Month: October 2022

There are three inevitabilities in life: death, taxes, and Don’t Worry Darling drama. The latest bit of gossip comes from — you guessed it — Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis’ former nanny, who is now claiming that Florence Pugh and Harry Styles were “f*cking” before Wilde started dating the pop star (and made him her “special” salad dressing).

“Olivia told Jason a couple of weeks after Harry started that Flo was f*cking Harry and she had a boyfriend but was f*cking Harry,” the nanny told the Daily Mail. “Then Olivia started seeing Harry herself. It was all very quick. A lot of people don’t know that.”

The exchange set off the bitter falling out between the two women and finally explains the notoriously frosty premiere of Don’t Worry Darling in Venice. Pugh, 26, did appear on the red carpet on September 5 but refused to take part in a panel ahead of the event and declined to give any interviews about the film.

The nanny described Wilde as being “giddy” around Styles on the Don’t Worry Darling set. “She was putting her face in her hands and saying she couldn’t believe he was so young,” she said. “I didn’t know who Harry Styles was at the time, and I thought, wow, I’ve never seen her like that.” The nanny “didn’t know who Harry Styles was”? I don’t know who to believe anymore (Wilde and Sudeikis have denied her “false” claims).

Don’t Worry Darling is expected to hit streaming in early November or after 45 more updates about who was supposedly having sex with who. Whichever comes first.

(Via the Daily Mail)

Latto has recently used Twitter to exchange barbs with Nicki Minaj, but on Sunday night (October 23), the platinum-certified rapper playfully debunked an online rumor that Lil Wayne denied her request to sample “Lollipop.”

The faux rumor was started by a parody Twitter account posing as Pop Base, a popular account with over 370,000 followers. Latto quoted their tweet, “POV: u don’t even have a song sampling lollipop” with plenty of laugh-crying emojis.

The real Pop Base account replied, “this isn’t us.” Latto reassured them, “I know” with a heart emoji.

Away from the internet, Latto is living her best life. Uproxx’s December 2021 cover star has been opening on Lizzo’s The Special Tour since late September. The Special Tour hit Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on Saturday (October 22), and Latto turned all the way up at 21 Savage’s Freaknik-themed birthday party while in town.

At the State Farm Arena show, Latto welcomed Stacy Abrams to the stage during her “P*ssy” performance. Abrams, currently running for Governor of Georgia, held up a sign aptly reading, “MY BODY MY CHOICE.” Abrams posted the powerful moment to Instagram with the caption, “Thank you for sharing your stage with me, @latto777. Time too voice and protect a woman’s right to choose.”

Latto actually did sample Betty Wright’s 1968 single “Girls Can’t Do What They Guys Do” for “P*ssy.” She shared in a September interview with Flaunt that she’d heard the sample before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“It was just in talks of being overturned,” she said. “So I touched on a little bit of that, just the ways of society right now in general. Then it ended up being overturned a month after I recorded that song. I’m like, ‘Oh, this gotta come out now.’ It literally fell in my lap.”

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 the clock strike Midnights and Carly Rae Jepsen also come through with a strong pop LP. 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. Also find our Uproxx HQ Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly with the best new music, at the end of this post.

Taylor Swift — “Anti-Hero”

Despite a solid lineup of new releases last week, this past Friday’s slate of fresh music was very much all about Taylor Swift and her new Midnights album. “Anti-Hero” is the lead single and it sees Swift returning to a more pop-oriented sound in one of her most vulnerable tracks to date.

Carly Rae Jepsen — “Bends”

Swift of course highlighted the week in terms of new albums, but don’t sleep on CRJ’s latest that came out on the same day, The Loneliest Time. In her review of the album, Uproxx’s Courtney E. Smith notes, “Jepsen comes as close as she’ll get to a sense of mourning with ‘Joshua Tree,’ ‘Far Away,’ and ‘Bends,’ which sound like remembrances of people and places that are rendered not unpleasant and a little nostalgic thanks to the ’80s-inspired soundscapes she incorporates into most of the album. The latter song, in particular, uses minor chords and the minor third (aka the saddest musical interval) to evoke a heavy feeling”

Arctic Monkeys — “The Car”

In his review of The Car, Uproxx’s Steven Hyden says of the title track, “There is no sense of uplift on the title track, the album’s best song, in which cloudy orchestral folk flourishes give way to a tortured guitar solo. But it does function as The Car‘s emotional center.”

Roddy Ricch — “Aston Martin Truck”

Signs have been pointing to a new Ricch album in the near future, including last week’s single “Aston Martin Truck.” He later revealed that indeed, a fresh project is forthcoming, as Feed Tha Streets 3 is set to drop on November 18.

