Nathalie Emmanuel is a key member of the Fast & Furious family (even if she can’t drive), but she’s best known for playing Missandei on HBO’s Game of Thrones. Missandei was freed from slavery by Daenerys Targaryen and became one of her most trusted advisors until, well, let’s pretend the final season never happened, deal? She was also part of one of the show’s endearing romantic relationships with Grey Worm, who she had a memorable nude scene with. In an interview with the Make It Reign podcast, Emmanuel discussed how stripping down on Thrones impacted her career.

“When I did Game of Thrones, I agreed towards certain nude scenes or nudity within the show,” she said (via Winter is Coming). “And the perception from other projects, when the role required nudity, that I was open to do anything because I did it on that one show. But what people didn’t realize is I agreed terms and specific things for that one particular project, and that doesn’t necessarily apply to all projects.” Emmanuel continued:

“Frankly, if someone was like, ‘Well we need this nudity,’ I would be like, ‘Well, thank you very much, I appreciate your interest but that’s just not what I feel is necessary for this part and it’s a difference of opinion and creative difference and that’s fine.’”

Emmanuel will next appear in F9 and the Army of the Dead prequel, Army of Thieves, as well as a new season of Netflix’s wonderful The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. OK, you got me. That one’s not actually happening, but a guy (or Gelfling) can dream, right?

(Via Winter is Coming)

Even as a woman who rarely notices things like other women’s breast size, it’s hard not to notice Christina Hendricks’ breast size. And while it’s one thing to simply be aware that she has ginormous boobs, it’s an entirely different thing to actually ask her about them. But in a recent interview with The Guardian, Hendricks recounted how during her Mad Men days, her cleavage was all anyone ever wanted to talk to her about.

As Zoe Williams so elegantly writes, the initial focus of Mad Men was on the eponymous men: Men wanted to look, act, and dress like Jon Hamm’s Don Draper (who was really an a**hole, by the way). It wasn’t until later that the show’s women became more of a focal point for the press. And when they did, much of the focus was on their bodies:

Hendricks, along with January Jones, who played Betty Draper, came to represent so much. There was a great deal of rumination on their physicality, Jones as elegant as an afghan hound, Hendricks like the pin-up painted on the side of a bomber. What did it mean, people asked, that in the middle of the 20th century there were multiple ideals of the female form, whereas in the 21st century there was only one? How did that complicate the perception of gender equality as a steady march towards the light? Thousands of column inches went on that question—but, from the actor’s perspective, it was an annoying distraction. “There certainly was a time when we were very critically acclaimed, and getting a lot of attention for our very good work and our very hard work, and everyone just wanted to ask me about my bra again. There are only two sentences to say about a bra,” she says.

It would be one thing if Hendricks’ role on the show, which is regularly cited as one of television’s greatest series, was merely window dressing. But Hendricks—who earned six Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy nominations for her role as badass office manager-turned-agency partner Joan Harris, née Holloway—was one of the show’s main stars. Even if her ample bosom sometimes seemed to be their own characters (remember the Japanese businessmen?)

Still, Hendricks has absolutely no regrets about her time on Mad Men, noting that: “It may eclipse anything I ever did. And, if it does, it was a good one and I’m proud of it. I got to bring who I was as a woman. I think I learned some of how to be a woman from Joan. No one would give a sh*t about me if it wasn’t for that show. I’d still be doing good work, but no one would have found me. If that’s the best thing I ever do, it was pretty good.”

(Via The Guardian)

Rachel Weisz stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night where things got off to an awkward start as Kimmel seemingly dropped a Marvel spoiler before the interview even began. While introducing Weisz, the late night host said the full name of the actress’s Black Widow character, which she may have been given specific instructions not to reveal. Knowing how secretive Marvel can be, she quickly flagged Kimmel so he wouldn’t say the last name again.

“I think we’re not allowed to say Melina’s second name though, right?” Weisz told Kimmel. “I think we’re prohibited from saying Melina’s second name. I think it’s a Marvel Cinematic Universe secret.”

