Month: April 2022

Just a couple of days into the spring season, Harry Styles announced that his third album would arrive just in time for the summer. The singer revealed that the upcoming project would be titled Harry’s House and that it will be available for listeners to enjoy on May 20. To kick off the campaign for his third album, Harry released its lead single “As It Was” and it was quite the successful record thanks to a Spotify record that it recently broke. A press release from Harry’s team confirmed that “As It Was” broke Spotify’s single-day streaming record for a male artist.

In its first 24 hours, “As It Was” reportedly tallied 16.1 million streams which broke the prior record that was held by Drake’s “Girls Want Girls” with Lil Baby, the rapper’s standout track from his 2021 Certified Lover Boy. Drake’s song only posted 12.4 million streams when it was released back in September. While Harry broke the record for the most streams for a song by a male artist in its first 24 hours, he come up short for the overall record. Adele still holds that title and she secured it last fall with the release of “Easy On Me” which posted 19.1 million streams in its first 24 hours.

Harry’s upcoming album will feature 13 songs with songwriting from frequent collaborators Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson, and Mitch Rowland. The title, Harry’s House, is also a reference to Joni Mitchell’s 1975 song, “Harry’s House/Centerpiece,” from the album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. After the announcement, Mitchell showed support for the album’s name, writing, “love the title.”

Harry’s House is due 5/20 via Columbia Records. Pre-save it here.

As the LGBTQIA+ community has been targeted by Republican lawmakers, an unlikely force has come to their aid: giant corporations. Both Disney and Apple have tried to fight new laws, in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere, that demonize queer and trans people. And that’s made Republicans mad — so mad that some of them have been issuing threats that sound suspiciously progressive.

On Friday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham took some time off from spouting pro-Russia talking points to condemn Disney and Apple for being against laws that target already marginalized people.

“These businesses should really learn this lesson now before it’s too late: Stay in your lane,” bellowed Ingraham. “Because if they want to talk about what they know nothing about, expect to be treated like any lame political pundit, on, let’s say, MSNBC.”

She then issued some veiled threats. “You guys have products and services that 74 million Trump voters don’t need to purchase if they don’t want to,” she said. “And when Republicans get back into power, Apple and Disney need to understand one thing: Everything will be on the table–your copyright and trademark protection, your special status within certain states, and even your corporate structure itself.”

If it was unclear that she was talking about antitrust laws, which exist to break up companies that get too large, and which these days are rarely used, she then made that unambiguous: “The antitrust division at [the Department of] Justice needs to begin the process of considering which American companies need to be broken up once and for all for competition’s sake, and ultimately for the good of the consumers who pay the bills.”

That’s right: One of the most popular figures on a deeply conservative news network is effectively saying government should curtail the free market and rein in out-of-control capitalism, targeting a corporation because it owns too much profitable stuff. Already strange times just got stranger still.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Skim the career of Michelle Zauner too hastily and you might come to the conclusion that she primarily viewed her Japanese Breakfast moniker as a valve to release her grief. It was late 2014 when Zauner put a stop to all activities with her band Little Big League and moved back to Eugene, Oregon to be with her mother, who had been diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer that would become terminal. In the history of popular music, it’s common for the psyche of an artist who records in such desperate conditions to be poured over, lyrics examined for insights, every snare crack or synth hum scanned for emotion. But Zauner wasn’t hiding the fact that the music was providing an outlet for her pain. When she posted the short lo-fi release Where Is My Great Big Feeling? to Bandcamp in June 2014, it was with a note that revealed her mother’s diagnosis. “I also hope anyone else who lost or is struggling with a family member or friend with cancer can maybe find some comfort in these sh*tty lo fi songs,” she wrote.

