Month: October 2020

David Bowie wasn’t DAVID BOWIE, internationally-known rock god, until his fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I mean, technically before he was David Bowie or DAVID BOWIE, he was David Robert Jones, but you get the idea. His self-titled debut barely made a commercial dent, while the follow-up, also named David Bowie (later re-titled Space Oddity), had a hit, but sold poorly as well.

IFC Films biopic Stardust follows Bowie (Lovesick‘s Johnny Flynn) as he’s sent to America to promote his third album, 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World, with help from a music publicist played by pre-Joker beard Marc Maron. “Be someone else,” the publicist tells Bowie. That bit of advice led to not only Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, but also, the Goblin King. And for that, we’re forever thankful to Marc Maron.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

David Bowie is one of the most seminal legends in music history; but who was the man behind the many faces? In 1971, a 24-year-old fledgling David Bowie (Johnny Flynn) is sent to America to promote his newest record, The Man Who Sold the World. Leaving behind his pregnant wife Angie (Jena Malone), Bowie and his band embark on a makeshift coast-to-coast promotional tour with struggling Mercury Records publicist Rob Oberman (Marc Maron).

Stardust hits VOD and digital services on November 25.

At the start of this year, Hayley Williams pivoted toward a solo career by releasing a handful of singles and videos which would make up her debut solo LP Petals For Armor. The record arrived only a few months before the lockdown took place, leaving Williams quarantined inside her home with her collection of new songs. To pass the time, the singer began sharing a several acoustic covers of her favorite songs and Petals For Armor tracks, and now, Williams has turned a select few of the acoustic efforts into a new EP.

Williams announced her Self-Serenades EP on Wednesday. The 10-inch vinyl boasts three stripped-down tracks. Two of the songs, “Simmer” and “Why We Ever,” were featured on Petals For Armor, but the collection also offers a previously-unreleased track titled “Find Me Here.”

“Survived 2020 thanks to self-serenades,” she wrote alongside the EP’s announcement.

Along with sharing acoustic renditions of some Petals For Armor songs while in quarantine, the singer offered her own spin on tracks from artists across genres. The singer covered SZA’s “Drew Barrymore,” Björk’s “Unison,” Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now,” and many more from her home.

Self-Serenades is out 10/18 via Atlantic. Pre-order it here.

Hayley Williams is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Wisconsin Badgers’ game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Saturday is officially off. The Badgers, which are dealing with a spike in COVID cases within their locker room that left them with only one scholarship quarterback, announced the news on Wednesday morning, saying that all football-related activities are off for the time being.

Amid the statement, it was revealed that the team’s head coach, Paul Chryst, tested positive for COVID-19, with Christ saying, “This morning I received the news that I had tested positive via a PCR test I took yesterday. I informed my staff and the team this morning and am currently isolating at home. I had not been experiencing any symptoms and feel good as of this morning. I am disappointed for our players and coaching staff who put so much into preparing to play each week. But the safety of everyone in our program has to be our top priority and I support the decision made to pause our team activities.”

The team also announced that the game against Nebraska will not be played altogether, an unsurprising development as the Big Ten has put forth a condensed schedule with the hopes of playing a season this year. Over the last five days, 12 members of the Badgers’ football program have tested positive for the virus, and according to the New York Times‘ tracking data, the state of Wisconsin has had the third-highest daily average of positive test per 100,000 residents over the last week.

Not long after Travis Scott’s big partnership with McDonald’s, it was revealed that the next huge company the rapper would be teaming up with is Sony, on Playstation things. Today, the company unveiled their launch trailer for the PS5 (which comes out on November 12), and sure enough, Scott narrates it.

In the video, which is titled “Play Has No Limits,” There is dramatic footage of space launches, scientific advances, and explorers of sea, sky, mountains, space, deserts, and beyond. Over all that, Scott narrates, “Exploration: It’s in our DNA. There’s something inside each and every one of us that compels us to know the unknown, to push past every frontier. We want to see what’s never been seen, hear what’s never been heard, feel what’s never been felt. There are no limits to where we’ll go, to what we’ll discover, to what we’ll achieve. We are all explorers and there are new worlds to explore.”

Scott previously shared a statement about the partnership, saying, “I’m really looking forward to being able to showcase everything that Cactus Jack has worked on with Sony and the Playstation team. Most importantly I’m excited to see how the Playstation fans and family respond, and I look forward to running some games with everybody very soon!”

Watch the ad above.

Common has been prolific in the past handful of years, putting out a new album in each of the last three years and penning a bestselling memoir. He’s keeping the streak alive in 2020, announcing the imminent release of his 13th (solo) album, A Beautiful Revolution Pt 1 this Friday, October 30.

