Month: August 2024

Back in the early days of social media, Myspace was king, and a now-iconic part of the experience was listening to the songs users would have on their profiles. That hasn’t been a common social media feature since then, but now Instagram is bringing it back.

How To Add A Song To Your Instagram Profile

On your Instagram profile, tap the “Edit profile” button. Then, scroll down to the “Music” option, and tap where it says “Add music to your profile.” From there, you can browse the songs available to use, select one, and then choose a 30-second portion of the song to use. To change the song, just remove the song currently in use via the “Edit profile” menu and then go through the selection process again.

As The Verge notes, Instagram launched the feature today in partnership with Sabrina Carpenter, who is currently using it to preview her song “Taste,” which hasn’t yet been officially released in full as of this post.

Meanwhile, in a recent interview, Carpenter said of her path to stardom, “I have dreams and goals, and I will say I’m a little bit of a freak manifester sometimes, which is a blessing and a curse, depending on how you look at it. I always knew deep down that this was something I would do with my life, and I didn’t ever really doubt that, even when sh*t was hitting the ceiling fan.”

Netflix original movies have largely moved from being bizarre little tales that turn into juggernauts and happen to star A-listers to movies that are planned as A-lister Mad Libs-style gatherings where the story sometimes feels secondary to the assembled cast. Lately, however, Netflix films have begun to come into their own as deserved comeback vehicles and as adaptations of beloved YA properties that are destined to be binged into oblivion.

That latter category is where Uglies appears to reside. We will have to wait and see if the viewership agrees when the movie streams in a few weeks, but for the moment, let’s roll out the must-knows before arrival:

Plot

Uglies adapts Scott Westerfeld’s young-adult dystopian novel that revolves around a world with government-mandated cosmetic surgery for every teen. Those who complete the process are declared as “Pretties” and graduate to a presumably cushy and utopian life, but the outcome isn’t always that simple. Joey King’s character, Tally Youngblood, looks forward to the process but then has a realization that takes her on an inner journey as well as a quest to locate a missing friend.

As the film’s director, McG, told Netflix’s Tudum blog, “It’s the belief of the society that if we all look the way we want, you can eradicate conflict.” As Westerfeld has pointed out, however, the sci-fi story has plenty of “McG” touches like people might expect from the director of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle: “The ‘uglies’ play pranks, ride hoverboards, and sneak into parties. They jump off buildings in bungee jackets! If you put McG in a dystopia, he would totally be that guy.”

From the official movie synopsis:

In a futuristic world that imposes a cosmetic surgery at 16, Tally is eager for her turn to join the rest of society. But when a friend runs away, Tally embarks on a journey to save her that upends everything she thought she wanted.

Joey King has been pumped for this adaptation since signing on to both executive produce and star as Tally. In 2022, the A Family Affair star declared, “The Uglies books meant a lot to me as a kid… what a dream realized! I was 11-years-old when I feel in love with the books.”

If all goes well for the streaming numbers with this film, there are three more books in Westerfeld’s series: Pretties, Specials, and Extras. Stay tuned on that note.

Cast

King will be accompanies by Laverne Cox, Chase Stokes, Keith Powers, and Brianne Tju.

Release Date

Uglies will stream beginning September 13 only on Netflix.

Trailer

From the looks of this trailer, sequel talk will likely happen:

Anderson .Paak and The Free Nationals will celebrate his January 2016 album Malibu with a tour of the same name. Anderson will perform Malibu in its entirety for each of the 14 shows, beginning on September 18 in Bend, Oregon.

Malibu is not the only remnant from 2016 that Anderson .Paak wants to keep alive in 2024.

On Thursday, August 22, Anderson .Paak announced that his 2016 NPR Tiny Desk concert with The Free Nationals will be released as a limited-edition vinyl. The 15-minute performance has accumulated over 108.8 million views on YouTube since it premiered on August 22, 2016.

