Month: November 2023

In this semi-regular column, Steven Hyden follows up on his book and podcast to discuss rivalries involving musical artists both historic and contemporary.

This weekend, I will do something I swore I would never do for most of my life: Attend a concert by The Eagles. Throughout my teens, twenties, and a big chunk of my thirties, I loathed the laidback troubadours of decadent 1970s Los Angeles with great gusto. I despised them for all of the usual kneejerk reasons that people hate the Eagles: they did not rock, they espoused problematic opinions about women (witchy or not), they epitomized the smug and unearned superiority of baby boomers, they were played way too much on FM radio, they were responsible for the monumentally terrible song “Get Over It,” etc.

But in my late 30s — around the time I regrettably printed the words “Don Henley sucks” at the start of my second book — my opinion changed. The 2013 documentary History Of Eagles had a lot to do with it — a band willing to make themselves look this unlikable somehow made them more likable to me. Each time Glenn Frey fired one of his guitar players with increasing ruthlessness, a growing percentage of my heart was won over. I couldn’t help myself. The Eagles were Sid, and I was Nancy. After that, I could no longer live with the fallacy of disliking the Eagles when they weren’t all that different (musically, philosophically, cocaine-ically) from other boomer rock acts from the late ’70s L.A. era: Fleetwood Mac, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt … and Steely Dan.

I forgot to mention that my interest in seeing the Eagles on this tour — which is advertised as their last, but in classic classic-rock fashion will continue for at least the next few years — was due in part to the inclusion of Steely Dan as the opener. Alas, health problems have sidelined the 75-year-old Donald Fagen, so the Dan are replaced on my bill by the Doobie Brothers. (I’m hoping against hope that “Michael McDonald Does The Backing Vocals For ‘Peg’” will be slotted on the Doobies’ set list.) When the tour was announced earlier this year, there was some predictable griping about the pairing, with some loud groans about how the Eagles should be opening for Steely Dan, man. This underlined the unexpected (and already much-discussed) rehabilitation of Steely Dan among non-boomer audiences. Two decades after they upset Eminem and Radiohead at the 2001 Grammys, Fagen and his late partner Walter Becker have become extremely meme-able musical godheads for millennials and zoomers, a fate that seems like it will never be possible for the Eagles.

But again: There is a lot hypocrisy here. Of all the artists I mentioned earlier, the most alike are the Eagles and Steely Dan. They are both hyper-proficient soft-rock acts that peaked commercially in the late ’70s. They both fizzled out in the early ’80s, and then reunited in the early ’90s. They are both led by male songwriting duos — in each instance, one guy is named Don and the other guy died in the late 2010s at the age of 67. They are both famous for writing about “the dark side of L.A.” in a manner that actually glamorizes (to the point of likely driving up the population of) America’s second-largest city. They are both managed by iconic “Satan” Irving Azoff. They both employed the services of Timothy B. Schmit, a man who seems too sweet for either band. Both bands were skeptical of punk, which is why expressing distaste for the Eagles and Steely Dan remains meaningful for a certain kind of aging Gen Xer fond of posting provocative opinions on social media. They were both sampled by landmark hip-hop albums in 1989 — 3 Feet High And Rising for Steely Dan, and Paul’s Boutique for the Eagles. I could go on. (And I will shortly.)

But none of this matters in the minds of the public. Steely Dan vs. The Eagles is a classic rivalry of ’70s rock. Let’s explore this further.

The Beef

I’m going to be brief here as this is well-trod territory. In the Steely Dan song “Everything You Did” from 1976’s The Royal Scam, Fagen sings, “Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening.” This is allegedly a reference by Walter Becker to a real-life argument he had with his real-life girlfriend, who apparently really loved the Eagles. (Assuming the album she was playing was One Of These Nights, which would have been the newly released Eagles LP when the song was written, I wonder if she enjoyed “Lyin’ Eyes,” another “I don’t trust the woman in my life” track that feels like a sister number to “Everything You Did.”)

Later that year, the Eagles referenced Steely Dan in this “Hotel California” lyric: “They stab it with their steely knives / But they just can’t kill the beast.” It was meant as a tribute. Years later, in an interview Bob Costas, Frey praised Fagen and Becker for their cleverness, and credited them with inspiring the “weird” lyrics of their most famous song.