“Is it a secret that I just ruined?” Kimmel asked. “I believe… so,” Weisz responded while looking nervous about the Tom Holland-esque moment.

Later in the interview, Kimmel asked Weisz what it’s like doing press for Marvel and if they give you a “list” of things you’re not allowed to say. Weisz revealed that, yes, there is a list, but she also admitted that she lost it. However, she did remember that one thing she’s not allowed to say is Melina’s last name, and obviously, any huge spoilers. One thing she could talk about, though, is Melina’s penchant for… pig experiments?

“She’s a Black Widow. She’s been trained as a Black Widow spy. She’s highly skilled spy and scientist. She runs a, kind of, well, a pig farm. And that’s in fact where the [Black Widow] family met me at my scientific lab where I also keep kips, which I experiment on.

“You’re a pig farming spy-entist and that’s all you can say?” Kimmel joked before moving on to David Harbour‘s unfulfilled request to have his character speak full Russian in the film.

(Spoilers for Black Widow below.)

As for Melina’s last name, which has been bouncing around the internet for a while, it’s Vostokoff. While that name will mean very little to regular moviegoers, Marvel junkies will know that Melina Vostokoff has a prominent place in Black Widow’s past as the villainous Iron Maiden. Of course, the MCU films and TV series have played fast loose with its characters’ comic origins, so it’s anyone’s guess as to whether Weisz’s character will be friend or foe.

The original version of Los Del Río’s hit “Macarena” was released in 1993, but it was the 1995 “Bayside Boys Mix” of the song that launched the track to international acclaim in 1996. It’s been 25 years since the song topped the US pop charts, and to celebrate, the duo is teaming up with Airbnb for a Spanish getaway they are hosting.

Starting June 28 at 10 a.m. ET, bookings will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis for a villa in Andalusia, Spain. As part of the two-night stay (which begins on August 3), guests will get tips from Los Del Rio on how to dance the “Macarena,” gain access to special memorabilia owned by the group, and otherwise enjoy the area.

Los Del Río said in a statement, “We can’t believe 25 years have gone by since ‘Macarena’ became one of the most listened to songs of summer. Without a doubt the best way to celebrate this milestone with our fans is to open the doors of our favorite rural refuge and list it on Airbnb.”

Even though the 1995 hit was the band’s first single, they actually formed way back in 1962. The story goes (according to a Spanish article translated via Google) that for about 30 years, the group performed at parties for the rich and powerful. The, at a party hosted by Gustavo Cisneros (a businessman who is now a billionaire) and Carlos Andrés Pérez (who was then the president of Venezuela), the band noticed a young girl dancing and cheered her on through music, which eventually became “Macarena.”

Learn more about the Los Del Río getaway here.

Before discussing Cruella, the new origin story in theaters and available for $28.88 on Disney+, it seems necessary to acknowledge the swirling winds of corporate fashion that carved it from the firmament. It has become conventional wisdom (whether true or not) among the mega-corporations that own the biggest movie studios to believe that “mining existing IP” (which is to say, remaking and remixing old stories and characters) offers better returns than taking chances on new, original stories. So it is we got live-action(ish) remakes of Aladdin, The Lion King, the spinoff Maleficent and others.

The goal of Cruella is to throw hip creators at old content, and in the process hopefully cash in both on the classic Disney audience and tap into the savvier adult audience who tune in for prestige cable. And to do it by applying the live-action formula to Cruella De Vil, a character originally created in 1956 as such a pure villain that One Hundred and One Dalmations author Dodie Smith (born 1896) simply added two letters to “cruel devil” when conceiving the character’s name. Ah, but what if there was more to her? Enough to justify an entire origin story, say?

So it is Disney execs hired I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie and Emma Stone to turn a character previously known only as an abominable dog murderer into some kind of girlboss anti-hero. A story that no one could possibly have a personal stake in becomes, almost of its own accord, a fascinating pastiche reflecting the zeitgeist’s most contradictory impulses. No human person actually wanted to see a Cruella De Vil origin story; it was mandated by the market. What sacrifices, then, do humans make in an attempt to appease this fickle God?

