Idles haven’t phoned it in when it comes to the videos for their latest album, Ultra Mono. They dropped an animated video, one made with Michel Gondry, and now they’ve returned with a left turn of a visual for “Reigns.”
The video goes back and forth between people sitting down to watch a nature documentary and clips of animal violence, with the people seemingly reacting in glee as nature brutally does its thing. In fact, some of the clips are so gory that it’s worth including a warning about here.
The band’s Joe Talbot previously said of the song, “This was written around the bass, obviously. Again, another movement — techno — and that idea of togetherness and the love in the room is always apparent. Techno is motorik, it’s mesmeric, it is just a singularity — minimal techno, especially. It’s just the beat or the bass line and that carries you through, that’s all you need. Obviously, we’re a chorus band, so we thought we’d throw in something huge to cut through it. But we didn’t want to overcomplicate it. That sinister pound just reminds me of my continual disdain for the Royal Family and everything they represent in our country, from the fascism that it comes from to the smiley-face racism that it perpetuates nowadays.”
As the music industry begins ramping up for the new year, many big-name pop musicians released new music this week. Taylor Swift added a few tracks to a deluxe version of her Evermore album, elusive ex-One Direction member Zayn returned with a new single, and Saweetie tapped Doja Cat to embark on antics in a fun collaboration.
“It’s Time To Go” is one of a pair of tracks Taylor Swift unveiled this week to keep eyes on her surprise Evermore release. A quiet ballad, Swift sings of learning the hard lesson of letting go of toxic relationships, even if they used to be a close friend.
Zayn — “Vibez”
Fans thought Zayn was gearing up for a new era of music when he dropped the single “Better” as his only track of 2020, and they were proved right this week. Zayn returned to promise fans that new music is, in fact, on the horizon with the shuffling single “Vibez.” The single arrived in tandem with the announcement of his album Nobody Is Listening, which includes “Better” and “Vibez” within the LP’s 11 tracks.
Saweetie — “Best Friend” Feat. Doja Cat
Though Saweetie and Doja Cat’s “Best Friend” was prematurely published by her record label in late 2020, the duo teamed up for a captivating visual to award fans for patiently waiting for its official release. The song is a swaggering single devoted to dynamic duos and serves as a hyped-up anthem for women everywhere to shake their hips to with their best friends.
Zara Larsson — “Talk About Love” Feat. Young Thug
Returning after her hit “Wow” went viral on TikTok, Zara Larsson tapped Young Thug to “Talk About Love” in a new single. “’Talk About Love’ is about that phase before two people work out what they are to one another,” Larsson said. “That specific window is so beautiful and fragile, as soon as you start asking ‘are we doing this?’ or ‘how do *you* feel?’, for some people that ruins the magic. ‘Talk About Love’ is savoring that moment before you have to decide.”
Alice Glass — “Suffer And Swallow”
It’s been nearly seven years since Alice Glass left Crystal Castles after saying she survived “almost a decade of abuse” from bandmate Ethan Kath. Now, Glass is pivoting back to her solo career with the new single “Suffer And Swallow.” In a statement about the song, Glass said: “The song is true to the singular vision that Glass has crafted over the course of her career, but finds her exploring the dichotomy of pain and beauty in a manner more stark than ever before.”
Charlotte Lawrence — “Talk You Down”
If Charlotte Lawrence has taught us anything over her career, it’s that she’s perfected the club-ready beat drop. Following a handful of 2020 singles, including one that landed on the Birds Of Prey soundtrack, Lawrence returns with another banger. “Talk You Down” explores times the singer has been needlessly in her own head underscored by a sparkling beat.
VanJess — “Curious” Feat. Jimi Tents and Garren
Sister duo VanJess have been turning heads since their 2018 debut album but now, they continue to tease a new era of music. Along with announcing their upcoming EP Homegrown, VanJess share the sultry single “Curious” to showcase their project’s captivating harmonies.
Olivia Rodrigo — “Driver’s License”
After coming into stardom with her lead role on Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Olivia Rodrigo has shared her debut solo single. “Drivers License” offers a vignette of the aftermath of one’s first heartbreak, with Rodrigo writing: “When I came up with ‘Drivers License,’ I was going through a heartbreak that was so confusing to me, so multifaceted. Putting all those feelings into a song made everything seem so much simpler and clearer.”
JC Stewart — “Break My Heart”
Following a string of mellow pop hits, JC Stewart’s distinctive sound has captured the attention of many, including Niall Horan. Stewart teamed up with Horan to co-write “Break My Heart,” a bouyant tune about knowing a relationship isn’t right, but taking the risk anyway. “‘Break My Heart’ is big, fast, and fun,” Steward said. “It’s about someone who can catch you so off guard that they can ruin a city for you and tear your life apart. But sometimes that can be addicting.”
