Names and faces
One of the world’s best-selling singers of all-time, Shania Twain, said she had to utter the scariest five words a vocalist would ever hear: “I may never sing again.” The queen of country pop had contracted Lyme’s disease, which crippled her most prized instrument — her voice — and she thought her singing career was over. Twain, 52, described the process of finding her voice again as both gruesome and trying: “I had sounded like a dying cow for a long time before I was able to really make any sounds that were pleasing at all.” Twain, who began her career in 1993, trained with coaches and worked extensively on her vocals, comparing the experience to an athlete recovering from a major injury. Twain has tested out her voice in various ways in the 15 years in between her last album, 2002’s Up!, and her newest effort, Now. She sang duets with Lionel Richie and Michael Buble for their own albums; she completed a residency in Las Vegas; and opened a successful U.S. tour, reconnecting with the fans who helped her sell more than 90 million albums worldwide. Now goes on sale Sept. 29. She said finishing the album felt like climbing “this huge mountain and I made it to the top.” Breakfast Club actor Anthony Michael Hall entered a no-contest plea to charges that he shoved a neighbor who fell and broke his wrist. Hall, 49, entered the plea Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court to one misdemeanor count of assault likely to produce injury. He was immediately sentenced to 40 hours of community service and three years of informal probation. Prosecutors say Hall and a next-door neighbor in Playa Del Rey got into an argument in September 2016 that ended with Hall pushing the man to the ground. Hall was a staple of early 1980s teen movies including The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. He more recently appeared in The Dark Knight and the TV series The Dead Zone. Original Kiss members Gene Simmons and Ace Frehley have reunited for their first public appearance since their group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. But unlike that terse ceremony, the two went to CHS field in St. Paul, Minn., to play Wednesday night in their first show together in 16 years. The event was a hurricane relief benefit that Simmons helped organize for the Minnesota charity Matter.ngo. The nonprofit focuses on feeding and aiding children worldwide, but after Harvey struck Texas in late August the concert’s theme turned to assistance for Houston and surrounding areas. Frehley took the stage about three-fourths of the way into Simmons’ set, then tore into “Cold Gin” and “Shock Me” before the finale “Rock and Roll All Nite.”