Month: September 2021

Charli XCX‘s last album How I’m Feeling Now was marked by hyperpop instrumentals and Y2K-inspired outfits. Now kicking off her new era of music with her “Good Ones” single, Charli is pivoting to a more goth-inspired look.

The driving pop tune “Good Ones” debuted with a video directed by Hannah Lux. The visual sees the singer leading a goth funeral procession, which she calls “twisted, dramatic and quite frankly electrifying.” With a group of backup dancers, Charli shimmies and sulks her way around a coffin, coping with the passing of a good friend. “The first single of my new chapter embraces all that my life has to offer in today’s world — fame, glamour, inner demons, and global hits,” she said about the song.

Alongside the new video, Charli lays out her new era, saying she’s continuing to innovate the world of pop music:

“As you already know, I am an iconic figure in the arts, and have helped expand the landscape of popular music over the last decade by seamlessly traversing the underground and the mainstream with my output. My innovative approach has opened up new possibilities within the pop sphere for both myself and others. You’re welcome.”

Watch the “Good Ones” video above.

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

Generally, album release cycles include a lot of promotion via interviews with and profiles in journalistic publications. That was firmly not the case with Kanye West’s Donda, as the only dispatches on it from West came via occasional social media posts. Now, though, he has given his first post-Donda interview.

West is in Berlin at the moment, and while there, he spoke with German tabloid Bild for a filmed on-the-street interview. In the clip, West’s voice is inaudible as it was dubbed over in German. According to a translation, though, West noted that he’s in Germany to meet with architects and artists. He also noted that he won’t be in the country for long, and he intends to get back to making music soon. There’s also a video clip of him playing a new piece of music featuring vocals from Andre 3000.

If the audio snippet is in fact from a West/Andre collaboration, it wouldn’t be their first time working together. Aside from Andre’s contributions to West’s “30 Hours,” the two also appeared together on songs like Chris Brown’s “Deuces (Remix)” and Fonzworth Bentley’s “Everybody.”

In completely opposite news, it looks like West may be keeping his feud with Drake alive by buying up Toronto billboards to promote Donda.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers got demolished in their preseason game against the Tennessee Titans last month. Tennessee came out on top, 34-3, in a game that featured a whole lot of backups and third-string dudes competing for two teams that have legitimate aspirations of competing for the Lombardi Trophy a little later this season.

In a fun little side note, this game gave us the latest reminder of Bucs QB Tom Brady’s longevity. Brady, who did not play, used to be teammates with Titans coach Mike Vrabel. The pair won a trio of Super Bowls together with the New England Patriots, and after the 2010 season, Vrabel opted to retire and go into coaching. Brady, of course, kept on playing despite being almost two years to the day younger than Vrabel.

A clip that the Bucs posted to their official YouTube account showed Brady having some fun with this, as he decided to roast Vrabel — “Mike’s kind of an asshole if you get to know him,” Brady said. He then mentioned the face that Vrabel went to Ohio State and discussed the “healthy competition” they have, even though Vrabel is no longer in peak physical condition.

“Physically, he’s really declined to a pretty sad state,” Brady said.

Unfortunately, the two teams do not play during the regular season, so we won’t get these kind of back-and-forths unless they meet up in the Super Bowl. Then again, Brady seems like he really likes prodding Vrabel, so we have to think he’d save something special if they met up on football’s biggest stage.

Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album Sour was released in May and is already one of the most-streamed albums of the year. Though most of the album’s response was generally positive, many Taylor Swift and Paramore fans pointed out some similarities in Rodrigo’s music. Indeed, those artists have made an eye-catching amount of money from being retroactively credited on certain tracks.

According to a report from Billboard, the songwriting credits have led to nearly $2 million being awarded to Swift and Paramore’s teams. The bulk of the royalty money comes from Rodrigo’s track “Good 4 U,” which was influenced by Paramore’s “Misery Business.” To date, the single has raked in at least $2.4 billion from streaming, sales, licensing, and airplay worldwide. After being awarded songwriting credits, Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Josh Farro now hold a collective 50 percent ownership of the composition, meaning they’re making the same amount of money from the song as are Rodrigo and her producer Dan Nigro.