Revisiting the Japanese Breakfast origin story reminds us of the distance Zauner has run to get to the 2022 Grammys, where she is up for Best Alternative Music Album, recognizing her third full-length Jubilee, and Best New Artist. The latter nomination is, of course, ridiculous, given she’s been musically active since 2006 at the latest, but it does reflect Zauner’s establishment in mainstream American music. Jubilee features big choruses, propulsive guitar lines, a grand cadre of orchestral instruments. Encouraged by her bandmate and co-producer Craig Hendrix (though it’s firmly Zauner’s vehicle, Japanese Breakfast is sometimes referred to as a band), she helped compose the string and horn arrangements for the first time. Zauner had, in fact, initially envisioned touring the record with an orchestra. Covid-19 restrictions ended those best-laid plans, but the intent reflects her grandiose vision for the project. “After writing two albums and a book about grief, I feel very ready to embrace feeling,” she told Pitchfork in March 2021. “I wanted to just explore a different part of me: I am capable of joy and I have experienced a lot of joy,” she added. “All the songs are different reminders of how to experience or carve out space for that.”

Zauner has not yet been one of Bowie-esque reinvention. The evolution of Japanese Breakfast from dropping rusty lo-fi jams online to the Grammys has been organic. On Psychopomp, her first album as Japanese Breakfast, Zauner and musician Ned Eisenberg polished up some of those previously released compositions. Alchemising dream pop, shoegaze, and teen movie alternative rock, Zauner wrote songs with lovely melodies but sad overtones. Alongside the fuzzy, chugging guitars of “In Heaven,” there is the image of the family dog searching the house for the Zauner’s missing mother. “I came here for the long haul,” the singer admits. “Now I leave here as an empty f*cking hole.”

Zauner’s voice has a hushed, breathy texture, capable of blowing through the arrangements like smoke through a room. But she can be versatile too. The vocal on “Rugged Country,” also from Psychopomp, has a more trashy feel, calling upon the spirit of Joan Jett.

There was a quick follow-up in Soft Sounds From Another Planet, released on Dead Ocean in 2017. A sure-footed step, the arrangements were more fleshed out and sophisticated. Dream pop was still the blueprint, but with extra synthesizers, funky basslines, various beeps and blips that provided a cosmic texture, and, on “Machinist,” a sax solo. Still, a sense of gloaming shrouded the project. The soothing, beautiful “Till Death” presented post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, and fears of genetic disease and death, packaged as a thank you from Zauner to her husband for his support.

We can be tricked into thinking that coming-of-age tales can happen in real life as neatly as they do in a John Hughes movie. But life’s key lessons rarely fit neatly into a weekend stint in detention or unauthorized day off. No Japanese Breakfast album cycle offered a perfect arc with a happy resolution. They gave us Zauner, in her mid-20s and dealing with cacophonous anguish, and the realization that grief is not a straight, descending line that time automatically heals. “I have a sh*t-ton of GI cancer in my family — both my mom and her sister died really young — so I feel like I have a ticking time bomb inside of me,” she told Pitchfork in that interview last year. And yet, there’s evidence that the thunderclouds have perhaps begun to dissipate: “Once death was really close to me, I suddenly became very fearful of it. I think that lit a fire in me like, What do you have to say before it happens?”

A four-year break from album-making saw Zauner harness a passion for writing into the memoir Crying In H Mart, which covered not just her mother’s death, but, as a woman of Jewish and Korean heritage, growing up mixed-race in America. And, not long prior to the book’s release, there was Jubilee. It would be wrong to suggest that this is the sound of commercial compromises, but its sense of catharsis is blended with brighter 1980s indie-pop arrangements into a more mainstream palatable formula. Baroque opener “Paprika” features trumpets, trombones, and cellos, among many other instruments, immediately offering more grandeur. Zauner describes awakening from a dream of untying a huge knot, immediately allowing the listener to share a sense of release.

​​With music co-written by Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum, lead single “Be Sweet” is Japanese Breakfast’s most anthemic tune: a brash indie number that pulls from both adult contemporary and new wave sounds of the ’80s. Interestingly, it’s followed up with “Komono, IN.” Zauner’s favorite song on the album resembles the vintage 1950s pop of an artist like Patti Page, but with the ripple of a slide guitar bumping up against the strings.