The Metaphor

In terms of actual personal animus, Steely Dan vs. The Eagles is not a real rivalry. But it absolutely is a real rivalry in the sense of these bands representing opposing ideas. The common shorthand for describing their dynamic is “nerds (Steely Dan) vs. jocks (the Eagles),” which is fine if also superficial. (It has a lot to do with the latter band literally sharing a name with a professional football team.) The reality is that we’re talking about two enormously rich old-guy rock bands. It’s just that one of them offers the listener plausible deniability of that fact. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are insiders — feted with Grammys, surrounded by world-class session players, and ensconced in the finest recording studios on the planet — who have the cachet of outsider misfits. They fit in without seeming like they fit in. The Eagles meanwhile were always a hugely popular band that carried themselves like a hugely popular band. They want it known that they fit in.

Herein lies the central allegorical conflict posed by Steely Dan vs. The Eagles: Is it better to appear as though you tried to be successful on purpose, or like your success happened in spite of everything else about yourself?

The Case For Steely Dan

I like their music more. They are funnier, smarter, and weirder than the Eagles. Their albums are a lot more consistent. (“The Disco Strangler” would not have made Steely Dan’s garbage bin during the making of Gaucho.) They are less culturally ubiquitous — there is no Steely Dan song I have heard 1/100th as many times as “Take It Easy” or “Hotel California,” even though I have consciously set out to listen to Steely Dan 100 times more than the Eagles. Steely Dan doesn’t have the same amount of “bad boomer” baggage that the Eagles do. They have some “bad boomer” baggage, but it has thinned considerably in recent years. When I picture a typical Eagles fan, I like that person less than the individual conjured by the prompt “Steely Dan fan.” Based on this interview, Timothy B. Schmit even prefers Steely Dan, perhaps because Don Henley has held the Sword Of Damocles over his neck (financially speaking) for the past 45 years.

Above all, I like Steely Dan more because they are less obvious than the Eagles. Most bands on Earth are less obvious than the Eagles, but their obviousness is even more, well, obvious in relation to Steely Dan due to their shared subject matter. In a 2016 interview, Don Henley enumerated the following themes as central to Eagles songs: “Loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the American dream, idealism realized and idealism thwarted, illusion versus reality, the difficulties of balancing loving relationships and work, trying to square the conflicting relationship between business and art; the corruption in politics, the fading away of the sixties dream of ‘peace, love and understanding.’” You can hear all of that stuff in the song “Hotel California.” It’s impossible to miss. There’s a hotel called California that represents the state of California (and California as a state of mind). This place could be heaven or hell, which we know because Don sings, “This could be heaven or this could be hell.” It evokes the spirit of 1969, though that might only refer to the Captain’s wine. (But it doesn’t. The song is clearly about the end of the sixties.) Finally, it all culminates with some instrumental fireworks from Joe Walsh and Don Felder, whose harmonized guitars represent the main character’s failure to escape his own nostalgia.

Now consider the Steely Dan song “Aja,” which is also about all of those things that Don listed. In “Aja,” the protagonist is in an opium den. This could also be heaven or hell, but Donald and Walter do not bother pointing this out. The main character is fixated on people on a hill. They may or may not be real. We never know for sure. These people never stare. They just don’t care. They’ve got time to burn. Because they are free. For the protagonist, they symbolize his own longing — for the past, for an unrealized version of himself, for all of his dreams that were never fulfilled. Finally, the song culminates with some instrumental fireworks from jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. No disrespect to Joe Walsh or Don Felder, but they are not Wayne Shorter.

I could have done a similar comparison of the Eagles’ “Life In The Fast Lane” (a song about life in the fast lane) and Steely Dan’s “Glamour Profession” (a better song about life in the fast lane) or the Eagles’ “The Sad Café” (a self-serious song about the end of an era) and Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” (a hilarious song about the end of an era). But I think I’ve made my point: The Eagles tell you what their songs are about, and Steely Dan shows you.

The Case For The Eagles

Lest it seem like I am knocking “Hotel California” let me be clear: I love “Hotel California.” I know I’m not supposed to say that. I am supposed to hate “Hotel California” because the Eagles suck and boomers are bad and The Big Lebowski is good and blah blah blah. But if you can set aside all of the baggage that comes with this song, and trick your mind into forgetting about all of the sports bars and hockey games and gas stations it has soundtracked in your life, you might come to the following conclusions: 1) The harmonized guitars rip; 2) The song’s central metaphor is sound; 3) You have probably quoted the line about how “you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave” at least once without realizing it; 4) The Eagles are good at writing “end of the innocence” songs.

