Month: February 2021

The recently-released documentary Framing Britney Spears examines the pop star’s life, the #FreeBritney movement, and the rampant misogyny she’s faced throughout her career. Late-night show hosts, in particular, were brutal to the pop star (“The Britney doc is also a sad reminder that not too long ago we had to pretend that jay leno was funny,” reads one emblematic tweet), with the exception of one: Craig Ferguson.

In 2007, The Late Late Show host explained why he refused to mock Spears’ public breakdown. “Tonight, no Britney Spears jokes, and here’s why,” he began. “The kind of weekend she had, she was checking in and out of rehab, she was shaving her head, getting tattoos, that’s what she was doing this weekend. This Sunday, I was 15 years sober. So I looked at her weekend, and I looked at my own weekend, and I thought, ‘You know, I’d rather have my weekend.’ But what she’s going through reminds me of what I was doing. It’s an anniversary, you start to think about it, and it reminds me of where I was 15 years ago, when I was living like that.” Ferguson refrained from diagnosing Spears, but “she clearly needs help.” He also said that he felt “uncomfortable about making fun” of celebrities like Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, who had recently passed away, when we should be “attacking the powerful people, the politicians and the Trumps and the blowhards.” (Ferguson was really ahead of his time by singling out Trump.)

Ferguson discussed his monologue, which has gone viral since Framing Britney Spears premiered, in 2019 with the Los Angeles Times. “I wanted to put myself in the position of what Ms. Spears had been in that weekend, [to show] that I understood, that I identified with her discomfort,” he said. “And I because I had done that, other people identified with me too. It feels odd to talk about, because I don’t want to aggrandize myself. I didn’t mean to do it. It just felt right at the time. But it has definitely stuck.”

You can watch the full monologue above, or an excerpt below.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is deeply missed.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

A particular scene from True Detective’s second season is stuck in Sun June vocalist Laura Colwell’s mind as she describes her band’s sound. The scene in question opens with a forlorn woman perched atop a stool on a bar’s dusty stage. The woman croons a lonely tune with her guitar’s weeping chords before the camera slowly pans to the main characters’ conversation. That’s where Colwell imagines their sophomore album Somewhere would fit: crammed in the corner of a dive bar, setting a somber atmosphere for a serious exchange of words.

But casting their album as a mere extra accompanying a monologue from Vince Vaughn is selling themselves short. On the contrary, Sun June’s Somewhere is fit for the spotlight. Throughout eleven gripping tracks, the Austin, Texas five-piece find poetry in the monotony and grief of life’s most dramatic moments.

No one is immune to grief, especially given the events that plagued our country last year. Nearly everyone is experiencing a sliding scale of anguish — and that’s something Colwell knows all too well. “I definitely am just always dealing with grief in some way,” she tells me over the phone from Austin. As we speak, the remainder of her band (including her partner and songwriting companion Stephen Salisbury) is spread out all across the US. Most of Sun June’s songs delicately explore how grief presents itself in various ways — grieving an old life, isolation, sobriety, the loss of a friend, or even something as simple as a carefree day that’s finally come to its inevitable end.

Songs like “Everything I Had” deal with the particular grief that arises from unwilling change. As people living in the transient city of Austin, Sun June are used to seeing transformation. Friends are constantly moving to or away from the city and, as someone who has settled there, this has made Colwell feel uneasy. “Seeing others around you thriving and you’re feeling out of place is also part of that feeling,” she says. As heard on the remainder of their tracks, the production on “Everything I Had” mirrors its theme of reluctant change. After Colwell croons of missing her former life, her band breaks into a cascade of arpeggio synths and descending keys, evoking a poignant sense of longing that’s further explored throughout each verse.

While change can be difficult, it’s oftentimes for the better. But even with this knowledge, it’s hard not to fantasize about how different life would be if one never learned from their mistakes. On their song “Bad Girl,” Colwell examines the missteps of her youth through a nostalgic lens. “I have a terrible memory and I repeat my mistakes a lot. So maybe I’ve been starting to learn that, no, I don’t have to keep repeating the same old dumb mistakes,” she says. Throughout the song’s lyrics, Colwell looks back on her naive slip-ups with rose-tinted glasses. She daydreams about the act of trashing an apartment without thinking of the consequences and chuckles at the time she irresponsibly spent her last dollar on a pack of cigarettes. “All the moments of your life are not something you necessarily want back, but you do miss it,” she says. “You’re grieving a part of you.”

