Category: Entertainment

NEW YORK (AP) — Online shopping giant Amazon is buying MGM, the movie and TV studio behind James Bond, “Legally Blonde” and “Shark Tank,” with the hopes of filling its video streaming service with more stuff to watch.

Amazon is paying $8.45 billion for MGM, making it the company’s second-largest acquisition after it bought grocer Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion in 2017.

The deal is the latest in the media industry that’s aimed at boosting streaming services to compete against Netflix and Disney+. AT&T and Discovery announced last week that they would combine media companies, creating a powerhouse that includes HGTV, CNN, Food Network and HBO.

Amazon doesn’t say how many people watch its Prime Video service. But more than 200 million have access to it because they’re signed up for its Prime membership, which gives them faster shipping and other perks. Besides Prime Video, Amazon also has a free streaming service called IMDb TV, where Amazon makes money by playing ads during movies and shows.

Buying MGM would give Amazon access to more films, shows and famous characters, including Rocky, RoboCop and Pink Panther. Amazon will also get a cable channel: Epix, which MGM owns.

Known for its roaring lion logo, MGM is one of the oldest Hollywood studios, founded in 1924 when films were still silent. It has more than 4,000 films in its library, including classics such as “Silence of the Lambs” and “Thelma & Louise.” Amazon said it plans to tap MGM’s vast library to create new shows and movies.

More recent productions include reality TV staples “Shark Tank” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” as well as the upcoming James Bond movie “No Time to Die” and an Aretha Franklin biopic called “Respect.”

Amazon already has its own studio but has had mixed results. Two of its shows, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Fleabag,” won best comedy series Emmys. Although it has won several Oscars, including most recently for “Sound of Metal,” many of its films have failed to click with audiences at the box office. Recently, Amazon has been spending on sports and splashy shows. It will stream “Thursday Night Football” next year and is producing a “Lord of the Rings” show, which reportedly cost $450 million for its first season alone.

Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. declined to say when it expects the deal to be finalized. But when it does, it will make Amazon, already one of the most powerful and valuable companies in the world, even bigger. Regulators around the world are scrutinizing Amazon’s business practices, specifically the way it looks at information from businesses that sell goods on its site and uses it to create its own Amazon-branded products.

A report by the House Judiciary Committee in October called for a possible breakup of Amazon and others, making it harder for them to buy other businesses and imposing new rules to safeguard competition.

Amazon, founded in 1995 as an online bookstore, has become a $1.6 trillion behemoth that does a little bit of everything. It has a delivery business network that gets orders to people in two days or sooner; sells inhalers and insulin; has a cloud-computing business that powers the apps of Netflix and McDonald’s; and has plans to send more than 3,200 satellites into space to beam internet service to Earth.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Demi Lovato’s drug overdose in 2018 resulted in the singer having three strokes and a heart attack, leaving her with physical limitations that still affect her.

Lovato reveals publicly for the first time details about the near-fatal incident in “Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil,” a four-part docuseries debuting March 23 on YouTube Originals.

In the trailer, Lovato says doctors told her family she had five to 10 minutes to live.

“I was left with brain damage, and I still deal with the effects of that today,” she said in a video call on Wednesday. “I don’t drive a car because I have blind spots in my vision. For a long time, I had a really hard time reading. It was a big deal when I was able to read a book, which was like two months later, because my vision was so blurry.”

Lovato said the lasting repercussions “are still there to remind me of what could happen if I ever get into a dark place again.”

The 28-year-old singer, who sported pink hair on the call, has been working since age 10, when she appeared on the TV series “Barney & Friends.” She went to rehab for the first time at 18, after struggling with bipolar disorder, anorexia and bullying.

Lovato has shared her private struggles before, in a 2012 MTV documentary and in a 2017 YouTube doc in which she said she was still dealing with alcohol and cocaine addictions after undergoing further rehab. She said speaking publicly on those programs provided her with the accountability that kept her sober for six years until her relapse in 2018.

“My purpose in putting this out is to help people who have been on the same path as I have,” she said. “I wanted to set the record straight, and I wanted to reveal it all for my fans.”

