In a recent segment on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, the program went ahead and hurled an insult at Maren Morris by showing a photo of her on screen and giving it the label “lunatic country music person.” Morris had some fun with that, sharing a screenshot on Twitter on Friday (September 2) and jokingly declaring, “#NewProfilePic.”
She didn’t stop there, though, as she took the mean-spirited jab and turned it into a fundraising effort to which Carlson probably didn’t contribute.
On the same day Morris shared the screenshot, she offered a new bit of merch for sale, a t-shirt. The shirt has her name on it as well as the Fox News appointed title “lunatic country music person.” Below that is the phone number for the Peer Support & Crisis Hotline for trans youth, (877) 565-8860. Morris noted that all proceeds from sales of the shirt will be split between Trans Lifelife and the GLAAD Transgender Media Program.
The response was enthusiastic. Morris noted that in just two hours, the shirts had raised $63k. The next day, less than 24 hours after the shirts went up for sale, Morris offered another fundraising update, tweeting, “Over $100K raised. Have a great Labor Day weekend, lunatics.”
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 Lil Baby and Gorillaz both launch their own new eras. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
Last Friday (September 2) brought a Rushmore-ian announcement for Lil Baby’s upcoming third album, It’s Only Me. The day also yielded a single to kick things off, “Detox,” on which the rapper lauds a minimal style while boasting a set of skills that’s anything but paltry.
Ari Lennox and Summer Walker — “Queen Space”
Music fans are pumped for Ari Lennox’s new album, Age/Sex/Location, to drop — J. Cole, for one, “can’t wait ’til this sh*t comes out.” The album’s out in just a few days but Lennox didn’t want her fans to wait even that short period of time, so she offered an EP, Away Message, last week. Highlighting that effort is “Queen Space,” a smooth and soulful Summer Walker collaboration.
The 1975 — “I’m In Love With You”
Being Funny In A Foreign Language, the upcoming album from The 1975 due out in October, is shaping up nicely so far. Advance singles have teased a promising LP, with new single “I’m In Love With You” carrying the promotional weight last week. It’s the lively sort of pop-rock tune that has brought the band much success in recent years, and the cherry on top here is a Phoebe Bridgers’ appearance in the song’s video.
Arctic Monkeys — “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball”
It’s been a hearty minute since Arctic Monkeys’ last album, 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. The wait for its follow-up won’t last much longer, though, as The Car is set to drop in November. The group previewed it last week with “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball,” a ballad much in the vein of the album that preceded it.
Gorillaz — “New Gold” Feat. Tame Impala and Bootie Brown
Next February, Gorillaz will bring us to Cracker Island on their just-announced new album. The Thundercat-featuring lead single/title track came back in June and the LP’s second single is also a collaboration, this time with Tame Impala and Bootie Brown. The song is “New Gold” and it definitely has Kevin Parker’s psychedelic stamp all over it, with Brown’s verse living harmoniously in the song’s groove.
Freddie Gibbs — “Too Much” Feat. Moneybagg Yo
While it’s been a quiet 2022 for Gibbs, that’ll change soon: His recently announced new album Soul Sold Separately is out at the end of the month and “Too Much,” a Moneybagg Yo single that’s Gibbs’ first of the year, dropped last week. Uproxx’s Armon Sadler says of the tune, “It is a unique foray for Gibbs, as the production is more trap-focused and he utilizes Aut-Tune on his vocals. As for Moneybagg, this beat is right in his usual brooding yet high-energy pocket.”
Kali Uchis — “No Hay Ley”
Uchis has indicated she’s working on a third album and while one hasn’t been officially announced yet, it would seem that last week’s single “No Hay Ley” is a taste of it. Uproxx’s Alex Gonzalez notes of the upbeat tune, “Over a hypnotic house-inspired dance track, Uchis sings about the ‘cosas magicas’ she wants to do with her lover.”
Smino — “24-8”
Last month, it would have been late NBA icon Kobe Bryant’s 44th birthday. Sports fans continue to mourn the loss of the superstar, including Smino, who honored Bryant’s jersey numbers on the single “24-8,” an introspective track that pays homage to the beloved Laker.
