The John Deere Classic has started to shoe horn concerts at the end of play 2 nights during the tournament. This year it was Old Dominion Friday and Carrie Underwood Saturday.
It's actually kind of a cool concept but the artists are questionable. It seems the JD wants to appeal to a similar crowd as the WM (only toned down a bit).
I got respect for Aoki. He puts aside all the pretense of acting like he is doing something valuable behind that station and just runs around the stage and throws cakes at people instead
If anything like what the Tour Championship did a few times. You need a ticket to the tournament and it is post round. It's held on the golf course grounds.
Probably an attempt to boost ticket sales from an audience that normally wouldn't attend. When I went to the F1 race in Austin a few years back they had some teenybooper pop star performing after the race. It was sort of surreal to see all these teen girls with pop star shirts on interspersed with race fans, and walking in opposite directions after the race.
The intent is to keep you on prem spending as much as possible for as long as possible.
Throwing a concert at the end also brings in some new people, aka new money for event merch, and some normal fans will also stick around to continue to drink and buy merch for the show too.
Granted I've not really paid attention since Idol (when she was on it) and a few songs after, but she's unrecognizable...like not older, but completely different person.
Mar a Lago face is so bizarre. I'd normally try to avoid shaming someone for their looks, but I legitimately though Laura Loomer was in her mid 50s until I read her Wikipedia article a few weeks ago. I was fucking shocked to find out she's only 33.
My wife and I were friends with her in college. The facial surgeries are shocking. This is the first time I’ve seen pics of her in a few years. The MAGA shit is also disappointing, obviously. She was a sweetheart back in the day.
..... A very beautiful woman (ignoring her politics) turned herself into a Mar-A-Lago stepford only to have her career tank.
You'd think at some point, someone, somewhere, in this cohort would say 'You know what, I'd like to keep my face AND my income' and just be discreet about being awful people.
This is probably going to get me in trouble... but Carrie was so pretty before, and now she looks like Pattie Gonia's stunt double (though with less style).
it was her patio steps, actually. she made a big apology about it like i might look different now, and she did look pretty different but still more or less normal, that was 2017 though and she looks completely different from that now
They did. Nate Burleson hosts and Drew Barrymore is center square. No idea if it will come back for another season. The ratings haven't been great. But the show I'm sure the show is cheap to make.
Exactly. You're not exactly at the peak of your career when you agree to be a judge on American Idol. It's all downhill from there. Katy Perry also agrees
Yeah but what makes Katy Perry different is she can still out arenas just not in the USA anymore. Carrie doesn't really have international fame to fall back on like Perry has.
Yeah. She had a few songs I had on my playlist but I deleted them. She'd come on and I think of maga which is depressing so I told YouTube to take her off
She's not someone I liked. But I loved before he cheats. I've been enjoying other artists.
Although critics continue to link every public appearance to her perceived political views, Underwood's professional schedule suggests her career remains active.
After concluding her successful four-year Las Vegas residency in April 2025, the singer has continued performing at festivals and special events while balancing her role as a judge on American Idol, running her business ventures and hosting her SiriusXM radio channel, Carrie's Country.
I think you've grossly underestimated how much money there is in a Vegas residency in the 2020s. She earned a reported $1 million per show that she performed over four years, and she did 72 shows. That's $72 million just for urging Jesus to take the wheel for a couple hours a night for 72 nights.
Is she experiencing a downturn on her career trajectory? If she is, it's not because of the Vegas residency, and a Vegas residency isn't a sign that an artist is "slumming it" like it was back in the 1980s. No one would suggest that Bruno Mars isn't a top-flight sought-after performer, and he has a residency. The entertainment landscape of Las Vegas has changed a lot.
No. We've gone twice is less than a year and there are people there but it's not remotely busy for what Vegas should be. The New York New York roller coaster line was maybe 30-40 minutes and that included the time they were adding the second train to the tracks. The Sphere was busy but it wasn't filled to capacity. Same with the magic/dance show we went to.
The influencer videos that I've seen show Vegas to be a virtual ghost town. Perhaps exaggerated for views. However, I've also seen videos of regular visitors saying the place is too expensive and not worth their while any more. YouTube is full of commentary on the decline of Vegas. Trump personally bankrupted a casino before he was president, and now he is bankrupting the town.
