Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw Lana Del Rey go on a musical adventure and Janelle Monáe give some love to the music side of her empire. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
We’re now less than a month away from Lana Del Rey’s new album, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd Pearl Watch Me On Ring A Bell Psycho Lifeguard. She unleashed a seven-minute chunk of its last week with “A&W,” a sprawling, narrative tune that’s as adventurous musically as it is lyrically.
Janelle Monáe — “Float” Feat. Seun Kuti and Egypt 80
Monáe is fresh off a big weekend getting some cardio in at the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game. Before that, though, she dropped “Float,” an anticipated new single that features hints of reggae and Monáe reaching into her rap bag.
Latto — “Lottery” Feat. Lu Kala
It feels like it was just a matter of time before Latto came through with a song titled “Lottery.” She made the most of it, too, recruiting Lu Kala to help deliver a Dua Lipa-esque disco-pop banger.
Polo G — “No Time Wasted” Feat. Future
Polo G got an assist from Future on last week’s “No Time Wasted.” Uproxx’s Alex Gonzalez notes of the track, “Over a triumphant beat produced by Southside, Polo reminds us where he came from and that he still sees himself becoming even more monumental.”
Tiësto — “Renaissance (The White Lotus) (Tiësto Remix)”
The White Lotus switched up its distinctive theme music a bit for the second season, although that catchy vocal part remained intact. The same is true with Tiësto’s new remix of the tune, which turns the track into what should be a DJ set hit at festivals this summer.
Skrillex — “Ratata” Feat. Missy Elliott and Mr. Oizo
Skrillex has been a machine lately, releasing new songs at an impressive clip. That was all leading up to Quest For Fire, his first album in nine years that’s out now. Highlights include “Ratata,” a jittery two-minute number featuring Missy Elliott and Mr. Oizo.
Caroline Polachek — “Fly To You” Feat. Grimes and Dido
Instead of dropping on Friday like everybody else, she opted to release her new LP, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, on Valentine’s Day. She mostly flies solo on the project, although she shared the love on “Fly To You,” which features Grimes and Dido.
Beabadoobee — “Glue Song”
Beabadoobee is enjoying some newfound happiness on last week’s single “Glue Song.” She explained of it, “I wrote a lot of this song while on tour across Australia and Asia in the back of cars and traveling. It’s a heartfelt song that means a lot to me…. A love song and the first one I’ve written in my new relationship.”
Don Toliver — “4 Me” Feat. Kali Uchis
Toliver had a busy week, dropping two new singles: “Leave The Club” and “4 Me.” Of the latter, Uproxx’s Aaron Williams says, “His latest single from the album, ‘4 Me,’ sticks closely to the [Lovesick] theme, hijacking an interpolation of Beenie Man’s 2000 Mya collaboration, ‘Girls Dem Sugar,’ to express his devotion to the song’s addressee.”
100 Gecs — “Hollywood Baby”
The famous Forrest Gump “box of chocolates” line could have easily been about 100 Gecs (timeline impossibility aside), because you really can’t predict what a new Gecs tune is going to sound like. On “Hollywood Baby,” the latest, they went in a guitar-driven direction that comes across as their warped-version of hooky ’00s pop-punk.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Ed Sheeran is coming in hot! Maybe not with new music quite yet, but today, the “Shivers” hitmaker has announced that he has dropped a new line of hot sauce, cleverly called Tingly Ted’s.
Tingly Ted comes in two flavors: the medium heat “Tingly” and the extra spicy “Xtra Tingly.” According to a press release, either of the sauces is ideal for fries, nuggets, falafels, and fried chicken.
In an Instagram post announcing the hot sauce, Tingly Ted’s is described as the ‘Ketchup Of Hot Sauces’ – a not-so-hot, hot sauce to be dolloped onto everything.”
“I had a year of whittling down the perfect flavors with a great mixing team, and we settled on two absolute belters,” Sheeran said in the post. “The tingly and the xtra tingly. I’ve had them on tour with me recently to try them with all sorts of meals, and there really isn’t anything they don’t go with (except bananas, don’t do that).”
