Month: May 2024

Billie Eilish’s new album, Hit Me Hard And Soft, is officially, which apparently means her self-imposed embargo on releasing singles has expired. “Lunch,” the borderline-NSFW song she debuted at Coachella last month, is the first song from the set to get the music video treatment. In the super-saturated, lo-fi clip, Billie dances in front of the camera in a number of different baggy outfits, showing off her grill, and lounging on an old couch.

In an interview with Rolling Stone ahead of the album’s release, Eilish explained the inspiration behind “Lunch,” which was just about as racy as the song’s lyrics. “I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after,” Eilish said. “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.”

Elsewhere on the album, Billie confronts her body image issues on the song “Skinny.” “People say I look happy / Just because I got skinny,” she sings. “But the old me is still me / And maybe the real me, and I think she’s pretty.”

Hit Me Hard And Soft is out now via Darkroom/Interscope Records. Find more information here.

After creating two of the best dramas in television history with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (and also writing some stellar episodes of The X-Files), Vince Gilligan is working on a new series. This one will be on Apple TV+ instead of AMC, and for now, it has the working title of Wycaro. But considering it’s a new Vince Gilligan show, it could be called All Taylor Swift Fans Are Morons (a personal insult) and I’m still watching on day one. That’s how much goodwill he’s earned. Oh, and did I mention the show stars Rhea Seehorn, the Emmy-snubbed star of Better Call Saul? That’s important to know.

Here are other important things to know about Wycaro, including plot details, other members of the cast, and if there’s a release date… bitch.

Plot

Like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Wycaro (don’t be surprised if the title changes before the show premieres) is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Unlike the other two series, however, there’s “no crime, and no methamphetamine,” Gilligan told Variety. “The world changes very abruptly in the first episode, and then it is quite different. And the consequences that that reaps hopefully provide drama for many, many episodes after that.”

Wycaro will have “a sci-fi element to it,” Gilligan teased. “It’s going to be fun and different. I have no prediction as to how folks to react to it — whether they’ll love it or hate it, or somewhere in the vast in-between. But I know it’s a story that interests me.” The show, which has already received a two-season order, has been described as a “blended, grounded genre drama” with reality-bending comparisons to The Twilight Zone and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Seehorn is playing “a very different character” than Saul‘s Kim Wexler (she even has a “drastic hair cut”!). Gilligan wrote the part with her in mind, “which is hard to say without crying,” the actress confessed to The Hollywood Reporter. “We will shoot in Albuquerque, with a lot of the same crew… I could see lots of reasons why he would want it to be Albuquerque, but I can tell you that it doesn’t have anything to do with Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul.”

Cast

Well, you’ve got Rhea Seehorn. That’s enough right there. But Wycaro will also star Karolina Wydra (House, True Blood, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), who landed a lead role alongside Seehorn. The actress will play “a character referred to as Ana, an optimistic young woman,” according to Deadline.

Release Date

Filming just started, so don’t expect Wycaro until 2025 or 2026.

Trailer

There’s no trailer yet, but please enjoy Rhea Seehorn’s acting masterclass.

Post Malone’s recent foray into country music has been embraced by the genre’s award show establishment, if not all of its fans. The “Circles” singer made his ACM Awards debut last night, performing a pair of his new songs, including “I Had Some Help” (ironically, without the help of featured guest Morgan Wallen) and “Never Love You Again,” which was that song’s debut, as well.

Backstage, Post talked with presenter Bobby Bones about his transition into a country star. “I have been having so much fun and I went to Nashville probably about six months ago and I’ve always wanted to make a record in this vein,” he said. “I’m having so much fun and I love the people that I get to write with in Nashville. It’s the most amazing time.”

Post’s transition started earlier this year, intriguingly enough, at the Super Bowl, where he sang an acoustic rendition of “America The Beautiful” with a twangy guitar. The shift continued when he was billed as one of the performers at Stagecoach Festival, which raised some eyebrows among country music fans. He previewed what his new musical direction would entail as a guest performer on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album, appearing on the song “Levii’s Jeans.” His Stagecoach performance turned out to be a festival-defining set full of country covers like Brad Paisley’s “I’m Gonna Miss Her.” With his performance at the ACM Awards, it looks like anticipation for his album, presumably releasing sometime this year, will be as high as the Rocky Mountains. Stay tuned.