Aaron Frazer — “Can’t Leave It Alone”
Aaron Frazer is gearing up for the release of his debut solo album Introducing… this week, produced by Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. Sharing the grand single “Can’t Leave It Alone,” Frazer said: “I have a soft spot for mid 2000s hip hop with marching band vibes. It just takes me back to the formative songs I heard emanating from 92.3 on my boombox. […] I wanted to write something in tribute to that sound, and who knows maybe a marching band out there will play it at a football game someday.”
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Hollywood’s preference for neatly categorizing the legions of good-looking thespians that grace our screens every year is fairly obvious. We used to silo the men and women who are cutting a check for acting out fantasies in theaters and on TV as either movie stars or dramatic actors. The former was the hook that studios hung tentpole blockbusters on: charming, impossibly masculine, glamorous, famous as much for their real-life personas as they were for the characters they played on screen. The latter? Those were the Oscar-winners, the critical darlings, the Jeremy Strongs making bold choices, begging directors to tear-gas them on sets in the name of storytelling.
The divergent path has merged some over the years. There’s no clear, defining line separating bankable talent from actual talent. Chris Evans can brandish a shield in Marvel behemoths one second, then don an unkempt beard and heavy demeanor for a limited drama on Apple TV+ the next. Jon Hamm, who rose to fame playing an arrogant, adulterous ad executive in ’60s era Mad Men is now one of the most unpredictably exciting comedic actors in the game. Chadwick Boseman brought a royal Wakandan superhero to life in Black Panther, but he’ll also probably take home posthumous awards for his brilliant turn in an August Wilson adaptation this year.
In Hollywood, you can now be both a movie star and a serious actor, which is what makes Michael Sheen even more interesting. Michael Sheen is decidedly not a movie star. He’s also Welsh, which means he likely doesn’t sport the kind of ego that would make him capable of attaching gravitas to his acting career. He has 93 credits on his IMDb page. He’s played former British Prime Minister Tony Blair thrice, earning awards recognition for his impersonation in the Helen Mirren-starring The Queen. And he’s lit up the small screen with guest stints on everything from 30 Rock to The Good Wife.
Michael Sheen is, by all accounts, a serious, or at least seriously talented, actor. But he’s also weird as f*ck. I hope he’ll take that as the highest of compliments because it’s the truly bizarre character actors that should be propped up on a pedestal. That’s what Sheen really is: a character actor in his prime, a fearless conqueror on-screen, blazing a path by brandishing his quirky habits and secret love for creating chaos while leaving behind a scorched Earth of conventional conformists in his wake. He’s not like the other girls, and that’s become more apparent as time drags on.
My fascination with Sheen’s filmography began, to my shame, late in his career. His current gig is playing an irresistibly charming serial killer and lauded surgeon named Dr. Martin Whitly on Fox’s Prodigal Son. Perhaps the best praise I can heap on Sheen’s performance is that it convinces me to tune into a network drama every week, a rare feat in the age of streaming. But even that adulation doesn’t paint the whole story of what Sheen’s doing on that show.
Sporting the kind of knit cardigan Ransom Drysdale would be envious of and a crop of wild, grey-dusted curls with just enough kink in them to hint at the perverted madness housed underneath, Sheen’s Whitly is charismatic, comical, and shockingly likable. His unnerving ease at see-sawing between philosophical convos on life and love with his son Malcolm (the excellent Tom Payne) and pragmatically outlining how to dismember a body is at once jarring and, oddly, mesmerizing. Sheen plays him as a perpetually amused psychotic genius, an Einstein whose intelligence is so far above those that keep him captive, it’s almost a joke. And we’re in on it, as the audience, gleefully cackling when Whitly gets overexcited about consulting on the most gruesome homicide cases or, even more disturbingly, momentarily forgetting he once stuffed a woman into a box when he shares a tender exchange with his son. And Sheen embraces the strangeness of the man, rejoicing in his eccentricities, adding a musical flair to every “My boy,” he greets Malcolm with and relishing the more awkward moments by exploiting their inherent comedy. Really, when has a slow-rising hospital bed and distasteful Stephen Hawking joke been funnier?
Lest you think playing a serial killing diva was the most oddball acting choice Sheen has ever made, may I point you to the rest of his film catalog. There’s his mustache-twirling clichéd villain in Dr. Dolittle. The eerily robotic bartender of Passengers. The long-haired alpha Lycan of Underworld. The Tony Blairs (all three of them) and the heavily-bronzed game show hosts of Quiz. The Hot Tub Time Machine hating settling soul mate of Liz Lemon in 30 Rock.
