Month: November 2021

Spoon have been incredibly active as they gear up for the release of their new album, Lucifer On The Sofa, next year. After a run of live dates supporting St. Vincent, they released the new single “The Hardest Cut.” They even took a dive into the covers realm, with two badass takes on Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and “A Face In The Crowd.” But they haven’t stopped there as they’ve now covered a Christmas classic by The Beatles ahead of the holidays.

Part of the Spotify Singles: Holiday Collection 2021 edition, “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)” was originally released by The Fab Four in 1967 for one of their Fan Club Christmas albums. Spoon’s take sees singer Britt Daniel at his typically debonair self on the mic. But in true Beatles style, the band’s other members add to the shapely harmonies in a handsome homage to the original.

Daniel shared some thoughts on the song in a statement, saying:

“Recording ‘Christmas Time (Is Here Again)’ was a group effort that pulled us away from rehearsals and quickly sent us down a turbulent path of what you might call the Christmas spirit. And it’s our song with the most band members doing vocals ever – pretty sure I’m counting four. THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS IS OVER.”

You can listen to “Christmas Time (Is Here Again) by Spoon above and check out the Spotify Singles: Holiday Collection with tracks from other artists like Nao, Black Pumas, and Demi Lovato here.

Like many pop stars in recent years, Lady Gaga has been very open about her journey with mental health. Earlier this year, the singer revealed she has struggled with PTSD after suffering a rape when she was 19. At one point, the untreated trauma caused her to cancel a 2018 tour. Gaga now says her trauma was once again triggered more recently — this time while she was on set filming the movie House Of Gucci.

While portraying the film’s main character Patrizia Reggiani, who married and ordered the murder of Gucci’s heir, Gaga took a method approach to acting. She spoke exclusively in an Italian accent for months, both on- and off-camera. But at one point during the filming process, Gaga told Billboard, the line between her own experiences and Patrizia’s began to blur, triggering her past trauma.

Explaining what when down, Gaga said, “It’s a scene where I knock a lit candle across the room, and I remember I gave Salma [Hayek] a heart attack that day. I was falling apart as [Patrizia] fell apart. When I say that I didn’t break character, some of it was not by choice.” She continued: “I took the pain I feel from being attacked when I was a young girl, from feeling left behind by people that I love, from feeling trapped that I can’t go out into a world that I love, I took that pain and I gave it to [Patrizia].”

The singer noted the the film’s director Ridley Scott was concerned for her safety, “Ridley said, ‘I don’t want you traumatizing yourself,’” Gaga recalled. “And I said, ‘I already have. I’ve already been through this anyway. I might as well give it to you.’ And he said, ‘Well, leave it here and don’t do this to yourself anymore.’”

Read Billboard‘s full interview with Gaga here.

Time and time again, the word “intuitive” has regularly been used to describe James Gandolfini as both an actor and as a human being. Few people know this better than Animal House actor Peter Riegert, who played the recurring character of Assemblyman Ronald Zellman on several episodes of The Sopranos during seasons 3 and 4.

For Riegert’s final appearance in “Watching Too Much Television,” the seventh episode of season 4, Zellman—a politician and sometimes-colleague of Tony’s—tells the mob boss that he has been dating Tony’s ex, Irina (Oksana Lada), and that he’s in love with her. While Tony initially takes the news well and wishes Zellman well, he has a change of heart at the end of the episode. While driving home, The Chi-Lites’ “Oh Girl” comes on the radio, and Tony’s thoughts turn back to Irina. Moments later, Tony is knocking on Zellman’s door ready to exact violent vengeance against him.

You can see how the scene plays out above, but that’s not how it was initially supposed to go. And according to Insider, it was Gandolfini’s singular intuitiveness that changed the scene and its dynamics. In Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos, a new book by The Sopranos co-stars Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa, Riegert tells the story of how Gandolfini sensed his discomfort with the scene as it was originally written, and took charge to make sure the actor was ok with how it was filmed.

“I show up at the [table] read and find out what I was going to be doing,” Riegert explains in Woke Up This Morning. “The scene was Tony beating the living sh*t out of me with a belt, but in the scene description, it’s written that he pulls my underwear off” then beat his backside with a belt, all of which made Riegert “unhappy,” especially as the veteran actor was never told that he’d need to appear nude.

“I was going to be naked,” Riegert said. “As far as I’m concerned, I would have liked a heads-up on that.” As Libby Torres writes for Insider:

He recalled that after the table read, Gandolfini came over to check on him. When the award-winning actor learned that Riegert was unhappy with being nude in the scene, he immediately called Chase over to discuss the situation, and according to Riegert, the “Sopranos” creator reluctantly agreed to let Riegert remain semi-clothed.

