Month: March 2022

International pop star and A Star Is Born celebrity Lady Gaga has just announced The Chromatica Ball, a 15-date summer stadium tour going through the US and Europe. It’s her first full run since 2017 following the release of her sixth studio album, Chromatica, which came out in 2020. It found her constructing an entire world of glittering, pathos-driven bangers; it was richer and more determined than Joanne or Artpop, both of which failed to live up to her previous material like the revolutionary albums The Fame or Born This Way. This tour is her return to extravagant, maximalist pop after focusing on jazz by collaborating with Tony Bennett for the album Love For Sale and doing a “Jazz & Piano” Las Vegas residency that’s taking place next month.

Check out her tour dates below and get more information here.

07/17 — Dusseldorf, DE @ Merkur Spiel Arena
07/21 — Stockholm, SE @ Friends Arena
07/24 — Paris, FR @ Stade De France
07/26 — Arnheim, NL @ Gelredome
07/29 — London, UK @ Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
07/30 — London, UK @ Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
08/06 — Toronto, ON @ Rogers Centre
08/08 — Washington, DC @ Nationals Park
08/11 — New York, NY @ MetLife Stadium
08/15 — Chicago, IL @ Wrigley Field
08/19 — Boston, MA @ Fenway Park
08/23 — Dallas, TX @ Globe Life Field
08/26 — Atlanta, GA @ Truist Park
09/08 — San Francisco, CA @ Oracle Park
09/10 — Los Angeles, CA @ Dodger Stadium

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Dominic Fike with a truncated version of his viral Euphoria tune and Justin Bieber continuing to get his footing in the afrobeats world. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters.

Dominic Fike — “Elliot’s Song” Feat. Zendaya

Euphoria, being one of the biggest shows on TV right now, seems to go viral every week it airs. The same was true during the show’s final week and it was Fike who brought it to life thanks to the five minutes (an eternity in TV time) he spent performing a song on the show. Fike took the resulting memes in stride: “The internet remains undefeated,” he said. After that, he went ahead, pared the song down some, and shared a studio version of it.

Omah Lay and Justin Bieber — “Attention”

Justin Bieber has been more into making afrobeats music in recent times, and he did so last week by hopping on a new one from Omah Lay, “Attention.” Bieber’s pop-R&B sensibilities are nicely applied here as both artists find their times to shine on the rhythmic track.

Khalid — “Last Call”

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of Khalid’s star-making debut album, American Teen. Aside from sharing a retrospective virtual experience, he marked the occasion by releasing a new song, “Last Call,” which he said represents “the first few steps of another chapter for myself.”

Camila Cabello — “Bam Bam” Feat. Ed Sheeran

Camila Cabello packed a lot into her birthday last week: She confirmed the release date of her upcoming album Familia, stopped by The Late Late Show, and linked up with Ed Sheeran on “Bam Bam.” She told James Corden of the song, ““It’s something that my mom has always said to me. […] The song is about the cycles of falling in love, falling out of love; life has its ups and downs. You gotta roll with the punches, you gotta keep dancing.”

Charli XCX — “Baby”

After her recent planned appearance on Saturday Night Live was canceled due to COVID (save for playing a rock and roll bird in a sketch), Charli XCX actually got to perform on the show this past weekend. She had a new song in tow, too, as she had dropped “Baby” — a bright, funky, and catchy pop tune — earlier in the week.

Kurt Vile — “Hey Like A Child”

A couple weeks ago, Kurt Vile announced a new album, Watch My Moves, and dropped the lead single from the project, “Like Exploding Stones.” He returned with another advance look at the LP last week with “Hey Like A Child,” a languid rocker that’s right in Vile’s wheelhouse.

Machine Gun Kelly and Lil Wayne — “Ay”

Expert headline-maker Machine Gun Kelly debuted a very pink new look last week, which also made an appearance in the video for “Ay,” his collaboration with Lil Wayne. Kelly is obviously pursuing a more pop-punk-influenced direction these days, but “Ay” serves as a bit of a bridge between his current aesthetic and the hip-hop that made him famous.