(This is also true of Don Henley’s solo career, which is highlighted by the two finest songs of his entire oeuvre, “The Boys Of Summer” and — obviousness alert — “The End Of The Innocence.” Haters will give the credit to Mike Campbell and Bruce Hornsby, respectively, for writing the music on those tracks, but Don’s melodies and words on are tip-top. To quote Jeff Lebowski, “out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” is true “that creep can roll, man” material.)

Let’s go back to the central allegorical conflict posed by Steely Dan vs. The Eagles: Is it better to appear as though you tried to be successful on purpose, or like your success happened in spite of everything else about yourself? Contrary to the “nerds vs. jocks” stereotype, Don Henley and Glenn Frey were not born-and-bred Southern Californians. And they were not born on third base. Don is from a tiny town in East Texas, and in this 2001 Charlie Rose interview he talks about being a small, sensitive kid who was bullied by the country boys in town because he was into books and music. And Frey is a Detroit native who cut his teeth as a teenager playing in garage bands before hooking up for a time with Bob Seger. (You can hear Glenn’s backing vocals on Seger’s immortal “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man.”) They were both Middle American kids who moved to Los Angeles in order to make their fortune, and they were willing to work their asses of to do it. Once they got rich, they could justifiably feel as though they earned it. So, why pretend otherwise?

Donald and Walter worked their asses off, too, but they were products of Bard College, as anyone who loves “My Old School” will tell you. Their smartypants sensibility is in line with a typical “elite college” mentality, where your social status is more secure, which means you can also afford to be noncommittal about your status. If the Eagles are the more obvious band, maybe it was because Don hustled for three and a half years at two low-prestige Texas schools — Stephen F. Austin State University and North Texas State University — and felt more urgency to prove his literary bonafides. (He not only read Henry David Thoreau, damn it, but he also saved Walden Woods!) Or maybe that obviousness comes from the proximity of the writers to their subject matter. I can picture Glenn Frey as one of the people in “Life In The Fast Lane.” I can also imagine him as a character in “Glamour Profession.” Steely Dan observed L.A. strivers and wrote about them, but the Eagles were the people in those songs.

What it comes down to is a matter of class — the more you need to be successful (because you have no other options in life) the more open and less ashamed you will be about seeking out. (And the most susceptible you will be to the excesses that come with that success.) On that count, I relate more to the Eagles than Steely Dan. I also believe in taking it to the limit one more time. Or more if that’s what it takes.

Who Won?

If you conduct an informal poll of extremely online people, Steely Dan wins in a landslide. If you ask the public at large, the Eagles win in a walk. This strikes me as just, and I suspect both parties would find it amenable.

In this semi-regular column, Steven Hyden follows up on his book and podcast to discuss rivalries involving musical artists both historic and contemporary.

This weekend, I will do something I swore I would never do for most of my life: Attend a concert by The Eagles. Throughout my teens, twenties, and a big chunk of my thirties, I loathed the laidback troubadours of decadent 1970s Los Angeles with great gusto. I despised them for all of the usual kneejerk reasons that people hate the Eagles: they did not rock, they espoused problematic opinions about women (witchy or not), they epitomized the smug and unearned superiority of baby boomers, they were played way too much on FM radio, they were responsible for the monumentally terrible song “Get Over It,” etc.

But in my late 30s — around the time I regrettably printed the words “Don Henley sucks” at the start of my second book — my opinion changed. The 2013 documentary History Of Eagles had a lot to do with it — a band willing to make themselves look this unlikable somehow made them more likable to me. Each time Glenn Frey fired one of his guitar players with increasing ruthlessness, a growing percentage of my heart was won over. I couldn’t help myself. The Eagles were Sid, and I was Nancy. After that, I could no longer live with the fallacy of disliking the Eagles when they weren’t all that different (musically, philosophically, cocaine-ically) from other boomer rock acts from the late ’70s L.A. era: Fleetwood Mac, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt … and Steely Dan.

I forgot to mention that my interest in seeing the Eagles on this tour — which is advertised as their last, but in classic classic-rock fashion will continue for at least the next few years — was due in part to the inclusion of Steely Dan as the opener. Alas, health problems have sidelined the 75-year-old Donald Fagen, so the Dan are replaced on my bill by the Doobie Brothers. (I’m hoping against hope that “Michael McDonald Does The Backing Vocals For ‘Peg’” will be slotted on the Doobies’ set list.) When the tour was announced earlier this year, there was some predictable griping about the pairing, with some loud groans about how the Eagles should be opening for Steely Dan, man. This underlined the unexpected (and already much-discussed) rehabilitation of Steely Dan among non-boomer audiences. Two decades after they upset Eminem and Radiohead at the 2001 Grammys, Fagen and his late partner Walter Becker have become extremely meme-able musical godheads for millennials and zoomers, a fate that seems like it will never be possible for the Eagles.

