Category: News

If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again. It seems Joe Jonas has taken those wise words uttered by the late Aaliyah to heart. With the blessing of his brothers (Uproxx cover stars Jonas Brothers) and to the pleasure of fans, the “Work It Out” singer’s next solo venture is on the way.

At the core of Music For People Who Believe In Love is love lessons learned after loss. Today (April 25), Joe Jonas leans further into his romantically optimistic outlook on the project’s latest single, “Heart By Heart.”

Co-written with Lewis Capaldi, Savan, Oscar Holter, as well as Max Gsus, Joe demonstrates that love is a learning process, and he is ready to enroll.

“You and I have been down these avenues before / Keep on going back and forth / Haven’t we baby, Oh my baby / There’s a long road left and a long time to live / You’re the sweetest loving to give / I know cause I’ve tasted it / I would hate you to waste it / So if he don’t ever light your spark / Remember I know your heart by heart,” sings Joe.

The song’s warm instrumental production and deeply intimate lyrical confessions make it hard not to take “Heart By Heart” as a homage to his reported ex-wife Sophie Turner.

Listen to Joe Jonas’ new single “Heart By Heart” above.

Music For People Who Believe In Love is out 5/23 via Republic. Find more information here.

Since his breakout single “Beautiful Things,” Benson Boone has become a pop music fixture. But Boone’s ubiquitousness seems to have ruffled a few feathers online. Well, his haters are in for a rough summer.

Today (April 25), Benson Boone shared his latest American Heart single, “Mystical Magical,” a track destined for radio domination.

Although the shimmering new song was initially premiered during Boone’s Coachella 2025 set, supporters outside of the Empire Polo Club grounds couldn’t truly grasp its sparkling energy.

“Once you know what my love’s gonna feel like / Nothing else will feel right / You can feel like / Moonbeam ice cream, taking off your blue jeans / Dancing at the movies / Cause it feels so / Mystical, magical / Oh, baby, ’cause once you know / Once you know / My love is so mystical, magical,” he sings.

Just as his stage costumes shine, so does Boone’s emotional vulnerability making him the perfect heartthrob. Thanks to the production insight of Evan Blair, “Mystical Magical” avoids the pitfalls of most gloom and doom hopeless romantic tunes. Instead, “Mystical Magical” feels like the jittery butterflies in your stomach after locking eyes with a crush.

Watch Benson Boone’s new lyric video for “Mystical Magical” above.

American Heart is out 6/20 via Night Street Records/Warner Records. Find more information here.

(SPOILERS for Netflix’s You will obviously be found below.)

At the end of You‘s fifth season, Joe Goldberg was revealed to be done and dusted in prison. This satisfying ending dovetails with what star Penn Badgley has felt that Joe deserved all along, which is perhaps a fate worse than death, and now, the object of Cardi B’s affections has lost his luscious locks and is inwardly blaming society for everything that he’s done.

So much for accountability, right? That final detail, in which Joe refuses to accept responsibility for his homicidal actions, is also commentary on how You viewers lusted over a serial killer. It also works out mighty fine that this show’s “Final Girl,” Bronte (a fantastic Madeline Brewer), got out alive, as did Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) and Marienne (Tati Gabrielle). Many did not fare as well, although we can guess that Dr. Nicky (John Stamos, not reprising his role in the fifth season) is feeling vindicated somewhere as a free man. Surely? Yet over 20 other people who encountered Joe did not make it out alive (whether by cage or through various other mechanisms), so let’s count ’em.

Season 1

Although this wasn’t Joe’s official first kill, the show started off with a bang when Joe kind-of deliciously killed Guinevere Beck’s boyfriend, Benji Ashby, which is rather annoying to recall because (dammit) Goldberg sometimes did what the audience secretly wanted him to do. Then there was spoiled literary heiress Peach Salinger, whose death (and the fact that Joe left behind some pee-evidence) resulted in the above ^^^ meltdown face. More murders followed including Ron Baker, abusive stepdad to Paco; Elijah Thornton (in flashback), a music exec with whom Candace Stone cheated on Joe; Jimmy Stone, brother to Candace; and Guinevere Beck, whose death was unjustly followed by Joe publishing her book and framing Dr. Nicky for her murder.

Subtotal: Five

Season 2

A flashback informed us that Joe killed his mother’s abusive partner to start his lifelong rampage. Additionally, horrendous perv Henderson lost his life to Joe, thereby ending a three-episode appearance by now-disgraced comedian Chris D’Elia, who was (in a case of art allegedly imitating life) accused of bad acts that bore a striking resemblance to his character. Penn Badgley’s baddie also took out Jasper Krenn, a fellow psychopath and mobster who probably would have killed Joe if given any more screen time.