“Thank you Tiny Desk for the beautiful platform and for giving us our most viral performance on the web, and thanks to everyone that it has reached and inspired in some way,” the eight-time Grammy winner said in a statement, as per press release. “We hope you enjoy this exclusive vinyl release of the performance that changed everything for me and my band.”

The limited-edition vinyl is available to order here for $35 on Anderson .Paak’s official website.

“Featuring The Free Nationals, the performance includes four of Anderson’s most iconic tracks — “Come Down,” “Heart Don’t Stand a Chance,” “Put Me Thru,” and “Suede” — with all four tracks spread onto a Side A and Side B,” the official product listing says.

Side A and Side B will each play at 33 1/3 RPM. Side A will feature “Come Down” and “Heart Don’t Stand A Chance,” leaving “Put Me Thru” and “Suede” for Side B.

Watch Anderson .Paak and The Free Nationals’ August 2016 NPR Tiny Desk above, and see their upcoming tour dates below.

09/18 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater
09/19 – Auburn, WA @ White River Amphitheatre
09/21 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
09/24 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
09/26 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl
09/27 – Phoenix, AZ @ Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
09/28 – Las Vegas, NV @ Fontainebleau Las Vegas
10/02 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
10/04 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
10/05 – Sterling Heights, MI @ Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre
10/08 – Philadelphia, PA @ TD Pavilion at The Mann
10/09 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
10/11 – Wantagh, NY @ Northwell at Jones Beach Theater
10/13 – Atlanta, GA @ Lakewood Amphitheatre

Jenna Ortega has been hard at work making Tim Burton’s eclectic stories come to life with both Wednesday and the upcoming Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice over the last year or so. But when she’s not playing a goth teen, she’s been exploring a different type of talent: music.

Ortega stopped by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon where she discussed bringing her love of music onto set with her. “Sometimes I like to bring my synthesizer to set, because I feel like music is the best way to get to know somebody,” she revealed. Ortega is currently shooting season two of Wednesday, which she is also producing.

But she believes that music helps her bond with her co-stars in way that just acting can’t. Maybe it’s the silly costumes or the excessive eyeliner, but it might be hard to take each other seriously on a Tim Burton set.

She explained, “You come on these sets, and you see people that you’ve never met before and then you’re super close to them for two months, and then you never see them again. So I got the synthesizer because I wanted to play music for people or get a feel for what they like, and then I can make them playlists or get to know them a little better.” She didn’t reveal what is on Michael Keaton’s playlist, but now that we know it exists, there must be a way to aquire it.

In addition to her playlist curation, Ortega also wants to venture into composing. “I would love to be a composer. I love film scores, I love everything about film scores, and composing is just so interesting to me. I like to do it a little in my free time.” It seems tough to imagine someone as in-demand as Ortgea having free time, but maybe she’ll be dropping an experimental goth-inspired ambient drone album sometime soon. Maybe!

Check out the full clip above.

Lana Del Rey is following up the longest album title of her career with her shortest. Lasso is the “A&W” singer’s pivot into country, although as she explained in a recent interview, most of her albums have been inspired by the genre.

“All my albums are somewhat rooted in Americana, unless it’s an album like Honeymoon which has a jazz flair, so I don’t think it will be a heavy departure,” Del Rey told Vogue. “If anything, it will just be a little lighter lyrically, and more pointed in a classic country, American, or Southern Gothic production — which again, so many of my songs already are.”

Lasso was announced by Del Rey, who recently collaborated with Quavo on “Tough,” at a pre-Grammys event earlier this year. “If you can’t already tell by our award winners and our performers, the music business is going country. We’re going country. It’s happening,” she said. “That’s why Jack [Antonoff] has followed me to Muscle Shoals, Nashville, Mississippi, over the last four years.”

Del Rey performed at the Rock en Seine music festival in France on Wednesday (“To play anywhere in Paris is more than a childhood dream,” the singer told Vogue), but didn’t debut any new songs from the album.

Lasso is supposedly coming out in September.