But again: There is a lot hypocrisy here. Of all the artists I mentioned earlier, the most alike are the Eagles and Steely Dan. They are both hyper-proficient soft-rock acts that peaked commercially in the late ’70s. They both fizzled out in the early ’80s, and then reunited in the early ’90s. They are both led by male songwriting duos — in each instance, one guy is named Don and the other guy died in the late 2010s at the age of 67. They are both famous for writing about “the dark side of L.A.” in a manner that actually glamorizes (to the point of likely driving up the population of) America’s second-largest city. They are both managed by iconic “Satan” Irving Azoff. They both employed the services of Timothy B. Schmit, a man who seems too sweet for either band. Both bands were skeptical of punk, which is why expressing distaste for the Eagles and Steely Dan remains meaningful for a certain kind of aging Gen Xer fond of posting provocative opinions on social media. They were both sampled by landmark hip-hop albums in 1989 — 3 Feet High And Rising for Steely Dan, and Paul’s Boutique for the Eagles. I could go on. (And I will shortly.)

But none of this matters in the minds of the public. Steely Dan vs. The Eagles is a classic rivalry of ’70s rock. Let’s explore this further.

The Beef

I’m going to be brief here as this is well-trod territory. In the Steely Dan song “Everything You Did” from 1976’s The Royal Scam, Fagen sings, “Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening.” This is allegedly a reference by Walter Becker to a real-life argument he had with his real-life girlfriend, who apparently really loved the Eagles. (Assuming the album she was playing was One Of These Nights, which would have been the newly released Eagles LP when the song was written, I wonder if she enjoyed “Lyin’ Eyes,” another “I don’t trust the woman in my life” track that feels like a sister number to “Everything You Did.”)

Later that year, the Eagles referenced Steely Dan in this “Hotel California” lyric: “They stab it with their steely knives / But they just can’t kill the beast.” It was meant as a tribute. Years later, in an interview Bob Costas, Frey praised Fagen and Becker for their cleverness, and credited them with inspiring the “weird” lyrics of their most famous song.

The Metaphor

In terms of actual personal animus, Steely Dan vs. The Eagles is not a real rivalry. But it absolutely is a real rivalry in the sense of these bands representing opposing ideas. The common shorthand for describing their dynamic is “nerds (Steely Dan) vs. jocks (the Eagles),” which is fine if also superficial. (It has a lot to do with the latter band literally sharing a name with a professional football team.) The reality is that we’re talking about two enormously rich old-guy rock bands. It’s just that one of them offers the listener plausible deniability of that fact. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are insiders — feted with Grammys, surrounded by world-class session players, and ensconced in the finest recording studios on the planet — who have the cachet of outsider misfits. They fit in without seeming like they fit in. The Eagles meanwhile were always a hugely popular band that carried themselves like a hugely popular band. They want it known that they fit in.

Herein lies the central allegorical conflict posed by Steely Dan vs. The Eagles: Is it better to appear as though you tried to be successful on purpose, or like your success happened in spite of everything else about yourself?

The Case For Steely Dan

I like their music more. They are funnier, smarter, and weirder than the Eagles. Their albums are a lot more consistent. (“The Disco Strangler” would not have made Steely Dan’s garbage bin during the making of Gaucho.) They are less culturally ubiquitous — there is no Steely Dan song I have heard 1/100th as many times as “Take It Easy” or “Hotel California,” even though I have consciously set out to listen to Steely Dan 100 times more than the Eagles. Steely Dan doesn’t have the same amount of “bad boomer” baggage that the Eagles do. They have some “bad boomer” baggage, but it has thinned considerably in recent years. When I picture a typical Eagles fan, I like that person less than the individual conjured by the prompt “Steely Dan fan.” Based on this interview, Timothy B. Schmit even prefers Steely Dan, perhaps because Don Henley has held the Sword Of Damocles over his neck (financially speaking) for the past 45 years.