Subtotal: Eight

Season 3

After literally marrying Love and growing obsessed with Marienne, Joe targeted her abusive ex-husband, Ryan Goodwin, who lost a brutal battle with Joe’s knife. Near season’s end, Joe was nearly killed by his then-wife, Love Quinn (who has her own separate body count), in a knock-down, drag-out, poison-filled fight that ended with her demise and Joe faking his own death and changing his identity before fleeing to Europe.

Subtotal: Ten

Season 4

Despite this season being the dullest of the bunch, Joe managed to rack up his highest body count yet while pretending to be Professor Jonathan Moore. This rather convoluted season sees him dissociate, and the rest was bloody TV history. The wildest part about this season is that Joe doesn’t remember his murderous spree as the Eat The Rich killer, but nonetheless, he took out Vic, security detail to Phoebe; Malcolm Harding, a badly behaving professor; Simon Soo, a con-artist in the most literal sense; Gemma Graham-Greene, whose throat was slit; Edward, who had uncovered the evidence of Joe’s crimes, Tom Lockwood, father to Kate; Hugo McNamara, bodyguard to Tom Lockwood; and Rhys Montrose, in both the literal and imaginary senses.

Subtotal: Eighteen

Season 5

This final tour of terror began with Joe back in his old stomping grounds while flying way too close to the sun. And although Bronte did grow worryingly close to permanently falling under his spell (You did not shy away from Joker-Harley Quinn comparisons with a certain episode title), she fought him like hell, which ultimately led and imprisonment for life.

Before that happened, Joe took out Buffalo Bob Cain, mentor to Kate; Clayton, who hoped to vindicate his father, the wrongly convicted Dr. Nicky; Dane, a misogynist who began stalking Bronte; and A Random Cop, who had the misfortune of losing his life during Joe’s final stand after a nearly-drowned Bronte alerted the police. Do we have a total now? Yes.

Total: Twenty two

2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis was a major role for star Oscar Isaac. It turns out it could have instead been a major role for Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, as he recounted on Tig Notaro, Mae Martin, and Fortune Feimster’s Handsome podcast.

It’s a story better listened to or read in full (below), but in summary: In 2012, Vernon was invited to audition for the movie’s lead role, and after some thought, he decided to go for it. So he went to an audition, which he didn’t realize was an audition, and… well, Isaac ended up doing the movie, not him.

Watch the video above (the story starts at 51:45 in) and read a transcript of Vernon’s tale below.

“In 2012, [Bon Iver was] running around touring and we got an email from the people that represent the Coen brothers, the filmmakers, who are originally from this area [near Minneapolis]. I’m the biggest fan of their movies. And to put it into perspective before I tell you this story, I made movies growing up with my friends, my sports friends and I made movies. I was never allowed to be on camera because I was so bad at acting. I was always the director.

We get an email from the Coen brothers, curious if I would read for one of their films. And I immediately was like, ‘There’s no way in high hell that I can do this. I definitely am not built for this. I don’t wanna be any more famous than I just got. No.’

I thought about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a couple days ’cause it was such a high honor. I started getting really confusing thoughts, like, ‘Maybe this was something I was meant to do, or maybe I need to grow into this.’ It’s the Coen brothers, you know?

So they sent a script and I had it on the road, and I’m a very kind of patchy reader. They wanted to have a meeting in New York, so I read the script. Over the course of a month, I read it once. I went to the Upper West Side, I believe it was Joel Coen’s apartment. And I was there with my brother, and they asked my brother to wait outside, and I thought that was kind of weird. And I walk in and embarrassingly now, I said, ‘Hey, I’m such a huge fan, it’s so great to meet y’all. I’ve been really thinking about this.’ I worked myself into such a tizzy that I went in and said, ‘I’m totally willing to move my Australia tour to do this part and let’s really make this happen.’ I was trying to talk to them about Minneapolis, and they were kinda just, ‘Hey man, why don’t we just sit down and read a little bit?’

In that moment, it was the most dun-dun-dun moment in my life. In that moment, I realized that I was in an audition and I didn’t know that. And I was completely paralyzed. The movie ended up being acted by Oscar Isaac, it’s a movie called Inside Llewyn Davis.

So I’m sitting there, I’m a terrible actor, I’ve read this thing exactly once. […] It was OK that they were laughing at me, because I was so bad. But anyways, it was one of those learning experiences where if something doesn’t feel right to you, and you’re not meant to do it, maybe just let it pass.”