NxWorries — “Where I Go” Feat. HER

Silk Sonic had a massive 2021, but here in 2022, Anderson .Paak is focusing on his other two-man group: NxWorries. He and Knxwledge have officially returned with their first new music in years, a smooth new song called “Where I Go” that gets a boost from a HER feature.

Fred Again.. — “Delilah (Pull Me Out Of This)”

Fred is prepping to drop Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9, 2022), his third project in the past 18 months, at the end of the week. He’s been gradually rolling it out with new songs and last week brought “Delilah (Pull Me Out Of This),” an upbeat club thumper featuring vocals from Delilah Montagu.

Dry Cleaning — “Hot Penny Day”

In a recent interview with Uproxx, Dry Cleaning guitarist Tom Dowse said of “Hot Penny Day,” “For a long time, that song was literally just the middle section. We were trying to play it really slow and groovy at first. And then Lewis [Maynard, bassist] just started doing this wild bass part, and we wrote it from that. That was two weeks before we went to the studio. We played a bit of it to John [Parish] when we did a process of two rehearsals in Bristol, and John came and the engineer came. They listened to everything, and he’d say, ‘I like it, but you need to make it into something else.’ Some of the songs we adjusted a bit more in the studio, so that was definitely one.”

Caroline Polachek — “Sunset”

Polachek says of her latest solo tune, “Resolution is so rare in life, but music is unnaturally full of it. A sunset is the biggest pop cliche ever, because it’s a perfect resolution. Ennio Morricone passed away a few months before Salvador (Sega Bodega) and I started ‘Sunset’, and the folkloric, epic tone of the spaghetti western sunset played on my mind.”

Smino — “Matinee”

Luv 4 Rent is now just a few days away and Smino previewed his upcoming album last week with “Matinee.” It’s a smooth tune on which Smino is clear about what he wants: “I wanna take you to the crib, I wanna own it / I wanna hone it, I wanna bone, damn.”

Lil Uzi Vert — “Just Wanna Rock”

At this point, it’s hard to say when the much-anticipated The Pink Tape is dropping. Uzi’s still delivering new music, though, like last week’s “Just Wanna Rock,” of which Uproxx’s Aaron Williams notes, “Employing a Jersey club beat with a stinging synth, the song has already become a TikTok favorite due to a snippet that has soundtracked hundreds of videos since mid-September.”

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

For the past several weeks, Kanye West has been a lightning rod for controversy. Beginning with his Paris Fashion Week YZY Supply show and its featured “White Lives Matter” t-shirts, each time West has made a public statement, he’s expressed some reprehinsible views. While it seems as though he started off trolling for attention, it appears that some of these views are ones he actually earnestly holds, and some entertainment industry leaders are now calling on their peers to boycott Kanye West.

According to Billboard, United Talent Agency CEO Jeremy Zimmer released a company-wide memo to UTA’s staff encouraging them to support the boycott and providing some compelling reasons for his sense of urgency. He wrote, “I’m saddened to write that once again we’re seeing a surge in anti-Semitism in our communities, fueled by Kanye’s comments and a resulting in an incident in Los Angeles yesterday where hateful banners were placed over the 405 freeway.”

Later in the memo, he highlighted how West’s celebrity helps to supercharge the hateful rhetoric he’s been sharing, and how it impacts the younger members of the rapper’s fanbase. “But throughout history some have used their public platform to spew the plague out loud and spread the contagion to dangerous effect. Kanye is the latest to do so, and we’re seeing how his words embolden others to amplify their vile beliefs…. Powerful voices spewing hatred have frequently driven people to do hateful things. Let’s not be lulled into thinking this time it’s different.”

West was recently booted from Twitter for tweeting that he was going to go “Death Con 3 on Jewish people” — a malapropism that might have been funny in a different context — and when he was invited on various interview shows, he continued to share antisemitic views. West was also sued by the family of George Floyd for $250 million for sharing disinformation about Floyd’s death.

Sit back and relax, because a few people are going to die on vacation. “They’re gonna have to drag you out of here,” Daphne, played by The Bold Type’s Meghann Fahy says to new guests at The White Lotus – Sicily in the opening scene of the second season of The White Lotus. Satisfied with her description of the resort to strangers, Daphne goes into the ocean for a swim where she stumbles upon something in the water, which turns out to be one of “a few” dead bodies.

The bright and stylish second season of The White Lotus (five episodes were given to press to review) is not the same as the staggering first season. It’s an improvement on itself: a deeply erotic, deeply human, and deeply funny but thought-provoking exploration of human desire that is also an incredibly good time.