Kevin Morby — “This Is A Photograph”

After delighting with his late-2020 album Sundowner, Kevin Morby is already gearing up for more. This Is A Photograph is set for May, and when he announced the LP last week, he also shared the title track, a progressively swelling tune that patiently unfolds. Uproxx’s Adrian Spinelli notes of the tune, “The lead title track single is a portrait of heartland nostalgia, featuring backing vocal harmonies by members of Memphis’ Stax Academy Of Music. The interplay of guitar and banjo speaks to Americana and highway rock and roll.”

Nilüfer Yanya — “The Dealer”

Nilüfer Yanya fans have eaten well over the past few years: After her beloved 2019 album Miss Universe, she dropped a couple 2020 EPs — Feeling Lucky? and Inside Out — and returned with a new album, Painless, last week. Before dropping that, she shared her final pre-album single, “The Dealer,” another rhythmic rocker that slots nicely into her oeuvre.

Nigo and Pusha T — “Hear Me Clearly”

DJ/fashion designer Nigo has an album, I Know Nigo, on the way, and he’s got some talented friends on board the project, as it’s set to feature Tyler The Creator, Lil Uzi Vert, ASAP Rocky, Kid Cudi, and others. That “others” also includes Pusha T, as he features on “Hear Me Clearly.” Uproxx’s Wongo Okon notes of the tune, “The track is driven by cut-throat raps from Pusha T, who uses the song’s haunting production to deliver a scathing lyrical attack.”

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

A band both of their time and before their time, Le Tigre blended art, punk, and politics with dancefloor electropop, all in service of reminding the world that it’s okay to be angry and joyful at the same time. The group also unknowingly provided a pretty solid model for the next 20-odd years of queer and feminist indie acts.

Founded in 1998 in New York, Le Tigre was initially composed of Johanna Fateman, visual artist Sadie Benning, and former Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna, who’d just come off creating solo material for her pseudonymous project, Julie Ruin. Frustrated about her inability to perform solo cuts live, Hanna sought Fateman, who she’d once lived with in Portland, and Benning, who she’d made a music video with in Chicago. The trio began sharing tapes of demos through the mail (Benning was still in Chicago, while Fateman and Hanna were in New York), picked a band name, and Le Tigre was born.

When it was released in October of 1999, Le Tigre’s self-titled debut set the punk world on its ear. Using its tight 34-minute run time to do everything from calling Rudy Giuliani a “f*cking jerk” to schooling the world about dot-happy artist Yayoi Kusama long before her aesthetic became Instagram candy, Le Tigre acted as the perfect fusion of music and message for so many listeners.

Though social activism through music is hardly an unheard of concept, Le Tigre’s danceable quest for justice has throughlines to tons of recent bands like The Linda Lindas, who wore Bikini Kill shirts during their viral performance in an LA library, and Lil Nas X, who has been so wildly successful with tracks like “Montero” and “Industry Baby” that it’s easy to forget that his very presence in the rap scene could have been viewed as a novelty mere years before.

Much of Le Tigre also identified as queer, and its music was a reflection of that. Tracks like “Hot Topic” shouted out queer icons like Vaginal Creme Davis and Billie Jean King, while “Viz” was Samson’s ode to lesbian visibility. The group also took queer openers out on tour, like Seth Bogart’s then-band Panty Raid or old Portland buddies The Need. It can be hard for Gen Z to imagine, but at the turn of the 21st century, there were precious few spaces for outspoken queer art, or even just queer joy.

Le Tigre also inspired conversation. On “What’s Yr Take On Cassavetes,” Le Tigre uses lyrics to debate the issue of art vs. artist, wondering if notorious actor/director John Cassavetes is a misogynist or a genius, a messiah or an alcoholic. Though the song was recorded over 20 years ago and reflected a chat that had been happening in feminist circles and women’s studies classes for about as long, it foretold a discussion that, today, we find ourselves having almost daily as we struggle to reckon with our once enthusiastic love of Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, or the TV series Louie.

That’s not even considering the countless debates we’ve had and acted on involving less well-known performers and businesses. When SoCal punk label Burger Records faced accusations of sexual abuse by its artists and management, fans quickly turned their backs, saying they wouldn’t support a place where women were maligned, hurt, and discriminated against. Bands like SWMRS, The Growlers, and The Buttertones have all faced assault and abuse allegations themselves, leading to whole scenes of musicians banding together to call out creeps who will no longer get a pass, a record sale, or even a show (There’s even a TikTok movement). The music business is at least trying to move forward into a more righteous era like the one Le Tigre envisioned.