Michelle Zauner’s latest Japanese Breakfast album For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad woman) is under her belt, but she’s not done with it yet: Today (April 24), she has unveiled a new video for “Winter In LA.”

The video, shot in South Korea, sees Zauner playing the role of a discontented bride. Zauner says of the clip, “I made this video with Peter Ash Lee, who also shot the cover of Jubilee. I loved the idea of playing a fussy bride who ruins her own wedding.”

Find the video above. Zauner also extended her 2025 tour, so check out all the upcoming dates below.

Japanese Breakfast’s 2025 Tour Dates

04/24 — Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom *
04/26 — Atlanta, GA @ The Tabernacle *
04/27 — Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore *
04/28 — Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium *
04/30 — Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed *
05/01 — Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed *
05/02 — Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed *
05/03 — Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore *
05/05 — Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall *
05/06 — Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall *
05/07 — Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway *
05/09 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
05/10 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
05/11 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
05/12 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
05/15 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia *
05/16 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia *
06/03 — Sydney, AU @ Vivid LIVE at Sydney Opera House
06/05 — Melbourne, AU @ RISING at PICA
06/07 — Auckland, NZ @ Auckland Town Hall
06/11 — Tokyo, JP @ Zepp Shunkjuku
06/13 — Osaka, JP @ Club Quattro
06/15 — Cheorwon-gun, KR @ DMZ Peace Train Music Festival
06/21 — Milwaukee, WI @ Summerfest
06/24 — Oslo, NO @ Rockefeller
06/25 — Stockholm, SE @ Filadelfia #
06/26 — Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA #
06/28 — Pilton, UK @ Glastonbury Festival
06/29 — Manchester, UK @ Academy 1 #
06/30 — Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland #
07/01 — Bristol, UK @ O2 Academy Bristol #
07/03 — London, UK @ O2 Academy Brixton #
07/04-06 — Ewijk, NL @ Down The Rabbit Hole 2025
07/05 — Utrecht, NL @ TivoliVredenburg #
07/08 — Paris, FR @ Le Trianon #
07/10 — Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK Live
07/27 — Portland, OR @ Project Pabst
08/20 — San Diego, CA @ Cal Coast Credit Union Theatre at SDSU *
08/22 — Los Angeles, CA @ Greek Theatre *
08/23 — Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl *
08/27 — San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic *
08/28 — San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic *
08/30 — Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater *
09/01 — Vancouver, BC @ The Orpheum *
09/02 — Seattle, WA @ Woodland Park Amphitheater *
09/03 — Seattle, WA @ Woodland Park Amphitheater *
09/05 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Twilight Concert Series @ Pioneer Park * ^
09/06 — Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom *
09/09 — St Paul, MN @ The Palace Theater *
09/10 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee *

* with Ginger Root
# with Minhwi Lee
^ with Tomper

Saturday Night Live has been on a short break, spanning last week and this upcoming weekend. New episodes return in May, though, and now we know who’s going to be on them: Hosts and musical guests for the next three shows were announced today (April 24).

On May 3, Quinta Brunson hosts and Benson Boone is the musical guest. The May 10 episode features Walton Goggins and Arcade Fire, and the May 17 show will have Scarlett Johansson and Bad Bunny.

This will be Bad Bunny’s first time on SNL since he was the host and musical guest in 2023. Before that, he was a musical guest in 2021 and made a cameo in a 2020 episode. Arcade Fire, meanwhile, are in the Five-Timers Club for musical guests, as they’ve been on the show in 2007, 2010, 2013, 2018, and 2022. Boone’s history is less fleshed out, as this will be his first time performing on the show.

Johansson has been on the show pretty regularly over the past few years, thanks to husband and Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost. Johansson made a notable cameo a few months ago, during Jost and Michael Che’s annual joke swap, where each host gets the other to read objectionable jokes. Jost said some that that left Johansson stunned.

If you want to see Modest Mouse play with a bunch of good bands this year but cruises aren’t really your thing, the indie rock legends have announced The Psychic Salamander Festival.

The lineup for the two-day event features Modest Mouse and The Flaming Lips on both nights, with the latter performing their 1999 masterpiece The Soft Bulletin in its entirety on night 2. The bill also features Courtney Barnett, Built To Spill, Sleater-Kinney, Yo La Tengo, and Friko among others.

Modest Mouse’s The Psychic Salamander Festival takes place on September 13 and 14 at Washington’s Remlinger Farms, a family-owned working farm with a concert space and amusement park. Tickets go on sale on Friday, May 2, at 10 a.m. local time. You can find more information here.