And then there are a handful of performances that live in my own brain, rent-free, like when he played Aro in the Twilight series. Other actors would’ve balked at the challenge of turning a 4,000-year-old Italian vampire riddled with boredom and consumed by unchecked power into something more than just a two-dimensional, cartoonish stereotype, but not Sheen. No, while Robert Pattinson flaunted his constipated sullenness and Kristen Stewart fidgeted and fought to make her character likable, Sheen basked in the camp of it all. He over-enunciated, he exaggerated Aro’s mercurial nature with rapid eye movement, twitchy physicality, and shrieking giggle fits. In the franchise’s final film, just before a climactic battle is set to take place, Sheen throws the atmospheric tension every other actor in the scene has worked so painstakingly hard to build into turmoil. It’s like watching Georgia O’Keefe destroy a room full of paintings, or Heath Ledger’s Joker burn a mountain of money, and it is glorious.
In Tron: Legacy he plays Castor, a maniacal nightclub owner with a consuming love for theatricality. As his guests fall into his well-laid trap, he dances and kicks and shuffles and shouts, wielding a neon-tinted cane like a Barnum and Bailey’s ringmaster and a slicked-back shock-white hairdo that turns him into an analog-style Bowie wannabe. His accent careens into the absurd, from high-pitched lilts to German parody to something I can only describe as Marvel supervillain Arnim Zola on steroids.
In Neil Gaiman’s Amazon Prime comedy Good Omens, Sheen played the anxiety-ridden angel, Aziraphale, a heavenly kiss-ass who befriends David Tennant’s demonic Crowley, and together, the two try to save the world. Playing the more uptight celestial being might not be as fun for any other actor, but Sheen has a hell of a time, dealing nervous spasms and twitchy eyeballs and exaggerated gulps with such a heavy hand, you can’t help but feel sympathy for the straight-laced seraph.
And just when I was ready to conclude my research, feeling quite confident dubbing Sheen’s extensive resume as one of the wilder, diverse acting careers in Hollywood, I stumbled upon Michael Bolton’s Valentine’s Day Special on Netflix. It’s here that Sheen truly goes above and beyond in the name of weird, playing a Bob Fosse parody named Carl Flossy: a gruff, chain-smoking choreographer whose manners are as coarse as his constantly-displayed chest hair. Shouting obscenities at Bolton as he tries to map out a musical dilly that will convince punk kids that old-time rock-n-roll is, in fact, badass, Sheen’s growling criticism and shouted anger is muffled only by the ever-present cigarette dangling from his mouth. He’s an aging Guido-type with an open-neck satin shirt, and inflated confidence, and a mysterious way of drawing out the best in his dancers, one that usually involves throwing the nearest folded chair.
I suppose that’s what’s so great about Sheen’s career so far. He’s happy to sacrifice whatever level of stardom and recognition he may have been afforded thanks to his talent and good looks for something even more elusive that blockbuster fame and Academy trophies: the unique ability to disappear into even the most bizarre of characters; to convince audiences he’s no longer Michael Sheen, affable Welshman and ex-husband of thee Kate Beckinsale, but instead, an amalgam of the oddities and freakish individuals he plays on the screen. Michael Sheen might, in truth, be as weird and out there as the characters he inhabits. That’s what makes him great.
FOX’s ‘Prodigal Son’ returns on Tuesday, January 12.
After Donald Trump was banned from virtually every social media platform, including his beloved Twitter account, for inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol building last week, critics of the president are taking the Trump erasure to the next level by demanding he be removed from Home Alone 2. In a moment of much-needed levity, social media users have come up with a few creative ideas on how to replace Trump’s scene where he tells a lost Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) how to find the lobby of the Trump Plaza.
I call on Congress to immediately order that Donald Trump be digitally replaced in all versions of “Home Alone 2” with … Gritty. I want my children to see someone they can look up too.
(Surely there is also something in the 25th Amendment that makes provision for this?) pic.twitter.com/ooXCPG4L9u
Not only should we digitally remove Donald Trump from Home Alone 2, we should replace him with adult Macaulay Culkin. Just make that plot go off the rails. pic.twitter.com/r4mObFZC37
While removing Trump from Home Alone 2 may seem random, the president notably flew off the handle in 2019 when he learned that a Canadian TV broadcast had edited out his scene. The cut was one of several made to the film for the sake of adding in commercials, but Trump went so far as to blame Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for personally excising the scene. Because Trudeau has nothing better to do than oversee the broadcast of random Christmas movies.
