Month: July 2023

Earlier this year, I was faced with a surreal, worlds-collide moment when Lil Uzi Vert popped out at Wrestlemania at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to perform their increasingly inescapable hit “Just Wanna Rock.” Just a month before, I had seen him perform the same song during his sub-headlining set at Rolling Loud, basically at the same venue, just outside. The first time, I was there to cover the music; the second, I’d been invited by a wrestling-obsessed friend who had floor seats for the main event.

Here we are, three months later, and Uzi’s new album, Pink Tape, features a similar dizzying moment of professional and personal crossover. The late-album song “Nakamura” actually samples the ring entrance music of WWE wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura, someone Uzi undoubtedly sees as something of a kindred spirit. Wrestlers, in general, are kind of weird (to me), but Nakamura takes it a step further with flamboyant, borderline androgynous ring gear and a demeanor somewhere between very intense and incredibly stoned.

Rap fans love to talk about what “the Rap Game needs” because rap fans love to complain about what the “Rap Game” isn’t. The format has evolved so much from what it once was that its followers often feel caught in the lurch between always chasing the newest, latest thing and nostalgically wishing to return to the moment the genre was perfect for what they wanted (coincidentally, this time always seems to overlap with whenever a particular listener happened to be in eighth grade). Thank God we have Lil Uzi Vert, who can do both.

When Uzi first popped up on the scene from the primordial soup of SoundCloud, old-school rap heads were furious. Here was this kid from the streets of Philadelphia who seemingly bought all their clothes from Hot Topic and had pink dreads and facial piercings, as prone to yowling into the mic for extended bouts or hypnotically repeating a seemingly nonsense phrase over and over as spit a hot 16 full of punchlines and gun talk. Uzi wasn’t “real hip-hop,” and certainly couldn’t really rap. Except that Uzi was as much real hip-hop as the yay-slanging studio gangsters of yesteryear and actually could really rap their ass off if they wanted to — they just didn’t think they had to.

Now that Uzi is an established fixture of the hip-hop mainstream, they could have laid off the wild stylistic experimentation, gotten complacent, and just continued doing the same stuff that got them here. Instead, on Pink Tape they are doing stuff like covering System Of A Down’s signature hit “Chop Suey,” which has experienced a resurgence in popularity thanks to Zoomers on TikTok — people that grew with Lil Uzi Vert as their musical heroes the way millennials did with Jay-Z. Is it nostalgia that drove Uzi to record the cover or contemporary awareness? Who cares? It’s cool, whatever we who grew up on the original think.

Uzi straddles multiple genres across Pink Tape, opening the album with in-your-face braggadocio raps and immediately swerving into screeching trap metal on the very next song. There are screaming electric guitars and thundering 808s, futuristic anime references, squeaky voice crooning (645AR is somewhere punching the air), Eiffel 65 samples, horror-movie strings, and more. If anything here isn’t your cup of tea, don’t worry — something on the tape probably is.

The “rap game” — an inaccurate moniker, shout out to Vince Staples — needs artists like Lil Uzi Vert to remind us that hip-hop has always been on the cutting edge, not stuck in the same, capitalism-serving patterns of “what works” (read: sells) already. That hip-hop was always for weirdos and misfits who did stuff like watch wrestling and read comics and played video games. Busta Rhymes once name-checked Hacksaw Jim Duggan; the Wu-Tang Clan members gave themselves nicknames like Tony Stark and Johnny Blaze; The Notorious B.I.G. started a verse boasting he had a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis.

Somewhere along the way as we grow up, we get stuck in what rap used to sound like and start thinking that’s the only thing it should ever sound like. Uzi’s primal scream, anything-goes, try-it-and-see-if-it-sticks approach to music is here to shake us out of that complacency and boredom. Even if it doesn’t always work — let’s keep it real: most of this isn’t really for me, personally — it’s there to open up a new avenue that hasn’t been tried yet. It’s there to pay homage to what did work but to ask, “What if we tried something new?” Lil Uzi Vert indulges all their impulses to make it possible to see what happens like Nakamura climbing to the top rope. You don’t know what you’re going to see next, but you know it’s going to be special.

Pink Tape is out now via Atlantic.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

People have an inordinate interest in Olivia Rodrigo’s romantic interests because she writes so brutally honestly about relationships gone wrong. Rodrigo’s singer-songwriter introduction to the world was “Drivers License,” inciting constant and intense speculation around Joshua Bassett.