Additionally, Modest Mouse are going on a separate co-headlining tour with The Flaming Lips, the The Good Times Are Killing Me tour, the dates for which you can see here.

Check out the lineup for The Psychic Salamander Festival below.

Modest Mouse’s The Psychic Salamander Festival Lineup For Saturday, September 13

Modest Mouse
The Flaming Lips
Courtney Barnett
Built To Spill
The Vaudevillian
Mattress

Modest Mouse’s The Psychic Salamander Festival Lineup For Sunday, September 14

Modest Mouse
The Flaming Lips (The Soft Bulletin)
Sleater Kinney
Yo La Tengo
Friko
Sun Atoms

Nelly’s “Country Grammar (Hot Shit),” the lead single from his 2000 album Country Grammar, is comfortably at home in 2025. He mentions AI, Donald Trump, and lighting up and taking a puff of chronic, all of which arguably have a stronger hold on America today than they did back then. But at the time, what made it such an interesting breakout single for the St. Louis rapper was how he threaded together East and West Coast with the South, all while being from the Midwest. His laid-back flow, which bounced behind the beat, was set to a song based on a game of patty-cake. This unique blend of styles and themes propelled him into the spotlight.

At the age of 26, Nelly was introduced to the world and went to No. 7 on the U.S. charts. The album went on to sell over 10 million copies and became only the ninth hip-hop album to be certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). What wasn’t clear at the time was that Nelly would become a bridge between rap and country music. And no one suspected that, in honor of the 25th anniversary of Country Grammar, Nelly would be invited to perform the album in full at a country music festival (Stagecoach – where he has performed previously). He wasn’t that kind of country — was he?

When Country Grammar dropped, Nelly was propped up on TRL next to Britney Spears and ‘NSYNC. Country crossovers were so rare that Shania Twain, pulling one off a few years prior by landing some videos in rotation on VH1 and adult contemporary radio, got lambasted for not being country enough. Country music remained siloed, and the idea of any rap or pop artist — and Nelly was both, thanks to the success of his first album — appearing on CMT was unthinkably uncool. Against this backdrop of genre separation, Nelly’s next move was surprisingly groundbreaking.

In 2004, he joined up with Tim McGraw on “Over and Over” (two years later, a little artist named Taylor Swift would drop her first single, “Tim McGraw,” for some context on exactly how popular he was during this era). As for Nelly’s popularity, he performed at the Super Bowl halftime show for the second time that year. The track was from the latter of Nelly’s double albums Sweat and Suit, and is a slow heartbreak ballad. The video shows a split-screen day in the life of Nelly and McGraw, highlighting how similar they are. Sure, they decorate their houses differently, but they both take the same shower, put on variations of an ostentatious belt buckle, and keep a photo of their sweethearts on the bedside table (Ciara for Nelly, and Faith Hill, who had already been married to McGraw for eight years). Later, the two get out their Nokia cell phones to call their partners while waiting for a private plane on two different air strips. While intended to convey heartbreak as a great equalizer, today it suggests wealth as their commonality. The overall effect of this unexpected hit single foreshadowed a larger trend that was beginning to take shape: the rise of hick-hop.

While Suit was an R&B album, and there are elements of R&B swing in the song, the only thing really stopping it from being identifiable as a country track is the click drum, which was still a no-no in the country world of live bands and Opry debuts. The song went to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, to the surprise of Nelly’s label, and signified to country music gatekeepers that the mainstream was ready for country, under the right conditions.

Prior to the Nelly and McGraw duet, artists weren’t really taken seriously when they blended genres. In Rolling Stone’s history of hick-hop, there are some novelty hits where established country artists like Toby Keith and Big and Rich playing with the syncopated rhythms of hip-hop, and outsiders to country music like Bubba Sparxxs and Kid Rock flirting with blue collar life years before they make a hard right turn into more completely appealing to country audiences.

Between Trace Atkins’ 2005 novelty hit ‘Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,’ which seemed to satirize rap vernacular, and Luke Bryan’s 2011 hit ‘Country Girl (Shake It for Me),’ which celebrated aspects of culture and incorporated Southern rock guitar influences, the hick-hop genre evolved. That same year, Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem,” which got a remix with a verse from Atlanta’s own Ludacris, was the first hick-hop song to go to No. 1 on the charts.

What shifted to make country and hip-hop blending acceptable? By 2011, Xennials and the first Millennials were taking the cultural helm, responding to a blending of culture that had begun with the generation before them. Nelly’s own background connects to this theory.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, rap became a fixture on MTV, and Gen X, of which Nelly is a member, were in high school. At that time, no matter how big or small the city, one place where men got together across racial and economic lines was the locker room. (Both country and rap were dominated by male artists at this time, and they still are. It follows that people involved in creating and legitimizing a hick-hop sound were almost entirely men.)

