travel weekends on record. But thrifty procrastinators take heart: there may still be some workarounds to help save money on holiday travel this year.
Condé Nast's shift to digital continued this week with an announcement that Glamour, the 80-year-old women's fashion magazine, would cease monthly print publication after its January 2019 issue. It follows similar moves by Teen Vogue and Self, other female-focused brands in the Condé stable. The vaunted magazine publisher lost $120 million last year amid a consolidation of its print properties.
The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line has been answering the questions of stressed-out Thanksgiving hosts for decades, but this year it is turning to Amazon Alexa to modernize how it helps with turkey prep.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018.
Home-builders were largely spared from the broader market sell-off early this week, but a mix of high home prices, rising mortgage rates, and low home-builder confidence are threatening the future of the housing market.
Gwenyth Paltrow's Goop brand is out with its annual holiday gift guide, with such practical ideas as 24 karat gold rolling papers and an entire Spanish village.
Dr. Karin Tamerius is the mind behind "Angry Uncle Bot," an interactive feature for the New York Times which simulates conversations between the user and their disagreeable relatives.