Le Tigre also moved punk and indie rock further into the art world. Though music and art have long been fairly cozy bedfellows, Le Tigre added dimension to what smaller club bands could do at live shows, often running quirky visuals behind them as they performed. Part of this push forward could have been due to technology — projectors, quality camcorders, and editing software were becoming more widely available at the time — but the band used art even before it could afford a video projector, enlisting then roadie Samson to project individual slides from the back of the room.

The group’s fusion of art and music didn’t come out of nowhere — Benning was and is still a very well-known artist, having exhibited at places like MOMA — but the group’s insistence that one could fuel the other or that both could fuel activism in tandem seemed like a novelty at the time. It’s the norm now, with acts as varied as Lady Gaga, Kanye West, and Childish Gambino relying on an intense fusion of art and music to promote their visions for the future. Even smaller artists have gotten in on the act, with groups like Crumb, George Clanton, and Wand using outlandish or otherworldly visuals to take their live tracks to another level.

When it was announced late last year that Le Tigre was reuniting for This Ain’t No Picnic, a Goldenvoice festival coming to the LA area later this summer, skeptical viewers could have seen that announcement as a cash grab. Though they never technically broke up, Le Tigre haven’t played together in over a decade. Seeing as how Bikini Kill’s reunion tour sold-out dates across the country in 2019, it’s easy to understand how Hanna and co. could look at an offer and see big dollar signs.

What that supposition misses, though, is that Le Tigre remain as vital now as they have ever been. It’s sad, but tracks about female oppression, bodily autonomy, and the everyday microaggressions experienced by queer people, women, and minorities are as vital now as they were then. Audiences need to hear their frustrations voiced, and they need reminders that there can be a brighter tomorrow if we all work together. Bands like Le Tigre have helped fuel that fire, and those who have learned from them will be the ones to keep it burning.

Every cinematic detective story needs a montage in which the protagonist rummages through evidence and covers their home in the research. In Matt Reeves’s The Batman, Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson), the billionaire descendant to the Wayne empire, peruses old files in his family home, searching for answers that could connect to the murders The Riddler is committing throughout the endlessly corrupt city of Gotham. Bruce opens file cabinets and sprawls photos and newspaper clippings on the floor while the score builds and builds to an aha moment. It’s all very standard, except for the fact that Bruce Wayne is shirtless and his greasy, dark emo Peter Parker-inspired hair falls into his face the entire time. Superheroes – including Bruce Wayne/Batman – have been seen shirtless on screen to show off their ripped biceps and torsos, and a shirtless man is not the sexiest thing you could show in a movie. But the specific choice to have Robert Pattinson act out this entire montage shirtless instead of in a t-shirt, sweater, robe, or hoodie elevates the film’s erotic, sexual undercurrent. In an era when major motion pictures are completely devoid of the concept of sex, The Batman is practically bursting with sexual energy.

The Batman establishes its underlying sensual vibe instantly as it opens with an erotic thriller signature: cinematic voyeurism. The film’s consistent moody atmosphere combines sexiness and looming death. Most scenes take place at night, or in darkness. It is almost always raining. A majority of the film’s rousing action sequences take place in the shadows, the only light coming from alternate sources such as nightclub strobe lights, the fire from a gun, or a scoreboard. The film’s dark and neutral color story uses colors such as the deep, passionate blood-red all over the film’s marketing intentionally and sparingly, which adds to the sexual mystery; a sharp contrast to an overwhelming amount of black (and black leather). A titillating score and quiet, patient dialogue amplify The Batman’s erotic visuals.

The slightly antagonistic but instantly deep connection between Batman and Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz) is the emotional heart of the film, but also its sexual center. Pattinson and Kravitz don’t have to do much to exude eroticism. Their presence alone – especially in skin-tight black leather costumes – brings the heat. Even if Pattinson and Kravitz were wearing Uncle Baby Billy wigs and teeth, they would be hot. Like the leads in an erotic thriller, Batman and Catwoman are drawn together despite their differences and even though they know they are bad for each other. While Batman and Catwoman do not have sex on a bed of money, scenes between the two characters are shot up close and include shots of their mouths, which are desperate to touch. Longer shots place them against gorgeous city landscapes at the top of a building overlooking the dimly lit gothic architecture of Gotham at sunset or riding motorcycles through a graveyard.