Youth sports were where Nelly met the St. Lunatics, the group of friends he would bring up with him through the music industry. Locker rooms were one of the most influential places this cultural mash-up would meet, and it makes sense. Music is a huge part of sports (hype songs, walk-up songs, team anthems) and being on a team is one place where diverse groups of people get the chance to work together, trust each other, qnd spend a lot of time together.

Beyond his influence on hick-hop, Nelly also helped spur another sub-genre, teaming with Florida Georgia Line on the remix of “Cruise,” a bona fide No. 1 hick-hop hit on the Hot Country Songs (it stayed there for over a year) and Country Airplay charts. The song kicked off a sound that became known as “bro-country,” a grouping of male-gaze centric songs about girls, trucks, and beer that many future hick-hop songs would fall into. Nelly and Florida Georgia Line would try to recreate the magic two more times with collaborations, but “Cruise” was a right song at the right time phenomenon, and lightning didn’t strike twice for the collaborators.

For Nelly, the hit “Cruise” came at a time when his career in rap was declining. He would hop on remixes with Kane Brown and Brett Kissel, to some success, as country embraced adding verses from established hip-hop artists to songs to extend the life of a single. In 2021, Nelly released Heartland, an album of duets with country artists, including the two most successful Black men in the genre, Darius Rucker and Kane Brown, as well as one of those Florida Georgia Line tracks and a solo collaboration with one of its members, Tyler Hubbard. The album was not met with success on country radio, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Looking back at Country Grammar, it’s easy to see the early parallels with country songwriting. The album is about a small part of St. Louis that Nelly and the St. Lunatics called home. It tells listeners about their world, bringing them into the party, the hard times, the posturing, and the world as they saw it. It’s fun while offering a nuanced version of country music’s long tradition of documenting rural life in a way that others have not, setting the stage for all that has followed and this upcoming moment of celebration for Nelly’s work at Stagecoach.

Snoop Dogg is about as marketable as they come in the music world, so unsurprisingly, NBCUniversal is getting in on it: As Variety reports, the beloved rapper and his Death Row Pictures have signed a “new creative partnership” with the studio. The deal covers film, television, sports entertainment, and streaming.

“Audiences around the world love Snoop and connect with his unparalleled showmanship and artistry,” NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios Chairman Donna Langley said in a statement. “Those of us lucky enough to be in his orbit also know his incredible business acumen, endlessly creative spirit and the unapologetic authenticity that he brings to every project. There’s only one Snoop, and we’re so excited for him to join our unbelievable roster of creative partners.”

The company also said, “This strategic evolution cements the brand’s influence beyond music, ushering in a new era of innovative onscreen storytelling.”

As for what will come of this new arrangement, Snoop is set to return to The Voice as a coach for the 28th season, after previously holding the role during the 26th season. Snoop will also continue to work on a biopic that was announced in 2022.

Snoop also shared a statement, saying, “Not everyone has the courage and vision to see what Death Row Pictures can bring to the table, but Donna and the NBCUniversal team have always understood, which is why I am proud to call NBCUniversal my new home. The Dogg has officially moved into the neighborhood, ya dig?”

June 2025 is proving to be a busy month for new albums. There’s releases from Addison Rae, Lil Wayne, Little Simz, Turnstile, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Hotline TNT, Yaya Bey, and now, Haim. The rock trio have announced I Quit will release on June 26, as teased at an album announcement concert.

The 15-track album was produced by Danielle Haim and ex-Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij, and “radiates the raw energy of seasoned performers whose deep reverence for classic rock shapes songs that are built for live performance,” according to a press release.

There’s no tracklist yet, but Alana previously said I Quit is the “the closest we’ve ever gotten to how we wanted to sound.” She continued, “Coming into this album, it feels like all three of us are really in tune with what we want, and we’re not f*cking afraid to say like — I’m sorry, now I’m two beers in — if I want to f*ck somebody, I’ll f*ck in the way that I want to. I’m not gonna feel judged by it. If I wanna go on dates, if I wanna do whatever… Do whatever feels good to you.”

You can listen to new single “Down To Be Wrong” above. Meanwhile, below you’ll find the album cover art shot by Paul Thomas Anderson, who previously directed Haim in a game-changing music video.

Haim’s I Quit Album Cover Artwork

I Quit is out 6/20 via Columbia Records. Find more information here.