He also shared the first single from the album, the bouncy and observant “Say Peace.” Over an Afrobeat instrumental (as in Fela Kuti, not Burna Boy), Common and guest rapper Black Thought comment on current and historical oppression of Black Americans while name-checking Nelson Mandela, Marcus Garvey, and the Black Power movement. Meanwhile, singer PJ provides the hook, echoing back the theme of the song: “All they really wanna do is cuff you,” she chants. “They don’t love you.”

Common was also tapped by Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote initiative, contributing another track from the album to the Former First Lady’s current pet project. Its latest voting PSA features “A Place In This World,” another funky track on which Common speaks on the current climate with his usual hopeful outlook. The Chicago rapper is due to perform “Say Peace” tonight on The Tonight Show and will host an album listening live stream on his YouTube channel on October 30.

Listen to “Say Peace” above.

A Beautiful Revolution Pt 1 is due 10/30 via Loma Vista Recordings. Pre-save it here.

PJ is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Election Day is less than a week away, which means that voting awareness is only getting more and more important with each passing day. Following the confirmation of the newest Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, Planned Parenthood has launched a new We Need Every Voice get-out-the-vote campaign, for which they garnered the support of over 200 musicians, including Billie Eilish, Foo Fighters, and Halsey.

The full-page ad was published on Wednesday in six swing state newspapers — including the Detroit Free Press, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Austin American Statesman. It reads:

“United, our voices can change the direction of this country. Voting shapes our lives and has lasting effects. After the rushed confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in the midst of a pandemic, we now face a Supreme Court that puts our health and freedoms, including our right to safe and legal abortion, at extreme risk. The damage already inflicted on our country will last for generations. We can’t afford any further assaults on our reproductive freedom — our right to control our bodies. We need your voice.

This election, more than any other, will determine our health, rights and our future. Now, we decide. We need every voice. Vote, because your body is your own.”

Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, also said in a statement:

“Everything is on the line with this election. Voters across the country understand that we need leaders who will fight to protect our rights and access to health care in every branch of government — that’s why tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots by mail or in-person in states with early voting.

As we face a Supreme Court that now poses an even greater threat to people’s healthcare access and reproductive rights, we know there is power in exercising our right to vote. We are proud to partner with musicians for We Need Every Voice to mobilize more people to use their voices and their votes to help elect leaders that will protect our futures, our health, our rights, and our freedoms.”

Other artists supporting the campaign include Aminé, Andre 3000, Angel Olsen, Beastie Boys, Big Thief, Black Thought, Bon Iver, Bright Eyes, Carly Rae Jepsen, Death Cab For Cutie, Finneas, Fleet Foxes, G-Eazy, Haim, Jeff Rosenstock, Jenny Lewis, Kacey Musgraves, KAty Perry, Lil Dicky, Maggie Rogers, Michael Stipe, My Morning Jacket, Nine Inch Nails, Perfume Genius, Phoebe Bridgers, The Postal Service, Pup, Questlove, The Roots, Saba, Sharon Van Etten, Sleater-Kinney, Soccer Mommy, Spoon, St. Vincent, and Weyes Blood.

Find the full list of artists below.