Above all, I like Steely Dan more because they are less obvious than the Eagles. Most bands on Earth are less obvious than the Eagles, but their obviousness is even more, well, obvious in relation to Steely Dan due to their shared subject matter. In a 2016 interview, Don Henley enumerated the following themes as central to Eagles songs: “Loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the American dream, idealism realized and idealism thwarted, illusion versus reality, the difficulties of balancing loving relationships and work, trying to square the conflicting relationship between business and art; the corruption in politics, the fading away of the sixties dream of ‘peace, love and understanding.’” You can hear all of that stuff in the song “Hotel California.” It’s impossible to miss. There’s a hotel called California that represents the state of California (and California as a state of mind). This place could be heaven or hell, which we know because Don sings, “This could be heaven or this could be hell.” It evokes the spirit of 1969, though that might only refer to the Captain’s wine. (But it doesn’t. The song is clearly about the end of the sixties.) Finally, it all culminates with some instrumental fireworks from Joe Walsh and Don Felder, whose harmonized guitars represent the main character’s failure to escape his own nostalgia.

Now consider the Steely Dan song “Aja,” which is also about all of those things that Don listed. In “Aja,” the protagonist is in an opium den. This could also be heaven or hell, but Donald and Walter do not bother pointing this out. The main character is fixated on people on a hill. They may or may not be real. We never know for sure. These people never stare. They just don’t care. They’ve got time to burn. Because they are free. For the protagonist, they symbolize his own longing — for the past, for an unrealized version of himself, for all of his dreams that were never fulfilled. Finally, the song culminates with some instrumental fireworks from jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. No disrespect to Joe Walsh or Don Felder, but they are not Wayne Shorter.

I could have done a similar comparison of the Eagles’ “Life In The Fast Lane” (a song about life in the fast lane) and Steely Dan’s “Glamour Profession” (a better song about life in the fast lane) or the Eagles’ “The Sad Café” (a self-serious song about the end of an era) and Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” (a hilarious song about the end of an era). But I think I’ve made my point: The Eagles tell you what their songs are about, and Steely Dan shows you.

The Case For The Eagles

Lest it seem like I am knocking “Hotel California” let me be clear: I love “Hotel California.” I know I’m not supposed to say that. I am supposed to hate “Hotel California” because the Eagles suck and boomers are bad and The Big Lebowski is good and blah blah blah. But if you can set aside all of the baggage that comes with this song, and trick your mind into forgetting about all of the sports bars and hockey games and gas stations it has soundtracked in your life, you might come to the following conclusions: 1) The harmonized guitars rip; 2) The song’s central metaphor is sound; 3) You have probably quoted the line about how “you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave” at least once without realizing it; 4) The Eagles are good at writing “end of the innocence” songs.

(This is also true of Don Henley’s solo career, which is highlighted by the two finest songs of his entire oeuvre, “The Boys Of Summer” and — obviousness alert — “The End Of The Innocence.” Haters will give the credit to Mike Campbell and Bruce Hornsby, respectively, for writing the music on those tracks, but Don’s melodies and words on are tip-top. To quote Jeff Lebowski, “out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” is true “that creep can roll, man” material.)

Let’s go back to the central allegorical conflict posed by Steely Dan vs. The Eagles: Is it better to appear as though you tried to be successful on purpose, or like your success happened in spite of everything else about yourself? Contrary to the “nerds vs. jocks” stereotype, Don Henley and Glenn Frey were not born-and-bred Southern Californians. And they were not born on third base. Don is from a tiny town in East Texas, and in this 2001 Charlie Rose interview he talks about being a small, sensitive kid who was bullied by the country boys in town because he was into books and music. And Frey is a Detroit native who cut his teeth as a teenager playing in garage bands before hooking up for a time with Bob Seger. (You can hear Glenn’s backing vocals on Seger’s immortal “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man.”) They were both Middle American kids who moved to Los Angeles in order to make their fortune, and they were willing to work their asses of to do it. Once they got rich, they could justifiably feel as though they earned it. So, why pretend otherwise?

Donald and Walter worked their asses off, too, but they were products of Bard College, as anyone who loves “My Old School” will tell you. Their smartypants sensibility is in line with a typical “elite college” mentality, where your social status is more secure, which means you can also afford to be noncommittal about your status. If the Eagles are the more obvious band, maybe it was because Don hustled for three and a half years at two low-prestige Texas schools — Stephen F. Austin State University and North Texas State University — and felt more urgency to prove his literary bonafides. (He not only read Henry David Thoreau, damn it, but he also saved Walden Woods!) Or maybe that obviousness comes from the proximity of the writers to their subject matter. I can picture Glenn Frey as one of the people in “Life In The Fast Lane.” I can also imagine him as a character in “Glamour Profession.” Steely Dan observed L.A. strivers and wrote about them, but the Eagles were the people in those songs.