Colwell’s youthful regrets aren’t universal, but Sun June’s poetic lyrics leave just enough mystery for listeners to insert themselves into. Colwell even admits to covering her prose with a purposeful veil of ambiguity, which not only helps listeners find Sun June’s songs relatable, but also acts as a way for Colwell to examine her emotions from an outside perspective. “Sometimes you reverse engineer yourself: you write a song and have no idea why you wrote it,” she says. “And then you realize when you put it all into the spotlight that, ‘Oh, okay. This is what’s going on with me, good to know.’ It’s hard to know what really makes sense or matters. We all get caught up in this fantasy of life sometimes, and it’s easy to lose yourself in it.”

For Sun June, the “fantasy of life” can be as simple as romanticizing a usually monotonous moment. Colwell believes this is best explored on their wistful track “Karen O.”

“We get into our heads sometimes, with mourning the loss of a part of you,” she says. “I think it’s really easy to fall into that spiral of feeling bad about yourself. [Karen O] also picks these random moments that are just kind of melodramatic. Like, climbing the stairs of your apartment. That’s so melodramatic — it’s like the end of a movie. No one actually lives that way, but it’s fun to get caught up in the fantasy of every minute detail meaning more than it really should.”

Somewhere does grapple with melodrama and grief, but not all of their tracks are forlorn. Each song is touched with a playfulness that arises from the band’s close-knit chemistry. “We’re all just tightly wound, and yet at the same time, very easy going and like to have a good time,” Colwell says, excitedly explaining how each member of the band equally contributes to a given song. Colwell and Salisbury begin to write music separately before reworking each other’s recordings. Leaning on the mantra “melodies are king,” their lead guitarist Michael is then passed the demo to flesh out lush tones. The rest of the group offers their edits at band practice, which results in a truly collaborative process.

Before starting Somewhere’s songwriting stage, the band collectively decided on a sonic theme for the record. After some deliberation, they eventually agreed on a universe where their album lives: a futuristic prom set in Albuquerque in a time where global warming has lapsed to a point of climate cooling. If their album as a whole is a prom dance, then, according to Colwell, the dreamy track “Once In A While” would be the night’s slow song. “It is a heady song, but also full of heartbreak and drunken stupor — which is all of what prom was,” Colwell says, continuing to set the scene. “The ball is spinning. And you’re in a hypnotic state when everything around you is just falling apart.”

Little did they know it at the time, but Somewhere is being released at a time when everything does feel like it’s falling apart. Nevertheless, it has arrived at the perfect moment. From start to finish, listening to Somewhere is therapeutic. It’s a lesson in patience, both with yourself and with the world, and it’s a thoughtful reminder that sometimes romanticizing the most monotonous moments is also a beautiful study in staying present.

Somewhere is out now via Run For Cover/Kneed Scales. Get it here.

Last year Queens rapper Nas released a new album called King’s Disease, the follow-up to his admittedly rushed Kanye West-produced Nasir in 2018. Although that record was a gamble in itself, due to the sometimes brilliant, sometimes wildly unstable genius of Ye, he seems to have hit upon something good by collaborating with Hit-Boy on King’s Disease.

Now, the pair have previewed another new project in the works via a video Hit-Boy shared on Twitter tonight. “New Nas E.P.M.D this Friday,” the producer wrote in the caption, sharing the initials of either a new song — or maybe a full album? — most likely named in homage to New York rap duo EPMD, composed of rappers Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith.

From the sound of the 50-second video clip, which shows the pair listening to a snippet of the new song in the studio, it will just be a new song. But given how much time everyone has had on their hands due to the pandemic, lockdown, quarantine and a dearth of live shows, there might be more than one new track between these two.

In the song Nas criticizes social media and other big tech companies like the new audio app Clubhouse. “Why you talking on Clubhouse, the guns out / This ain’t audio chat boy this audio crack / Social media platforms they ratting on / Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon / Some say…” and the clip trails off right there. Ironically absent from the list is Twitter, where the duo chose to share the clip. Guess Jack and his crew are safe from the wrath of new Nas bars… for now.

Some fans are worried that announcing the release date early in the week gives Jay-Z enough time to release something of his own in an attempt to eclipse his longtime rival. Jay and Bey famously dropped their surprise joint album Everything Is Love as The Carters the day after Nasir came out, and last year on the release day of King’s Disease Jay put out his collaboration with Pharrell, “Entrepreneur.”

While he was working on his acclaimed album After Hours, The Weeknd called on Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin) to lend production assistance. Since then, the two have formed a friendly working relationship. The Weeknd appeared on Lopatin’s recent LP, and Lopatin in turn was invited to be the musical director for The Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show. In fact, the two musicians enjoy working together so much so that they may be releasing a collaborative project very soon.