• Adam Horovitz
• Adia Victoria
• Adult
• Alan Palomo (Neon Indian)
• Alex Skolnick
• Alexandra Savior
• Alice Smith
• Alynda Segarra (Hurray For The Riff Raff)
• Amanda Palrner
• Amara La Negra
• Aminé
• Andra Day
• Andre 3000
• Angel Olsen
• Angelica Garcia
• Ani Difranco
• Ashanti
• Baroness
• Beach House
• Beastie Boys
• Berra Mancari
• Beck
• Belaro
• Best Coast
• Big Freedia
• Big Thief
• Bikini Kill
• Billie Eilish
• Black Thought
• Blood Orange
• Bon Iver
• Brad Mehldau
• Bright Eyes
• Broken Social Scene
• Bully
• Buzzy Lee
• Calexico
• Carly Rae Jepsen
• Caroline Shaw
• Cate Le Bon
• Cécile Mclorin Salvant
• Ceremony
• Charlotte Lawrence
• Chelsea Collins
• Chloe Lilac
• Chloe Moriondo
• Chris Thile
• Claud
• Clipping
• Courtney Marie Andrews
• Craig Wedren
• Dana Williams
• David Yow
• Dean & Bata
• Death Cab For Cutie
• Deaton Chris Anthony
• Devendra Banhart
• Dorian Electra
• Electric Guest
• Eli Janney (Girls Against Boys)
• Emmylou Harris
• Erin Rae
• Evann Mcintosh
• Finneas
• First Aid Kit
• Fleet Foxes
• Flock Of Dimes
• Foo Fighters
• Future Islands
• G-Eazy
• Gaby Moreno
• Gilligan Moss
• Grace Potter
• Grandson
• Grouplove
• Haim
• Halestorm
• Haley Blais
• Halsey
• Hot Snakes
• Jeff Rosenstock
• Jenny Lewis
• Jehnny Beth
• Jimmy Eat World
• Josie Dunneye
• Joshua Redman
• Julien Baker
• K.D. Lang
• Kacey Musgraves
• Karen Elson
• Katy Perry
• Keith Morris
• Kevin Seconds
• Kim Gordon
• King Tuff
• Knocked Loose
• L7
• Lael Neale
• Lætitia Tarnko (Vagabon)
• Lake Street Dive
• Laurie Anderson
• Lil Dicky
• Lindsey Buckingham
• Loma
• Love Mansuy
• Lykke Li
• Macklemore
• Madi Diaz
• Madison Beer
• Maggie Rogers
• Mandy More
• Margo Price
• Michael Stipe
• Michelle
• Michelle Branch
• Mike D
• Milck
• Misterwives
• Mudhoney
• My Morning Jacket
• Mykki Blanco
• Natalie Merchant
• Narrow Head
• Neko Case
• Nina Ljeti (Of Kills Birds)
• Nine Inch Nails
• Norah Jones
• Olivia O’Brien
• Patrick Carney
• Pauline Rubio
• Peach Tree Rascals
• Perfume Genius
• Perry Farrell And Etty Lau Farrell
• Pete Yorn
• Phoebe Bridgers
• Pinegrove
• Pink
• Pissed Jeans
• Pom Pom Squad
• Portugal. The Man
• Princess Nokia
• Pun. Brothers
• Pup
• Queens Of The Stone Age
• Questlove
• Randy Newman
• Real Estate
• Resistance Revival Chorus
• Rhiannon Giddens
• Romero
• Royal &The Serpent
• Saba
• Sad13
• Sammy Brue
• Sarah Mclachlan
• Saygrace
• Seth Jabour (Les Savy Fav)
• Sharon Van Etten
• Shearwater
• Sia
• Silversun Pickups
• Skullcrusher
• Sleater-Kinney
• Soccer Mommy
• Sons Of An Illustrious Father
• Speedy Ortiz
• Spoon
• Squirrel Flower
• St. Vincent
• Sunflower Bean
• Syd Butler (Les Savy Fav)
• T Bone Burnett
• Tegan And Sara
• Tempers
• Tenacious D
• The 130 Band
• The Aces
• The B-52s
• The Bird And The Bee
• The Breeders
• The Chicks
• The Decemberists
• The Distillers
• The Head And The Heart
• The Kills
• The Magnetic Fields
• The Madan
• The New Pornographers
• The Postal Service
• The Roots
• The Streets
• Third Eye Blind
• Tune-yards
• Turnstile
• Uniform
• U.S. Girls
• Wallows
• Weezer
• Weyes Blood
• White Reaper
• Wristmeetrazor
• X Ambassadors

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Letitia Wright is, as you might imagine, reticent to discuss how Marvel will handle Black Panther 2 following the death of Chadwick Boseman. But the actress, who played sister Shuri in the Best Picture nominee, is more willing to talk about her campaign to make an all-female Avengers movie. “I don’t think we have to fight for it,” she told Yahoo! Entertainment. “[Marvel Studios executive] Victoria Alonso is very strong about spearheading it, alongside Kevin [Feige]. It’s only a matter of time before they do it.”

In Avengers: Endgame, the clunky but well-meaning female superheroes scene had Shuri, along with Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Okoye (Danai Gurira), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), teaming up to take down Thanos and his goons. But who would Wright want for her dream movie?

Wright makes it clear she’s thinking big, starting with her Black Panther co-stars, Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o, and Angela Basset, a.k.a. “Mama Angela.” Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie is also in the mix, as is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most powerful player, Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, both of whom were featured in that Endgame scene alongside Shuri.

Wright makes it clear that she “definitely” wants Captain Marvel in her crew, because obviously. Marvel has no current (public) plans to make an all-female Avengers movie, and Black Panthers 2 has been delayed until at least 2022, but you can catch Wright in Death on the Nile and Steve McQueen’s Small Axe miniseries.