Lovato’s family, as well as Elton John and Christina Aguilera, are among those interviewed in the doc that was shot over a year. In the third segment, Lovato discusses past traumas in her life.

Lovato doesn’t relate to artists who claim they are most creative when they are in a dark place or using drugs.

“I feel like the best work that I make is when I’m present and when I am aware of what’s going on in my life,” she said. “That’s when the truth just flows out of me. As long as I continue to tell my truth, I’m going to make music that resonates with people.”

Lovato re-launched her singing career at last year’s Grammy Awards and sang the national anthem at the 2020 Super Bowl before the coronavirus pandemic took hold.

Last month, Lovato sang on a TV special marking President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Despite her near-death experience, Lovato wouldn’t change what happened to her.

“Everything had to happen in order for me to learn the lessons that I learned,” she said. “I look back and sometimes I get sad when I think of the pain that I had to endure to overcome what I have. I’m so proud of the person that I am today. One of the main reasons I’m coming forward is so I never have to live that life again.”

Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio host who ripped into liberals and laid waste to political correctness with a merry brand of malice that made him one of the most powerful voices on the American right, influencing the rightward push of conservatism and the rise of Donald Trump, died Wednesday. He was 70.

Limbaugh said a year ago that he had lung cancer. His death was announced on his show by his wife, Kathryn.

Unflinchingly conservative, wildly partisan, bombastically self-promoting and larger than life, Limbaugh galvanized listeners for more than 30 years with his talent for vituperation and sarcasm.

He called himself an entertainer, but his rants during his three-hour weekday radio show broadcast on nearly 600 U.S. stations shaped the national political conversation, swaying ordinary Republicans and the direction of their party.

Blessed with a made-for-broadcasting voice, he delivered his opinions with such certainty that his followers, or “Ditto-heads,” as he dubbed them, took his words as sacred truth.

“In my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement,” Limbaugh, with typical immodesty, told author Zev Chafets in the 2010 book “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One.”

Forbes magazine estimated his 2018 income at $84 million, ranking him behind only Howard Stern among radio personalities.

Limbaugh took as a badge of honor the title “most dangerous man in America.” He said he was the “truth detector,” the “doctor of democracy,” a “lover of mankind,” a “harmless, lovable little fuzz ball” and an “all-around good guy.” He claimed he had “talent on loan from God.”

A portly, cigar-chomping, round-faced figure, Limbaugh was divorced three times, after marrying Roxy Maxine McNeely in 1977, Michelle Sixta in 1983 and Marta Fitzgerald in 1994. He married his fourth wife, the former Kathryn Rogers, in a lavish 2010 ceremony featuring Elton John. He had no children.

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was born Jan. 12, 1951, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. His mother was the former Mildred Armstrong, and his father, Rush Limbaugh Jr., was a lawyer.

Rusty, as the younger Limbaugh was known, was chubby and shy, with little interest in school but a passion for broadcasting. He would turn down the radio during St. Louis Cardinals baseball games, offering play-by-play, and gave running commentary during the evening news. By high school, he had snagged a radio job.

Limbaugh dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University for a string of DJ gigs, from his hometown, to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh and then Kansas City. Known as Rusty Sharpe and then Jeff Christie on the air, he mostly spun Top 40 hits and sprinkled in glimpses of his wit and conservatism.

“One of the early reasons radio interested me was that I thought it would make me popular,” he once wrote.

But he didn’t gain the following he craved and gave up on radio for several years, beginning in 1979, becoming promotions director for baseball’s Kansas City Royals. He ultimately returned to broadcasting, again in Kansas City and then Sacramento, California.

It was there in the early 1980s that Limbaugh really garnered an audience, broadcasting shows dripping with sarcasm and bravado. The stage name was gone.

Limbaugh began broadcasting nationally in 1988 from WABC in New York. While his know-it-all commentary quickly gained traction, he was dismayed by his reception in the big city. He thought he would be welcomed by Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather.

“I came to New York,” he wrote, “and I immediately became a nothing, a zero.”

Ultimately, Limbaugh moved his radio show to Palm Beach and bought his massive estate. Talkers Magazine, which covers the industry, said Limbaugh had the nation’s largest audience in 2019, with 15 million unique listeners each week.