As of now, Tingly Ted’s is only available for pre-order in Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. However, fans can sign up here to receive a notification by email as to when it will be available in other parts of the world.
Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of The Simpsons lines that have crept into my everyday vocabulary. “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean that I don’t understand” is useful for feigning interest, while “lousy Smarch weather” is a handy phase for when the weather is subpar, in Smarch or otherwise. I haven’t found the right opportunity to use “so then I says to Mabel, I says…” yet, but it’s always buzzing around my brain, unwilling to be pushed out every time I learn something new (there’s another one).
Bart’s “Mabel” story — which appears in the season eight classic “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer,” or “The Mysterious Voyage of Homer” — is a favorite line among many Simpsons fans, and even for people who wrote on the show. “Homer story in Chili ep was so full we had no room for kids B story. So when Homer asks them where Marge is, they have nothing going on. What they’re doing that moment had to be 100% freestanding. Hence, Mabel,” former co-showrunner Josh Weinstein tweeted.
He added, “And no, there were never any Mabel-related lines before or after ‘So anyway, I says to Mabel, I says…’ It was perfect. And to be clear, because people have asked about this often, the Mabel line does not reference anything, it never appeared in a book or movie or anything. As far as I know, it is totally freestanding in the human timeline.”
Weinstein also asked his followers to share their favorite “random” quotes.
Story behind “I says to Mabel”
Homer story in Chili ep was so full we had no room for kids B story
So when Homer asks them where Marge is, they have nothing going on. What they’re doing that moment had to be 100% freestanding
The Last of Us Episode 6 may have dropped one of the biggest Easter eggs yet for Season 2 and fans of the hit video game are freaking out. Shortly after arriving in Jackson, Wyoming, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) spots a girl staring at her while she’s eating in the commune’s dining hall. That had fans going wild on Twitter that the staring girl is Dina, who is a very significant character in The Last of Us Part II video game. That sprawling story will be adapted in Season 2 (and possibly even Season 3), so it was a neat visual clue — if the girl really is Dina.
Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckman aren’t confirming whether the staring girl (played by Paolina van Kleef) is or isn’t Dina, but they seem to be having a little fun heavily hinting that the scene does look awfully familiar. Here’s what they said during the latest episode of The Last of Us podcast via ScreenRant:
Mazin: I wonder who that could be, theoretically or not. We’ll find out maybe one day.
Troy Baker: Oh! I completely missed that. “What are you looking at.”
Druckmann: Yeah, because in Part 2, there is a story about the first time Dina met Ellie that is very similar to what happens here.
Mazin: That doesn’t mean that that’s Dina, but it doesn’t mean it’s not.
In The Last of Us Part II video game, Ellie tells Dina about her first time arriving in Jackson and what it was like seeing so much food. Ellie recalled how she couldn’t resist “gorging myself,” which prompted Dina to admit that she saw her. “I remember thinking, ‘Who’s this string bean girl stealing all the jerky?’”
While Mazin and Druckmann are being coy, it’s looking very likely that fans just saw Ellie and Dina’s first live-action encounter.
Eminem is reportedly trying to stop Real Housewives Of Potomac stars Gizelle Bryant and Robyn Dixon from trademarking their podcast, titled Reasonably Shady. According to Page Six, he filed an opposition against the reality TV duo on Valentine’s Day (February 14), claiming that the name could “cause confusion in the minds of consumers.”
As he’s gone by the nickname “Slim Shady” for nearly his whole career, Eminem owns the trademark for “shady” on merchandise.
Dixon and Bryant reportedly want to use the trademark to sell podcast-related merch, including water bottles and clothing items, as fans of the franchise have tuned into the show since it started in 2021. While they have not currently responded to Eminem’s filing, they have until March 26 to offer a reply or the next step.
Just earlier this week, they celebrated reaching 5 million downloads for their podcast, which is hosted by Charlamagne Tha God’s Black Effect Podcast Network on iHeartRadio.