(Via Yahoo! Entertainment)

Narcos: Mexico has gotten high on its own supply (for two seasons) and has managed to be as intense as Narcos‘ three preceding seasons. Of course, the timeline flipped, and Narcos: Mexico partially takes place beforehand, during the start of the War on Drugs in the 1980s. As we know, that war never ended, but Scoot McNairy‘s Walt Breslin will keep the mustache coming while hammering away at the nonexistent final yard line as El Chapo starts to ascend to power. In the last season finale, we saw Walt’s quiet confrontation with Diego Luna’s drug lord after his imprisonment. The mayhem will continue under new plazas, and Netflix has announced that the next installment is definitely happening, and that includes a little behind-the-camera bonus for fans.

Wagner Moura, who played Pablo Escobar during the first two Narcos seasons, will return to direct two episodes of Narcos: Mexico‘s third season. For old time’s sake, let’s revisit Escobar, shall we?

However, Netflix does not list Moura on the returning cast list (Scoot is definitely back, though), so Moura will likely be confined to time behind the camera, or heck, who knows, maybe we’ll see Escobar as a surprise? The timelines between the two series overlap all over the place, so it’s not inconceivable. Here’s a third season synopsis:

Set in the 90s, when the globalization of the drug business ignites, Season 3 examines the war that breaks out after Felix’s empire splinters. As newly independent cartels struggle to survive political upheaval and escalating violence, a new generation of Mexican kingpins emerge. But in this war, truth is the first casualty – and every arrest, murder and take-down only pushes real victory further away.

Meanwhile, five-season showrunner Eric Newman will be handing his showrunning duties to co-creator Carlo Barnard (while Newman continues to executive produce but segues into work on another Netflix series, an opioid-focused drama, Painkiller, Escape From Spiderhead, starring Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Daniel Kaluuya).

Narcos: Mexico‘s third season will star Scoot, Jose Maria Yazpik, Alberto Ammann, Alfonso Dosal, Mayra Hermosillo, Matt Letscher, Manuel Masalva, Alejandro Edda and Gorka Lasaosa. Here’s a “teaser” that’s a recap of seasons past with no release date for Season 3 as of yet.

Rhye (aka Michael Milosh) took his time between albums the last go around: Five years passed between his 2013 debut Woman and its follow-up, 2018’s Blood. Now, though, he’s on a roll. His third album, Spirit, dropped last year, and now he’s ready with a fourth: Today, he announced that Home will be released on January 22.

He also shared a video for the lead single, “Black Rain.” The clip is a single shot of a dancer (actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass and Avengers: Age of Ultron) moving on a dimly lit stage. As for the strong, its undercurrent is funky disco, and Milosh says of the song, “It has this ’80s version of disco, like the way Quincy Jones was interpreting disco.”

Press materials note of the album, “Home is centered around the idea of home as the core of creativity and community. It’s familiar in its synthesis of propulsive beats, orchestral flourishes, piano ruminations and sultry, gender-nonconforming vocals, but never have they sounded more cohesive or alive.”

Watch the “Black Rain” video above and find the Home art and tracklist below.

01. “Intro”
02. “Come In Closer”
03. “Beautiful”
04. “Safeword”
05. “Hold You Down”
06. “I Need A Lover”
07. “Helpless”
08. “Black Rain”
09. “Sweetest Revenge”
10. “My Heart Bleeds”
11. “Fire”
12. “Holy”
13. “Outro”

Home is out 1/22/2021 via Loma Vista Recordings. Pre-order it here.

(SPOILERS for the first episode of The Undoing will be found below.)

HBO’s The Undoing is clearly meant to appeal to Big Little Lies fans. Yes, the newer show is more of a psychological thriller than a drama with a heaping helping of female friendships, but both shows revolve around a sensational death. Both team up Nicole Kidman and writer-producer David E. Kelley, who’s really great at crafting great roles for women. And both shows know that people enjoy the high drama of absurdly wealthy humans who can’t figure out how to, you know, just be happy and appreciate their own privilege and beauty. While I will concede that Big Little Lies is the better show, overall, it sure doesn’t have Hugh Grant stepping outside his “dishy Brit” box like The Undoing does.

Speaking of boxes, this project is directed by Susanne Bier of Bird Box Netflix fame. She knows a thing or two about capturing the Internet’s attention. Bier, along with Kelley and Kidman, has brought us an extremely watchable, albeit imperfect, series that debuted this past Sunday. Expect things to get intense with all the customary, psychological-thriller twists but too many red herrings. I’m going to touch upon what happened during the premiere — mostly because there’s no way to talk around how this show’s central mystery involves a murder. And it plays out like an intentionally clumsy whodunnit, which makes it guilty-fun to discuss, despite the morbid subject matter at hand.