Rodrigo’s latest single, “Vampire,” is less than one week into its existence and already having the same effect — leading Rodrigo to address her fans’ guesses as to the identity of the bloodsucking “fame f*cker” in the form of a TikTok joke.

There is no such ambiguity about Rodrigo’s celebrity crush.

The 20-year-old three-time Grammy winner was revealed this morning (July 6) as Vogue‘s August cover star, formalizing her Guts album rollout. Within the accompanying profile by Jia Tolentino, Rodrigo shares that Bruce Springsteen is her “biggest celebrity crush of all time.”

The excerpt places Rodrigo and Tolentino in a record store, where they spot a Springsteen live recording from 1984. Tolentino describes the record’s title as saying, “PORN IN THE USA!” Rodrigo says, “I think I might have to get this for my new apartment. Yeah, you’re coming home with me.”

Rodrigo joined Billy Joel on stage at Madison Square Garden to perform “Deja Vu” and “Uptown Girl” last August. The next logical step is for her to perform somehow, somewhere with Springsteen.

Check out Rodrigo’s Vogue cover spread below.

Guts is out 9/8 via Geffen Records. Find more information here.

Drake and 21 Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour kicked off last night in Chicago, bringing all of the shenanigans and fascinating imagery we’ve come to expect from the Canadian superstar. In addition to teasing his next album, ostensibly titled For All The Dogs, and showing off a statue of the late Virgil Abloh, Drake’s stage dressing included a body double representing his younger self. The pair sits on a couch as Drake “reads” from a notebook while performing his loving ode to his mom, “Look What You’ve Done.” Some are assuming it’s a hologram, but the jury’s still out.

Check out some videos of the Drake double below, along with the remaining tour dates. You can see the setlist here.

07/08 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
07/09 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
07/11 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
07/12 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
07/14 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
07/15 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
07/17 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/18 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/20 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/21 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/23 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
07/25 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
07/26 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
07/28 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
07/29 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
07/31 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
08/01 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
08/03 – Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum
08/12 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/13 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/15 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/16 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/18 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
08/19 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
08/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
08/22 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
08/25 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
08/26 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
08/28 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
08/29 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
09/01 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
09/02 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
09/05 – Glendale, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena
09/06 – Glendale, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena
09/08 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
09/11 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center
09/14 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
09/15 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
09/17 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
09/18 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
09/20 – New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
09/22 – Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
09/25 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
09/26 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
09/28 – Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
09/29 – Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
10/01 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
10/02 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
10/05 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
10/07 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena

Welcome back, leisurely body of water appreciators, to NBA Summer Vacation Watch! Since our inaugural dispatch, the getaways have been going strong and summer has officially kicked into high gear. Signs of this include Buddy Hield returning to the Bahamas (sort of the NBA SVW version of “nature is healing”) and Euro trips to the big three of Italy, France, and Greece continuing to trend. Signs also include a certain Fourth of July “white party” in the Hamptons, but every outlet from Vogue to Fox News covers that, and we prefer to go off the beaten track of respite reporting here. Plus, you know nobody got into what looked like a beautiful pool, lest they wreck their pre-wrinkled linens. Can Tom Brady swim?

I digress. Give us the sweltering summer goods! You’re all hollering at the screen. And I intend to.

Jimmy Butler

Butler was in Rio de Janeiro and took some time out of hanging with footy friends to play game where you play ping pong with a soccer ball, or soccer with a ping pong table, and then skipped rocks down by the river.

Rating: Trust Jimmy to squeeze all the usable, improvable hours out of summer vacation.

Luka Doncic

Doncic is – I’m going to venture a guess based on the Google mapping I’ve done of the northern part of the Adriatic Sea that abuts Slovenia – home for the summer, and sorry to bury the recreational watercraft lede, he’s ripping around in his new zippy watercraft! Could it be bigger? Sure. But why? This thing is going to get you where you need to go, corners like a dream, and best of all you can claim there’s no room/safety hazard when all of your freeloading friends want to come hang out on it for the day.

Rating: Just Luka and the open seas!

Pascal Siakam

After what we in the biz would call a particularly dank season for the Toronto Raptors, it’s nice to see Siakam jetted off to the tropics to have a chill and beautiful vacation. He’s got a beach umbrella, an infinity pool right beside that umbrella on the beach, matching vacation leisurewear, a bag of ice to put on his head in the hot sun, and a stack of pancakes.

Rating: If this column were ever about trades, which it will never be, I’d say the aforementioned list are pretty decent terms.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

Shai went home to Toronto to celebrate Canada Day, the superior early July holiday that falls three days prior to the American Fourth of July. That’s a giant chrysanthemum burst firework going off in the background, reflected in the deep, cool waters of Lake Ontario.

