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Newly elected Va. delegate Roem attends AMAs with Demi Lovato

By Abigail Constantino

WASHINGTON — Newly elected Virginia delegate Danica Roem attended the American Music Awards Sunday with singer Demi Lovato.

People magazine reported that Lovato was inspired by Roem’s win and invited Roem to the awards to be her date.

Demi Lovato, Danica Roem
Demi Lovato, right, and Virginia state Representative-elect Danica Roem arrive at the American Music Awards at the Microsoft Theater on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017, in Los Angeles. Roem will be Virginia’s first transgender lawmaker. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Roem, a journalist, defeated Republican Del. Bob Marshall in Virginia’s 13th District, which includes parts of Prince William County and Manassas Park. Roem, who carried 54 percent of the vote, made history as the first openly transgender elected official in Virginia history.

Marshall, who calls himself Virginia’s “chief homophobe,” introduced Virginia’s version of the so-called “bathroom bill,” refused to debate Roem and referred to her using male pronouns.

Lovato told the New York Daily News that she wanted Roem to join her because Lovato’s performance is about bullying and Roem has “put up with so much bullying.”

Roem told E News that she was grateful that Lovato has spent her career advocating for people who need a voice when they feel voiceless. Lovato “really understands that no matter what you look like, where you come from, how you worship or who you love, you should be welcomed and celebrated because of who you are,” Roem told E News.

Lovato performed her hit “Sorry Not Sorry.” She told NPR that the song was written with school bullies in mind.

Watch a music video of “Sorry Not Sorry.”

Editor’s Note: This video may contain explicit language. 

David Clayton-Thomas, powerhouse lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, dies at 84

By The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — David Clayton-Thomas, the lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, whose husky, high-strung tenor on “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die” and other hits helped make the so-called brass rock band among the most popular acts of the late 1960s, has died at age 84. Spokesperson Eric Alper said that Clayton-Thomas died “peacefully” Wednesday at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Alper did not cite a specific cause. Clayton-Thomas was a onetime street fighter and petty thief from Canada who briefly became a rock superstar, the front man of a nine-member group that sold millions of records and won two Grammys for “Blood, Sweat & Tears,” which beat out the Beatles' “Abbey Road” for best album of 1969. Calling out amid a jazzy parade of horns, keyboards and percussion, Clayton-Thomas’ urgent shout was a signature voice of the era, preaching love on the Motown cover “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” a lasting legacy on Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die” and a cool head on his own “Spinning Wheel.” Meanwhile, Blood, Sweat & Tears helped inspire a wave of horn-led bands, among them Chicago, the Electric Flag and Ten Wheel Drive. “A lot of the guys (in Blood, Sweat & Tears) would play a Broadway show matinee, then go up to Harlem and play Latin music or R&B and funk at night, or come down to the Village and play pure jazz the next night,” Clayton-Thomas told bestclassicbands.com in 2023. “I was just a blues player: give me three chords and I’ve got a song.”
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