“I didn’t know whether I was going to get fired or not, but Jimmy [Gandolfini] said to me, ‘Whatever you decide to do, I promise you I will have your back,’” Riegert remembered.

Per Riegert, he ultimately decided to keep his underwear on for the scene. After testing out the prop belt (made of Styrofoam) that Gandolfini was going to use on him, however, he told the late actor that he could “whale away” on him during the beating—thereby humiliating Zellman in a different way.

It’s a powerful scene, made all the more impactful by the way it’s shot—part of it from the ground, looking up at a hulking Tony standing over the camera, belt in hand. But for Riegert, the most memorable part was how Gandolfini had sensed his discomfort, and taken immediate steps to alleviate that.

“At that table read, I didn’t realize that Jim recognized, on my face, that there was an actor in trouble,” Riegert said. “And he made it so it was my choice.”

Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos is out now.

(Via Insider)

After wowing audiences back in 2018 with her Oscar-winning Pixar short, Bao, Domee Shi is back to work at Pixar with an even more exciting project: her first full-length film. Much like Bao, Turning Red is a coming-of-age story that pulls from her Chinese heritage and involves adolescent transformation, but this time Shi is writing the piece from the perspective of confident and mostly carefree 13-year-old Mei Lee (Rosalie Chiang). While the teaser trailer dropped earlier this summer, giving us a brief look at the film’s strange and fur-filled Hulk story, we now have our first trailer and somehow, it looks even cuter.

Turning Red follows Mei, a smart and spunky teenage girl who loves her friends, her Tamagotchi, music, and being unapologetically herself — or at least she did, until it’s revealed her family suffers from a curse that causes her to turn into a giant red panda whenever she experiences intense emotions. Mei must then learn how to fully embrace her fuzzy form as well as navigate her emotions and life as a teenage girl. In addition to Chiang, the film also features Sandra Oh as Mei’s slightly overbearing mother and a whole cast of colorful characters.

However, Mei’s giant red panda form isn’t the only larger-than-life sensation being unleashed in Turning Red. Like oh so many teen girls, Mei and her friends share a common and all-consuming interest: hit boy band 4*Town. Seemingly based off of *NSYNC, whose song “It’s Gonna Be Me” plays throughout the trailer, 4*Town looks like it will play a significant part in Turning Red, and Pixar enlisted some major star power to help make sure each and every one of their musical performances memorable. Creating three original songs as 4*Town are Grammy-winning singer-songwriters Billie Eilish and FINNEAS, which is a pretty inspired and on-the-pulse choice. The first of the duo’s songs, “Nobody Like U,” plays briefly in the trailer.

You can catch 4*Town and what’s sure to be an adorable, coming-of-age journey when Turning Red hits theaters March 11, 2022.

When most artists want to add songs to an existing album, they follow it up with a new deluxe edition featuring the additional songs. Petey went a different route today, though: He released a new track called “Perfect Teeth” and just tacked it into the end of the standard Lean Into Life album.

The song sees Petey keeping things relatively minimal with his piano and acoustic guitar arrangement. Petey explains the song’s theme is a sort of variation of the “lean into life” mantra of the album and its title track, saying, “This is a song called ‘Perfect Teeth.’ It’s a song about accepting a dissociative state as a new normal and just going with it. I recorded it with acoustic guitar and piano.”

Petey previously said of his music more broadly, “The music and the comedy are all wrapped up together as part of the same thing for me. Someone told me that a great way to create something original is to combine all of your favorite things and then fill in the gaps with your own personality. When I sing, I want to sing like Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse. When I play guitar, I want to play guitar like Chris Walla from Death Cab For Cutie. When I produce synth parts, I want to produce synth parts like Kanye West. And when I play drums, I want to play drums like Travis Barker from Blink-182. All those approaches get combined with my own story in my songs.”

Listen to “Perfect Teeth” above and revisit our recent profile of Petey here.

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

Thanks to his “Chewbacca bikini” outfit and prominent presence in photos where he’s screaming while holding the American flag on a spear, Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. the QAnon Shaman, was just slapped with the second-longest prison sentence yet for participation in the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol building. While Chansley has attempted to have his sentence reduced by denouncing Donald Trump and asking for credit for time served (he was one of the first insurrectionists arrested in January), the Department of Justice and Judge Royce Lamberth were not open to leniency. Via CNN:

Other judges are likely to look to Lamberth’s sentence as a possible benchmark, since Chansley is one of the first felony defendants among more than 660 Capitol riot cases to receive a punishment.