The outer perimeters of the Japanese Breakfast sound are further tested on “Slide Tackle,” which includes a steady, synthesized beat that feels salvaged from an old Postal Service tune. “Savage Good Boy” is underpinned by what sounds like a more hyperactive version of the famous riff from Devotchka’s “How It Ends.”

“Posing in Bondage” is one of Zauner’s greatest achievements. The grinding, machine-like beauty of the music is paired with a lilting melody. The chorus on the short sentences is an exercise in brevity: “Closeness / Proximity / I needed / Bondage,” sings Zauner, each word floating into the atmosphere.

In the wake of Jubilee, Zauner has put out a soundtrack to the videogame Sable — check out strings-led “Better The Mask” and how it resembles the production skills of Jon Brion and Van Dyke Parks. Even more recently, there’s been a new standalone single, “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do.” A piano ballad, it feels like a closing track of an epic record, perhaps a curtain call on the first act of Japanese Breakfast. Collecting a Grammy would be an emphatic button on this period of her career. Zauner’s upward trajectory to this point might have felt unbroken, but that doesn’t mean the road has been predictable.

Game shows have enjoyed a renaissance over the last few years. Jeopardy! and sometimes even Wheel of Fortune have been headline fodder. Classic shows have been revived. As such, this news seems ominous: As per Variety, ABC is probably not bringing back four of their game shows, most notably the Match Game revival that was hosted by now-troubled actor Alec Baldwin.

The network is in the midst of planning it summer schedule, and among those shows reportedly getting the axe are Card Sharks, Celebrity Dating Game, The Hustler, and Match Game. The latter hasn’t been in production for a while, with the last episodes were taped in 2020, prior to the pandemic’s outset. Last year it only aired two new episodes, filmed the previous year.

ABC insists the likely cancellation does not have anything to do with the accidental shooting on the set of Rust, which involved Baldwin.

Launched in 2016, the Match Game revival brought back the classic show, which features contestants trying to match the answers of a bevy of celebrity guests. The show began in 1962 but didn’t come into its own until the 1970s, when it was dramatically revamped as a more comedic program, with the famous participants, often with drinks in their hands, regularly trying to crack each other up. The Baldwin version, which wasn’t as loose as that, ran for five seasons.

In the meantime, other ABC game shows, such as Celebrity Family Feud, Press Your Luck, and The $100,000 Pyramid, are expected to return.

(Via Variety)

There have been multiple examples of transphobic legislation that have been passed across the United States. For example, Texas and Arizona have both passed their own variations of bills that impede on the rights of transgender children. As a result, there has been an increased fight to make sure that basic rights for transgender people are preserved across the country. One example comes from Ariana Grande who recently teamed with Pledge, a charity-centric fundraising platform, to launch the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund.

Grande says that the fund was created “to support organizations providing direct services and advocating for the rights of trans youth.” The fund was also launched on March 31 which was this year’s International Transgender Day Of Visibility. Grande has promised to match all donations, up to $1.5 million, made to the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund. All of the money raised through it will be split between 19 organizations, with many offering special services to queer and transgender people in different states across the country. It includes Equality Florida, One Iowa, the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance, and the Tennessee Equality Project.

“Right now, there are hundreds of bills pending in state legislatures across the United States that target trans youth and aim to curb their rights,” Grande said in a statement about the new fund. “The impact of fighting these anti-trans bills and policies is felt all year by trans people, their families and loved ones.”

Donations to the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund can be made here. If you live in the United States, a donation can be made by texting “PLEDGE” to 707070.

It’s been almost a week since the 94th Academy Awards, which is to say it’s been almost a week since what may be the most shocking thing to ever happen at the ceremony: Will Smith, on the cusp of winning his first-ever Oscar, slapped Chris Rock for telling a joke then screamed obscenities at him. The fall out has been severe, and it’s permeated much of the culture. Everyone’s talking about it, though not Mel Gibson — though only because his handler cut him off.