Season one’s frantic energy, thriller-like pace, and visual style reminiscent of horror suggested that at any moment, anything could happen. Rather than build up to the worst, season two gets its mystery out of the way immediately. With the whole “people are going to die” thing out of the way, the series starts off fresh and can relax a little bit. Guests at The White Lotus – Sicily are more likely to venture off the resort grounds for a day, making the tone of the show and its characters less claustrophobic, and more relaxed. Even the theme song, a more upbeat version of the show’s whistling tune that might inspire you to get off your ass and dance like no one’s watching, establishes that this is something different.

Without the need to make the audience feel edgy — because we already are after seeing Murray Bartlett’s Armond take a sh*t in a suitcase and subsequently get stabbed in the Pineapple Suite — series creator, Survivor finalist, and absolute genius Mike White has more room to sit with his characters. In season two, the characters — all new with the exception of Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya and Jon Gries’ Greg — feel more lived in, more authentic, rather than representations of generations or classes. The characters from season one were infuriating by design, whereas the characters in season two are endearing despite their glaring flaws.

Every actor in season two of The White Lotus — from Michael Imperioli to Aubrey Plaza to Theo James — gives career-best work, but the standouts include F. Murray Abraham as the gross but delightful Bert, and Italian actors Beatrice Grannó and Simona Tabasco. As local Sicilians Mia and Lucia, they provide a majority of the show’s laugh-out-loud moments, all while being the emotional heart of the cast.

Season two of HBO’s The White Lotus wasn’t supposed to exist, yet it feels more essential and intentional than anything else on television this year. The excellent, biting first season was a sharp, uncomfortable by-design analysis of class dynamics in America. Rather than doing the same thing twice, White took his perfect formula and made something new with it. Season two is still about class, but within that, it is also about relationships both professional, familial, platonic, and romantic. But more than anything it is a study of the human impulse.

In season one of The White Lotus, anyone could die. In season two, people will die, but anyone could f**k.

Season two of ‘The White Lotus’ kicks off on Sunday, October 30th via HBO and HBO Max.

Muna conquered the late-night circuit, from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to Jimmy Kimmel Live to The Late Late Show With James Corden. So, the Saddest Factory Records signees took over morning television this weekend, bringing three singles from their self-titled third album to CBS Saturday Morning‘s “Saturday Sessions.”

It doesn’t matter the environment or stage, Muna always seems to feel right at home. That sentiment was bolstered by seamless performances of “Kind Of Girl,” “Silk Chiffon” (their charting single featuring Phoebe Bridgers), and “Solid.” Their infectious uninhibited demeanor displayed on “Saturday Sessions” (and everywhere they go) is hard-earned and miles away from how Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson felt after RCA dropped them two-plus years ago.

“I think signing with Saddest has just been really nice, because it was a fresh start,” Maskin told Uproxx this June upon Muna’s album release — their first since signing with Bridgers and Saddest Factory. “Also, it’s nice to work with Phoebe, someone who is also of a marginalized gender. She just gets us. Not that our A&R at RCA didn’t get us and wasn’t wonderful, but it’s been a nice experience working with Saddest.”

Watch Muna’s mesmerizing “Saturday Sessions” performances above and below.

In an effort to support the Houston Astros in its League Champion Series game, Ted Cruz arrived at Yankee Stadium on Sunday night where he was given a warm New York City welcome by fans. And by warm welcome, we mean fans flipped him off, called him racist, and reminded him of the time that Donald Trump called his wife ugly. There were also chants of “Go back to Cancun,” so really just a whole menagerie of Cruz’s greatest blunders being thrown in his face amongst a sea of boos.

You can see the crowd turn on Cruz in the video below and pay close attention to the eyes of the dude behind him. Either that’s a random baseball fan just trying to get the heck out of Dodge or a Secret Service agent who didn’t sign up to fight an entire stadium full of people from the Bronx.

Despite Cruz getting roasted by Yankee fans, the Astros surprisingly pulled off a win. Maybe their home senator getting publicly humiliated is the team’s lucky charm? Who’s to say? But they should probably make sure it happens every game now. Just strap Cruz to the bus.

In the meantime, you can check out Twitter absolutely loving Cruz’s Yankee Stadium welcome below. It’s not every day you get to see an entire stadium drag a United States senator and publicly scream his greatest failures at him. Baseball truly is America’s sport.

(Via Wu-Tang is for the Children on Twitter)

When We Were Young Fest canceled its first day because Las Vegas was under High Wind Warning. Fans were not happy, but the unexpected free time seems to have given Hayley Williams time to reminisce before Paramore took the festival’s Pink stage to headline Sunday (October 23).

The iconic Paramore lead vocalist posted a handwritten letter to her Instagram Story, reflecting on the challenges she and the band have overcome to arrive in a place where they could authentically co-headline When We Were Young. Williams explained how “this scene” was “not a simple thing” to grow up in, but Paramore “fell in love with this subset of post-punk and hardcore likely because nothing else moved us,” adding, “We didn’t fit in other places.”