Lopatin recently joined Bryce Segall on Radio.com’s New Arrivals show to chat about his work with The Weeknd. During their conversation, Lopatin revealed that the two have a “whole bunch of music” together in the works, which points to the possibility of a joint project:

“Everything was just rolling together for a couple years for us. We have a whole bunch of music in the pipeline, we worked on After Hours, I was sharing my music, we were having discussion all the time, we would get into heated debates about what constitutes an interesting song or good production or whatever and it occurred to me I was having these conversations so frequently with him, that we were just kind of artistically invested in one another, and when he offered to co-exec, I said sure. Like, how could you not.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Lopatin said he’s “tantalized” by the thought of The Weeknd’s fans being exposed to his music by proxy. “I’m tantalized by the idea of mischievously getting legions of Weeknd fans to listen to my bizarre machinations,” he said. “The name Oneohtrix Point Never literal has the trickster embedded in it. My job is to constantly… I don’t wanna allow myself to get comfortable. So if I have an opportunity to do something new that’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m usually saying yes just to see what bizarre results come of it. Its like being able to bend the matrix or whatever”

Listen to Lopatin’s full interview above.

The Golden State Warriors tipped off their first of two back-to-back games in San Antonio with a rough second half performance that saw a five-point halftime lead evaporate into a 105-100 loss.

The Warriors scored just 41 in the second half, as the Spurs defense, led by Dejounte Murray and his eight steals on the game, put the clamps on Golden State to allow themselves to pull in front and hang on. Stephen Curry did his best to keep the Warriors hopes alive, scoring 32 including this stepback to cut the lead to one with nine seconds to play and give the Warriors a fighting chance.

After a pair of DeMar DeRozan free throws to get to 21 points on the night, the Warriors got the ball with 8.7 seconds to play needing a three to tie. The Spurs put a lot of focus on Curry, unsurprisingly, and when the inbound pass went to Draymond Green, the Warriors big man anticipated a foul was coming and, well, you can see for yourself.

The Warriors broadcast crew’s reaction was the best, as they couldn’t help but wonder aloud, “what’d he do that for?!” and an exasperated, “why?!” Now, it looks worse than it actually was because Green was, of course, trying to get three free throws to tie the game — although he had just missed two free throws not long before that so the likelihood of him sinking three in a row felt low — but it looked hilarious as Derrick White recoiled and avoided contact to allow Green to brick a 35-footer with authority.

Naturally, people immediately jumped to the Carlton Banks basketball moment and Green will have to live with the jokes for some time.

The Spurs got the win, thanks to Murray’s 27-point, 8-steal night and DeRozan’s 21 as well, and the two teams will get to do it all over again tomorrow in the same place.

There is perhaps no more famous teen in America right now than Claudia Conway. The daughter of two prominent people with diametrically opposed views on Donald Trump — his former counselor Kellyanne and fierce critic and Lincoln Project co-founder George — the 16-year-old has made a name for herself, doing things like leaking to the world that her mother had contracted COVID-19 and accusing her of posting nude pictures of her online. She lives one rollercoaster of a life, and here’s another sharp turn: She’s going to be on the next season of American Idol.

The news broke Monday night during an episode of ABC’s The Bachelor, with an Idol commercial that dropped the Conway daughter in as one of its “bigger surprises.” It’s actually not that big a surprise: Back in the fall, Conway teased her audition on the show over her popular (and sometimes national news-making) TikTok. But people evidently forgot about that, possibly because a ton has happened in the world — and even in Claudia’s life — since then.

Though Claudia and her parents don’t have the calmest of relationships — both Kellyanne and George had to resign from their jobs to tend to their parental duties — they’re very supportive of this, less earth-quaking move on her part.

“Claudia and her siblings are taught to be independent self-starters and free thinkers who dream big and aim high. She sets goals and works toward them. Of course, American Idol is next level!” Kellyanne Conway said back in the fall, as per The Daily Beast. “We are proud of Claudia for entering the arena and sharing her beautiful voice and inspirational message about mental health with others.”

In any case, it’s a reminder that 2021 seems to be about as random and weird as 2020.

Back in December Offset received an extremely rare Lamborghini worth $700,000 from no less than Cardi B. But it seems he has so many cars that he can’t keep track of them all: The rapper is being sued by a rental car company after he reportedly misplaced one of their luxury rides.

According to a report from TMZ, Offset rented a Bentley Bentayga for a video shoot from LA car rental company Platinum Transportation Group. The transaction went down in the spring of 2020 and he had originally only rented it for a few days at a rate of just under $600 per day. However, when it came time for him to return the ride, Offset kept pushing the date back. He eventually admitted to the company that he wasn’t going to be able to return the Bentley because it wasn’t actually in his possession. He apparently couldn’t remember who last had the car and he had no clue where it was.

Needless to say, Platinum Transportation Group wasn’t happy about Offset’s negligence and was even less enthused when he stopped making payments for the ride. So in order to recoup their damages, the company has reportedly hit him with a $100,000 lawsuit, which they say is to make up for lost revenue.