In I, Tonya, Gillespie and screenwriter Steven Rogers forced America to put aside what we thought we knew about Nancy Kerrigan’s tacky foil, which became both an exercise in empathy and an exploration of class. On the face of it, Tonya Harding, an unfairly maligned if not entirely heroic human, probably warranted that treatment a lot more than Cruel De Vil, the fictional two-toned dog murderer. Gillespie and screenwriters Dana Fox and Tony McNamara nonetheless attempt to apply roughly the same formula in Cruella, complete with ever-present classic rock needle drops. (Seriously, Cruella‘s music budget, featuring everything from The Rolling Stones to Queen to T-Rex, must’ve been bigger than the actor budget, assuming Disney didn’t already own it all).

In some ways, Cruella responds to the market forces that birthed it in the most obvious yet absurd ways. How do you create an origin story about a woman who grows up to want to skin Dalmatian puppies? You show Dalmatians killing her mother, obviously. This was a scene in Cruella‘s opening frame, set in the 1950s, in which little Estella’s mischievous alter ego, Cruella, gets her kicked out of boarding school. Estella watches as her mother goes to a fancy fashion soiree to beg for alms, and is instead cruelly pushed off a sea cliff by three snarling Dalmatian guard dogs (you know, Dalmatians, that famous guard dog breed).

This framing device is essentially Batman’s origin story remixed with “record scratch, freeze frame: yup, that’s me. You might be wondering how I got into this situation…” How the adorable Dalmatians got transmuted into the Joker in this analogy is worth pondering, though not for too long. The market wants what it wants.

Expanding on this “Dalmatians killed mum” origin story required more, however, and Cruella‘s solution to how to make its title character worthy of exploration was, strangely, to turn her into Vivienne Westwood. Because Vivienne Westwood was the Tonya Harding of fashion or something like that? Sure, why not.

Thus, the Oreo-haired little girl (apparently Cruella’s black-and-white hair was natural in the 101 Dalmatians canon and this could NOT BE ALTERED) becomes a London orphan who gets adopted by two fellow chimney sweep-esque urchins, Jasper and Horace (played by Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser). Bonded by their difficult upbringings, they grow up to be three striving, grifting squatters in ’70s London’s burgeoning punk scene.

Just like Westwood, an art school dropout, who, along with her then-boyfriend Malcolm McLaren, is largely credited with inventing the “punk” aesthetic in the 70s at their store, SEX (McLaren went on to manage the Sex Pistols), Estella is a working-class hoodlum who aspires to one day shake up the fashion world. She makes her name tearing apart a dress and covering a window display in punk graffiti and at one point even crashes the reigning queen of fashion’s Spring show with a barge and Jasper chugging away on power chords (an on-the-nose nod to the Sex Pistols crashing the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977).

Corporations have been co-opting punk since punk’s inception, so it seems a little redundant to point it out in a review of a Disney movie 45 years on. Not that “Disney movie about the Sex Pistols” isn’t still pretty weird. Cruella even has its own Malcolm McLaren character, in the functionally useless Artie, played by John McCrea, a thrift store proprietor with a Ziggy Stardust lightning bolt drawn on his face. “Cruella the punk” is a mildly interesting mash-up, compelling in an “I recognize that” sort of way (gold star for me!), though it doesn’t really go anywhere. And how could it, really, constrained as it is by corporate-mandated adherence to an ancient Dalmatians canon.

Far more interesting is the way Cruella/Estella’s split personality seems to mirror the fractured psyche of the upwardly mobile 2020s liberal. If we reimagine the dog murderer as an iconoclast, does she automatically become a heroine? Is the girlboss protagonist a hero because she’s a girl or a villain because she’s a boss? Can we celebrate her pulling herself up by her bootstraps if it just means she becomes the new representative of predatory power? Cruella isn’t exactly successful in this exploration but it’s interesting to watch it try. Especially in the context of a product of the market that it’s forced to criticize, almost through sheer cultural inertia.