“When Rush wants to talk to America, all he has to do is grab his microphone. He attracts more listeners with just his voice than the rest of us could ever imagine,” Beck wrote in Time magazine in 2009. “He is simply on another level.”

Limbaugh expounded on his world view in the best-selling books “The Way Things Ought to Be” and “See, I Told You So.”

He had a late-night TV show in the 1990s that got decent ratings but lackluster advertising because of his divisive message. When he guest-hosted “The Pat Sajak Show” in 1990, audience members called him a Nazi and repeatedly shouted at him.

He was fired from a short-lived job as an NFL commentator on ESPN in 2003 after he said the media had made a star out of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb because it was “very desirous that a black quarterback do well.” His racial remarks also derailed a 2009 bid to become one of the owners of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams.

“Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and just think to yourself, `I am just full of hot gas?’” David Letterman asked him in 1993 on “The Late Show.”

“I am a servant of humanity,” Limbaugh replied. “I am in the relentless pursuit of the truth. I actually sit back and think that I’m just so fortunate to have this opportunity to tell people what’s really going on.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Last year, Taylor Swift gave us a lot of new music. This year it will be old — the pop star has announced she’s dropping the first of her re-recorded albums.

Swift said online Thursday that “Fearless: Taylor’s Version” is finished and “will be with you soon,” featuring re-recorded songs from Swift’s sophomore album, “Fearless.” The new set will have 26 songs — the original album had 13 — and also contain six never-before released songs, tunes which “almost made” the album.

Swift will also release a new version of her song “Love Story” from “Fearless” on Thursday at midnight, just in time for Valentine’s Day weekend.

Swift has vowed to re-record her first six albums after music manager Scooter Braun announced that his Ithaca Holdings company had acquired Big Machine Label Group, the home to Swift’s first six albums. He then sold Swift’s catalogue and the singer-songwriter complained she hadn’t been given a chance to acquire her masters.

“Fearless” was written when Swift was between 16-18 and earned Swift her first Grammy Award. The re-recorded version is likely to be embraced by her fans and push the original recordings lower in searches.

Swift hasn’t announced when “Fearless: Taylor’s Version” will be available but a statement she posted on Twitter included a hidden message using only the capital letters which reads: April Ninth.

About the stuffed new recording, Swift wrote: “I’ve decided I want you to have the whole story, see the entire vivid picture, and let you into the entire dreamscape” that is the “Fearless” album.

“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all my music,” she added.

In 2020, Taylor dropped two albums — “Folklore” and “Evermore.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Country star Morgan Wallen has been suspended indefinitely from his label and seen his music pulled by radio stations and streaming services Wednesday after video surfaced of him shouting a racial slur.

Big Loud Records said in a statement that Wallen’s contract has been suspended indefinitely. Republic Records, which he is co-signed to, said it agreed with Big Loud’s decision and said “such behavior will not be tolerated.”

The video, which was first published by TMZ on Tuesday night, showed Wallen outside a home in Nashville, Tennessee, yelling profanities and a racial slur.

Wallen said in a statement to TMZ that he is embarrassed and sorry.

“I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back. There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever. I want to sincerely apologize for using the word. I promise to do better,” his statement said.

He’s one of the genre’s biggest young stars. His sophomore album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” is spending its third week atop the Billboard 200 chart and it has set several streaming records, even besting the recent release from country star Luke Combs. Wallen is also one of the few country acts to score a Top 10 hit on the pop charts, thanks to the success of “7 Summers” and “Wasted on You.”

But the fall from the top has been swift.

“In light of Morgan Wallen’s recent actions involving the use of a racial slur, we have made the decision to remove his music and content from our stations effective immediately,” according to a statement from iHeartMedia, which has hundreds of radio stations across the country.

The Academy of Country Music, which is currently taking nominations for their annual awards show in April, said in a statement they would “halt” Wallen’s eligibility for this year’s show and will also be reviewing the awards eligibility and submission process. “The Academy does not condone or support intolerance or behavior that does not align with our commitment and dedication to diversity and inclusion,” the ACM statement said.

As of Wednesday morning, streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music don’t have his songs in their most popular country music playlists, where normally Wallen had multiple songs from his new album.