Rating: People always say Montreal is the most “European” of Canadian cities, but that patio bistro set? SGA’s lugtread patent loafers? The deeply aloof yet casually celebratory feeling emanating from this photo? Eat your heart out, all of France!

Russell Westbrook

The Brodie takes Paris! Specifically, for a special show of his own Honor The Gift line. Lots of league favs were in attendance to support the man of the hour, but Russ also had time to put a beautiful cornucopia of fit pics together for us here.

Singling out this one because if you’re an NBA guy in Paris and you don’t do the “I’m picking up the Louvre Pyramid with my fingers” perspective pic, were you even an NBA guy in Paris?

Rating: The Louvre has since replaced the Mona Lisa with this photo.

Buddy Hield

As mentioned in the intro, Buddy Hield has returned to the Bahamas! He’s going to have plenty of working out on the beach to do (the only person that will ever be featured doing so here), but first he took a quick spin out to check in and catch up with the only other famous locals that can hold a candle to him, the swimming pigs.

Rating: Sorry it’s not the whole video but picture Hield chuckling and asking the pigs what’s good and there you have it, a cinema of the mind.

Kyle Kuzma

Kuz did indeed attend the well-covered white party, which was why he was in the Hamptons, but before he did he lounged by a very nice looking pool (two-tier, hot tub foreground and probably saltwater background) and showed off a new hair color in honor of staying in D.C.

Rating: I have no idea if that’s what the hair color was for but I feel deeply in my bones that G-Wiz would approve of the tone.

Myles Turner

Turner, we know (because we told you last time), was in Milan for fashion week, but then he took some time off the runways to hit the coastal waterways of the Amalfi Coast, with a stop in Capri.

He also did a quick run into those majestic, ancient hills of the Lattari Mountain range and took a bite out of the perfect slice to recover.

Rating: I can’t explain the specific math and logic of Summer Vacation, precisely, but the melon and languid coastal breeze cancels out the working out.

D’Angelo Russell

DLo and his family are in Croatia, likely enjoying the off the beaten track beaches they were getting to when they took this boat that went lightly skimming across the bay adjacent to the Adriatic Sea — if they hurry, they can probably easily catch up with Luka Doncic.

Rating: NBA SVW is anti-vacation location gatekeeping (like, in a general location sense, not in a paparazzi lurking around exact location sense) and DLo is with us!

Josh Okogie

When we last caught up with Okogie he, too, was in Milan for fashion week. He’s since been seen ripping around Europe like a Napoleon reborn (in terms of countries visited and miles traveled, not general demeanor or conquering tendencies). He’s made stops in London, Capri, and now Rome, where he played a pickup game with some teenagers, one of whom has a vertical block that might already have Popovich on the phone. This guy is already in the running for NBA SVW MVP.

Rating: I did see the spaghetti coming!!

Delon Wright

https://www.instagram.com/delonwright/?hl=en

Perpetual ray of sunshine Delon Wright was in Paris for vacation, but also for Westbrook’s Honor The Gift launch. In case you were panicking: Don’t. He also did the picking up the Louvre Pyramid photo.

Rating: Fit pic by a fountain that looks like it’s blasting out of you is a new, and great one.

Norman Powell

A friend saw me share these photos of Norman Powell on a nice, relaxing, rent a villa for all your best dudes vacationing in Greece trip, and said they thought it was me. Which: Thank you! But: Alas.

Rating: No offense to Norm, but I’m not sure Marcus Aurelius’, who is heavily quoted in The Daily Stoic Journal, could even conceive of infinity, let alone an infinity pool. Exalted Emp(eror)? More like summer simp.

Lou Williams

Big news! Newly retired Lou Williams is taking his new downtime seriously, and was handed the keys to the holiday grill this long weekend. Williams started off a little warily, listing all the things that would come under his supervision — hot dogs, burgers, chicken — but got right down to business in that snappy red Starbucks apron.

Rating: Not to mix up our ancient civs, but I’m pretty sure Lou Williams cooking you a hot dog is somebody’s form of Valhalla.

Patrick Beverley

Pat Bev landed in Nice (nice), then zoomed over to Ibiza, Spain, like the easy breezy summer skipping stone that he is. Pretty sure the “IYKYK” caption is regarding these jet skis, but it might also be referring to the vast and unknowable depths of the ocean itself.

Rating: Pretty sure it’s just the jet skis.