A big week for college football video game fans continued on Friday, as a day after getting a release date (July 19) and official cover reveals, we got out first look at the ‘EA Sports College Football 25′ gameplay trailer.

The trailer looks great, as you’d expect, and only raises the excitement for the game to finally get in our hands. As for gameplay details, it sounds like they aren’t trying to stray too far from the things we loved in the past. Homefield Advantage is back, as is Pre-Snap Recognition, as young players will struggle to see the field and play before the snap and road teams will get shaken (literally) by raucous road atmospheres. They’re also adding a Wear and Tear System that will wear players down as they take hits and exert energy, forcing strategic sub patterns to keep players fresh for the fourth quarter.

EA Sports also offered details on the game modes we will be getting in the new game as part of the trailer reveal.

The one longtime fans of the game care most about is Dynasty mode, which sounds like it will operate similarly to the old games, but with the addition of the transfer portal and being a bit more built out.

Create a coach and take control of your own college football program. Establish your coaching staff, then work to recruit the best talent either straight from high school or direct from the transfer portal. Coaching archetypes and skill trees empower you to run your program your own way as you vie for a spot in the new 12-team College Football Playoff, or create your own college football program with customization tools on the Team Builder website.

Road To Glory mode also returns as the game’s player mode, once again with the added element of the transfer portal and NIL opportunities.

Live the life of a student-athlete with your created player and take home the Heisman as you build an unforgettable college football legacy. Manage your weekly schedule, GPA, and your image, earn Coach Trust to get more playing time, or use the transfer portal to get the time and the glory you deserve.

Beyond those two classic modes, EA Sports is bringing their Ultimate Team format to the game, along with an online Road to the College Football Playoff mode where you rise in the rankings by taking down top teams.

Dua Lipa has experimented with different genres in recent years, but she hasn’t really gotten into country music yet. She took a stab at it last night, though: Making her debut appearance at the Academy Of Country Music Awards last night (May 16), Lipa and Chris Stapleton delivered a surprise duet of Stapleton’s “Think I’m In Love With You.”

Stapleton told ET of the 2024 ACM Awards performance, “It was her idea, as far as I know. They kind of called us up and said, ‘Hey, she would like to do this.’ I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah!’ So we got on the phone and talked about it and worked on it a little bit. […] We really only kind of put together what we did like two days ago. So it was kind of a whirlwind of a thing to do — but it was awesome.”

Lipa also said, “It was a big dream of mine to work with Chris, and to have it happen tonight on the stage was really special. I’m a big, big Chris Stapleton fan, that’s for sure, and I love country music. I love the storytelling, I love the passion, and it was just so beautiful to be able to dive into that world a little bit, just kind of see it firsthand. It was really special.”

Check out a video of the performance above.

Recently, Chains Of Hades, a new Greek-inspired weapon, was added to Fortnite. Doja Cat has made it abundantly clear that she absolutely hates it.

In now-deleted tweets (as Eurogamer reports), Doja wrote, “If you’re horrible and garbage at Fortnite make sure you grab a Chains of Hades whip to pass the time. Dumb c*nts,” and, “If Fortnite knew what was good for them they’d get rid of Chains of Hades.”

In other non-deleted tweets, Doja wrote, “FORTNITE WOULDN’T BE SO F*CKING EMBARRASSING IF THEY MADE LOBBIES WHERE PEOPLE WITH ACTUAL AIM SKILLS AND FPS EXPERIENCE DIDN’T DEAL WITH LOSERS USING F*CKING WATER BENDING AND CHAINS OF HADES. *,” and, “WATER BENDING IS A F*CKING CRUTCH YOU ARE NOT GOOD AT THE GAME BECAUSE OF WATER BENDING, I WOULD BECOME SEVERELY DEPRESSED IF I HAD TO RELY ON ANY OF THESE STUPID NON F*CKING WEAPONS*.”

After Doja’s tweets, Fortnite makers Epic Games actually did remove the weapon from the game’s tournament mode. As NME notes, Epic says this was due to a bug (and not necessarily in response to Doja’s complaints), but the weapon can still be found in other game modes.

Doja was less bothered when her album leaked ahead of its release date. In April, Doja wrote, “its definitely messed up cuz i wanted to put it out myself but theres nothing i can do about it!! thats just how its gonna be but at least i can just keep being creative and look forward to the awesome things i have coming up!!”