The first step in Estella’s journey is her Devil Wears Prada-esque apprenticeship under “The Baroness,” played by Emma Thompson, a callous, imperious, fabulously-dressed fashion designer who treats everyone like dirt, yet seems to be the only person in the world to recognize Estella’s talent. The Baroness is Estella’s mortal enemy, yet her praise is to Estella like drops of water to a flower in the desert. As Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Gangs of New York says of befriending Bill The Butcher: “It’s a funny feeling being taken under the wing of a dragon; it’s warmer than you’d think.”

The question for Estella/Cruella then becomes: does she befriend The Baroness, destroy her, become her, or all three? It’s a relevant dilemma, both for Cruella‘s creators and its intended audience. In 1977, Barbara and John Ehrenreich coined the term “Professional Managerial Class” (PMC) to describe college-educated, technocratic middle-class overachievers, “salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production,” who often scorn the less educated, manual labor-performing members of their ostensible political coalition. The PMC is, essentially, the face of the meritocracy, such that it exists.

It’s interesting the degree to which Cruella/Estella’s split personality, right down to the black and white hair and dual names, seems to be a perfect reflection of the PMC’s fractured psyche. Our generation has been trained, virtually from birth, to become part of this class — to strive, to study, to succeed, etc. Become the boss!

A critique of power and predatory capitalism — as represented by the cruel, sociopathic Baroness, who literally kills anyone who gets in her way — has become so widespread in the collective consciousness that it’s now appearing in a Disney movie. That’s progress, of a sort. We’ve gotten to a critique of the elite, yet we’re still doing our damndest to make sure that our own children become part of it. And why shouldn’t we? The presumptive alternative is poverty, obscurity, irrelevance, death. Yet it naturally creates a kind of cognitive dissonance to strive to become your enemy, as perfectly reflected in the Estella/Cruella schism.

How much should Estella become like The Baroness in order to defeat her? And what does that “defeat” even look like? And once Estella/Cruella becomes the new champion, then what?

That the PMC hasn’t been able to square this circle is illustrated by the way Cruella can’t even seem to decide whether it wants us to root for Estella to become Cruella, to sacrifice the kind and humane parts of her personality in exchange for success. There’s the vague sense that Estella should be nice and “win” the right way but a near-total inability to imagine what that looks like.

After an extended flirtation with these interesting ideas, Cruella retreats into what it was intended to be all along, a crassly commercial, not-to-deep origin story for a character who probably never warranted it in the first place. It ends up falling back on, laughably, one of the oldest, most tried-and-true Disney tropes: the notion of secret royal blood. Cinderella isn’t some mistreated worker, she was a princess all along.

Estella/Cruella never has to ponder what it means to “win” in the meritocracy; she’s special by default, thanks to her true pedigree. If all Americans are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, all Disney protagonists are temporarily denobled aristocrats.

Thus Cruella is banal on one level, a deep-pocketed attempt to justify unnecessary content by coopting relevant actors and filmmakers and fusing them into an easy jukebox musical. On another, it’s an accidentally salient critique of our current notions of what it means to be the boss.

‘Cruella’ is available now in theaters and on Disney+. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

A few weeks ago, the legendary actor Robert Englund — best known for playing Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series — appeared on the Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum to reflect on his lengthy career both as the horror icon and in other roles. Before landing the role of Freddy Krueger, in fact, the classically trained actor was usually typecast as a redneck or a nerd.

Englund’s Wikipedia page also suggests that he was up for a role in Star Wars back in 1977, which is only sort-of true, according to Englund. He was never in serious consideration for the role; however, he says he helped Mark Hamill land the role of Luke Skywalker. As Englund tells it on the podcast, he was actually auditioning for a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. He didn’t land the role, but after the audition, they did “walk him across the hall” to the Star Wars audition and told him, “You might be right for something here.”