The troubled actor and filmmaker, who has a couple Oscars himself (for producing and directing the 1995 Best Picture winner Braveheart), appeared on Fox News, chatting with Jesse Watters about his upcoming Mark Wahlberg movie Father Stu. At one point, Watters decided to ask Gibson — whose temper has in the past materialized in, shall we say, offensive language — on his take on Smith’s Oscar actions.

“I was wondering if you had been the one that jumped up out of his seat and slapped Chris Rock,” Watters asked Gibson, “if you would’ve been treated the same way, Mel.”

Gibson never responded with words, but he did launch into a series of strange faces, laughing nervously, appearing to wave the question away. Meanwhile, his handler cut in. “Hello, Jessie?” she said. “Thank you. That’s our time.”

Watters attempted to get Gibson to answer anyway, but his handler once again cut him off.

Gibson, of course, was all but run out of Hollywood after various scandals, in which he spouted anti-Semitic and racist epithets. Since then he’s struggled to get his career back on track, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Right now, he swears he’s directing the fifth Lethal Weapon.

As for Smith, on Friday night he resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Rock, meanwhile, has seen his ticket sales skyrocket.

(Via Mediaite)

The Los Angeles Lakers fell to the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night, 114-111. With the loss, L.A. fell a game behind the San Antonio Spurs in the race for the final spot in the Western Conference play-in tournament, and because the Spurs hold the tiebreaker over the Lakers, the team needs to make up a two-game gap in their final five games of the year or else their offseason will begin way sooner than anyone anticipated.

The game was broadcast on NBA TV, and in the aftermath, Jamal Crawford tore into Los Angeles for what he perceived as a lack of heart with their backs against the wall.

“The scary thing for me is, we don’t know who the Lakers are, exactly,” Crawford said at the 1:12 mark of the above video. “But I’m not sure that they know who they are. We got five games left, and they’re still searching on ‘where do we go late, what are we looking for?’ And we all talk about it and it’s a topic of discussion around the world — the Lakers got five games until the play-in. Do they care? Because their actions don’t support that they care about making this play-in.”

After Ro Parrish pointed out that the Lakers have barely had their superstar core of Anthony Davis, LeBron James, and Russell Westbrook together — and when they have, they’re only a game over .500 — Crawford again spoke about whether or not the team is properly motivated.

“That’s the real question, do they really care?” Crawford asked. “Because like we said, the urgency, diving on the floor, if you really want this to continue on, if you really want your playoff lives to be extended and have a shot at it, every play has to play like that. New Orleans had the urgency, so I figured, even going into it, they were generating all the energy, they were like, ‘you know what, we’re playing for something.’ I didn’t get that from L.A.”

It was an important win for the Pelicans, as they entered the night only two games up on the Spurs and San Antonio won on Friday. But regardless, the Lakers are running out of time and are seeing the hill they have to climb become more and more insurmountable, and in Crawford’s eyes, they’re not carrying themselves with the sense of urgency that requires.

The Los Angeles Lakers have five games left to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Despite having both Anthony Davis and LeBron James return from injury on Friday night, Los Angeles fell to the New Orleans Pelicans at Crypto.com Arena, 114-111, in a loss that makes the already tall task of passing the San Antonio Spurs for the final spot in the play-in tournament a little tougher.

With 3:11 left in the game, Russell Westbrook made a layup to put L.A. up by three. From there, the Lakers had a nearly three-minute scoring drought, all while the Pelicans outscored them by seven to take the lead. An Avery Bradley three followed by a pair of free throws by CJ McCollum gave New Orleans a three-point lead, and while James had a look to force overtime, both Herb Jones and Larry Nance pestered him just enough that his attempt from deep didn’t hit the rim.

The loss knocked the Lakers to 31-46 on the year, which puts them a full game behind the Spurs with five games remaining this year. Further complicating matters is that San Antonio holds the tiebreaker over Los Angeles, meaning this is actually a two-game lead, and as Matt Moore of Action Network laid out, the Lakers’ paths to the play-in are increasingly narrow.