As for the chances of editing Trump out of Home Alone 2, director Chris Columbus probably wouldn’t mind. While recently celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first film, Columbus revealed that Trump “bullied” his way into the sequel by refusing to allow filming in the Plaza unless he had a cameo. The scene was going to be edited out after it was filmed to appease Trump, but according to Columbus, test audiences “cheered” when Trump showed up on-screen, and here we are.
It’s been a long time since Azealia Banks’ name has trended on social media due to her music. Unfortunately, the latest incident of increased notoriety for the Harlem rapper was par for the course as horrified music fans woke up today to find see her trending on Twitter — and even more so once they found out why.
The “212” rapper, who has been more well-known in recent years for her feuds with other celebrities and interest in the occult, posted a video to her Instagram Story of her digging up and boiling her dead cat Lucifer, apparently in an effort to bring it back to life. Clearly, she’s never seen Pet Semetary, or she’d know just how bad an idea that is.
All jokes aside, the video was quickly deleted, but nothing is ever truly deleted on the internet (we aren’t posting it here, but you can find it on Twitter — you shouldn’t, though). While the initial reactions were troubled, it didn’t take long for fans to begin making light of the situation, comparing Banks to her stylistic successors, posting screenshots from the universally-panned 2019 screen adaptation of Cats, and making the same crude joke.
Since exploding into pop culture’s consciousness in 2012 with her breakout single “212,” Banks has become better known for her concerning, frustrating, and often alarming antics and social media posts than her music, despite keeping up a relatively steady stream of new releases over the years. From beefing with Cardi B, Lana Del Rey, Nicki Minaj, and even Elon Musk, Azealia’s public feuds, and disturbing behavior have overshadowed her talent.
Future Islands is one of the best live bands around today, which makes it a real bummer that they didn’t get to tour behind their new album, As Long As You Are, in 2020. Last year was actually the first year of the band’s existence when they didn’t put on live shows, save for their “A Stream Of You And Me” livestream concert.
They’ve always thrived on late-night TV, though, and they got to do so again last night with a performance of “Plastic Beach” on Late Night With Seth Meyers. The performance was pre-taped from a separate venue, where the group was bathed in red light as Samuel T. Herring, as he always does, led his band with uncommon levels of passion.
In an interview with Uproxx last year, Herring spoke about how the pandemic has affected the band and reflected on their canceled tour, saying, “It’s all interesting. We were supposed to be in Japan a week ago and we missed some shows in Mexico already this year. I guess we were supposed to be going on tour any day now, or maybe we were supposed to be on tour right now. It’s really changed a lot of things.”
Watch Future Islands perform “Plastic Beach” on Late Night above and revisit our interview with the group here.
Meghan McCain picked a heck of a week to return to The View. Not even three days into her comeback, which was already punctuated with notable clashes with co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg, the U.S. Capitol building was attacked by a mob of Trump supporters. The unprecedented assault on the nation led to a brief moment of unity as the conservative McCain joined her more liberal co-hosts in denouncing the violence. Unfortunately, that truce didn’t last long as McCain went right back to causing eye rolls aplenty as she defended Senator Josh Hawley, who is under intense scrutiny for his role in inciting the attack.
In a nutshell, it was an eventful week. But despite Behar telling McCain directly to her face that “I did not miss you” while she was on maternity leave, McCain has no plans of leaving The View. While stopping by Watch What Happens Live on Monday night, McCain told host Andy Cohen that as bad as the drama looks on TV, she loves the show and is in it for the long haul. Via The Daily Beast:
“Even if some people didn’t miss me, I missed the show. We’re a family. All these women were at my dad’s funeral. We’ve been through a lot of sh*t together and I miss being on the show and I hope that we can all be examples, myself included, for where the country should go forward.”
“Because whether we like it or not, I’m not going anywhere on the show, Joy is not going anywhere on the show,” McCain vowed. “We all have to live and coexist together just like Americans right now.”
According to a recent report from E!, tensions are especially high on The View because of COVID restrictions requiring them to film remotely. However, if anyone has seen an episode of The View, there were plenty of fireworks between McCain and her co-hosts long before the pandemic arrived.
The majority of movie theaters in the United States are still closed due to the pandemic, and will likely remain that way for months to come (No Time to Die hopes “months” equals “by April 2”), but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any new movies in 2021. Netflix has made good on its promise (threat?) to release a new movie every week of the year, as the streaming service revealed in its 2021 film preview.