Englund says that they had briefly considered him for the Han Solo role, although at the time, it was configured differently than after Harrison Ford was cast. “Originally, they were thinking of an older uncle, the kind of guy that brings a joint to Thanksgiving and gets all the kids high,” Englund said. “And I think they even offered it to Tom Selleck.”

Needless to say, Englund did not get offered the role of Han Solo. However, while he was at the audition, he “noticed the sides for Luke Skywalker because of the name. It was such a great name. I looked at the sides, and I can’t remember if I stole them or not.” Afterward, he went and had a couple of drinks and returned to his home, where his then-close friend, Mark Hamill, was sleeping on his couch.

“Mark was on my couch watching The Bob Newhart Show,” Englund continued. “And I walked in the door and I said, ‘Hey Mark, George Lucas is doing another movie. And you might be right for this.”

“And so my ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Story’ is that Freddy Krueger told Luke Skywalker to call his agent and he got in there and got the part. Now, his agent hates me telling this story because she swears that she already submitted him,” Englund added.

Hamill’s agent is not the only person who hates that Englund tells that story, which he has been repeating for years. Englund continues to tell the story even though Mark Hamill himself has gone on the record to deny it.

It’s a good story, but at least according to Hamill, it is not entirely true. On the podcast, Englund says that he and Hamill remained friends for several years after Star Wars before they began to drift apart. One wonders if they drifted apart because Englund continues to repeat a story that Hamill has denied?

Source: Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum

Memphis rapper Yo Gotti is a year removed from his most recent album, Untrapped, which also saw the end of his previous record deal with Epic. Today, he’s returned with a new single, “Drop” featuring DaBaby, just a day after announcing his Collective Music Group’s new deal with Interscope Geffen A&M. The deal will see support for CMG’s roster of burgeoning stars which includes 42 Dugg, EST Gee, and Moneybagg Yo, who recently scored his first No. 1 album.

Meanwhile, Gotti’s new single finds him teaming up with one of the biggest artists of the moment, DaBaby, for a strip club-friendly anthem featuring a digitized loop and a head-bopping, skeletal kick-snare combo perfect for inspiring hip-shaking and booty dropping. The two rappers deliver boastful verses about their appeal to the opposite sex littered with punchlines like “Her ass make a whole lot of noise when I f*ck from the back / And it clap, it’s annoying.”

While Yo Gotti has spent much of the past year laying low musically, he has been busy in other areas, like pursuing prison reform alongside Jay-Z. Filing a lawsuit against the state of Mississippi last February, they saw a big breakthrough in August as Mississippi’s Department of Corrections ended its contract with healthcare provider Centurion over insufficient and neglectful practices.

Listen to Yo Gotti’s new single “Drop” featuring DaBaby above.

Today, Amazon revealed the dates for their annual Prime Day, which this year will take place on June 21 and 22. The day features significant Black Friday-like sales on items from across the website, but the Amazon Music wing of the site is getting in on the fun, too: Starting on June 17, a “Prime Day Show” will be streaming on Prime Video, and the three-part special will feature performances from Billie Eilish, Kid Cudi, and HER.

Amazon describes Eilish’s performance, “Billie brings a timeless, Parisian neighborhood to life with a series of cinematic performances. Set in the city known as the birthplace of cinema, it was directed by Billie Eilish and Sam Wrench, and features new music from Billie’s upcoming album, Happier Than Ever. This breathtaking musical tribute was inspired by Billie’s long-time admiration of a long gone era.”

Of Cudi’s show, they note, “As he embarks on his biggest mission to date, Kid Cudi departs Earth to establish a new community on the moon in this intercosmic performance. Featuring music from his album Man On The Moon III, Cudi collaborates with the International Space Orchestra, the world’s first orchestra composed of space scientists from NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute, and the International Space University as his backing band, in a musical collision defying sight, sound, and space.”