Pictures of Chansley at the Capitol went viral because of a bizarre appearance while leading others through the Capitol, shouting into a bullhorn. As one of the first 30 rioters inside the building, he made his way to the Senate dais that was hastily vacated earlier by then-Vice President Mike Pence, and left a note, according to his plea documents.

During the sentencing hearing, the judge explained to the Shaman’s attorney why he was throwing the book at this client, saying, “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he?” Lamberth said. “For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.”

The Shaman’s sentence is just one month shy of the one given to New Jersey gym owner Scott Kevin Fairlamb, who received 42 months in prison after repeatedly posting videos of his involvement in the MAGA coup on social media… where people are currently celebrating the Shaman’s fate and hoping to see even more Jan. 6 rioters behind bars, particularly its ring leader.

(Via CNN)

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) might very well be a Democrat in name only these days, especially after her literal thumbs-down on a minimum-wage vote. Amid all of the denim vest and Ted Lasso-related backlash, she’s leaning harder to the right with each passing Senate gridlock (including the infrastructure bill), and Sinema is very aware of the speculation on whether she will go Republican.

At least, that’s the vibe she’s giving off during a rare interview that she gave to Politico. When directly inquired about whether she’ll switch sides, she simply answered like this: “No. Why would I do that?” Politico notes that Sinema used her “trademark deadpan” in response. The article notes that GOP Whip John Thune has pushed hard to recruit Sinema, who’s already making that Senate split difficult enough for Democrats. Yet Sinema has more to say about, uh, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Specifically, she finds him to be enormously funny:

….[I]n her miniature, pink-hued Capitol hideaway office, Sinema dressed down Democratic leadership for setting expectations too high. She also defended the right of her critics to protest her, but not to follow her into a bathroom and “unfairly and illegally” victimize the students she teaches at Arizona State. Sinema also revealed why she’s constantly spotted on the floor chatting with GOP leader McConnell: “He has a dry sense of humor. It’s underrated.”

I can only imagine — I take that back. It is hard to imagine what types of jokes that Mitch McConnell would tell. They can’t be fantastic jokes, right? They’ve gotta be the ultimate dad jokes. Whatever he’s selling, Sinema sure is a fan of his. She even said hello to him on the way to give that cutsey, backpack-accented, thumbs down vote, which you can relive again below.

(Via Politico)

Unlike the perfect couple Phyllis and Bob, Jim and Pam’s relationship had its share of ups and downs over nine seasons of The Office. But it was never tested more than in season eight with the introduction of Cathy. She filled in as the office administrator while Pam was away on maternity leave — and like Pam, she had the hots for Jim. Unlike Pam, however, she had no shot. Not after John Krasinski said no to a make-out scene.

“That’s the only time I remember putting my foot down,” Krasinski writes in the new book, Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office. “I remember saying things that I never thought I’d say before, like, I’m not going to shoot it.”

He continued:

“My feeling is there is a threshold with which you can push our audience. They are so dedicated. We have shown such great respect to them. But there’s a moment where if you push them too far, they’ll never come back. And I think that if you show Jim cheating, they’ll never come back.”

The kiss between Jim and Cathy would have happened while they were on a work trip in Florida, but creator Greg Daniels was convinced by Krasinski’s appeal and cut it. He still defends the idea, however. “I feel like that kind of worry was good in terms of the fans’ engagement. I think they knew what was coming. They were very comfortable with the show they were getting, and I needed to worry them that maybe I was going to give them a bad ending so they were happy when they got a good ending,” he contends.

As for Lindsey Broad, who played Cathy, she would appreciate it if “fans” of The Office stopped harassing her. “If anyone is wondering what it was like to be on The Office, the best comedy of this century: I just posted something on Instagram about how my dog was murdered and a bunch of people were like ‘F*ck you, Cathy, she deserved it!’ So. There ya go!” she tweeted last year. Everyone on social media needs to chill out.

(Via the New York Post)

This month is a big one when it comes to the release of new music from today’s top stars. The smash-hit duo of Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars, Silk Sonic, shared their debut album. On the same day, Taylor Swift graced fans with the rerecorded version of her classic LP Red. Though Silk Sonic had one of their singles previously top the charts, Swift’s new album seems to have wildly out-performed Silk Sonic’s when it came to first-week album sales, leaving .Paak with a few regrets.