The two-and-a-half minute video debuts first-look footage from many of Netflix’s most-anticipated titles, including Red Notice, the mega-budget action flick starring The Rock, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds; Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised; teen-friendly romantic-comedies The Kissing Booth 3 and To All The Boys: Always And Forever; Escape from Spiderhead, which has Chris Hemsworth wearing sunglasses on a speedboat so I’m in; and Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s asteroid-comedy starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Timothée Chalamet, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande, and every other famous person in Hollywood.
Here’s the full lineup, with more to come:
ACTION Army of the Dead
Awake
Kate
Outside the Wire (January 15) Red Notice
Sweet Girl
HORROR Fear Street Trilogy
No One Gets Out Alive
There’s Someone Inside Your House
Things Heard and Seen
THRILLER Blood Red Sky
Beckett
Escape from Spiderhead
Intrusion
Munich
O2
Night Teeth
The Swarm
The Woman in the Window
SCI-FI Stowaway
ROMANCE A Castle For Christmas
Fuimos Canciones
Kissing Booth 3
Love Hard
The Last Letter from Your Lover
The Princess Switch 3
To All The Boys: Always and Forever
Untitled Alicia Keys Rom-Com
DRAMA Beauty
Blonde
Bombay Rose
Bruised
Concrete Cowboy
Fever Dream
Malcolm & Marie (February 5) Monster
Penguin Bloom (January 27) Pieces of Woman (January 7) The Dig (January 29) The Guilty
The Hand of God
The Power of the Dog
The Starling
The White Tiger (January 22)
Unt. Alexandre Moratto Film
Unt. Graham King
WESTERN The Harder They Fall
COMEDY 8 Rue de l’Humanité
Afterlife of the Party
Bad Trip
Don’t Look Up
Double Dad I Care A Lot (February 19) Moxie (March 3) The Last Mercenary
Thunder Force
FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY A Boy Called Christmas
A Winter’s Tale from Shaun the Sheep
Back to the Outback
Finding ‘Ohana (January 29) Loud House
Nightbooks
Robin Robin
Skater Girl
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans
Wish Dragon
YES DAY (March 12)
CNN’s Don Lemon hasn’t ever been afraid to put the MAGA crowd in its place, but he found even more of a reason to do so on Monday while reacting to a few temper tantrums. One of them, obviously, would be from President Trump, who’s undoubtedly furious about being permanently suspended from Twitter. Then there’s MAGA insurrectionist Jacob Anthony Chansley — known to the public under a few aliases, including Jake Angeli, QAnon Shaman, and Chewbacca Bikini guy — whose mother revealed that her son has refused to eat since last Friday because organic meals are the only food he’ll place into his temple of a body.
Lemon has had enough, beginning with talk of Trump spokesperson Hogan Gidley calling him the “most masculine person ever” to sit in the Oval Office: “Shut up, shut up!
From now on, he shall be known as Don “No Fucks to Give” Lemon.
Here’s the face Lemon saved for “the guy with the horns,” conspiracy theorist Angeli:
CNN
Before all was said in done in the above clip, Lemon had branded Trump the “biggest snowflake” of all and “the biggest loser we’ve ever had as president,” whose feelings needed to be coddled by those around him. “I have heard a lot of pathetic things from this White House, this one really takes the cake,” Lemon said of the masculinity remark. Meanwhile, Trump has apparently tried to blame Antifa after he (the freaking POTUS) incited an insurrection upon the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead.
As for Angeli, he’s languishing behind bars in Arizona after being charged with disorderly conduct, violent entry, and illegally entering the U.S. Capitol. NBC News has quoted him as saying, “I walked through an open door, dude” while he also described his actions as “civil disobedience.” A U.S. Marshal in Arizona revealed to a local station that a judge did order that Angeli’s requested organic diet will be supplied, after his mom said Angeli would grow ill without his usual menu. Well, don’t tell Don Lemon.
There has recently been hope that concerts can return in 2021: There was a test COVID-safe concert last month and US Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci thinks some venues could host shows again this fall. Whether or not that ends up being the case, The 1975 won’t be in those venues, as they announced today that they have canceled all of their scheduled shows for 2021.
However, they did revealed that they’re working on a new album. In a message shared on social media, the band wrote:
“We are really sorry to announce that we have made the decision to cancel all scheduled touring for 2021.
These are incredibly difficult times for a lot of people, and until we can be sure that we will be able to play shows in a way that is safe for our fans and crew, we have decided the best course of action is to cancel our touring so that, where possible, everyone can get their tickets refunded sooner rather than later.
We’re currently making a new album and look forward to seeing you all at a show as soon as it is safe to do so.
For information on refunds for Finsbury Park please go to your point of purchase.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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