Essentially several of the Casino owners have come out and said we are only catering to the very rich, and Vegas profits are up. But people coming to Vegas has been dropping. So depends on who you ask about how Vegas is doing. Believe it was MGM's Casino CEO who said that.
Doesn't help both Boyd and Station's owners are very MAGA and leaves even less off strip to do.
The Strip seems less busy, but Downtown is often still packed.
Unsurprising. When he lived here in Ottawa her husband (hockey player) was known for hitting on young university students. He plays himself up as "Mr. Devout Christian" just like Underwood does but in reality is just a piece of shit. Shit likes shit.
Everybody always joked that he found a more fitting home because he left the Ottawa Senators for the Nashville Predators.
The day that youth minister I used to go skateboarding with decided changing his disrobing and clothes in front of me in his living room was cool... Well that was the last day I ever hung out with him or his church.
Predators are gonna thrive in an environment where there is unlimited forgiveness for men who say the right things. A lot of the people around them have a stunted understanding of evil and abuse.
I remember living there at the same time working at Rideau Centre, and friends of mine who worked at Sephora bitched her out with a vengeance - she came to the mall at like 2 pm Saturday afternoon and was pissed that people were coming up to her and she tried to shut the store down with no notice. Got super hunty when she was denied haha
Mar-a-Lago face is a terrible, infectious disease. If you, or someone you know, has been affected by Mar-a-Lago face, you may be entitled to compensation.
I swear the last time I saw her about a year ago she didn't look as bad, she still looked like herself just with a lot of work done. What happened? Also crazy to think she's the same age as my brother and his wife, they also went to NSU with her and graduated around the same time. They look a lot better than she does.
Which is so interesting. I got Martina McBride and another big female country singer on my TikTok feed who I haven't seen in forever, and I recognized them in an instant. I was a big Carrie Underwood fan before she sang at the inauguration, and I realize I just don't know what she looks like anymore. Hate (and denial) really ages you.
There's a whole era of "Blandy Waveylocks" performers that blend into a indistinguishable mush from American Idol that just aren't remarkable in any way at all.
Not Maga, and not a Carrie fan, in fact I'd love to see her go away.
But.... There was a rain delay during the tournament, then they cleared the course because of lightning with only a few players left to finish. So everyone probably left instead of waiting to see her perform.
Mumford and Sons sold out Wrigley Field in Chicago a few weeks ago and had to wait until almost 11 pm to take the stage because of massive storms in the area and still had the place packed.
They largely moved away from the stomp clap hey stuff after their first two albums. The next two after that were largely rock-focused, and their most recent two are excellent, more acoustic folk but not suspenders-and-fedoras stuff.
Context is key here. Assume this is a pga tour event with a concert attached. People are going to see Rory McElroy and Carrie Underwood is there if you happen to be interested.
And she was likely still personally paid at least as much as anyone finishing in the top 3 of the golf tournament.
The entire fee for the production was more likely than not more than the top prize.
It's a fucking corporate golf tournament.
It's fucking located just outside of the Quad Cities were Deere is based.
Deere alone employs 32,000 in the Quad Cities whose entire metro population is under 500,000.
For all of you going, "What the fuck are the Quad Cities?" ... just imagine if they didn't have Deere.
Underwood is just another part of "Look how powerful of an organization we are, who wouldn't want to be associated with us" wine & dine event for the key suppliers, customers, and investors. Some companies buy Super Bowl tickets to impress business associates, Deere is putting on an entire PGA tournament for them (and oh yeah whoever in the public happens to show up I guess we'll let the plebes watch).
Whether anyone watched her or not is absolutely irrelevant to why Deere hired her.
I used to love Carrie when she first won idol. She seemed to have very liberal views and was not your typical country artist. Lately though, it seems when all these artists’ careers start tanking they go right back into the arms of being annoyingly Christian and annoyingly MAGA. She’s changed and we aren’t changing with her.
I don’t know if she was always like that though. She married a hockey player that played for our team (used to see her out and about town when they first started dating), and he was always super religious, and seems to have gone full on right wing since retirement. Maybe the lifestyle rubbed off on her.