The Young Sheldon series finale aired on Thursday night on CBS (“bazinga,” he says mournfully), ending Sheldon Cooper’s journey after seven seasons and 12 more on The Big Bang Theory. If you watched every episode of both shows, that’s 420 total episodes, which is so much Sheldon. But even the most hardcore fan probably missed The Big Bang Theory easter egg in the finale.

“It is for nobody, because no one would recognize it,” showrunner Steve Holland told Entertainment Weekly. “[Sheldon] has an exchange with a professor on [the Caltech] campus, and that’s David Saltzberg, who is our science consultant since Big Bang Theory all through Young Sheldon.”

There was consideration given to hiring a Big Bang Theory actor for the role, but “we didn’t want it to be distracting,” Holland explained. “And we realized [Saltzberg], other than Chuck [Lorre] and Jim [Parsons], has been with this character the longest, because he worked on the first Big Bang Theory pilot, so it’s really just a nice way for us to honor David and all the contributions he’s made to both of these shows for the last 16 years.”

Young Sheldon might be over, but don’t throw away your Flash shirt in anger: there’s more adventures in the Sheldon-verse to come.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

The second round of the PGA Championship at Valhalla in Louisville got off to a truly insane start on Friday morning. The world’s No. 1 player, Scottie Scheffler, was arrested by Louisville police after attempting to drive around an accident scene on his way to the golf course.

ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington was also on the scene and witnessed the entire interaction, taking video of a handcuffed Scheffler being walked to the police car by officers.

Scheffler apparently thought he was moving around a traffic stop out front of the golf course, but was instead driving around an active crime scene after a person was struck and killed by a shuttle bus. According to Darlington, a police officer tried to get him to stop, jumped on Scheffler’s car, and then tried to drag him out of the car once stopped.

Scheffler was booked into Louisville jail on four counts, one felony count of second degree assault of a police officer and three misdemeanors, including reckless driving.

Scheffler was released from jail and driven to the golf course by one of the owners of Valhalla Golf Club, arriving just under an hour before his 10:08 a.m. tee time.

It appears his plan is to play his second round, and there will certainly be plenty of questions he will be asked about the incident afterwards — as will Louisville police. Scheffler released a statement prior to his round, via the PGA Tour, noting it was a misunderstanding of what he thought were security guards outside the course directing traffic and not police officers.

Netflix is the king of streaming services (even Disney thinks so) with a reported 296 million subscribers. The only other streamer with over 200 million subscribers is Prime Video, and seemingly all of them have binged Fallout since it premiered in April. That’s the power of Walton Goggins in effect.

Within the first five days of its release on April 10, the video game adaptation starring Ella Purnell was viewed for 2.9 billion minutes, per Nielsen. That’s the highest viewership ever achieved by a Prime Video series in a single week. Fallout nearly equaled that number in week two with 2.62 billion, but combined, the show “became the first series outside of the Netflix platform to rack up 2 billion minutes viewed in consecutive weeks,” according to TVLine.

Fallout should stay at or near the top for a bit longer, too.

The last to do so was Suits, which had more than 100 episodes to keep audiences engaged — and it wasn’t a streaming original. This makes Fallout‘s achievement all the more substantial. Nielsen also reports that viewing was still skewed to the earlier episodes at this interval, indicating a strong performance still to come as audiences continue to make their way through the series.

It’s about time Amazon got a win. They’ve been the underdog for too long.

(Via TVLine)

The beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar appears to have died down, as neither artist has released a diss track in a little while now. So, now that we’re at what looks like the end, Lil Yachty is taking a look back at the situation. He believes that from the very start, many people had already decided that Lamar was the winner.

On a new episode of the A Safe Place podcast, Yachty said:

“Drake was deemed a loser in this battle before it started, because people don’t like him, and haven’t, and he’s won for a very long time. And he’s sat at the top of the throne… honestly, respectfully, I think he still sits on top of the throne. I think that even if opinionated masses would say that Kendrick won, I don’t think that people are going to stop listening to Drake and Drake’s career is going to flush, you know?”

He added, “I said to Drake, I told him, ‘I don’t feel like you won or lost.’ Rappers have lost and then lost everything. […] I think Drake will still be in everyone’s rap Spotify at the end of the year at the top. He can still drop hits and it will still control the summer. I think that Kendrick made very smart moves, and I don’t think Drake would disagree.”

Check out the full episode here.