Even The Batman’s supporting cast adds to the eroticism, albeit more subtly. Jeffrey Wright, who plays Batman’s literal bestie Lieutenant James Gordon, adds to the film’s sensuality with a muted but significant performance that adds a mystical element to the character. Wright’s performance calls to mind David Fincher’s Zodiac, another stunning crime thriller that has a similar sensuality due to its style and performances. John Turturro, whose effortless performance as the cruel but charismatic crime lord Carmine Falcone feels as if he made up his lines on the fly, is seductive and stunning in tinted glasses and standing over a pool table. Colin Farrell, meanwhile, is very ironically the antithesis of the film’s eroticism as the Penguin.

The Batman’s story, themes, characters, and technical elements make it more erotic thriller than superhero film. Although the film does not include any fucking, it suggests that its hero fucks, a sadly unique and new element to the genre. In doing so, the film plays with the idea that superhero movies (such as those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) do not have to be sexless copies of each other. The Batman is not only proof that a comic book movie can be sexy, but an indication that the long-gone genre that defined Hollywood in the 80s and the 90s is making a slow but sure comeback.

Olivia Rodrigo fans can’t get enough new music, and it turns out fans will get some when Rodrigo releases her Driving Home 2 U documentary/concert film on March 25: In a new Rolling Stone interview, she says the movie’s end credits will feature a previously unreleased song.

Rodrigo says of the track, “I was listening to some of them and heard it and thought, ‘Oh, it’s kinda good!’ With the film, I wanted people to have a new bit of Sour content with it.” Rolling Stone describes the tune as “a scrapped and still in-progress iPhone demo that still doesn’t have a name.”

Elsewhere, she explained the philosophy behind the film, saying, “For a year, I filmed a show [High School Musical: The Musical: The Series] in Salt Lake City. So I started writing there and ended writing and producing [the album] in LA. You get to see the beautiful scenic drive.”

That drive includes spots like the Mojave Airplane Boneyard and the Red Rock Canyon State Park.

The feature also notes in the film, Rodrigo performs with an all-female band and that most of it should be joining her on her upcoming tour. Rodrigo said, “I think it’s so cool to watch women in rock, and I feel like there’s probably not enough of that shown in the media.”

Find the full interview here.

Last week, Kanye West’s video for “Eazy,” the new single with The Game in which Kanye expresses his wish to “beat Pete Davidson’s ass” for dating his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, ruffled a few feathers for its black-and-white narrative that ends with Davidson buried up to his neck and sprouting flowers — literally, pushing up daisies. Some looked at it as Kanye’s genuine wish to harm Davidson, as the video contains claymation sequences in which Eazy-E and the Game kidnap the comedian at Kanye’s direction. Over the weekend, however, West defended the video and denied that he literally wants to harm Davidson.

“Art is therapy just like this view,” he captioned an Instagram post containing a still from the video depicting a burning house — a motif that has run throughout his rollouts for Donda and Donda 2. “Art is protected as freedom of speech. Art inspires and simplifies the world. Art is not a proxy for any ill or harm. Any suggestion otherwise about my art is false and mal intended.” That would have seemed obvious from the title card that closes the video (and from the fact that it’d be kind of difficult to get Eazy-E to kidnap anyone for obvious reasons), but clearly, West felt that the backlash was worth responding to.

Kanye may not have any plans to take his grudge against Pete Davidson any further but he’s certainly been vocal about his disapproval of the comic’s association with Kardashian, apparently seeing Davidson as one of the obstacles to their eventual reconciliation. For her part, though, she’s repeatedly said she has no desire to reunite with Kanye, even pushing to have their divorce finalized as soon as possible.

The Batman made $128 million at the box office during its opening weekend. If there’s any justice in this world, Deep Water (which features a former-Batman) will be watched by at least 128 million people when it debuts on Hulu later this month.

The erotic thriller stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas as a married couple where everything — get this! — isn’t as it seems. “Do you think we’ll ever just be happy?” the No Time to Die standout asks Affleck. He replies, “God, I hope so.” About that…

You can watch the sensual trailer above. Here’s the official plot synopsis:

Based on the celebrated novel by famed mystery writer Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Deep Water takes us inside the marriage of picture-perfect Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas) Van Allen to discover the dangerous mind games they play and what happens to the people that get caught up in them. Directed by Adrian Lyne from a screenplay by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, based on the novel Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water stars Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Lil Rel Howery, Dash Mihok, Finn Wittrock, Kristen Connolly, Jacob Elordi, Rachel Blanchard, Michael Braun, Jade Fernandez, Grace Jenkins, Brendan C. Miller, Devyn Tyler and Jeff Pope.