Terrence Ross

I’m sad we don’t get another update of “Nature with TRoss,” but happy we get this blurry still (best I could do, folks!) of Ross jumping off the ledge of his open-air Jamaica villa into the ocean.

Rating: In the Olympics, this style of dive is known as the very rare, very difficult, “Just totally winging it.” Excellent form here.

Where in the world is Metta Sandiford-Artest?

Sorry we couldn’t pin down Boris Diaw for you this week! Thankfully, Metta Sandiford-Artest has come through and made the sleuthing very easy for us.

In May, Dominic Fike finally announced his sophomore album Sunburn. Singles “Dancing In The Courthouse,” “Ant Pile,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Mama’s Boy” are out now, but there’s a lot more to be excited about.

The singer shared the tracklist with an Instagram post of the songs scrawled on a wall in smudge sharpie. The album’s opening track encapsulates Fike’s mischief with its title: “How Much Is Weed?” Meanwhile, the third track, “Think Fast,” actually has the only feature on the record: Weezer.

He’ll also be kicking off his Don’t Stare At The Sun Tour next week with the first night in Indiana. It’ll go through the summer until the end of August.

“I don’t stop working,” Fike said last year at one of his concerts. “I don’t go out or anything, so the only thing I do is make music, so I have like four albums. … I have this new album that comes out really soon. It’s really good. It’s very honest. I think the world is missing honesty.”

1. “How Much Is Weed?”
2. “Ant Pile”
3. “Think Fast” Feat. Weezer
4. “Sick”
5. “7 Hours”
6. “Dancing In The Courthouse”
7. “Mona Lisa”
8. “Bodies”
9. “Sunburn”
10. “Pasture Child”
11. “4×4”
12. “Frisky”
13. “Mama’s Boy”
14. “Dark”
15. “What Kinda Woman”

Sunburn is out 7/7 via Columbia Records. Find more information here.

Donald Trump Jr. is doing his part to keep eyes on the mysterious cocaine that was discovered in the White House over the holiday weekend. This has led to jokes from people who have likely watched Don Jr.’s recent teary-eyed, twitchy spell of nose rubbing during a media appearance, which followed a string of high-energy Fox News rants.

Jr. is not thrilled that the knives haven’t fully come out for Hunter Biden (although the illegal white powder surfaced when Biden and fam were out of town). No matter, though. Don Jr. is actually comparing this situation to his dad’s famed Diet Coke obsession. This is something that Trump Sr. himself constantly reminded people of (while also calling it “garbage” that “I’ll still keep drinking”), and his delight over the carbonated beverage was so pronounced that he did what was probably the coolest thing that a Trump has ever done: install an actual “Diet Coke button” within the Oval Office.

Still, Don Jr. is steamed that people enjoyed ribbing his dad over his beloved soda addiction. “For perspective,” the MAGA heir complained. “[T]he media made a much bigger deal about my father drinking multiple Diet Cokes a day then they are about actually finding cocaine in the White House which also led to an evacuation!”

There’s a lot here. Yet at least this cocaine-related complaint is distracting him from spreading more conspiracy theories about the doomed Titanic tourists. Don Jr. might also be distracting himself from an Australian official calling him a “big baby” over his apparently nixed speaking tour Down Under. Who knows!

Last summer, I reached out to two of the creative minds behind one of my favorite television shows, FX’s The Bear, about the series’ distinctive and proudly unfashionable “dad rock”-heavy soundtrack. I did this because along with loving the show I also loved the music. More than that, the soundtrack spoke to me as a person who (like the characters on The Bear) came of age in the Upper Midwest in the ’80s and ’90s. I have never worked in a high-end restaurant, and I am a terrible cook. But The Bear nevertheless has made me “feel seen.”

I learned that Christopher Storer, the creator and co-showrunner as well as frequent writer and director, and his co-executive producer Josh Senior took over music supervisor duties as a way to save money on a relatively tight budget. But ultimately this decision gave The Bear a unique musical personality utterly unlike the standard, taste-conscious, run-of-the-mill “prestige” TV show. Even if you hate the music on The Bear, the show’s soundtrack feels handmade, like a mixtape, in a way most TV soundtracks do not.