Los Angeles will try to bounce back on Sunday afternoon against the Denver Nuggets.

For the first time since 2016, the UConn Huskies will play for a national championship. UConn took on Stanford in the Final Four on Friday evening in Minneapolis, and in a matchup in the two winningest coaches in the sport’s history, Geno Auriemma and the Huskies came out on top over Tara VanDerveer and the Cardinal, 63-59.

The game’s first half was defined by defense, as both UConn and Stanford had to work for every single shot that they took. As a result, neither high-scoring offense was able to really get in a grove — the Huskies led after the first quarter, 12-9, and took a 27-26 lead into the locker room. While Paige Bueckers scored eight points for UConn, the story of the half was Evina Westbrook. A 30 percent three-point shooter, Westbrook came off the bench and gave the Huskies nine points on 3-for-5 shooting from deep in the first half, making herself and Bueckers the only players on the team to score more than four points in the game’s opening 20 minutes.

The Cardinal got huge performances from Cameron Brink and Haley Jones before the break — both had eight points and combined for 11 rebounds — and while they only led for 39 seconds in the entire first half, their gameplan was evident, as 10 of their 11 made baskets in the half came from inside the paint. Further, they never trailed by more than five points.

While the third quarter was much of the same, UConn started to pour it on in the fourth. While Stanford could not get anything to fall from behind the arc, the Huskies got Brink in foul trouble and were able to get a considerable edge on the glass. At one point, they managed to extend their lead to as many as eight points as Stanford struggled mightily to make anything from three.

Even when UConn went on a lengthy field goal drought of nearly five minutes, the Cardinal’s own issues to get their offense going made it hard for them to get within five. But as we’ve seen in the Tournament so many times, late in the game, a few shots started to fall for Stanford, while the Huskies got sped up just enough that the door got opened up — UConn led, 52-44, with 86 seconds left, but a 12-4 run headlined by a trio of Huskies turnovers got them within two points.

After Azzi Fudd hit a pair of free throws with 22.5 seconds left, Stanford called a timeout and got Brink a chance at the rim, which she converted.

Two more free throws, this time by Christyn Williams, put UConn up by four once again with 11 seconds remaining, which was too tall a mountain for Stanford to climb.

Bueckers led the way for the Huskies on the evening with 14 points, five assists, four rebounds, two steals, and a block, while Westbrook had 12 points and six boards, Williams had 10 points, and both Aaliyah Edwards (nine points, eight rebounds) and Olivia Nelson-Ododa (eight points, 10 rebounds) just missed double-doubles. Jones had quite the game for the Cardinal, going for 20 points with 11 rebounds, while Brink had 15 points, seven rebounds, three assists, and a pair of blocks.

Now, the Huskies will get a day to rest up before a national title game showdown with South Carolina. The two teams played earlier this season, with the Gamecocks coming out on top, 73-57. Sunday’s game is slated to tip at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.

There’s a whole lot of basketball happening on Friday night. This includes a game between the Houston Rockets and the Sacramento Kings, two teams that are building towards the future, and as such, don’t exactly attract a ton of eyeballs on nights when the attention of the basketball-watching universe is elsewhere.

Well, if you were watching the game, you would have noticed that a streaker ran onto the court. During the third quarter of action, things just kind of stopped for a second after an official blew their whistle and security started to run onto the floor. A dude made his way to center court in nothing more than a pair of underpants and started dancing before security leveled him, formed a dogpile, and carried him out.

Here is a video of the incident, which is a little NSFW:

The best part of the video is Kings big man Damian Jones advocating for someone to go full “Macho Man” Randy Savage and drop an elbow on the streaker.

It’s been a minute since we have had a streaker at a sporting event — the last high-profile one was, if memory serves, during the Bills-Chiefs playoff game — so let this be our latest reminder that you should not do this.