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

Though he’s a legend of the music industry, David Crosby has slowed down on releasing music in recent years. He instead spends some of his time sharing hot takes on Twitter and rating his followers’ poorly-rolled joints. Some of Crosby’s opinions have gotten him in hot water, like when said he felt “meh” about Eddie Van Halen’s music just days after the musician’s death. Now, Crosby has given his tepid review of Phoebe Bridgers’ recent performance on Saturday Night Live, though Bridgers wasn’t phased.

Bridgers took the SNL stage over the weekend to perform some of the tracks off her sophomore album Punisher. Though most of her songs are relatively slow, Bridgers had one trick up her sleeve to liven things up a bit: After singing the final verse of her track “I Know The End,” Bridgers began smashing her guitar against a nearby amp. People had a lot of opinions about the shtick — including Crosby.

One of Crosby’s followers tweeted at him asking how he felt about Bridgers’ attempt to destroy her guitar. Crosby offered his succinct critique: “Pathetic.”

Much like Crosby’s review, Bridgers had a pithy response. “Little b*tch,” she wrote under his tweet.

While it seemed as though Bridgers had totally broken the stage amp during her guitar smashing, the singer later revealed that it was all premeditated. Apparently, SNL had a fake monitor made especially for the occasion.

Viggo Mortensen is famously picky about roles, and he’s spent the years since the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended only popping up in things he wanted to, when he felt like acting. The result is one of the most adventurous and unpredictable careers in Hollywood, from David Cronenberg joints to Best Picture winners to Argentine Westerns in which he doesn’t speak a lick of English. While promoting his latest project, Falling — which is in fact his directorial debut, in which he plays a gay man railing against his homophobic old father (Lance Henriksen) — he talked about one of the many roles he turned down, X-Men’s Wolverine, which he didn’t do for his son.

In a recent podcast appearance on Happy Sad Confused (as caught by IGN), Mortensen talked meeting with Bryan Singer, the since-disgraced director, back when he was planning the first X-Men movie. Mind you, this is before The Fellowship of the Rings, but even then he was choosy. He said he already had misgivings about the role.

“The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over,” Mortensen explained. So he brought along his son, Henry, to the meeting, both as a “good luck charm” and because he knew a lot about comics and had already said the script got some stuff wrong:

“And he goes ‘yeah, but he doesn’t look like this,’ And all of a sudden the director is falling all over himself and then the rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail to Henry why he was taking certain liberties … We walked out of there, and Henry asks if he will change the things he told him about, and I say I don’t think so. I’m not going to do it anyway, because I’m not sure I want to be doing this for years, and then a couple of years later I’m doing three Lord Of The Rings [films] so who knows.”

So there you go: You might have missed out on Viggo’s Aragorn had it not been for his reluctance to take a role with a multi-year commitment — which he got over, apparently — and because of his son. Granted, many stories about acclaimed thespians taking on comic book roles revolve around them doing it because their kids wanted them to. So enjoy this rare case in which the opposite happens.

In the meantime, you can catch Mortensen’s Falling, which was released in America Friday, on PVOD now.

(Via IGN)

The biggest game in basketball on Monday was in Storrs, Connecticut, as the No. 1 ranked South Carolina Gamecocks took on the No. 2 ranked UConn Huskies in a massive women’s college hoops showdown.

The game delivered on its promise, as the two teams went back and forth in regulation, as freshman phenom Paige Bueckers dueled with Aaliyah Boston in regulation. As the game came to a close, South Carolina had a two-point lead with just over a minute to play when Bueckers got the ball moving towards the baseline on the right and hit a tough contested pull-up to knot things at 54-54.

On South Carolina’s final possession they had a number of opportunities, as Boston continued their dominance on the glass, but couldn’t get two put-back attempts to fall and we went to overtime.

In the extra period, it was the Paige Bueckers show as she hit back-to-back pull-up jumpers after the Gamecocks went up three to give UConn a one-point lead (one almost identical to the game-tying basket in the fourth), and then put the dagger in the top-ranked team in the country with this leaning shot clock buzzer-beater that got a very friendly bounce — but one you earn when you already have 28 points.

Bueckers finished the night with 31 points and five assists, her latest spectacular performance as she’s found her footing and showing why she was the top recruit in the country, and had all nine of UConn’s points in the overtime period as she flat out took over. It’s a tough loss for South Carolina, who will feel like they had plenty of chances to get a big road win, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone if these two teams met again in early April at the Final Four.

Boston finished with 17 points and 15 rebounds, dominating inside, but it was Bueckers’ shot-making that made the difference down the stretch as both defenses refused to give up anything easy.