Deep Water hits Hulu on March 18.

London breakout star Nilüfer Yanya just unveiled her sophomore album Painless last week, following up her successful 2019 debut Miss Universe and two EPs since then, 2020’s Feeling Lucky? and last September’s Inside Out. She celebrated the record release with an enticing performance on Radio Nova, a French radio station. The intimate session consists of “Anotherlife,” “Chase Me,” “The Dealer,” “Stabilise,” “Belong With You,” and “Midnight Sun.” It’s just her singing and playing the guitar along with a backing vocalist, as well as Jazzi Bobbi on the synth and, for “The Dealer,” on the saxophone.

Painless was announced back in November with the eerie, brooding “Stabilise” as the lead single. She stated that the song was “about recognizing what it feels like to be pushed down but wanting to resist. I really like the imagery of ‘midnight sun’ as a lyric as it insinuates a light guiding you through darkness. The wings carry their own symbolism – freedom, lightness, flight, fantasy. If I could pick what people saw & heard it would be seeing the beauty of confrontation and the necessity of rebellion.” The heaviness of this song and the strong desire to be free are evident in her emotional delivery in this session.

Watch the performance above.

Last week on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, actor Sam Elliott called The Power of the Dog a “piece of sh*t” for its “allusions of homosexuality.” He was particularly upset by how the male characters, including Benedict Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank, were dressed. “Where’s the Western in this Western?” he complained. “I mean, Cumberbatch never got out of his fucking chaps. He had two pairs of chaps — a woolly pair and a leather pair. And every fucking time he would walk in from somewhere — he never was on a horse, maybe once — he’d walk into the fucking house, storm up the fucking stairs, go lay in his bed in his chaps, and play his banjo. It’s like, what the f*ck?”

Anyway, Cumberbatch indirectly responded to Elliott’s comments during a recent BAFTA Film Sessions interview. “Someone really took offense to – I haven’t heard it so it’s unfair for me to comment in detail on it – to the West being portrayed in this way,” he said. “Beyond that reaction, that sort of denial that anybody could have any other than a heteronormative existence because of what they do for a living or where they’re born, there’s also a massive intolerance within the world at large towards homosexuality still and towards an acceptance of the other and anything kind of difference.” He continued:

“This is a very specific case of repression, but also due to an intolerance for that true identity that Phil is that he can’t fully be. The more we look under the hood of toxic masculinity and try to discover the root causes of it, the bigger chances we have of dealing with it when it arises with our children.”

Benedict Cumberbatch: the “anchor” of the MCU and common sense.

The Power of the Dog is up for 12 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Jane Campion, Best Actor for Cumberbatch, Best Supporting Actress for Kirsten Dunst, and Best Supporting Actor for Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

(Via Variety)

Charli XCX has basically become a regular Saturday Night Live cast member as of late. She was initially supposed to be the musical guest on a December episode, and even though her performance was canceled due to COVID, she still appeared in a sketch as a singing bird. SNL gave Charli another shot at taking the stage this weekend, which she was actually able to do. On top of that, she also popped up in another sketch, this time as an even more peculiar singing character: a meatball growth.

In the sketch, titled “Meatballs,” a woman (played by Sarah Sherman) is hanging out with a romantic interest (Chris Redd), who wonders why she’s always wearing a ribbon around her neck. She hesitantly removes it to reveal a singing “little meatball guy” (Oscar Isaac) on the side of her neck. It turns out she has a variety of strange meatball creatures attached to her body.

The meatballs sing a song together, and after Redd’s character is sufficiently weirded out, he tries to end the relationship. As Sherman’s character starts crying, some sad music starts to play, which turns out to be from Charli’s meatball character, who lives under Sherman’s armpit and plays a keytar. Charli sings an emotional ballad that begins, “Don’t give up on love just because of some meatballs / Don’t give up on this girl because she’s got eleven meatballs.”

The tune won Redd over, who decided to try to make the relationship work. Of course, in classic SNL fashion, the sketch ends on a last-second twist.

Check out “Meatballs” above.

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