SiriusXM and Pandora also removed his music from their playlists, according to a spokesman for SiriusXM. The music television channel CMT said it was removing his appearances from all its platforms.

The Tennessee-born singer who has hits with songs like “Whiskey Glasses” and “Up Down” featuring Florida Georgia Line, has done a lot of public apologizing lately.

Wallen was arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct in May 2020 after getting kicked out of a downtown Nashville bar.

In October, “Saturday Night Live” dropped him from a scheduled performance on their show after he violated COVID-19 protocols when videos appeared on social media of him partying with fans in Alabama. He was later invited back on the show in December, where he appeared in a skit making fun of himself.

Other country stars criticized his actions publicly.

“It actually IS representative of our town because this isn’t his first ‘scuffle’ and he just demolished a huge streaming record last month regardless,” tweeted country star Maren Morris. “We all know it wasn’t his first time using that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse.”

Other music stars have faced backlash for using racial slurs or derogatory language. Justin Bieber apologized in 2014 for using a racial slur joke in a video from when he was a teenager.

In the past, country radio has sometimes ignored offensive behavior by male stars, even as female artists like the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, were removed from radio for criticizing the U.S. president. Country star Jason Aldean wore blackface for a Halloween costume in 2015, but never issued an apology, and he remains one of the top selling country artists.

Marcus K. Dowling, a music journalist who has written about Wallen, said the country music industry has experienced a reckoning in the last eight months prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement that has had an effect on the industry’s reaction to Wallen’s words.

“I feel like it set a trip cord that never existed in country music for racial behavior,” said Dowling. “It was inarguably the Black people who work and occupy space in the genre who set that boundary. And any artist, even an artist who has sold well and has over 500 million streams in three weeks, if they cross that line, they were going to be impacted.”

NEW YORK (AP) — After a year where the pandemic nearly emptied movie theaters, Netflix dominated nominations to the 78th Golden Globe Awards on Wednesday, with David Fincher’s “Mank” leading film nominees with six nods and “The Crown” topping all television series.

The Globes, delayed about two months due to the coronavirus, tried to muster some of the awards’ usual buzz on Wednesday in a largely virtual awards season bereft the kind of red-carpet glamour the Globes annually feast on. And perhaps to account for the otherwise lack of it, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association heaped nominations on two lavish period pieces rich in royalty — both the Hollywood variety (the black-and-white “Mank” dramatizes the making of “Citizen Kane”) and the British kind.

“Mank,” about “Citizen Kane” co-writer Herman Mankiewicz, landed nominations for best film, drama; best actor for Gary Oldman; best director for Fincher, best supporting actress for Amanda Seyfried; best score; and best screenplay for Jack Fincher, the director’s father who penned the script before dying in 2003.

“Despite a stressed pandemic year, there is a comfort of sorts in embracing traditions, perhaps it is a hopeful sign that we will get out of this eventually,” Oldman said in a statement. “The Golden Globes are such a sign of both tradition and normal.”

Netflix, which topped all studios at the Globes last year, too, led with a commanding 42 nominations, with 22 coming in film categories and 20 in television. No other studio was close. The day overall belonged to the streaming services. Disney+ (“The Mandalorian”) and HBO Max (“The Flight Attendant”) both notched their first Golden Globe nominations. Apple TV+ scored nods for “Ted Lasso,” “Wolfwalkers” and “On the Rocks.” Amazon was competitive with Regina King’s “One Night in Miami” and Steve McQueen’s anthology “Small Axe.”

“The Crown” landed six nominations including best series, drama, and acting nods for Olivia Colman and Josh O’Connor. The final season of “Schitt’s Creek” trailed with five nominations, while Netflix’s “Ozark” (four nods) and “The Queen’s Gambit” (two nods) also added to the streamer’s totals. (“Queens Gambit” star Anya Taylor-Joy was nominated for both the hit show and for the Jane Austen adaptation “Emma.”)

Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7” — also a Netflix release, about the countercultural clash at the 1968 Democratic National Convention — came in second among movies with five nominations, including nods for best film, drama; best director and best screenplay for Sorkin; supporting actor for Sacha Baron Cohen; and best song.