They also say of HER’s performance, “Once known as the hub of Los Angeles Black culture in the 1930’s and ’40s, the iconic Dunbar Hotel hosted some of the most prominent figures of its time, including musicians Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and many more. In a modern day musical tribute to this legendary and important piece of history and culture, HER imagines what The Dunbar Hotel would be like if it existed in 2021 featuring new music from her album, Back Of My Mind.”

All performances will run for about 25 minutes.

Ryan Redington, VP of Music Industry at Amazon Music, says of the shows, “Working with Billie Eilish, HER, and Kid Cudi to bring their music to life through these imaginative experiences has been incredible. Watching these globally renowned artists create three shows from the depths of their imagination has been unlike anything we’ve ever done before. We’re thrilled to bring fans along with us to celebrate these three remarkable artists and Prime Day.”

Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios, added, “These iconic artists have not only broken new ground in music but are inspired storytellers, culture creators, and visionaries. We’re thrilled to partner with Billie, HER, and Cudi to bring these authentic and deeply personal specials to fans around the world as we celebrate Prime Day.”

In September, the hardcover version of my book This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ and the Beginning of the 21st Century was released. It came out three days before the 20th anniversary of Radiohead’s classic fourth album, which my book analyzes in extreme (perhaps too much?) detail. On June 8, the paperback edition of the book comes out, which is three days after the 20th anniversary of Kid A’s sister LP, Amnesiac. The paperback of This Isn’t Happening truly is the Amnesiac to the hardcover’s Kid A, in the sense that it arrives about eight months later and is softer than its predecessor.

To all of the people who have read the book, thank you. To all of the people who haven’t, a warning: There’s a part of one chapter that, based on the feedback I’ve received, you will either totally love or absolutely hate. This section is easily the most commented-upon aspect of This Isn’t Happening, and like the LP it covers, it’s apparently pretty polarizing! This was not my intention, but I think I understand why it was received that way.

First, some context: Radiohead started working on the followup to their hit 1997 album, OK Computer, in early 1999. Over the course of about a year and a half, they accumulated enough material for two albums. After briefly considering lumping all of the songs together into a double LP, they opted to put out Kid A in the fall of 2000, and Amnesiac the following summer.

When Kid A was released, some critics were disappointed that the more conventional “Radiohead-sounding” songs performed on the band’s summer European tour — including “Knives Out” and “Pyramid Song” (then dubbed “Egyptian Song”) — didn’t make it on the record. Kid A was deliberately sequenced as a monochromatic mood piece with a heavy emphasis on suffocating emotional paralysis. The more dynamic material was reserved for Amnesiac, which also became a clearinghouse for Radiohead’s weirdest songs from the sessions. The result was a willfully inconsistent (though often thrilling) listen.

In my book, I write about the circumstances that compelled Radiohead to make Kid A and Amnesiac, and how those albums affected their career in the years afterward. I also engage in at least one thought experiment: What if Radiohead had decided to make a single 14-track album culled from all of the material they recorded at the turn of the century? What if, instead of Kid A and Amnesiac, they instead made Kid Amnesiac? What would such an album sound like? What songs would make the cut in such a scenario?

Now, some people read this and thought it was a fun hypothetical. Other people read it and were annoyed (or even angry!) over my sacrilege. Let me be clear: I don’t think Kid A and Amnesiac SHOULD have been a single album. I love both records exactly as they are. They’re both classics! But I am intrigued by this hypothetical Kid Amnesiac.

In honor of Amnesiac‘s 20th anniversary, I am sharing my made-up early aughts Radiohead album. If you are a Radiohead fan, I am sure your version would probably be different. Though hopefully not that different, as I think I nailed this pretty much perfectly.

Let’s walk through Kid Amnesiac one track at a time.

SIDE A

“Everything In Its Right Place”

This is my favorite Radiohead song. And it’s one of my favorite album-opening tracks ever. Kid A didn’t take shape in the band’s minds until Jonny Greenwood took a middling piano ballad composed by Thom Yorke and played it on a Prophet 5 synthesizer. The sound of that riff played on the Prophet 5 immediately creates the paranoid, spine-tingling vibe that defines the band at this time. I can’t imagine any version of the album without this song in the lead-off position.

