Carey, Minaj clash during ‘Idol’ tryouts
Feuding divas on “American Idol”? Ryan Seacrest says that’s just great.
The show’s host said Wednesday that things got intense between new judges Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey during a tryout taping the previous day in Charlotte, N.C.
Amid a dispute over a contestant, Minaj announced that she was no longer putting up with “her … Highness,” in a reference to Carey and with a few expletives added in.
Another new judge, Keith Urban, was in the unenviable position of sitting between the two of them.
On his radio show, Seacrest said “Idol” needs some passionate debate.
“It did get intense,” he said. “We want that. We want them to be on this panel together. This is a good team, a great team, to go out and look for the next American Idol … the feedback that they give is very good.”
“American Idol” is still the nation’s most popular show despite a dramatic fall-off in ratings last season that led to three new judges joining Randy Jackson.
The show’s new season premieres in January.
ABBA exhibit to stay in Stockholm
A traveling ABBA exhibit is to get a permanent home in a new museum dedicated mostly to the Swedish quartet that has sold nearly 400 million records since its heyday in the 1970s.
Former band member Bjoern Ulvaeus said Wednesday that “ABBA The Museum” will be part of a Swedish music hall of fame to be inaugurated in Stockholm next spring.
The museum will feature some of the band’s glitzy stage costumes, instruments and other mementos that were displayed in the ABBAWORLD exhibition that toured Europe and Australia in 2009-’11.
The other band members were Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.
They started the band as two married couples, consistently topping charts in the English-speaking world after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with “Waterloo.”
They continued performing after both couples divorced, but drifted apart in the early ’80s.
The birthday bunch
Author Jackie Collins is 75. Author Roy Blount Jr. is 71. Author Anne Rice is 71. Actress Lori Saunders (“Petticoat Junction”) is 71. Actress Susan Sarandon is 66. Music producer Russell Simmons is 55. Singer Jon Secada is 51. Actor Liev Schreiber is 45. Actress Alicia Silverstone is 36. Figure skater Kimmie Meisner is 23.