A few days after the release of his collaborative LP An Evening With Silk Sonic, .Paak shared a screenshot of the projected numbers for this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart. It show Swift’s music at No. 1, having nearly five times the amount of streams as Silk Sonic at No. 2. As a result of the numbers, .Paak joked that he wishes he formed Silk Sonic with Swift rather than Mars.

“Looks like I linked up with the wrong pop star,” he wrote. “Hey @taylorswift13 is your number still the same!? Lmk if you need help with 1989, I’m available! #ShakeItOff”

Despite the joke at Mars’ expense, .Paak has said he really does admire working with the singer. .Paak recently commended Mars as “one of the greatest vocalists” he’s ever worked with, going on to say that Mars has been able to push him “to a different level.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Brooklyn Nets were throttled at home by the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night thanks to a monster performance by Steph Curry, who played so well that the crowd at Barclays Center showered him with MVP chants. While the loss knocked the Nets to 10-5 on the season, the team is still in third place in the Eastern Conference and one game out of first place.

Despite this, Stephen A. Smith thinks the loss is a sign of a much bigger issue in Brooklyn, and on Wednesday’s edition of First Take, he expressed his belief that Kevin Durant should have never joined the franchise in the first place.

Much of Smith’s argument revolves around Durant having “no help” despite his two superstar teammates — James Harden, he claims, “ain’t James Harden right now, averaging 19 points a game. You sittin’ there, struggling from the field, you had 24 points last night, it’s the most meaningless 24 points that I’ve ever seen from the career of James Harden.” He then turned his ire to Kyrie Irving, who has yet to play in a game this season due to his decision to not get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“KD, you made the wrong decision, bro, and here’s why: Because you trusted Kyrie,” Smith said. “Kyrie Irving betrayed you, flat out betrayed you, left you hanging. And why you’re sittin’ up there, gettin’ your ass kicked last night — Steph Curry’s sittin’ there, shimmyin’ and jokin’ around, they were cheering for Steph Curry in Brooklyn from opening tap. They were chanting ‘MVP’ in the Barclays Center, and it wasn’t for the dude averaging 28.9 points per game for the Brooklyn Nets. It was for Steph Curry.

“And then you juxtapose Steph Curry, compared to Kyrie Irving, and what do you have?” Smith continued. “You got Kyrie Irving, who is a showstopper, Kyrie Irving, who is a superstar talent, he is box office, and can’t be trusted. I actually hope Kyrie Irving gets cut, I mean, this is a disgrace. To sit up there and watch this team last night look like straight garbage, and every respectable team that you go against — you lost to Chicago by double-digits, you got spanked last night by Golden State by double-digits, you lost to the Charlotte Hornets by double-digits, you got spanked on opening night by double-digits against Milwaukee — every respectable team you go up against, waxes y’all behind. And why? Because KD don’t have not help. You’re left there all alone, you ain’t got a culture, you don’t even got a damn fanbase.”

Smith went on to say that he was showing more passion by being disappointed than anyone who attends a game at Barclays Center has for the Nets before turning his attention back to Irving, claiming that while it can be denied by anyone, he knows what sequence of events led to Durant ending up in Brooklyn.

“KD and Kyrie were going to the Knicks, they were going to the Garden,” Smith said. “Kyrie steps in and Kyrie said, ‘To hell with all of that, let’s establish our own culture, let’s go to Brooklyn, don’t feed off of their brand, their culture, let’s build our own culture.’ KD said, ‘Yo, I wanna go with Kyrie.’ But even in the wee hours, Kyrie and KD wasn’t talking, because Kyrie was all over the place. And DeAndre Jordan had to get on a phone call, five in the morning, to get them brothers together, so you could do this and come to Brooklyn. That is why KD is in Brooklyn. Only to be here and watch this dude, this sad excuse for a professional — I ain’t sayin’ he ain’t a superstar, I didn’t say he’s not box office. As a talent, I think Kyrie Irving deserves $50 million a year. I don’t think that man should ever get another long-term contract in his career, cause he can’t be trusted.”

Smith closed by saying the fans in Brooklyn do not appreciate and value Durant nearly enough, that he thinks Steve Nash is not quite up for being the coach of a team right now, and that he has no plans of returning to Barclays Center unless ESPN makes him. It is worth mentioning that Smith and Durant have butted heads a number of times in the past, and that he does not seem to think that Durant just likes being in Brooklyn regardless of what’s going on with Irving. The Nets will get the chance to bounce back on Wednesday night during a home tilt against the Cleveland Cavaliers.