Rodrigo’s other hit song “Deja Vu” gave songwriting credits to Taylor Swift, which has earned at least $1.3 million to date. Swift’s team also holds 50 percent of the song, meaning Swift herself has 25 percent and her producer Jack Antonoff has 20. That means Swift herself has earned at least $325,000 from influencing Rodrigo on the song, while Rodrigo and Nigro have both pocketed at least $500,000 from publishing revenues.

Read Billboard‘s full report on Sour royalties here.

Sour is out now via Geffen/Interscope. Get it here.

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

Adam Sandler likes basketball a whole heck of a lot. We have evidence of this in a few of his movies — Uncut Gems, for instance, revolves around Sandler’s character betting on basketball because of a black opal he gives to Kevin Garnett — but we have exponentially more evidence from Sandler’s seemingly daily games of pickup basketball. Clips of Sandler randomly rolling up to pickup games, oftentimes dressed like someone who didn’t expect to be playing pickup basketball when they left the house, pop up all the time, and as it turns out, the man famous for playing Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore in Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, respectively, can hoop.

The latest example of this involves a bunch of dudes who are far better than the average pickup hooper. A video made its way around the Twitterverse of Sandler playing with a number of NBA players, including Trae Young, Tobias Harris, and Boban Marjanovic. He looked very happy and, at one point, canned a jumper off of an assist from Young.

I have no idea who the MVP of this game was but I demand that whomever got that honor is gifted that Adam Sandler pickup basketball god t-shirt that James Caan’s assistant wore last month.

Despite a fairly standard comedy premise—two very different couples meet on vacation, have a wild time together, then meet up again in their real, non-vacation mode lives—Hulu’s new movie Vacation Friends has been getting some pretty solid reviews.

Even our Vince Mancini, who admitted to being one of the film’s biggest skeptics, ultimately concluded that it was “against all odds, pretty damn fun.” Currently, the film holds a respectable 60 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes—whereas Step Brothers’ approval rating is only 55 percent (proving, yet again, that people are stupid). Viewers, meanwhile, have been pressing play in record numbers, leading Hulu to already greenlight a sequel.

As Deadline reports, Vacation Friends has become Hulu’s “most-watched original film in its opening weekend”—a feat that led the streaming giant to bring writer-director Clay Tarver and the film’s four main stars (Lil Rey Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena, and Meredith Hagner) back for another go-around, currently titled Honeymoon Friends.

With the movie theater industry still in a state of flux due to COVID-19, Deadline, for one, thinks that the quick greenlight of Honeymoon Friends is a good sign for the film industry as a whole:

This is an encouraging sign as the team at 20th Century Studios ramps up its slate of films for the company’s streaming services. The Disney-owned studio led by Steve Asbell has a number of features in the works that will stream as Hulu Originals in the U.S. and as Star Originals on Disney+ internationally including the suspense thriller No Exit, The Princess starring Joey King, and the Shakespeare-inspired romantic comedy Rosaline starring Kaitlyn Dever.

Can we already predict where Honeymoon Friends will go, narratively? Yes. Does it really matter? Not really—it’s happening with or without your “I do.”

(Via Deadline)

There’s a lot of conspiracy theories out there these days, but only one that’s worth a damn: Roy Kent, Ted Lasso‘s grouch with a heart of gold, is CGI.

It began on Reddit, as theories are wont to do, with a post that reads, “I just started watching the pilot, and i’m up to the scene where roy is called into teds office. Am i crazy or does he look like a complete cgi character?” Laugh if you want, but I don’t hear this “Brett Goldstein” guy dismissing the deafening rumors.

Oh. He did? Well, in the immortal words of Roy Kent, f*ck.

“My final statement on the matter,” Goldstein tweeted, along with an official statement video. “There’s a f*cking load of mad sh*t happening on the internet today, as usual,” he said (the filter is a nice touch). “I just want to clear up something once for all: I am a completely real normal human man who just happens to live in a VFX house and does normal human basic things like rendering and buffering and transferring data.” He says something else, but I can’t make it out because his accent is very thick — and he’s CGI.