It’s also worth noting that Eminem has had a documented feud with Char, going so far as to diss him on a 2018 song, “Kamikaze,” after Charlamagne called him “trash all year long” the year before.
While it seemed to calm down on the surface in recent years, the filing very well could cause some tension between the two once more.
While in New York City to promote his book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, the senator walked into a video being recorded by user @taylorchamp. “Nailed it @Bernie,” she wrote. It doesn’t appear to be staged, because, well, it’s Bernie Sanders. The man only has patience for so many things, and I doubt TikTok is one of them.
After posting the video, the TikTok user said not much happened during her stay in the city. “Hi, Bernie Sanders. I wanna apologize,” she said, seemingly sarcastically. “I saw the doorman actually had a TikTok where he was tagging the place. I was like, ‘Oh dope. Maybe I’ll just make one with him. I’m about to check out.’ The very moment I walk outside, I set it up. This whole trip, nothing happens.” She explained she got “in the way of Bernie Sanders’ walking space… It’ll never happen again.”
In It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, Sanders “takes on the billionaire class and speaks blunt truths about our country’s failure to address the destructive nature of a system that is fueled by uncontrolled greed and rigidly committed to prioritizing corporate profits over the needs of ordinary Americans,” according to the publisher. You know what else it’s OK to be angry about? This face should answer the question:
After Madonna took the stage at the 2023 Grammys, people online took notice of her appearance, which was enough to make her a trending topic on Twitter. Many commented that her face looked different than usual, and now, weeks later, Madonna is poking fun at the situation.
On Twitter yesterday (February 20), she shared a photo of herself and wrote, “Look how cute i am now that swelling from surgery has gone down. Lol [crying laughing emoji].”
If Madonna actually did get something like facial filler injections shortly before the Grammys, that could explain swelling she may have been experiencing. Koha Skin Clinics explains, “Dermal fillers cause swelling and bruising because the injection process causes minor trauma to the area. Swelling is just the body’s natural response to this trauma as the area heals. It is normal to experience some swelling after dermal fillers, but the amount can vary from person to person.”
In an Instagram post shortly after the show, Madonna addressed the “Close-up photos of me Taken with a long lens camera By a press photographer that Would distort anyone’s face” and wrote in part, “I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start. I have been degraded by the media since the beginning of my career but I understand that this is all a test and I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.”
Madonna is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
While the streaming wars have been ongoing for years, competition within the sector has been heating up in recent months as networks compete for the best content — and collaborators. Paramount+ in particular has been generating enough drama to fill a Taylor Sheridan western (and its seemingly never-ending series of spin-offs). Just last week, as Variety reports, Paramount+ made the announcement that it’s planning to increase the cost of its monthly subscription for the first time in its near two-year history.
The decision comes as part of the streamer’s merge with Showtime, which was initially announced in September 2022. In order to offset the costs of such an enormous undertaking, the company plans to increase the monthly cost of a basic Paramount+ subscription — the one you need to itch that western TV shows your dad probably loves itch — will increase from $4.99 to $5.99. And while $1 may not seem like much, it’s still a 20 percent hike in price. For customers currently subscribed to the premium Paramount+ tier with Showtime and currently paying $9.99, that cost will climb to $11.99 per month.
While Variety reports that Paramount has yet to specify exactly when these price jumps will go into effect, they did say it will be at some point in 2023. So, consider yourselves warned!
In some ways, watching the Super Bowl just for the commercials is the sports equivalent of reading Playboy just for the articles. But when you consider that the typical NFL game consists of a mere 11 minutes of any real on-the-field action, the truth is that most of us watch the Super Bowl just to see the commercials — whether we know it or not.