On August 25, 2014, Ariana Grande released My Everything as her sophomore LP. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — Grande’s second of six No. 1 albums, with the most recent being Eternal Sunshine this March — and solidified Grande as a perennial hitmaker.

Worth celebrating, yes?

On Thursday, August 22, Grande announced her plans to commemorate a decade of My Everything. A digital deluxe release is out now, while limited 7-inch vinyl singles will be released on Monday, August 26, and digital single bundles will become available on Tuesday, August 27.

“Happy tenth anniversary to an album that very much changed my life,” Grande captioned her Instagram announcement. “I love you all so much and am deeply grateful always. Hope you enjoy these little anniversary celebration surprises.”

According to a press release, the limited 7-inch vinyl bundle features “Problem,” “Break Free,” “Love Me Harder,” and “One Last Time.” You can listen to the digital deluxe album here or pre-order vinyl here.

See the full deluxe album tracklist below.

Ariana Grande’s My Everything (Tenth Anniversary Edition) Tracklist

1. “Intro”
2. “Problem”
3. “One Last Time”
4. “Why Try”
5. “Break Free”
6. “Best Mistake”
7. “Be My Baby”
8. “Break Your Heart Right Back”
9. “Love Me Harder”
10. “Just A Little Bit Of Your Heart”
11. “Hands On Me”
12. “My Everything”
13. “Bang Bang” +
14. “Only 1” +
15. “You Don’t Know Me” +
16. “Cadillac Song” +*
17. “Too Close” +*

+ First time on vinyl
* First time on DSPs

Way back in December 2022, during an Amazon Music Live performance, ASAP Rocky shared the message, “Thursday Night Football. Amazon. My first time back on the stage. Album’s finished. Don’t Be Dumb. Let’s go!” Just because it was finished, though, didn’t mean fans were getting it soon.

Updates followed from there. In July 2023, Rocky suggested that the project would be on the way shortly. Eventually, the project was given a release date of August 30, 2024.

Well, that’s not happening: The project has been delayed.

An excerpt from a new Billboard feature on Rocky reads:

“Today, Rocky seems confident that he’s in full control of his creative output and says he’s finally ready to drop his long-awaited fourth album, Don’t Be Dumb. He’s only been working on it for the past year but he believes, like most artists discussing their new work, that it’s the best album he’s ever made. (During the course of reporting this story, he does push its release date from Aug. 30 to the fall.)”

Elsewhere in the piece, Rocky said, “I sat and I played the album for Tim Burton, and he was f*cking with it heavy. […] He was rocking his head and he’s like, ‘Wow! I didn’t know you made that kind of music!’”

(SPOILERS will be found below for Kevin Can F**k Himself.)

About a week ago, an enormous crop of AMC series hit Netflix for the first time. These included the stellar but underappreciated Dark Winds, fan-favorite series like The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and Interview With The Vampire, not-so-great-but-perhaps-that’s-the-charm selections like Mayfair Watches, and depraved gems like Kevin Can Go F**k Himself. These shows are generating plenty of social media chatter and being bingewatched in large quantity, so some will surface on Netflix Top 10 charts when the time comes.

That 2021 series starring Annie Murphy, however, is of particular interest because Kevin Can Go F**k Himself was a tough but intoxicating pill to swallow during its initial runtime. The two-season show was born as a fed-up reaction to sitcoms like King of Queens and Home Improvement, but the AMC series satirically cranked the nightmare pairing up to eleven, so that the show’s attractive, smart wife (Allison) is married to a schlubby manchild who isn’t simply annoying.

Mind you, he is annoying, but this Kevin emotionally abuses his spouse and eventually sucks the life out of her, and she determines to kill him, thereby avenging every long-suffering sitcom wife. The show is now striking a home-theater chord. Naturally, this has prompted a question:

Will There Be A Kevin Can F*ck Himself Season 3?

The short answer to that question would be “nope.” That is, unless the show is resurrected through the anthology route, which also feels incredibly unlikely to happen. Because if you know how the second season ended — including how Kevin went and f**ked himself by lighting a fire and passing out — then you know that the story concluded with Allison and Patty acknowledging their ride-or-die status.

