logo
The Weeknd and Jimmy Fallon Crash Fordham University's Graduation Party with a Big Performance

The Weeknd and Jimmy Fallon Crash Fordham University's Graduation Party with a Big Performance

Yahoo16-05-2025

Jimmy Fallon and The Weeknd snuck to Fordham University, where its graduating class of 2025 was gathered to celebrate
The students didn't know their graduation party was hosting some famous guests
"Whoa! 2025!" The Weeknd sang, prompting thunderous applauseJimmy Fallon and The Weeknd are giving the class of 2025 a celebration to remember.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon host and the singer — a.k.a Abel Tesfaye — snuck to Fordham University, where its graduating class of 2025 was gathered to celebrate. The students didn't know their graduation party was hosting some famous guests until Fallon was announced as their DJ.
"Yo, what's up! Congratulations, Class of 2025!" Fallon belted to a room filled with clapping and cheers.
A giddy, awkward pause set in as Fallon realized he's never been a DJ in his life and didn't know how to work the equipment. "Can I plug my phone in, maybe?" he quipped, reaching for some cords and eventually giving it the ol' college try.
Fallon got the crowd warmed up as the intro to The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" played, and joyous screams erupted as the singer himself waltzed through the doors. The Weeknd high-fived Fallon and performed an animated, upbeat set for Fordham's ecstatic students.
For the chorus, Fallon abandoned his post at the turntable and grabbed a microphone to join The Weeknd. The singer, in turn, was caught up dancing with Fordham's mascot, a ram named Ramsey, who came close to stealing the show with his moves.
The Weeknd then shifted to his hit "I Can't Feel My Face," to which — like the first song — the students sang every word.
"Whoa! 2025!" The Weeknd sang, prompting thunderous applause.
Fallon hugged the singer as their set wrapped up, and shouted to the crowd: "That's how you do it! Goodbye everyone!" And with that, the dynamic duo ducked out.
Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The Weeknd appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Thursday night, and the two stars raved about each other's performances.
"I didn't expect it to be that crazy!" The Weeknd said, adding, "What if they hated us?"
Fallon asked, "When did you know, for a second, that it might work?" To which, the singer replied, "When they started screaming for you, actually!"
Read the original article on People

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

These Miami brothers took their musical act to national TV. Remember them?
These Miami brothers took their musical act to national TV. Remember them?

Miami Herald

timea day ago

  • Miami Herald

These Miami brothers took their musical act to national TV. Remember them?

Before Gloria Estefan and before KC and the Sunshine band, a family band put Miami music on the map. The Rhodes Brothers recorded albums and appeared on nationally TV variety shows. But back in Miami, they were best known for their local performances at lounges around town, their own club near the Miami airport, their restaurant at the Miami Springs Country Club and their appearances on the Jerry Lewis telethon. They came to Miami in the early 1960s, but also were known across the country. In 1969, they appeared on the 'Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.' 'They have something special, something different,' Carson said as he introduced The Fabulous Rhodes Brothers. 'They have an electricity about them that literally turns the audience on.' The brothers — Ruey, Johnny, Tommy and Eddie — were known for their smooth three-part harmony and slapstick comedy. The Fabulous Rhodes Brothers spent the early 1960s playing hotels and casinos across the country. Their big break came in 1968 at the Crossway Inn in Miami. 'One audience member really liked watching four guys sing and dance while holding banjos,' Johnny Rhodes once said. 'His name was Roger Ailes and he signed us up for the Mike Douglas Show.' Here's a look at the Rhodes Brothers through the years:

Sydney Sweeney Reacts to Leaked ‘Euphoria' Wedding Dress Photos: 'I Can't Confirm or Deny' Cassie Gets Married
Sydney Sweeney Reacts to Leaked ‘Euphoria' Wedding Dress Photos: 'I Can't Confirm or Deny' Cassie Gets Married

Yahoo

time2 days ago

  • Yahoo

Sydney Sweeney Reacts to Leaked ‘Euphoria' Wedding Dress Photos: 'I Can't Confirm or Deny' Cassie Gets Married

The third season of Euphoria is underway, but Sydney Sweeney isn't dishing out too many details about her character Cassie's fate quite yet. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, on Thursday, the Echo Valley actress shared minuscule details about the upcoming season of the HBO Max series. However, Sweeney reacts to a leaked image of her on set in a wedding dress. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Echo Valley' Review: Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney Star in Apple TV+'s Satisfyingly Tense Domestic Thriller Mikey Madison in Talks to Star in A24's Out-There Reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death' (Exclusive) Sydney Sweeney's 'Split Fiction' From Jon M. Chu in Talks to Land at Amazon MGM When presented with the photo of herself in bridal attire on the set of Euphoria, Fallon asked Sweeney if her character gets married. 'Um,' Sweeney started. 'I can't confirm or deny.' Then, the Anyone but You star quipped, 'Who knows, that could be AI,' to which Fallon joked, 'No, it can't.' Sweeney did say she'd 'love to' dish the scoop on the scene 'next time when I [come back to the show and] can actually say everything.' Despite not being able to share details on her character's potential wedding, what fans speculate is with Jacob Elordi's Nate, the two-time Emmy nominee confirmed that 'Cassie is crazy' in season three and 'she's even worse' than seasons prior. This wasn't the first time Sweeney revealed that her character in Cassie would be 'crazier' than before. In a interview with Empire magazine, she said that season three of Euphoria was 'unhinged' while raving about her love for the role. 'I have such a spot in my heart for Cassie, and I hold her really close and dear. She is crazy. She makes so many mistakes. She's flawed on so many levels, but she does it all from a place of love. It could be a sad version of love, as well,' Sweeney said. 'It's so much fun to play a character that is as crazy as she is. Sam [Levinson] is such a brilliant filmmaker to work with, because I'll read something, then I'll call him, and I'm like, 'Let's go crazier.' And he's like, 'I'm all in.' And this season is unhinged.' Notably, Euphoria season two aired in early 2022. Production on the long-awaited third season picked up in January 2025, though it's unclear when the new installment will actually arrive on the streamer. Even if season three arrives in January 2026, as suspected, there will still have been four years between the most recent season, creating a demand for new episodes. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise

The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs
The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs

The Verge

time2 days ago

  • The Verge

The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs

The music industry's nightmare came true in 2023, and it sounded a lot like Drake. 'Heart on My Sleeve,' a convincingly fake duet between Drake and The Weeknd, racked up millions of streams before anyone could explain who made it or where it came from. The track didn't just go viral — it broke the illusion that anyone was in control. In the scramble to respond, a new category of infrastructure is quietly taking shape that's built not to stop generative music outright, but to make it traceable. Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery. The goal isn't just to catch synthetic content after the fact. It's to identify it early, tag it with metadata, and govern how it moves through the system. 'If you don't build this stuff into the infrastructure, you're just going to be chasing your tail,' says Matt Adell, cofounder of Musical AI. 'You can't keep reacting to every new track or model — that doesn't scale. You need infrastructure that works from training through distribution.' The goal isn't takedowns, but licensing and control Startups are now popping up to build detection into licensing workflows. Platforms like YouTube and Deezer have developed internal systems to flag synthetic audio as it's uploaded and shape how it surfaces in search and recommendations. Other music companies — including Audible Magic, Pex, Rightsify, and SoundCloud — are expanding detection, moderation, and attribution features across everything from training datasets to distribution. The result is a fragmented but fast-growing ecosystem of companies treating the detection of AI-generated content not as an enforcement tool, but as table-stakes infrastructure for tracking synthetic media. Rather than detecting AI music after it spreads, some companies are building tools to tag it from the moment it's made. Vermillio and Musical AI are developing systems to scan finished tracks for synthetic elements and automatically tag them in the metadata. Vermillio's TraceID framework goes deeper by breaking songs into stems — like vocal tone, melodic phrasing, and lyrical patterns — and flagging the specific AI-generated segments, allowing rights holders to detect mimicry at the stem level, even if a new track only borrows parts of an original. The company says its focus isn't takedowns, but proactive licensing and authenticated release. TraceID is positioned as a replacement for systems like YouTube's Content ID, which often miss subtle or partial imitations. Vermillio estimates that authenticated licensing powered by tools like TraceID could grow from $75 million in 2023 to $10 billion in 2025. In practice, that means a rights holder or platform can run a finished track through TraceID to see if it contains protected elements — and if it does, have the system flag it for licensing before release. 'We're trying to quantify creative influence, not just catch copies.' Some companies are going even further upstream to the training data itself. By analyzing what goes into a model, their aim is to estimate how much a generated track borrows from specific artists or songs. That kind of attribution could enable more precise licensing, with royalties based on creative influence instead of post-release disputes. The idea echoes old debates about musical influence — like the 'Blurred Lines' lawsuit — but applies them to algorithmic generation. The difference now is that licensing can happen before release, not through litigation after the fact. Musical AI is working on a detection system, too. The company describes its system as layered across ingestion, generation, and distribution. Rather than filtering outputs, it tracks provenance from end to end. 'Attribution shouldn't start when the song is done — it should start when the model starts learning,' says Sean Power, the company's cofounder. 'We're trying to quantify creative influence, not just catch copies.' Deezer has developed internal tools to flag fully AI-generated tracks at upload and reduce their visibility in both algorithmic and editorial recommendations, especially when the content appears spammy. Chief Innovation Officer Aurélien Hérault says that, as of April, those tools were detecting roughly 20 percent of new uploads each day as fully AI-generated — more than double what they saw in January. Tracks identified by the system remain accessible on the platform but are not promoted. Hérault says Deezer plans to begin labeling these tracks for users directly 'in a few weeks or a few months.' 'We're not against AI at all,' Hérault says. 'But a lot of this content is being used in bad faith — not for creation, but to exploit the platform. That's why we're paying so much attention.' Spawning AI's DNTP (Do Not Train Protocol) is pushing detection even earlier — at the dataset level. The opt-out protocol lets artists and rights holders label their work as off-limits for model training. While visual artists already have access to similar tools, the audio world is still playing catch-up. So far, there's little consensus on how to standardize consent, transparency, or licensing at scale. Regulation may eventually force the issue, but for now, the approach remains fragmented. Support from major AI training companies has also been inconsistent, and critics say the protocol won't gain traction unless it's governed independently and widely adopted. 'The opt-out protocol needs to be nonprofit, overseen by a few different actors, to be trusted,' Dryhurst says. 'Nobody should trust the future of consent to an opaque centralized company that could go out of business — or much worse.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store