This summer, The Bear returned for season two, and if anything Storer and Senior have doubled down on their unorthodox approach. Last season, they leaned heavily on the kinds of legacy alt-rock (Wilco, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Counting Crows), ’80 AOR (John Mellencamp, Genesis), and ’70s classic rock (Van Morrison) songs that you won’t likely hear in a boutique HBO series, but you probably will hear in a Chicago Italian beef joint. This season, they have gone back to many of the same artists in somewhat different proportions — there’s less Wilco and more R.E.M. this time — which helps to inform the singular world of the show and the personality of the characters. On The Bear, the soundtrack is practically a character itself, a Greek chorus that comments on the action and undergirds the overall Midwestern milieu. And it absolutely separates The Bear from other critically acclaimed TV shows, which typically use “cool” music as another signifier of “high-end quality” in nondescript, even soulless fashion.

When I reached out to them again last month, Storer and Senior admitted that both seasons of The Bear started with a playlist that they collaborated on. And that playlist stayed more or less the same as the episodes were created. We talked about more than a dozen of the songs — which include several tracks that originally appeared on other soundtracks — on this season’s playlist, and I found out why they were picked and what they added to the episodes.

Bruce Hornsby & The Range, “The Show Goes On”

Christopher Storer (Creator/Co-Showrunner/Executive Producer/Writer/Director): Basically every year, Josh and I put together a long playlist based on the scripts. Correct me if I’m wrong, Josh, but I feel like the one we made at the beginning of the year pretty much is the show, right?

Josh Senior (Executive Producer): Yeah, that’s correct. Outside of the ones that are scripted in or we know in the moment, we try and find a place for these songs that we share with each other while we’re coming up with how the whole season’s going to come together. And Hornsby, I think, was your first pick on the list, Chris.

CS: Growing up, I spent a lot of time at Mr. Beef with my buddy Chris Zucchero, and I remember one of the earliest memories I had of a movie filming in Chicago was Backdraft. If you remember, in the middle of the movie, there’s this really beautiful montage set to that song.

We knew this season was going to be a little bit of a departure, pace-wise. There was something captured in “The Show Goes On” that’s so calming for a second, especially after where we were coming from in season one. As we started to get more exterior footage from Chicago, it just felt correct. It was just such a great, off-the-jump needle drop.

Forgive me if this is a stretch, but this season has a bit of a sports movie feel, where you have a rag-tag team of misfits who come together for a mission. You also have a ton of Coach K references scattered throughout the episodes. And now you have Bruce Hornsby, who is a known basketball fan and amateur player, setting the tone. Is there any extra resonance there?

CS: 100 percent, man. I think it’s cool that you caught that, too, because each aspect of the music we wanted to reverberate somewhere in other plot lines and other themes running through the show. It’s interesting, because also a big part of picking Coach K was that he served in the military. And, obviously, there’s a big theme in this year about service and acts of service.

“The Show Goes On” also is pretty clearly about attempting to move on after a loved one dies.

JS: I always took something away from that song about searching for either positivity or some solace after something had happened. I think that’s what every character in the show is ultimately looking for.

CS: And the rebirth. If you look at the way that the season starts, it’s the polar opposite of the way that we ended the seventh and eighth episodes last year. Things are tense at the end of the show, and I think being able to introduce the audience to a new season with a song like that helped us ease people into the pace shift that the first episode has, and really established a new look at the world that people already knew a little bit about.

Wilco, “Handshake Drugs”

You used the Kicking Television version, right?

CS: I think it is the Kicking Television version. It was so funny you said that, because Josh and I were going back and forth on which live version to use. But it’s sort of a callback. We don’t have a lot of Wilco this season. That was keeping in the spirit of season one, where you feel like, “Uh-oh, it’s going to get chaotic again,” and then it slows down. There was something about that song that just felt that as much as this band of characters is trying to move on and start from a positive place, we see trouble is always around when you’re opening a restaurant or endeavoring to do something crazy like that.

Have you heard from Jeff Tweedy about how you have used his songs?

CS: We talk to Susie Tweedy. In fact, I texted her 10 minutes ago, weirdly. I love that family so much. And Susie is a dear, dear friend of ours.

Counting Crows, “Baby, I’m A Big Star Now”

What’s unique about how you use music on The Bear is that you break two unwritten rules about supervising soundtracks for TV shows: You’re typically not supposed to use the same artist more than once, and you’re definitely not supposed to use the same songs more than once.

JS: We don’t subscribe to these rules.

Wilco, Counting Crows, R.E.M., Van Morrison — you have this almost-repertory of artists that you use repeatedly. And I appreciate that, because it makes the world of the show feel lived-in and singular. In real life, people tend to listen to their favorite songs over and over.

CS: I think the easiest answer is we’re never trying to be cool. I know that sounds lame. This is stuff that we like and music that’s in our life. And growing up in Chicago, I listened to XRT a lot, and these are some of the memories I have from around the city and hearing some of these things.