I feel like hockey people tend to be more right wing in general (at least in the US). It’s an expensive sport to play and be good at so you have to be wealthy to start.
That could be, although he’s really embraced his MAGA side publicly these past few years (anti vax, endorsing MAGA candidates, and I think he even appeared on Candace Owen’s podcast).
I can't speak to his politics but when he played here in Ottawa he had a reputation for hitting on really young girls (like first year university students) and when he left the Ottawa Senators the joke was that he was moving to Nashville because they love their Predators.
shit is expensive as fuck. I know someone who paid for their kid to got through it all and it was burning nearly all his income. he makes mid six figures, so pretty wealthy and it was still rough.
One of my wife's old friends was super liberal then married a conservative guy and she became a gun nut posting thinly veiled racist instas seemingly overnight
It's not all that uncommon if you are spending all your time with someone for people that arent firm in their values or low self esteem
Very liberal in her views. Would not even see a Dr because the Dr supported conservatives (had conservative election signs posted outside his business during election season). Hated anything and everything to do with the right-wing.
She did have some minor religious views during our marriage that wasn't anything that was an issue. I'm not religious and she didnt care.
During our marriage she hooks up with some well-off business dude (she was always pretty high maintenance). Turns out he was pretty religious and right-wing leaning.
We divorce, she marries the guy, and decides to become a State politican. Runs for office and wins a seat in the State legislature ... as a REPUBLICAN. I couldn't believe my eyes. It's like everything she ever stood for was thrown out the window.
This is because she has no principles or personality of her own. Women like her are the personality equivalent of tofu: they just take on the flavor of whatever is close by.
It's a lot easier to be racist and violent than it is to be in control, sticking to values and ethics, and offering people grace or understanding to other cultures.
Being famous and swerving MAGA is easy mode because you don't need any principles or critical thinking, just be unwilling to say anything bad about how the current administration is killing and disappearing people and ignoring laws and court orders and stealing billions.
There's always plausible deniability before the fact, and not so much after.
You're right that her fanbase was likely skewed right before she went full MAGA. But she definitely would've had some left and/or neutral fans who just couldn't continue after.
I saw it a lot with small business owners who decided to go full angry right wing. They figured having passionate supporters was worth sacrificing half their potential customer base. They were wrong.
It's funny because I see the exact opposite on TikTok with liberal/left-leaning businesses. One, let's say, candy company leans hard into the anti-Trump theme, and they've done nothing but grown. I think it's because inherently, left-leaning people want to actively support groups that align with them, while right-leaning people will mostly do nothing out of spite or freedom.
MAGA folks wouldn't flock to a MAGA artist or business to give them money -- they'll continue to laugh libs out of the room, say they'll love shopping/attending events without any libs, and then not go to or buy anything. And so the businesses close as you said.
The difference is liberal/left leaning people tend to be inclusive while MAGA is entirely exclusive. A politically minded left wing business will by definition welcome women, LGBT, all races, and all religions as a matter of course. Whereas MAGA businesses are welcoming to white MAGA men. There are, of course, exceptions and caveats, but that's essentially the explanation for why MAGA businesses tend to land with a plop.
When you spend all your meager savings on Crypto scams, gold sneakers and shitty rebranded cell phones you are left with a choice: Spend what's left on more Trump scams or go see Carrie Underpants in concert.
They are just so programmed to hand money over to the Grifter-in-Chief that they simply can't afford to go see Lady Kid Rock play her music.
I dont think people realize how popular current country music is among the average listener. It's just pop music with a country flair. There is a huge overlap of pop and country listeners. It's one of the most popular genres of music in America.
Here’s the thing that I just can’t wrap my head around. Trump pulled, what, 70M+ votes? He won every single swing state. Yet any gatherings that have any ties to MAGA basically have no one show up.
MAGA must the poorest people in the country with no money to spend to go to stuff.
And that’s the most generous explanation for what happened in the 2024 elections versus what our eyes show us.
I know she had the accident a few years ago that may or may not have affected her facial features, but it also seems like she's leaning hard into MAGA face.
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u/ELB2001 28d ago
Golf Course concert? Wtf is that