Unfortunately, that means I have to leave off the first track from Amnesiac, “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box,” which is very good and evokes a similar feeling but in a slightly less compelling way. In this timeline, “Packt Like Sardines” must exist as a beloved B-side. Does that seem wrong? Buckle up, we’re just getting started.

“The National Anthem”

The hardest rocking song from this period. (If I was going to be super nerdy here, I would be tempted to put on the live version from Saturday Night Live performed two weeks after Kid A dropped.) It’s also one of two quasi-jazzy tunes, along with “Life In A Glasshouse,” which didn’t make my cut. In my book I actually made a disparaging comment about “Life In A Glasshouse” that my copy editor strenuously objected to. Typically, copy editors are only supposed to care about my awful grammar, not my awful opinions. But apparently this take was exceptionally beyond the pale.

“Pyramid Song”

After two defining Kid A mindfuckers, a sharp turn toward the majestic. “Pyramid Song” certainly wasn’t left off of Kid A for quality reasons. It was saved for later because “Pyramid Song” would’ve decisively altered the feeling of Kid A. You put this song on and all of that “technological anxiety at the dawn of a new age” stuff goes out the window. Listening to Kid A feels like being trapped in a dark room for 40 minutes; “Pyramid Song” meanwhile is a ray of light.

“How To Disappear Completely”

In the context of Kid A, “How To Disappear Completely” is the “normal-sounding acoustic ballad” track. But in the context of this imaginary record — which is a bit more dynamic and less centered on suffocating techno-horror — the oddness of the arrangement is teased out more. When it’s sequenced immediately after “Pyramid Song,” Kid Amnesiac suddenly seems much more closer to OK Computer than either Kid A or Amnesiac.

“Dollars & Cents”

An inspiration for Radiohead at this time was the German band Can, who would jam endlessly in the studio and then assemble the best bits into songs. “Dollars & Cents” came together in similar fashion, starting out as an 11-minute piece that Yorke described as “incredibly boring” that was cut in half and then tricked out with a Greenwood arranged string section. Another nerdy caveat: The live version from Radiohead’s July 4, 2000 concert in Berlin trumps the take on Amnesiac.

“Optimistic”

“In Limbo”

These tracks are attached at the hip on Kid A so perfectly that I can’t bear them to separate them on Kid Amnesiac. In a way, they’re an odd couple — “Optimistic” is perhaps the most straightforward guitar song to come out of this period, while the head-swimming “In Limbo” sounds like five musicians playing in five different tempos. Coming after “Dollars & Cents,” this feels like the appropriate conclusion to the “jammy” part of Kid Amnesiac.

SIDE B

“Cuttooth”

It’s my duty as a stereotypically obnoxious Radiohead fan to include at least one B-side on this imaginary album, and then put it at the top of Side B. I went with this one, my favorite B-side of the era, with all due respect paid to “Worrywort” and “Fog.” It supposedly came close to making Amnesiac, showing up on a promotional copy that was serviced early to French radio. Instead, it ended up on the “Knives Out” single, a dubious fate for one of the most epic-sounding Radiohead songs to come out of these sessions.

“Knives Out”

The most cited example of Radiohead losing their minds in 1999 and early 2000 is the fact that it supposedly took 313 hours to make “Knives Out,” a seemingly simple ballad that sounds like it was knocked out in 10 minutes. This speaks to the weird insecurity that has plagued Radiohead throughout their career, in which they spend months or even years in the studio trying to not sound like themselves before inevitably realizing that Radiohead sounding like Radiohead is actually pretty great. (This song also includes the album’s single bleakest lyric: “If you’d been a dog / They would have drowned you at birth.”)

“Morning Bell”

This has always been my dark horse favorite on Kid A. It’s not the greatest track or the most adventurous or the one that best exemplifies this era. It’s simply one of the songs that I most want to hear, every single time I put on Kid A, because I never tire of it. It’s the best fusing of Radiohead’s classic ’90s “mid-tempo ballad” sound with the “forward-thinking” sensibility of the 1999-2000 sessions. It’s like “Karma Police” after a Bitches Brew phase.