As the compilation video above shows, Rihanna’s Halftime Show/pregnancy announcement (which brought in more viewers than the big game itself) wasn’t the only star-powered portion of Super Bowl LVII: as is often the case with Super Bowl commercials, a bevy of famous names popped up in commercials throughout the night. Ben Affleck brought out his Boston accent to serve up Dunkin’ coffee and donuts to unsuspecting customers — plus wife Jennifer Lopez; Serena Williams got inspirational for Remy Martin and faced off on the golf course with “Boar on the Floor” king Brian Cox in a Caddyshack-themed Michelob Ultra spot; Will Forte and Chris Bauer took one giant leap for Xfinity; Melissa McCarthy made her debut as Booking.com’s newest spokesperson; and Eagles superfan Miles Teller danced with his wife and dog for Bud Light.
While many celebrities opted to play themselves for the Super Bowl, the game also served as a prime time for Hollywood studios to release trailers for their biggest upcoming titles, which meant we saw teasers for movies such as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, a.k.a. James Gunn’s MCU swan song. In fact, sequels and remakes were really the main types of movies on the menu, with Fast X, Scream VI, and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
If you want to see more of what $7 million and 30 seconds of TV buys you, watch the full compilation video above.
Thierry Henry is one of the greatest Premier League players ever, staking his claim as a club and country legend by winning the 1998 World Cup with France, winning the Premier League as part of Arsenal’s Invincibles, and joining Barcelona to win the 2009 UEFA Champions League. These days, Henry can be found working as a pundit breaking down the Champions League, and if you were lucky enough, he may have even joined you on your couch to share the experience of watching a match together.
To celebrate Lay’s partnership with the Champions League, Henry took part in the “No Lay’s, No Game” experience, where Henry returned to Barcelona and unexpectedly visited Barça fans at their homes to see if they were prepared for the game with Lay’s. If they were, he’d stay to watch the match. But if they didn’t, he’d leave to a new home in search of some chips.
“I’ll be honest, it brought me back to me being a fan because it made me ask myself, ‘How would you have reacted?’ When you’re an athlete or you work on TV, you just roll with it. I used to play, go home, sleep. You don’t think about the impact that you have on people. You know about it when you score a goal, we all love it, everyone jumps, we all are happy, pain, we all share it,” Henry tells Uproxx Sports.
But this experience — from laughing with a fan who couldn’t find Lay’s and instead brought two potatoes, to sharing an emotional moment with another who was brought to tears — reminded Henry how much he means to those who have spent their lives rooting for him.
“I realized the impact when you give people emotions, helping them as they’re going through stuff,” Henry says. “Sometimes you don’t even know it. I don’t know what I did that inspired someone. Maybe it is something that I said, the way I look, I don’t actually know.
“But then at that moment I was like, ‘Could that have been you?’ It was almost impossible to think if Michael Jordan knocked on my door to ask me if I have some water,” he continues. “I would’ve been like, ‘What are you doing here?’ I would’ve passed out. I was as surprised as they were because if I didn’t get that opportunity, sometimes you tend to forget. It’s not that you do it on purpose, but you live your life and you tend to forget.”
Henry’s work covering the Champions League doesn’t include the club for whom he ascended to global superstardom, Arsenal. But as the season progresses, it’s looking more likely by the week that the Gunners will finish in the Premier League’s top four for the first time since 2016, thereby earning a spot in Europe’s top club competition when next year rolls around.
That has been a revelation for Henry, who is enjoying the club’s return to form under his former teammate in North London, Mikel Arteta.
“As an Arsenal fan, what you want is, ‘Can I relate to my team?’ When I look at that team, I can, as a fan. I feel it. And then, are they competing? Yes, they’re competing,” Henry says. “Sometimes you might go against the better team, sometimes you might, you know, who’s gonna win it, but at least we are there. You compete. You go to the game with excitement. The Emirates is rocking again. Do we wanna win the league? Hell yeah. But first and foremost, I wanted that fight, that class, that competitiveness, that family, what we were. And now, it is back.”
Arsenal hired Arteta to fill its managerial vacancy in December of 2019. It marked the first time Arteta, who previously served as an assistant under Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, served as a club’s manager.