The characters sure don’t do themselves any favors. All feel a little bit “off.” However, there are solid performances across the board. Nicole Kidman and Donald Sutherland (who play daughter and father) could pick up their roles in their sleep. They’re good, but the most engrossing performance comes from Hugh Grant. Dare I say — and this feels incredibly strange given that this is a show revolving around a homicide — that this is his most interesting turn since Paddington 2? Now it sounds like I’m making light of a murder-show, but really: we rarely get to see Grant play a layered character, yet he gets that chance in The Undoing. The show sets him up at the end of Episode 1 to make you question everything about his suave doctor persona. The guy not only vanishes into thin air but, in a manner that can only be purposeful, leaves his cell phone at home.

That’s weird. Extremely weird. No one would do that 2020, and it’s especially unheard of for a pediatric oncologist who’s always on call to do that. Yep, it sure looks strange to be so unreachable when a death rocks your social circle.

Obviously, the show’s debut sets things up to make us wonder what’s going on with Hugh’s character, Jonathan Fraser. We’re supposed to find his disappearance awfully unsettling right after someone killed a young mother named Elena (Matilda De Angelis). Did someone snag Jonathan, too? Is he, gasp, the murderer? Or perhaps Jonathan’s wife, Grace (Kidman) is going crazy? That would be a nice touch, and of course, the show already dropped in a random-feeling moment where Elena laid a kiss on Grace in an elevator. A few hours later, Elena is no more. (There’s a lot going on here.)

This scene isn’t as gratuitous as you might imagine, and the show delivers a pretty interesting mystery (though I haven’t seen the finale yet, so there might be some backtracking). Overall, The Undoing serves a fine slice of escapism.

What I’m more interested in, though, is that Hugh Grant’s digging into a role that suggests a dark side. That’s a (strangely) rare thing, after a career trajectory that’s always looked bland-ish compared to his early-IRL-reputation that’s always lingered in the background. On that note, it’s enough to say that he alerted the world to Liz Hurley’s presence and then posed for a mug shot in 1995 after behaving roguishly. That compromising position didn’t affect his endless supply of those dishy-roles. He was King of the British Romcoms, but I always got the feeling that Hugh was keen to stop being so likeable onscreen. He got that chance, sort-of, as Daniel Cleaver in the Bridget Jones movies while treating the title character terribly, muttering about “f*ck me, enormous panties,” and cheating in a well-dressed street fight against Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy. Still, he wasn’t nuanced, merely a dirty dog, so anyone who wanted to see Hugh play a more morally ambiguous character was in for a wait.

Over the past handful of years, Hugh’s finally been shaking things up onscreen. He played a super-sleazy private investigator in The Gentleman, although that film felt like Ritchie retreading old ground. He received an Emmy nod for A Very English Scandal, and yes, he was hamming it up as a tap-dancing villain in the beloved Paddington 2, a truly wonderful movie. His washed-up actor, Phoenix Buchanan, descended into a life of crime and committed the most heinous act in cinematic history (I will stand by this declaration) by helping to frame a marmalade-loving bear into doing hard time. It was scandalous, I say, and sheer fun to witness, but with The Undoing, we get a different kind of shady Hugh Grant: one that you’re not quite sure if you like.

It’s a role that a lot of other actors would have played too stiffly or gloomily, but I like to imagine that this was inspired casting. Intentionally or not (and the show already differs quite a bit from its source material, You Should Have Known, by Jean Hanff Korelitz), The Undoing plays upon Hugh’s professional and (former) personal reputations, and it’s soapy and indulgent as a watch. The show’s also very much a guilty pleasure that’s acted out by a prestige-prone cast, and it’s an easily digestible show when we could stand to focus on characters’ problems other than reality.

Most importantly, we’ve got Hugh Grant playing a character who looks straight-laced and wholesome but might be up to no good. Clearly, he’s not 100% angelic, but I shall not spoil the season. I will say, however, that Hugh’s performance is so clever that I caught myself saying, “Ahhhhh!” later on while remembering mere gestures on his behalf. The dude’s got layers going on here. In hindsight, it makes sense that a top children’s oncologist, who regularly witnesses tragic outcomes but manages to never bring his work home and always maintains a sense of humor, might have some hidden sides. Or he might not! I’ll stop here and leave you with this screencap. All Hugh Grant characters are at least a little bit randy, after all. Enjoy.

HBO’s ‘The Undoing’ airs on Sunday nights at 9:00pm EST.