Want Luke Combs tickets? You’ll need this betting app
Luke Combs’ breakout hit from five years ago could describe the full Super Bowl experience in Las Vegas: “Beautiful Crazy.”
The artist, whose name is a full sentence, is headlining the BetMGM Big Game Bash concert at The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas on Feb. 10. Tickets are offered exclusively on the BetMGM app, a rarity as this is just the second time tickets have been presented on that app.
The first was for BetMGM’s Super Bowl event in 2023, though that offer was limited to pre-sale tickets.
Combs is on a winning streak any of the surviving NFL teams would envy. He’s notched 16 consecutive No. 1 singles among 18 total releases on Billboard’s Country Airplay charts.
Combs’ first 13 singles shot to No. 1, the longest streak by any performer in the Country Airplay category.
Combs is also an adept crossover artist. His cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” from the March album release, “Gettin’ Old,” was streamed more 65 million times on Spotify in less than two months. Last May, Combs collaborated with Ed Sheeran “Life Goes On,” which Sheeran released as a solo tack on his fifth solo album, “Subtract.”
At age 33, Combs has already won eight Country Music Associations Awards, three Academy of Country Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards and is nominated for Best Country Solo Performance at the 2024 Grammys.
Combs didn’t always envision a career in music, and certainly not stardom.
“I had been singing forever and I always loved that. And I never in a million years would have thought that I would be doing that for a living,” Combs once told Rolling Stone. “I would love to tell you I knew when I was five years old that I wanted to be a country singer, (but) I just loved music. And then when I picked the guitar up, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is how I can make a living doing this and feel like I’m really good at it as well.’”
Tiffany theater
Laugh Factory at the Tropicana has booked top headliner for Super Bowl weekend. Tiffany Haddish is playing the club 6:30 p.m. Feb. 8-10. This is a special time slot specifically for the Super Bowl crowd.
Haddish broke through with her role in the 2017 comedy “Girls Trip,” and won a Primetime Emmy Award for her “SNL” hosting stint that year. Her “Black Mitzvah” album in 2019 won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album. Haddish also played a CIA agent in Nic Cage’s 2022 action-comedy, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”
They’re ‘Magic’
The adult revue “Magic Mike Live” has assembled a power trio of singers in its residency production at the Sahara.
Vocal vet David Terry, a great singer-songwriter, is the primary emcee. Dai Richards (late of Tenors of Rock vocal ensemble and the Original Chaos cover band). And just announced, on-call emcee Josh Strickland, whom we met when he was the co-star of “Peepshow” at Planet Hollywood. After that show closed in 2012, he moved to “Vegas! The Show” at Saxe Theater at Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood.
Strickland has also played “Tarzan” on Broadway, most recently reviving the role at Tuacahn Center for the Arts in Ivins, Utah. And if you believe a “Tarzan”-themed number in “Magic Mike” would kill, you are right.
Great moments in social media
Carrot Top has shared is latest football helmet-tissue prop on his social media pages. This is the bit where the Luxor headliner says, “The (team name) have a new helmet!” and pulls a helmet with Kleenex protruding from the top, then dabs tears from his eyes.
This week it was the Cowboys, having lost to the Packers in the NFL playoffs on Sunday.
The comic swaps out the helmet color and logo for the appropriate team (the Eagles after losing last year’s Super Bowl, for instance).
The Atrium Showroom mainstay says he’s likely used all NFL franchises. He debuted the bit in 1991, after the Bills lost to the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. He’s also used several college teams, including Alabama after the Crimson Tide lost the national championship game to Michigan. The comedian refers to the bit as, “The prop that keeps on giving.”
Ray’s en fuego
Longtime Cirque performer Ray Wold opens Ray’s Comedy World at 7:30 p.m. Monday. The new venue at 3525 E. Flamingo Road features an array of Vegas entertainers (the extreme magician Shocker; ventriloquial vixen April Brucker; the longtime Psychic Tanya in Amazing Johnathan’s act, Penny Wiggins; and “Splash” alum Joe Trammel among them).
You might recognize Wold, kinda, as the artist in flames in “O.” Lin-Manuel Miranda brought up this act during the “Freestyle Love Supreme” days at The Venetian in November 2022.
“I saw ‘O,’ when I was here with my grandma, and I have never seen a man on fire for that long,” Miranda said. “I still have questions. Like, I couldn’t wrap my head around the rest of it. But I know how hard it is to be on fire, and I do not understand how that man was on fire for that long, and how he does it nine times a week.” So see Wold, fire or no, at the new place.
Cool Hang Alert
Chrome Showroom at Santa Fe Station is a Cool Hang treasure. In that spirit, catch Tre’Sure at 9 p.m. Friday. No cover; guests must be 21 years or older.
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.