“I Might Be Wrong”

Yorke claims that he wrote and recorded this song after seeing a ghost in his house, “with this presence still there.” It sounds like the sort of story that became associated with David Bowie during his mid-’70s L.A. period, when he was having all kinds of dark hallucinations because he was snorting enough cocaine to kill all five members of the Eagles. This is not to suggest that Thom’s vision was drug-induced; the only thing he was sniffing was ambivalence about his own success.

“You And Whose Army?”

Most of the lyrics on Kid A and Amnesiac are deliberately vague and even nonsensical, as Yorke was tired of having to explain to nosy music journalists that OK Computer was in fact not a concept album. But this song comes closest to making an overt political statement. The echo effect on the vocal — which was intended to evoke the Ink Spots, a popular vocal group from the 1930s and ’40s who predated doo-wop — was created in part by something called The Palm Speaker. It makes “You And Whose Army?” sound like a pre-war blues record, as future generations will come to understand pre-war blues in the year 2900, when all humans are living on Mars.

“Idioteque”

Purists will protest about separating this song from “Morning Bell,” as that transition is nearly as perfect as “Optimistic” melting into “In Limbo.” But my instinct is to put “Idioteque” in the penultimate slot. It is part of the trio of most essential tracks from this period, along with the prominently situated “Everything In Its Right Place” and “The National Anthem.” The easiest way to explain how Radiohead changed from OK Computer to Kid A and Amnesiac is to play those songs. (I say this as a person who wrote about 63,000 words that attempt to explain how Radiohead changed from OK Computer to Kid A and Amnesiac.)

“Like Spinning Plates”

Just as Kid Amnesiac can only have one undeniable opener, it can only have one inarguable closer. It was either this or “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” and I’m going with the one that reminds me of experiencing a low-level tinnitus hum after hours of screamingly loud music. (But in a good way.)

This is another instance where I’m strongly tempted to include a live version, in this case the stunning reimagining from the I Might Be Wrong EP. But the studio cut from Amnesiac is ultimately preferable precisely because it’s not so damn pretty. “When I listen to it in my car, it makes the doors shake,” Yorke later said of this song. Any representation of Radiohead at this extremely creative and momentous juncture in their history should leave us all feeling shaken.

In 2015, Sam Esmail came out of seemingly nowhere to reinvent the modern tech-crime-drama-thriller (yes, that’s a thing) with Mr. Robot and has two Emmy nominations to prove it. Writer Andy Siara did very much the same thing last year with the sci-fi-infused Hulu comedy Palm Springs, which—while it flew slightly under the radar—ended up on several Best Of movie lists of 2020 (including our own). Now, as Variety reports, the two creative innovators are coming together for The Resort, a darkly comedic new series for Peacock that is sure to disrupt every genre it touches (in a good way, of course).

According to Variety, Siara will write and executive produce the series with Allison Miller, with whom he’s currently working on Angelyne, another Peacock series. Esmail will executive produce through his company, Esmail Corp, as part of his overall deal with studio UCP.

“Andy and Esmail Corp have a distinct point of view exploring off-kilter, genre-bending storytelling that is infused with humanity and compelling characters,” Lisa Katz, NBC Universal Television and Streaming’s president of scripted content said in a statement. “The Resort has everything viewers are looking for in their next escape drama—thrill, mystery, love, and a tropical backdrop.”

UCP president Beatrice Springborn is also excited about the potential of this pairing, saying that: “The Resort is a dream-come-true collaboration between Andy and Esmail Corp, two creative forces who from Palm Springs to Mr. Robot have continued to reinvent and subvert genre with heart. By combining an unsolved crime investigation with an exploration of marriage in a tropical location, they have designed a show for the Peacock audience that is fresh, fun and relatable.”

No word yet on when the series will premiere, but let the subversion begin!

(Via Variety)