And it’s interesting that you brought up Counting Crows, because this season there’s a Rounders poster in the basement of the restaurant. Rounders is one of my favorite movies. The writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien are dear friends of mine and mentors. And the song at the end of Rounders is “Baby, I’m a Big Star Now,” which had been previously unreleased since the movie, because I think there was some legal issues with the band and Miramax when the movie was made. But the fact that we were able to load it out for the show was great. And, as of yesterday, I believe it’s on Spotify. So, for Counting Crows fans, you could finally hear that song.

R.E.M., “Strange Currencies”

This is obviously the central song of the season. It’s practically a theme for season two.

CS: We use three different versions of it as a baseline theme for Claire and Carm. It was really cool to use the original track off Monster and then the Scott Litt remix, which is awesome. And then Josh was able to get a hold of a demo.

JS: That was really cool. One of the things I’ll say about this is don’t discount partnership in the conversation. Having the ability to have a dialogue with artists and their reps about music directly as the people who are making the show has afforded us such a deeper level of collaboration. That demo is a really good example. That’s something we didn’t even know was available. It’s not published anywhere. We hadn’t seen it in another movie. But we started talking about how we were going to use the song and the way that we were going to use it.

If you notice we have a small amount of original composition for the show. We really use our needle drops like composition. And so, you have these themes that come back. And I think it makes sense in our heads at least to reuse a lot of these artists and even songs specifically as a way to create some repetition and match the story as it’s evolving.

How did you settle on “Strange Currencies” being the song?

CS: Actually that was, I think, one of the first songs on the playlist when we knew that there was going to be the very, very beginnings of a love story this season. Josh and I both love, love, love, love R.E.M., but particularly that song. There’s something about “Strange Currencies” that, at least for me, reminds me of being 16 where anything felt possible and everything felt impossible. Because the lyrics are about failing and trying again. I think everyone has a different interpretation of it, but it definitely feels like the potential of something that’s not going to work out.

That’s on top of which, on the Scott Litt remix, Stipe’s vocal is incredible.

JS: Thematically, it’s right on. It’s every character in the show. When you step back and look even further away from Claire and Carm, it’s the relationship with Ayo and her father, Ebon and Gillian, Tina and her friends, it reverberates through every character.

This might be another stretch, but Monster is a maligned R.E.M. record. And I feel like you guys often pull songs from maligned records. And that seems to align thematically with the show as well.

CS: It’s so interesting, because I was a little too young to see when R.E.M. was at what some people would call their height, with Automatic For The People. So, I discovered them later in life and went backward. I loved Up, and I loved New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and I loved Monster. And then, it was like, “Holy shit, their other stuff is even better!” So going backward was this really fun foray into their music. But I love Monster, and I love “Crush With Eyeliner.” And there’s something about “Strange Currencies” that has just stuck with me forever, because there is something just heartbreaking in it that I can’t quite pinpoint.

I saw the Monster tour. And I was in Milwaukee, which is not far from Chicago. Richie and I are the same age, so my fan-fiction for The Bear is that we were at the same R.E.M. show in 1995.

CS: Richie was either at the Monster tour or Rage and Wu-Tang at the Rosemont.

Freddie Fender, “Before The Next Teardrop Falls”

Liza Colón-Zayas does a beautiful karaoke version of this song in episode five. Why was this the right karaoke song for her character Tina?

CS: Well, it’s a direct reference to one of my favorite movies, Something Wild.

Oh wow, I missed that.

CS: In the high school reunion scene, I believe Gary Goetzman is singing it on stage when Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels are walking in.

Episode five, which Joanna [Calo] directed beautifully, that’s one of my favorite episodes of the season. They’re at a weird high school reunion party, and it feels childlike. It’s like Carmy is 15 again. And I feel like because he started this mission of becoming a chef at such a young age, he missed out on a lot of his life and almost stopped developing. And for Tina, she’s with a new group of friends and scared, and there was something so gorgeous about her singing that random song in the bar.

The Replacements, “Bastards Of Young”

CS: One of my favorite songs of all time.

In the scene in which you use this song, a character is talking about how Pleased To Meet Me is the best Replacements record. Which is interesting, because “Bastards Of Young” obviously is from Tim.

CS: Tim is my favorite Replacements record.

Mine, too.