There has been no indication that AMC was ever planning a third season, and as of now, no additional statements on the matter have surfaced. Still, the show is well worth watching if you haven’t caught it yet, and if you are still hankering for even more wife-ly angst, there’s always that Mad Men episode (also from AMC) where Betty Draper (albeit in a different but still relevant and highly entertaining context) takes aim at the birds.

Two seasons of Kevin Can F**k Himself are streaming on Netflix.

First and foremost, Rihanna is not a possession to be won. That said, ASAP Rocky is in a seemingly loving relationship with Rihanna, sharing two children together, while Drake couldn’t stop referencing his virtually ancient relationship with Rihanna on For All The Dogs, his October 2023 full-length album. Of course, Drake took aim at Rocky, too.

Rocky fired back on “Show Of Hands” from Future and Metro Boomin’s We Still Don’t Trust You, which doubled as a Drake diss extravaganza. But that sounds like the extent to which Drake plays on Rocky’s mind.

On Thursday, August 22, Rocky was revealed as the latest Billboard cover star and commented nonchalantly about Drake and all of the beef mounting around him in 2024, spearheaded by Kendrick Lamar.

“You got to realize, certain n****s was throwing shots for years,” the Harlem rapper told the publication. “I ain’t in the middle of that sh*t. That’s not how I retaliate right now. I got bigger fish to fry than some p*ssy boys. It is real beef outside. It is real. N****s getting really clipped and blitzed every day. N****s sniping n****s every day. That little kitty sh*t ain’t about nothing.”

Billboard additionally relayed that Rocky pushed the release date for Don’t Be Dumb, his forthcoming LP, from August 30 to “the fall.”

There’s not enough caffeine in the world to metaphorically equate to the buzz around Short N’ Sweet, the sixth full-length album from Sabrina Carpenter. Carpenter put the pop sphere on high alert with “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” and “Taste” will arrive with a Dave Meyers-directed video on Friday, August 23.

But when will Short N’ Sweet become available to stream in its entirety?

When Will Sabrina Carpenter’s New Album Short N’ Sweet Be On Apple Music?

Short N’ Sweet is due out on Friday, August 23. In all likelihood, that means the album will become available to stream on Apple Music (and across all DSPs) at 9 p.m. PT on Thursday, August 22, and at midnight ET on Friday, August 23.

Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet Tracklist

1. “Taste”
2. “Please Please Please”
3. “Good Graces”
4. “Sharpest Tool”
5. “Coincidence”
6. “Bed Chem”
7. “Espresso”
8. “Dumb & Poetic”
9. “Slim Pickins”
10. “Juno”
11. “Lie To Girls”
12. “Don’t Smile”

Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 North American Dates: Short N’ Sweet Tour

09/23 — Columbus, OH @ Nationwide Arena
09/25 — Toronto, Ontario @ Scotiabank Arena
09/26 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
09/29 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
09/30 — Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
10/02 — Hartford, CT @ XL Center
10/03 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
10/05 — Baltimore, MD @ CFG Bank Arena
10/08 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
10/11 — Montreal, QC @ Centre Ball
10/13 — Chicago, IL @ United Center
10/14 — Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
10/16 — Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
10/17 — Saint Louis, MO @ Chaifetz Arena
10/19 — Raleigh, NC @ PNC Arena
10/20 — Charlottesville, VA @ John Paul Jones Arena
10/22 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
10/24 — Orlando, FL @ Kia Center
10/25 — Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
10/27 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
10/28 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
10/30 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
11/01 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
11/02 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Delta Center
11/04 — Vancouver, BC @ Pacific Coliseum
11/06 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
11/07 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center
11/09 — San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
11/10 — San Diego, CA @ Pechanga Arena
11/13 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center
11/15 — Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
11/17 — Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
11/18 — Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum

Short N’ Sweet is out 8/23 via Island Records. Find more information here.