What it comes down to is a matter of class — the more you need to be successful (because you have no other options in life) the more open and less ashamed you will be about seeking out. (And the most susceptible you will be to the excesses that come with that success.) On that count, I relate more to the Eagles than Steely Dan. I also believe in taking it to the limit one more time. Or more if that’s what it takes.

Who Won?

If you conduct an informal poll of extremely online people, Steely Dan wins in a landslide. If you ask the public at large, the Eagles win in a walk. This strikes me as just, and I suspect both parties would find it amenable.

Drake has used his features as a compass lately. His and 21 Savage’s joint (and newly Grammy-nominated) album, Her Loss, resulted in their supporting It’s All A Blur Tour. Cut to October’s For All The Dogs, and Drake’s “First Person Shooter” featuring J. Cole not only became Drake’s record-tying 13th-career No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — and J. Cole’s first — but also spawned the title for Drake and Cole’s 2024 joint tour, It’s All A Blur Tour — Big As The What?

Put more simply, it’s only natural to wonder who will be featured on Scary Hours 3 immediately upon Drake confirming its impending arrival is tomorrow, November 17.

Who Is Featured On Drake’s Scary Hours 3?

As of this writing on Thursday morning, November 16, Drake has not revealed features nor a tracklist whatsoever. We could lean on the his past Scary Hours projects to make a hypothesis, but that doesn’t help because 2018’s Scary Hours had no features, while 2021’s Scary Hours 2 featured Lil Baby and Rick Ross. So, the third installment could go either way.

Who Produced Scary Hours 3?

According to the cinematic, orchestral-backed trailer posted to Drake’s Instagram, the credited Scary Hours 3 executive producers are Drake, OVO’s Noel Cadastre, and perennial NBA All-Star Kevin Durant, also recently revealed as a NOCTA campaign star.

Watch the trailer below.

Scary Hours 3 is out 11/17 via OVO/Republic.

Earlier this week, André 3000 announced that he’d be making his return with a brand new solo album titled New Blue Sun.

His album is set to drop this Friday, November 17 at midnight. For those who might be wondering, it also will likely be available to stream on Spotify, as it is listed being one of the options on the pre-save link from Sony.

It is also available for pre-order currently, but only as a digital download.

While Outkast fans might have been hoping for a rap record, he’s made it very clear that it won’t be what they expect. “I don’t want to troll people,” André said during a recent interview with NPR Music. “I don’t want people to think, ‘Oh, this André 3000 album is coming!’ And you play it and like, ‘Oh man, no verses.’ So even actually on the packaging, you’ll see it says, ‘Warning: no bars.’”

As for what the album will sound like, it has been described as “an entirely instrumental album centered around woodwinds; a celebratory piece of work in the form of a living, breathing, aural organism,” according to a statement. Basically, he won’t be giving any lyrics at all.

New Blue Sun is out 11/17 via Epic Records. Find more information here.

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks haven’t had enough of each other or enough of bringing Band Of Brothers-related subject matter to the screen. As a result, they followed up the 2001 HBO series with 2010’s The Pacific. Fast forward to 2023, and the pair will focus upon the U.S. Army Air Forces to take flight with Masters Of The Air, which will stream on Apple TV+ and hails from Spielberg’s Amblin Television along with Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone.

The dynamic screen duo has enlisted several highly capable directors for this project: Cary Joji Fukunaga (It, No Time To Die, Maniac), Tim Van Patten (The Pacific, Deadwood, Game Of Thrones), and Dee Rees (Mudbound). As well, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Captain Marvel) took a spin at the helm. This will be a fairly large-budgeted series, and way back in 2019, the estimate stood at $200 million. Surely, that number has grown in recent years because inflation is hitting every industry. Additionally, those aerial flight combat scenes can’t be cheap.

Let’s talk about what else viewers can expect from this sky-high series.

Plot

Masters Of The Air will adapt Donald L. Miller’s book, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, which is (yes) a true story. Miller’s book was adapted into a story by John Orloff (Band Of Brothers) and John Shiban (Breaking Bad, The X-Files) with Orloff doing screenplay honors.