“On the one hand, it is strange to be celebrating when so many people are suffering but on the other hand, at least for movie lovers, the Golden Globes are a fun thing,” said Sorkin by phone. “It’ll be a weird ceremony this year. I’m not sure what they’re planning. Who knows what it’s going to look like.”

The other nominees for best film in the drama category were Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland,” Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” and Florian Zeller’s “The Father.” Also nominated were the stars of each: Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”), Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”).

Netflix doesn’t report box office figures and both “Nomadland” and “The Father” are yet to open beyond a qualifying run in theaters. So the category’s total box office — a historic low of about $265,000 — is due entirely to “Promising Young Woman,” Fennell’s acclaimed revenge drama.

A year after fielding no female nominees for best director — or a best feature film nomination for any movie directed by a woman — the HFPA nominated more female filmmakers than it ever has before. King, Zhao and Fennell were nominated for best director, alongside Sorkin and Fincher.

By splitting up films between drama and comedy or musical, the Globes gave a boost to an awards season wildcard, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Baron Cohen’s film — one of the few nominees partially shot during the pandemic — was nominated for best picture, comedy or musical, best actor in a comedy for Baron Cohen and best supporting actress for Maria Bakalova.

Celebrating the nominations for both “Borat” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Baron Cohen said in a statement: “These two films are different, but they share a common theme—sometimes we have to protest injustice with our own farce.”

Should neither win, he said, “I promise to hire Rudy Giuliani to contest the results.”

Also nominated for best picture in the comedy or musical category were: “Palm Springs,” “The Prom,” “Music” and “Hamilton.” The film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical isn’t eligible for the Academy Awards but was for the Globes, which also nominated Miranda’s performance.

As expected, Chadwick Boseman was nominated posthumously his performance in George C. Wolfe’s August Wilson adaptation “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” as was his co-star, Viola Davis.

The other nominees for best actor in a drama, alongside Oldman, Hopkins and Boseman, were Riz Ahmed for “Sound of Metal” and Tahar Rahim for “The Mauritanian.” Along with McDormand, Davis and Mulligan, best actress nominees in a drama film were Andra Day for “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” and Vanessa Kirby for “Pieces of a Woman.”

Gauging the awards prospects of most films has been difficult this winter, with none of the usual screenings and events happening in-person, and a number of the films once expected to lead contenders postponed. But there were still plenty of choices by the press association — an always unpredictable group of 89 voting members — that surprised observers Wednesday.

Spike Lee, whose daughter Satchel and son Jackson are Globes ambassadors this year, saw his Vietnam veteran drama “Da 5 Bloods” unexpectedly shut out entirely. Meryl Streep, who has won eight Globes from a record 32 nominations, was actually snubbed this time, for both “The Prom” and “Let Them All Talk.” Nominations for Jared Leto’s performance as a serial killer in the just-released “The Little Things” and for the Sia-directed musical “Music” were so far out of left field that they seemed likely to rank among previous wayward Globes nominees like “The Tourist.”

The press association also drew much criticism for an earlier decision to consider Lee Isaac Chung’s lauded immigrant drama “Minari,” about a Korean-American family in Arkansas in which the characters largely speak Korean, ineligible for its top award. The group instead nominated “Minari” for best foreign-language film, along with “Another Road,” “La Llorona,” “The Life Ahead” and “Two of Us.”

The nominations announcement was also scaled down due to the pandemic. Presenters Sarah Jessica Parker and Taraji P. Henson read nominees not from a teleprompter but holding print-outs and streaming live from what appeared to be their homes.

The Globes are typically the first major show of Hollywood’s awards season, which ends with the crowning of the best picture winner at the Oscars. They’ll retain that distinction, despite being delayed nearly two months and opting for a bi-coastal ceremony to be hosted by Tina Fey from New York and Amy Poehler from Beverly Hills, Calif. The Oscars are set for April 25.

Last year’s Golden Globes culminated in awards for “1917” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” The telecast, hosted by Ricky Gervais, couldn’t buck the overall ratings trend for awards shows, drawing an average of 18.3 million viewers, down 2% from the previous year.