Williams detailed how long it took to feel a sense of belonging. “It’s taken a lot of unlearning,” she wrote. She later noted, “Tonight, while we’re running through the lengths of our discography and I’m refraining from singing the word, ‘wh*re,’ know that, inside, I’m celebrating the fact that, as a scene, we’re come a long way.”

Paramore began performing “Misery Business” for the first time since September 2018 during their current North American fall tour ahead of their February 2023 comeback album, This Is Why. The “Misery Business” lyrics — “Once a wh*re, you’re nothing more,” especially — have been a sore subject for Williams, dating back to a 2015 Tumblr post that explored her feminism.

When We Were Young will conclude next Saturday (October 29), and the festival has already unveiled its 2023 lineup.

Read Williams’s full letter below.

“To grow up in this scene was not a simple thing. To be celebrating it (and to be celebrated by it) is not a simple thing. Nothing about this life — for you, me, or anyone — is simple. We fell in love with this subset of post-punk & hardcore likely because nothing else moved us. We didn’t fit in other places. To be a young girl in love with this scene was to have the hope that I might find my own way to belong. It took years to find that belonging. It’s taken a lot of unlearning. A lot of untangling knots I didn’t even know were there. What I did know was that for every, ‘TAKE OFF YOUR TOP!,’ or snarky Punkzine review .. for every dramatic headline pinned on my name, or any season of self-doubt… No one was going to define Paramore but Paramore.

“Nearly 20 years later, we find ourselves a pillar of the very scene that threatened to reject us. And me. I do my best to stay humble. What good is a bloated ego? But beyond the intense devotion of Paramore fans around the world, the reason we made it this far is us. What I really mean to say is — we never banked on trends. Or nostalgia. Or even me, alone. We only did exactly what we knew was real for us. (And sure, I leaned into spite as needed.) Tonight, while we’re running through the lengths of our discography and I’m refraining from singing the word, ‘wh*re,’ know that, inside, I’m celebrating the fact that, as a scene, we’ve come a long way. With much further to go. F*ck the ones who doubted! Hugs to the ones who watched on and even sort of believed. Young girls, queer kids, and anybody of any color … we have shifted this scene together. Messily, angrily, heartbroken, and determined.

“Tonight, for me at least, is about celebrating all the facets of what punk music actually represents. All the things it wasn’t allowed to be when we were young. Can’t wait to see everyone tonight.”

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

Rhaenyra Targaryen had a no good, very bad day(s) during House of the Dragon’s season one finale.

Not only did the heir to the Iron Throne lose both her father and her unborn child in quick succession, but her half-brother Aegon usurped her crown, and her son Lucerys became a midnight snack for the biggest dragon in Westeros. So, yeah, The Realm’s Delight is not having a f*cking delightful time of things right now.

And sure, Emma D’Arcy more than earned their Emmy nomination in this episode with those loaded looks to camera and the powerful figure they cut, portraying the Black Queen as both a benevolent ruler trying to achieve peace for her people and a grieving mother ready to burn it all down if it means the Hightowers will also be amongst the ashes, but if you ask HOTD fans, they’d prefer she focus on the latter.

After the chaos and heartbreak of the season one finale, Twitter is firmly in Rhaenyra’s corner — even if that means committing a few war crimes to ensure a certain One-Eyed Prince and his overbearing mother get what’s coming to them.

In conclusion, Rhaenyra Targaryen has never done anything wrong in her life — but if she does do something wrong, HOTD fans will support that too.

Margot Robbie isn’t in the market for Negan’s bat. She has one of her own.

In an “Ask Me Anything” interview with Elle, the Australian actress, along with her Amsterdam co-stars Rami Malek and John David Washington, was asked what’s the favorite prop she’s taken from a set. “I’ve got my Harley Quinn baseball bat,” Robbie replied. “Next to my bed. Just in case anyone makes the mistake of breaking into my house. They’ll really regret that.” She also said that she has a “really comfy pair of cashmere track pants from The Wolf of Wall Street that weren’t actually on camera ever,” but that’s less intimating than the Harley bat.

Robbie and Christian Bale (who was told to “shut up” and let Taylor Swift sing) have been a delight on the Amsterdam press tour, but the movie itself is a big ol’ bomb. The latest film from director David O. Russell, who has a long timeline of abuse and assault allegations, is expected to lose around $100 million.

As for Harley Quinn, Robbie is likely to portray the character for a fourth time, following Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey, and The Suicide Squad, but the next time the character will appear on-screen, she’ll be played by Lady Gaga in Joker 2. There’s no professional jealously there, however. “I think she’ll do something incredible with it,” she said.

You can watch the Elle interview above.