Justin Bieber — “Beautiful Love (Free Fire)”
In recent years, the virtual worlds of video games have become increasingly accommodating spaces for musicians to perform and share their work. Just recently, Bieber debuted a new song called “Beautiful Love” in the Free Fire game and now he’s given the afrobeats-leaning tune a proper release.
Charlie Puth — “Smells Like Me”
Puth has long proven himself to be an extremely capable songwriters and invoker of aesthetics. He fulfills both roles on last week’s “Smells Like Me,” a catchy ballad that reaches its presumed goal of sounding like a modern take on an emotional, lovelorn track from an ’80s movie.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Getty Image/zanastardust via Flickr/Derrick Rossignol
At the start of August, YouTube channel Recess Therapy posted a video of a kid named Tariq, a video you’ve probably seen by now: It’s the one where the young man enthusiastically talks about how much he loves corn. The clip inspired Schmoyoho (aka The Gregory Brothers, the folks behind Stranger Things remix “Chrissy, Wake Up” and 2010 hit “Bed Intruder Song”) to remix the video into a song, which has been viral on TikTok for weeks now.
The tune has caught the attention of Kevin Bacon, who went ahead and performed a rendition of the track. In a recent TikTok video, the actor/musician sings and strums along on acoustic guitar… or rather, he uses an ear of corn to hit the strings, which worked out surprisingly well. The performance of course includes all the viral lyrics, from “a big lump with knobs” to “it has the juice.”
This time, Bacon wasn’t surrounded by goats like he usually is. He frequently shares clips of himself on TikTok, performing songs with some goats in tow, like last week when he offered his version of Beyoncé’sRenaissance highlight “Heated.”
Check out the “It’s Corn” cover above and Bacon’s goat-flanked rendition of “Heated” below.
The Creative Arts Emmy Awards were handed out this weekend and it was a big moment for some notable folks in the music industry: Adele, Eminem, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr all won awards, which puts them each just a Tony Award victory away from attaining the coveted EGOT status — meaning they’ve won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar (Academy Award), and Tony.
The Adele: One Night Only concert special won a total of five awards, as did the The Beatles: Get Back documentary, getting Adele, McCartney, and Starr their first Emmys. This year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show also got three awards, giving Eminem his first Emmy.
Those four artists now join a list of musicians who are just one win away from the EGOT, as they all already had Grammy and Oscar wins under their belts. Aside from the aforementioned, performers just missing a Tony include Cher, Common, producer/composer Ludwig Göransson, Randy Newman, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Barbra Streisand, and composer John Williams. Meanwhile, Oscar Hammerstein II, Elton John, and Stephen Sondheim are an Emmy shy of their EGOT. As for artists who are an Oscar shy, that list includes Quincy Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Bette Midler, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
The short list of those who have gotten their EGOT already includes Richard Rodgers (who secured his in 1962), Helen Hayes (1977), Rita Moreno (1977), John Gielgud (1991), Audrey Hepburn (1994), Marvin Hamlisch (1995), Jonathan Tunick (1997), Mel Brooks (2001), Mike Nichols (2001), Whoopi Goldberg (2002), Scott Rudin (2012), Robert Lopez (2014), Andrew Lloyd Webber (2018), Tim Rice (2018), John Legend (2018), Alan Menken (2020), and Jennifer Hudson (2022).
Find the full list of people (musician or otherwise) who are one win away from an EGOT below.
Donald Trump has a truly out-there relationship with the press. On one hand, he deplores them because they keep reporting on all the terrible and weird stuff he does. On the other, he adores them, obsesses over them, needs them. The former president has always loved few things more than seeing his name in headlines, reporters quoting him, changing the world with the power of either the press or, better yet, social media. Now he’s even offering some help to some of his longtime journalistic nemeses.
“Wow! Fox News is really pushing the Democrats and the Democrat agenda,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Gets worse every single day. So many Dems interviewed with only softball questions, then Republican counterparts get creamed. RINO Karl Rove is unwatchable, very negative, and on all the time – Has a big record of losing! Not an easy place to be as a Republican, especially with all of the “pervert” purchased ads.”