NEW YORK (AP) — Dolly Parton has been singing about everyday office employees working “9 to 5” for over 40 years, but now the country icon is singing about entrepreneurs working “5 to 9” to pursue their dreams after hours.

The Grammy-winning legend’s 1980s hit has been flipped by Squarespace — a company that helps users build and host their own websites — for a Super Bowl commercial debuting Tuesday. Oscar winner Damien Chazelle of “La La Land” fame directed the spot.

“A lot of people through the years have wanted to change the lyrics to fit certain things they’re doing. I really thought that was a wonderful thing, especially for Squarespace. They’re so into people, new entrepreneurs working after hours to start their own businesses,” Parton said. “‘5 to 9’ seemed to be a perfect thing when they pitched it.”

Parton is using Squarespace to create a website for her new perfume, DollyFragrance.com.

The singer, who is also an actor, producer, humanitarian and more, said she can relate to businesspeople working around the clock to fulfill their goals.

“Well I work 365 (days a year). I’m always working 5 to 9, 9 to 5. I work all hours of the night and day,” she said. “Whatever you need to do, you gotta get it done, however many hours it takes.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Parton talked about flipping “9 to 5,” being a part of this year’s Super Bowl, donating $1 million to coronavirus research and remembering her brother Randy Parton, who died last month. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

AP: Are you excited to be part of this year’s Super Bowl?

Parton: I’ve been asked several times to be part of that. It’s always such a big commitment. I’ve always kind of chickened out. I know it’s just a big commitment. If you do good, you do great. If you do bad, you do bad in front of all those people. This seemed like the perfect kind of way to do it.

AP: What was it like writing “9 to 5” over 40 years ago?

Parton: That song just stays so true to people that get out — you get up in the morning, you wobble into the kitchen, you pour your coffee, you try to get your butt going, you try to get up and get to work knowing that you’ve got to do it. I’m really happy. This is the 40th anniversary of “9 to 5” since the movie came out. We’re celebrating, so this could not have happened at a better time.

AP: You donated $1 million to coronavirus research — what compelled you to do that?

Parton: Well, I follow my heart. I’m a person of faith and I pray all the time that God will lead me into the right direction and let me know what to do. When the pandemic first hit, that was my first thought, “I need to do something to try to help find a vaccination.” I just did some research with the people at Vanderbilt (University) — they’re wonderful people, they’ve been so good through the years to my people in times of illness and all that. I just asked if I could donate a million dollars to the research for a vaccine.

I get a lot more credit than I deserve I think, but I was just happy to be a part of any and all of that.

AP: Have you gotten your shot?

Parton: No. I’m not going to get mine until some more people get theirs. I don’t want it to look like I’m jumping the line just because I donated money. I’m very funny about that. I’m going to get mine though, but I’m going to wait. I’m at the age where I could have gotten mine legally last week. I turned 75. I was going to do it on my birthday, and I thought, “Nah, don’t do that.” You’ll look like you’re just doing a show. None of my work is really like that. I wasn’t doing it for a show. I’m going to get mine. I want it. I’m going to get it. When I get it, I’ll probably do it on camera so people will know and I’ll tell them the truth, if I have symptoms and all that. Hopefully it’ll encourage people. I’m not going to jump the line just because I could.

AP: How does it feel to be 75?

Parton: Well I plan to be around a lot longer. I don’t have no plans of slowing down because the number says I should. I don’t pay attention to that. I wake up with new dreams every day. I try to make the most of every year that I’ve lived. I’ve been doing that since I was little. I’ll be doing it until I keel over. Hopefully that won’t be anytime soon.

AP: Your brother Randy recently died from cancer. How are you holding up?

Parton: Well, we’re heartbroken. We loved him so much. He fought really hard for the last year. Randy was a wonderful artist, entertainer. He was very dear to me. He was one of my younger brothers. I lost my baby brother last year, around the same time of the year. This was really a double whammy for all of us. There’s a certain kind of peace that comes from knowing that he is at peace, and he was suffering, and we didn’t like that. He is dearly loved. You just go around with a hole in your heart and a knot in your stomach. You just think of him, love him, try to keep your precious memories. You have to go on. We’re a close family, so we’re supporting each other.