Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Global Citizen Concert Yields Huge Drop of Views on YouTube From Last Year as The Weeknd Bows Out of Show, Cardi B Headlines

Share

★ Make Showbiz411 your Preferred Source on Google

A lot of people didn’t care about the Global Citizen concert in Central Park this year.

On YouTube, views come to around 600,000 around the world. That’s down 40%, from 1 million last year.

Attendance — which was mostly free — was estimated in person at around 60,000. It was a nice day, too.

But once The Weeknd smartly dropped out, and Cardi B was announced as his replacement, interest waned.

People have caught on Global Citizen as a fraud. The charity’s execs spend millions on themselves and producing rock concerts. They’ve ignored Ukraine and Gaza, where hundreds of thousands are starving and need medical assistance.

And what happened to Mars Rodriguez? She won the Global Citizen Rolling Stone prize of $50,000 and a chance to perform on the show. She’s put nothing on social media. There’s one picture of her from the GC Twitter account indicating she may have played on the pre show. Otherwise, she’s not in any of the publicity.

Did she perform? Did she get the money? Who knows? (email me at showbiz411@gmail.com if you saw her.)

Me? I caught up with “Only Murders in the Building.” Best season yet. Scene with Steve Martin and Tea Leoni at dinner like something from the best of original “Naked Gun.”

Donate to Showbiz411.com

Showbiz411 is now in its 13th year of providing breaking and exclusive entertainment news. This is an independent site, unlike the many Hollywood trades that are owned by one company. To continue providing news that takes a fresh look at what's going on in movies, music, theater, etc, advertising is our basis. Reader donations would be greatly appreciated, too. They are just another facet of keeping fact based journalism alive.
Thank you


Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

Read more

In Other News