Whether you subscribe to the conspiracy or not, there’s one thing we can all agree on: this is the only good Ted Lasso discourse.

There’s a lot of hostility towards Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and not just from Piers Morgan. The pair were unfairly targeted long before they relocated to the U.S.; it was one of the reasons they skipped town. But they’ve stayed strong, using their clout to expose inequities amongst the Royal Family, and to generally speak truth to power. One example came Wednesday, when Harry used his pulpit at the British GQ Men of the Year Awards to beg those in power to ensure those in need get vaccinated.

Speaking over video from his American home, Prince Harry pointed out that the vaccines have been pretty successful: over a third of the globe has at least one dose. But, he said, that’s not good enough. Instead, he dwelled on the “huge disparity between who can and cannot access the vaccine.” He pointed out that “less than two percent of the developing world have received a single dose at this point.”

He continued:

“We cannot move forward together unless we address this imbalance as one. At the same time, familelis around thwo rld are being voerhwelemd by mass scale misinformation, across media and social media, where those who peddle in lies and fear are creating vaccine hesitancy, which in turn is dividing communities and eroding trust. This is a system we need to break if we are to overcome COVID-19 and the risk of new variants.”

He added, “Where you’re born should not affect your ability to survive, when the drugs and know-how exist to keep you alive and well.”

There were, of course, a tone of negative reactions to Prince Harry’s words. The hatred towards the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is that strong. But his words did not fall on deaf ears. Many praised Prince Harry for using his pulpit for good.

(Via GMA)

So far, Finneas’ most significant contribution to culture at large is his work with Billie Eilish, who has become a chart-topping international superstar in recent years. Finneas has a nice solo career going for himself as well, and he insists that he doesn’t compare his career with his sister’s.

Speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Finneas explained, “I think I always sort of looked at Billie’s career trajectory as this kind of anomalous fluke thing, even though we’re both proud of the music we’ve made. And I never ever thought, ‘I’m next.’ I thought, ‘Wow. How lucky am I to be involved in this thing that got to such great heights?’ I’m going to put music out under my name, the same way that we put music out under her name.”

Finneas is fresh off the release of his latest single, “The 90s,” which was the impetus behind his conversation with Lowe. The track comes from Finneas’ upcoming debut solo album, Optimist, which is set for release this fall.

Outside of his solo work and Eilish collaborations, Finneas has remained busy. Over the past few years, he has written and/or produced for and/or with artists like Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello, Halsey, Justin Bieber, and Kid Cudi.

Mike Lindell’s 72-hour Cyber Symposium was an absolute dumpster fire of an event. It spectacularly went down in flames as Lindell was humiliated by his own cyber security expert, who refused to say that the MyPillow CEO’s alleged treasure trove of election fraud was legit. The event was a monument to crazy that only Lindell can deliver, and now, it’s literally landed a man in jail.

Shortly after the Cyber Symposium ended in a cloud of fake Antifa attacks and potential lawsuits, 41-year-old Iowa resident Douglas Jenkins was scooped up by his probation officer for streaming the event in his garage. You see, Jenkins had been released while facing multiple charges for his involvement in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building. Part of that release prohibited Jenkins from using devices with internet access, which he agreed after denouncing his QAnon ways and saying he was “deceived by a pack of lies.” Turns out Jenkins can’t quit that sweet Big Lie teat, and a judge ordered him sent back to prison for streaming Lindell’s Cyber Symposium. Via Raw Story:

“It’s now clear that he has not experienced a transformation, that he continues to seek out those conspiracy theories that led to his dangerous conduct on Jan. 6,” [U.S. District Judge Timothy J.] Kelly said, adding that Jensen to seems to have an inability or unwillingness to follow orders from law enforcement — which was previously demonstrated by his conduct during the Capitol insurrection.

Getting back to jail has to particularly sting for Jenkins considering Lindell’s Cyber Symposium imploded. He didn’t even deliver the goods. Then again, we’re talking about a person who literally attacked the Capitol building for Donald Trump, so it’s not like logic and reason are huge factors here, if at all.

(Via Raw Story)