With approximately eight hours of runtime, the Apple TV+ series will take an extended dive into the “Bloody Hundredth,” i.e. the 100th Bomb Group, who risked everything they had — body, mind, and emotions — to target Nazi Germany with bombing raids. The Bloody Hundredth’s efforts did help to take down Hitler’s Third Reich, although injury and even capture awaited some who did battle in the skies. The tech giant and streamer has been describing the series as “a true story of brotherhood and American airmen in WWII Europe.” That means that with the highs will come lows, and not every character is destined to get out alive, which is sadly to be expected while carrying out combat missions at 25,000 feet high.

Shooting locations include southeast England villages and a German POW camp, along with bucolic fields, and at some point, as the trailer reveals, there will be a shirtless Austin Butler. Clearly, there will be a lot of moods happening in this production.

Here’s more from Apple TV+’s description.

Masters of the Air” follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, lack of oxygen and sheer terror of combat conducted at 25,000 feet in the air. Portraying the psychological and emotional price paid by these young men as they helped destroy the horror of Hitler’s Third Reich, is at the heart of “Masters of the Air.” Some were shot down and captured; some were wounded or killed. And some were lucky enough to make it home. Regardless of individual fate, a toll was exacted on them all.

Cast

Did Austin Butler manage to drop his Elvis voice that he kept around arguably longer than necessary? We are going to find out. As well, BAFTA winner/Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan, and Callum Turner stand out among the ensemble.

Butler will run the full spectrum of emotions as Major Gale Clevin, who leads a constant smattering of peril-filled aerial bombardments and was, at one point, taken as a POW. On that note, Turner steps into equal rank as Major John Egan, and Keoghan portrays Lt. Curtis Biddick. Cast members including Branden Cook, Ncuti Gatwa, Nate Mann, Anthony Boyle, Rafferty Law, and Josiah Cross will continue to make this series soar.

Release Date

The show takes flight on January 26, 2024 with two episodes. Weekly new episodes will follow through March 15. followed by new episodes on Fridays through March 15, 2024.

Trailer

A two-minute teaser trailer sets up the chess board. This looks wonderful.

Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air streams on January 26, 2024.

Will Smith has been the center of tabloid headlines this week after an alleged former assistant, Brother Bilaal, claimed he caught the Fresh Prince star having sex with Duane Martin. After getting stopped on the street, Jada Pinkett Smith gave a short and blunt reaction to the scandal to TMZ cameras: “We suin,’” she said.

However, in true Will and Jada form, the actress appeared on The Breakfast Club on Thursday morning where she opened to Charlamagne Tha God about her husband’s reaction to the viral rumor. According to Jada, Will was able to “find the funny” in the situation and has been laughing the whole thing off.

Via Page Six:

“You have to because it’s absolutely ridiculous,” Pinkett Smith, 52, explained. “You’ve just got to laugh about it. And it’s unfortunate.”

When the host joked that Smith, 55, probably asked whether he “give[s] off bottom energy,” the “Girls Trip” star laughed and shared his real reaction.

“He was like, ‘Do you believe this s–t?’” she recalled.

Jokes aside, Jada did reiterate that she and Will are planning to take legal action, corroborating a report from earlier in the week when a rep from Will denied the rumor.

“This story is completely fabricated and the claim is unequivocally false,” Smith’s rep told TMZ, who also cited a family source that said legal action was being weighed.

(Via Page Six)

Anyone But You: the only movie that dares to ask, “What if two people were hot?” The comedy from Easy A director Will Gluck and writer Ilana Wolpert stars Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney as Bea and Ben, who pretend to be a couple at a wedding in Australia to get their family and friends — and exes — off their back. And butts, as seen in the trailer above. The actors were so good at pretending, in fact, that everyone thought they were dating in real life.

“When all that stuff happened, you know, publicly, it felt disorienting and unfair,” Powell recently told Men’s Health. “But what I’m realizing is that’s just a part of this gig now.” In an interview with Women’s Health (they’ve cornered the market on magazines with “Health” in the name), Sweeney added, “Getting to work with Glen, I’ll never forget this one… I hope the audience can actually feel the love and fun we all shared making this film.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

In the edgy comedy Anyone But You, Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) look like the perfect couple, but after an amazing first date something happens that turns their fiery hot attraction ice cold – until they find themselves unexpectedly thrust together at a destination wedding in Australia. So they do what any two mature adults would do: pretend to be a couple.