JS: I think I like Pleased To Meet Me a little bit more. That might be controversial for this phone call. But much like Chris explaining the way that he came to R.E.M., I didn’t really come to appreciate that band until later in life. I’m a year or two younger than Chris, and I think I learned about R.E.M. from my older sister playing records in her room. When you get secondhand introduced to someone’s favorite music, they do a good job of just playing the hits for you. And I think that skewed my appreciation of some of these bands. Pleased to Meet Me is just really hard to mess with in my mind.

When I brought this up, Chris immediately said it was one of his favorite songs of all time. Is that enough to get a song on the show? It just has to, in your minds, rock?

JS: I don’t think we take picking the music particularly seriously. We’re in this world so much in making the show that it’s not a separate discourse. There’s music that we like for the reason that we’re already talking about, the world of the show that we’re trying to build. It’s not like we just have our personal playlists. The songs are all picked with that in mind. But liking a song, I think, is definitely enough to try it out.

CS: Seriously, dude. We’re not trying to impress anybody with our musical knowledge. Truly, we’re not show-offs.

Ira Newborn, “Weird Romance”

CS: The one music cue that Josh and I snuck in there that I don’t think anyone’s really picked up on yet. There’s a moment with Carm and Claire, where it’s towards the end of the party in episode five, and they’re having a nice quiet moment in the kitchen, and we got the Ira Newborn score from Weird Science.

Now that seems like a show-offy moment!

CS: It’s this really beautiful piece of music.

JS: And then the guy’s like, “Yeah!”

Lindsey Buckingham, “I Want You”

CS: We had a lot of fun in the Christmas flashback episode, because we kept thinking Donna made a Christmas playlist but then forgot all this other shit was in there. I feel like so many times I’ve gone to a Christmas party, and there’s been Christmas music, and all of a sudden you hear like Nilsson or Crowded House in there.

JS: Steve Earle.

CS: They played through all the Christmas music, and it just went to the next list she made. I was like, “Donna is a Lindsay Buckingham fan.”

Tangerine Dream, “Diamond Diary”

This song is used in in the “Forks” episode, which has emerged as a critical and fan favorite for the season. It also appears in Michael Mann’s Thief, which I’m guessing had special appeal because of the Chicago connection?

CS: One of our consultants this year is Donnie Madia, who owns Avec and Publican, these great restaurants in Chicago. He’s someone I met way back when I was hanging out at Mr. Beef when I was 20. He has always been this wonderful figure in our life. And he has great stories about when Michael Mann was making Thief in Chicago. I think our editor Adam Epstein put that in, not as a joke but as a surprise to Josh and I.

When we heard it we’re like, ‘This is such a great fucking drop, dude!” And then we were like, “Oh god, are we going to get beat up for taking a Thief cue?” But we’re like, “Who cares?” It’s so loving and works perfectly.

And by the way, Richie would love Thief. Richie would love Michael Mann. He’s obsessed with Ridley Scott.

JS: And we did use a Tangerine Dream song in season one as well. So it was nice to be able to use them again.

Otis Redding, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long To Stop Now” (Live)

I believe this is the Live In Europe version?

CS: Yes, it is.

I’m intrigued by how often you guys pull from live albums. You did that a lot in season one, and you did it again this season. What is the thinking there?

CS: There’s something really alive about it. It’s just the simple answer. There’s something about live tracks, where you know the song, but it feels different than the song that you know.

The thing I always say about the greatest live albums is that you’re hearing the room as much as the music.

JS: And this helps with our mix and the way that we approach sound in general, because we aren’t just picking the music. We do try and build around the fact that you can hear audience and applause and a little bit more distance between the performer and the microphone. I think those songs always feel more real and authentic when we try and put them in and around our dialogue and sound design.

Wilco, “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” and Pearl Jam, “Animal”

These two songs were both in season one, and you reprise them both effectively in the season two finale.

CS: Because episode 10 starts off with, I think, an 11 or 12-minute take, and we sense that the shit is going to hit the fan again, it was so great to start building up “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” only to reverse that by dropping “Animal” when Sydney and Richie save the day unbeknownst to Carmy, who thinks it’s still melting down. I think it was just such a great signal to the audience like-

JS: “Oh, fuck, here we go again.”

“Spiders (Kidsmoke)” really does bring back the “sick to your stomach” feeling from the first season.

JS: And that moment is designed to bring back that feeling. It’s like a sensory memory where you’re hearing that song, and the camera’s not cutting, and things seem to be going really badly. I think we were hoping that the audience would see all of those things, and they’d be like, “Oh shit, here we go again.”