He then turned to one of their ostensibly non-partisan rivals. “If ‘low ratings’ CNN ever went Conservative, they would be an absolute gold mine, and I would help them to do so,” Trump wrote.
As it happens, if the offer is sincere, he might have good timing. CNN is under new management, and owner Chris Licht has been slammed for either laying off or driving away some of its more openly anti-Trump reporters, most recently White House correspondent John Harwood. Then again, right now there probably aren’t a lot of people who want to get in business with someone who might have to run for president from jail.
During Sunday’s EuroBasket game between Turkey and Georgia, Philadelphia 76ers guard Furkan Korkmaz grew animated, butted heads with a Georgian player and was ultimately ejected. The clip makes clear that something set Korkmaz off and, apparently, things didn’t end once he was ejected.
Furkan Korkmaz is getting into it with a Georgian player:
According to various reports, three Georgian players confronted Korkmaz on his way to the locker room following his ejection and initiated a fight.
“When I was talking to the tunnel, our conditioning guy was with me,” Korkmaz said, per BasketNews. “As soon as we walked out of the tunnel and were trying to reach the locker room, I saw three Georgian players alongside two security guys running at us. We started throwing punches at each other. That’s basically what happened.”
“It was like a street fight. There was no talk or conversation. People just came at us and were trying to attack us. Of course, we reacted and tried to defend ourselves,” he continued. “I also think it’s a security problem. But I don’t know if it’s a security problem or if they just showed tolerance to their players.”
Clearly, this incident understandably frustrated Korkmaz. Fortunately, he was back at Turkey’s team shootaround on Monday. Turkey and Belgium square off on Tuesday.
Furkan Korkmaz did attend shoot-around this morning:
Movie Awards Season has only just begun, and there’s already a pick for the most controversial entry. It’s Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde’s hotly anticipated follow-up to Booksmart. Over the last few weeks, the film has been hit with one mini-scandal after another. Did Wilde fire original key supporting player Shia LaBeouf, or did he quit? Did Wilde have a falling out with her main star, Florence Pugh? Can Harry Styles act? It’s all a mess, and during a predictably awkward press conference during its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the director did her best to sidestep the “tabloid” issues.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, handlers at the presser reportedly shot down proposed questions from journalists about LaBeouf and Pugh. Instead, most of the questions stuck to the costumes, the sets, the cinematography, etc. Only at the end did someone get in a question about the absence of Pugh, who announced she would skip the conference but still attend the premiere.
Well, I just tried to ask Olivia Wilde a question about Shia LaBeouf at the DON’T WORRY DARLING press conference, but the festival wouldn’t let me. #Venezia79
Wilde did her best not to pour gasoline on an already raging fire, calling Pugh “a force, and we are so grateful that she’s able to make it tonight despite being in production on Dune.” (Indeed, she arrived in town while the presser was still going.) She added, “I can’t say enough how honored I am to have her as our lead. She’s amazing in the film.”
Then she tried to dismiss all the elephants in the room, saying, “as for all the endless tabloid gossip and all the noise out there, I mean, the internet feeds itself. I don’t feel the need to contribute. I think it’s sufficiently well-nourished.”
THR reported that they tried to ask a question about LaBeouf specifically, only to be told that Wilde “already answered that” in relation to “Internet noise.”
Is this all nonsense and Don’t Worry Darling is some stunning masterpiece? It would hardly be the first great film to face terrible press in its lead-up. Perhaps everyone will go back to talking about all the film’s hot sex. Whatever the case, the film hits theaters on September 23.
Ever since he first started running for office, Donald Trump has claimed to be a champion of the common man. But perhaps that’s an exaggeration. In reality, he’s pocketed donations from his cash-strapped supporters, on top of having a long history of stiffing contractors. He’s even having trouble finding competent legal representation now that he’s in a whole mess of real trouble, in part because good lawyers don’t want to be stiffed. Indeed, a new book claims that he’s so averse to reimbursing people for goods and services that he once paid an attorney with a horse.