Anyone But You, which also stars Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Hadley Robinson, Michelle Hurd, Dermot Mulroney, Darren Barnet, and Rachel Griffiths, opens in theaters on December 22nd.

Time means nothing to Drake. On Wednesday afternoon, November 15, Drake released his and J. Cole’s “First Person Shooter” video. Less than 24 hours later, he has announced Scary Hours 3 will release tomorrow, November 17. The project will arrive just six weeks after For All The Dogs, his latest No. 1 album and 13th in his career (per Billboard). Generally, Drake has taken a liking to giving people little-to-no warning that a project is on the way. See: March 2021’s Scary Hours 2 and June 2022’s Honestly, Nevermind.

Remember when Drake openly contemplated retirement? That was cute. We’ll get real-time insight into what’s on Drake’s mind now when Scary Hours 3 presumably hits Apple Music (and all DSPs) at 9 p.m. PST and midnight EST (November 17).

In the Instagram video confirming Scary Hours 3, Drake says, “I’ll say this to you: I feel no need to appease anybody. I feel so confident about the body of work that I just dropped that I know I could go and disappear for, whatever, six months, a year, two years — even though I’m not really, like, into [laughs] — I’m not really into the super lengthy disappearances for the sake of mystery, but…”

He continues, “You know, ultimately, it’s coming to me in a way that I haven’t experienced maybe since, like, If You’re Reading This, where it’s just kind of like, I feel like I’m on drugs. I feel like I’m in that mental state without doing anything. I did those songs in the last five days. I didn’t have one bar written down for those songs on the night that For All The Dogs dropped. It’s not like I’m picking up from some unfinished sh*t, you know, this is just — it’s happening on its own. And, you know, who am I to fight it, right? And to fight back against the right thing would be, well, you know.”

Watch the trailer below.

Scary Hours 3 is out 11/17 via OVO/Republic.

In the middle of the night, Drake revealed that he’s releasing a brand new project, Scary Hours 3, as another surprise drop. The new record will be out this Friday, November 17 starting at midnight on all streaming platforms.

The Canadian rapper shared a teaser trailer for it on social media, revealing at the end that it is being executive-produced by Noel Cadastre, Drake, and Kevin Durant.

“I did those songs in the last five days,” Drake says in the video. “I didn’t have one bar written down for those songs on the night that For All The Dogs dropped. It’s not like I’m picking up from some unfinished sh*t, you know, this is just… it’s happening on its own. And, you know, who am I to fight it, right? And to fight back against the right thing would be… you know.”

Right now, not much else is known about the tracklist or if Drake will have any features on the project. As he pointed out, it has only been a short time since he dropped For All The Dogs. He’s also been on tour but has been busy working on new music again.

Check out Drake’s teaser post for the announcement of Scary Hours 3 above.

Scary Hours 3 is out 11/17 via OVO/Republic.

Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian used to at least pretend to like to each other. That’s no longer the case.

In his book, Tired of Winning, author Jonathan Karl reports that Trump was irritable with Kardashian when she asked for his help in a clemency case. “Hell no, the former president told her. He wouldn’t do it. ‘You voted for Biden and now you come asking me for a favor?’ Trump told her. Kardashian has never publicly said who she voted for in 2020, but after [Joe] Biden was projected the winner, she posted a tweet of Biden and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris along with three blue hearts,” he wrote. Trump hung up on her.

Trump responded to the claims in Karl’s book on (where else?) Truth Social. “Failed ABC Fake News reporter Jonathan Karl just wrote another bad book. He works sooo hard, but has sooo little talent – Some people have it, and some people don’t,” he wrote with typical, orange-faced bluster.

Trump was particularly steamed by the Kardashian anecdote.

In the “book” he has the World’s most overrated celebrity, Kim Kardashian, supposedly telling me that she “would leverage her celebrity to get football stars to come to the White House,” if I would commute the sentences of various prisoners. This story is Fake News in that she would be the last person I asked to get football players. I’ve had many teams, from all sports and leagues, in the White House. If there was even a slight reluctance, I would immediately withdraw the invitation, there would be NO Negotiation – But this did not happen often. I did help with prisoner commutation, but only if deserving, and much more so for Kanye West than for Kim, who probably voted for Crooked Joe Biden, and look at the mess our Country is in now. Many other false stories in Karl’s very boring book, but nothing worth mentioning!

Say what you will about the guy (nothing good!), but Trump putting “book” in quotes is extremely funny.

(Via Truth Social)