Nine Inch Nails, “Hope We Can Again”

CS: We should also say Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were really lovely and generous to us this year. In the finale, we ran a Nine Inch Nails song three times in a row.

Josh, is it three or four times in a row?

JS: It’s 30 minutes that we ran the song. It’s an eight-minute song that we ran for 30 minutes.

CS: As we were cutting the episode, we were like, “This works so well. Let’s just keep playing it.” And we run that right into an original piece by Trent and Atticus and then “Half A World Away.” And that’s the way we end the season. I think as far as music goes, that’s us in a nutshell right there.

R.E.M., “Half A World Away”

You mentioned that you had a playlist at the beginning of the season that you followed faithfully to the end. Did you always envision this song as the one to end the season?

CS: That was always it, because I think we were using R.E.M. as a theme throughout the season. There’s something in “Half A World Away” that really speaks to waiting for some miracle to happen or some form of connection and feeling lost at the same time.

JS: I think it was probably the second or third song that Chris added to our list, before I had ever even added anything. He was like, “Here’s this season. Here’s some of the music.” And you just knew that the whole thing had to land with “Half A World Away.”

Are you guys already assembling a playlist for the next season?

CS: If we’re lucky enough to get another season, we definitely have ideas.

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

Lately, Britney Spears appears to have been mending fences after meeting up with her mother and sister. It appears she may have a new beef brewing now, though: TMZ reports that Spears was hit in the face by new NBA star Victor Wembanyama’s security team, so hard that she fell to the ground.

Spears has yet to publicly address the alleged incident.

This post is being updated.

Yesterday, Taylor Swift announced 14 new shows for the European leg of The Eras Tour next year, and she’s bringing with Paramore along. However, other places want her, too — like Canada.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau replied to the “Anti-Hero” singer’s tweet about the tour announcement with an invitation: “It’s me, hi. I know places in Canada would love to have you. So, don’t make it another cruel summer. We hope to see you soon.”

This follows a whole string of Swift being celebrated by cities in the United States on her tour stops. In Tampa, Florida, she was made honorary mayor for a day and given a key to the city. In Arlington, Texas, a road was temporary renamed as Taylor Swift Way. Glendale, Arizona temporarily renamed itself to Swift City.

“Arlington is participating in a friendly competition with other U.S. cities hosting The Eras Tour to demonstrate its ‘Reputation’ as one of Swift’s biggest fans,” Arlington’s statement read. “We don’t have any ‘Bad Blood’ with Las Vegas, which recently lit its Gateway Arches in colors that correspond with Swift’s various musical eras, but never in our ‘Wildest Dreams’ would we go so far as to ‘Change’ Arlington’s name as our friends in Glendale, Ariz., did when it rebranded as Swift City.”

Olivia Rodrigo is known for her bold lyricism. Most recently, her record-breaking songwriting instincts produced “Vampire,” the lead single from her forthcoming sophomore album, Guts.

The piano-based ballad steadily ramps up to the song’s hook, “Bloodsucker, fame f*cker / Bleedin’ me dry like a g*ddamn vampire.”

Rodrigo is tending to the f-bomb for the clean version of “Vampire.” The three-time Grammy winner posted a TikTok on Wednesday, July 5, of her running through various alternatives in the studio with producer Dan Nigro. She had some fun with it, giggling as she cycled through “fame lover,” “fame hunter,” “tree hugger,” “whale blubber,” “garlic butter,” and “Mark Zucker.”

“Dream crusher it is,” Rodrigo captioned the TikTok.

In May 2021, Rodrigo explained to Nylon why she didn’t hesitate to curse in her seminal smash, “Drivers License”:

“I’m very aware of that classic ‘Disney pop girl’ archetype. My music is definitely separate from my acting in a way I always dreamed would happen. When ‘Drivers License’ came out, everyone was like, ‘I have no idea who this Olivia Rodrigo girl is, but I love this song.’ That is the absolute dream for me, because I’ve always wanted to be taken seriously as a songwriter. Being an actor can interfere with that, just because being an actor is based on telling lies, and being a songwriter is based on telling the absolute, whole truth.

And people always ask me, ‘Oh, did you say f*ck in ‘Drivers License’ to show that you aren’t just a Disney star?’ It’s cool that people might think that, but I’m just making music that I love and that I feel passionate about. It’s who I am. I have a dirty mouth. It was what felt natural and good to me, and people resonated with that. If I am ushering in a new generation of pop stars that aren’t afraid to speak their mind, that’s so cool. I’m just doing my thing, though.”

Guts is out 9/8 via Geffen Records. Find more information here.