As per The Guardian, the forthcoming book Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice, by New York Times reporter David Enrich, features the umpteenth bizarro tale of creative tomfoolery from the former president. The story? Trump once owed a lawyer he employed $2 million. Instead of cash, though, he offered him a deed to a horse he claimed was worth $5 million.
Was the horse actually worth 2 ½ times what he owed? This is Trump, so it’s up in the air. In any case, the lawyer in question reportedly did not take kindly to this form of payment. Enrich writes that “once he regained the capacity for speech,” the attorney “stammered, then informed Trump, ‘This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t pay me with a horse.”
Trump famously dislikes or is at least disinterested in animals. He’s long used “dog” as an epithet, and he was the first U.S. president since Andrew Johnson to have no White House pets, although even Johnson was known to feed mice that lurked in his bedroom. (At least he’s not his oldest son.) But at least he likes horses, if only as a form of currency. He might have to get several bands of horses to get him out of the legal muck that may land him on prison — although at least he can still run for president from the slammer.
Last Thursday (September 1), Megan Thee Stallion made her much-discussed debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by popping up in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law. The most noteworthy part of her appearance came in a mid-credits scene, when she hired Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk to be her lawyer. The two celebrated by dancing in Walters’ office, a moment that saw the two of them twerk together.
After the episode debuted, Meg took to Instagram to share her thoughts on what it was like to film the show. She had a terrific time, as she wrote, “Likeee thee hot girl coach is now in thee marvel universe [green heart emojis] ive been holding this in for so long im glad the hotties finally get to see it !!! Shooting this was a BLAST thank you @shehulkofficial @marvel for asking me to be apart. Im gonna manifest I get to do moreeeeee.”
She-Hulk head writer and executive producer Jessica Gao recently said about how Megan came to appear on the show, “We knew that for that story, we needed a famous, beautiful, successful woman… We were going through all the possibilities… but when it came down to it, Jameela [Jamil, who plays Titania] knew Megan from working on [HBO Max’s] Legendary together, and she brought her up. We were like, ‘Don’t say it if it’s not really true! Don’t tease us with this!’”
Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Spoilers for House of the Dragon will be found below.
And we have “Dracarys!”
Daemon Targaryen looked the part of a badass in this week’s House of the Dragon. He could have easily died, however, given this war against the Crabfeeder isn’t going too well, two years into Daemon’s alliance with Corlys. And although Daemon and his dragon, Caraxes, immediately squished a dude who believed that he was being rescued, they pulled off a blazing entrance that left people declaring that they had a new favorite dragon. But wait, not so fast? Daemon needed a rescue.
Caraxes still rules, but Daemon is foolhardy when it comes to war. Yes, part of this attitude is because he’s salty over King Viserys I not naming him as heir, but it really is miraculous that Daemon was still standing at the end of “Second of His Name.” That happened by the grace of Leanor and his dragon, Seasmoke, but there’s still one incredible feat that Daemon (and Matt Smith) pulled off during the course of this episode: Daemon dominated attention, and Matt Smith in turn delivered a spellbinding performance, but the rogue prince never spoke a word during his screentime.
Yep, not one word, even though it sure felt like Daemon’s eyes (and his entire presence) said so much. People noticed and duly shouted out Smith’s silent prowess.
Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen had a scene-stealing set of sequences in #HouseoftheDragon episode 3 and didn’t utter a single word in the episode!! pic.twitter.com/iTPftvxzn1
Daemon Targaryen did not say a word during the entire episode. He only appeared for a few minutes, and yet we could not take our eyes off him. Matt Smith is GLORIOUS in this role. Only the best of the best could make such an impact. #HouseOfTheDragonHBO#DaemonTargaryenpic.twitter.com/zhxmVBhRP7
Daemon Targaryen did not utter a single word from the moment he stepped out from Caraxes, got belittled, read a letter, sailed through the waters alone, fake surrender, hit by arrows. The eyes and body tell a LOT.
Not even a single word spoken in the last quarter of the episode & yet gave a terrific performance, this how good the writing of the show is. Daemon Targaryen my chaotic boy#HOTDpic.twitter.com/tSRnrCxJDx
HBO’s House of the Dragon airs on Sundays at 9:00pm EST.
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