While Arteta has the club sitting atop the league and playing at a level not seen since Arsène Wenger was in charge, it wasn’t too long ago that there were serious questions about his ability to lead the Gunners to where they wanted to go. Entering the 2021-22 campaign, Arteta was the overwhelming favorite to be the first manager sacked in the Premier League. They started the year with three straight losses in the league, all of which came without Arsenal scoring a single goal.
But instead of shaking things up, the club stood behind its manager. It’s a decision that has paid off in a big way, and Henry can’t help but praise Arsenal for sticking by Arteta.
“(Arsenal’s return to being title challengers) took three years. This is why it’s important also to let a manager put whatever he needs to put in motion,” he says. “Because you can’t just arrive somewhere and then you need to change a squad, almost an entire squad and perform. It’s going to take a little while. You have young kids that need to develop. You need to bring the players that you like, get rid of the players that are not equipped to play the way you’d like to play or are not going to be good guys in a dressing room. Things that we don’t see, I think it’s important, but it takes three years and now we can judge Mikel Arteta. Is he the guy that can lead us to the title, where it’s not me saying, it’s not you saying, he’s saying it.
“So now, I know what I’m supporting,” he continues. “For a little while, I was just like, I know I was an Arsenal fan and I would die as an Arsenal fan, but I was missing the why — why, apart from you’ve got to, and I will always. But now I can stop with people and talk and I say, ‘Yeah, you know, we might not win it, but we are fighting’ and that for me is most important.”
Just past the midpoint in the season, Arsenal sits atop the Premier League amid a fierce battle with the two-time defending champions, Manchester City. Henry and I spoke one day after the Gunners hosted City at the Emirates Stadium, a 3-1 win for the champions that briefly put them atop the league. As of this writing, Arsenal has regained the top spot — they won their weekend fixture against Aston Villa, 4-2, while City drew Nottingham Forest, 1-1.
The promise of youth can bring the burden of inexperience. While two players in Arsenal’s squad have won the Premier League before, none of them have lifted it in the club’s shirt — summer signings Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko have won it with City. Many of these young players haven’t been in a title race before, so if Henry were to give a piece of advice to the Gunners as they push toward the home stretch of the season, it would be to stay calm and relax.
“I’ve been there,” he says. “You’re going to, during the season, have bad games, and it didn’t happen for little while. Yeah, we lost against Man United. We had to draw and then everything was just like always good during the season. It’s not the case. You’re going to draw some games. You’re not going to win for a week or two weeks, it will happen. It’s not how you fall, it’s how you go back on your feet and how you stand after that.
“So, you lost against Man City. Is it shameful? No, it is not,” he continues. “Was it a decider? It might be. Everyone wanted to see if you could, you didn’t. Relax, relax. That doesn’t mean you’re going to now blow everything away and not keep the ship steady. You have to stay there. Just keep it at the end of the day, when you look at it, the level of points and defeat, not a lot. Yes, we still have a game in hand, but keep calm, keep calm, keep calm. Just believe in what you did since the beginning. Now it is a fight. It was always a fight. But now it is a proper fight.”
Arsenal’s resolve was tested at the weekend, when a 2-1 deficit away at Aston Villa was turned on its head. Zinchenko scored the goal to level things, while winter addition Jorginho — who, in recent years, has won the Champions League with Chelsea and the Euros with Italy — put a shot on target that bounced off of Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez’s head and went in to give the Gunners a game-winning goal in stoppage time. One of the team’s precocious talents, Gabriel Martinelli, added a fourth to secure all three points.
It’s these moments, where the more seasoned players provide an assist, that Henry predicts will do Arsenal’s young stars good in the long run.
“A lot of people will give the advantage to City because they’ve been there, because they’ve done it, because they have guys in the team that did it and they know how to suffer, they know how to chase, they know how to be chased,” Henry says. “But I’ve seen Leicester win it and nobody in that team knew what it was. So you need to keep on dreaming. You need to keep on believing you. We have guys also in that team that won it — Jesus, Zinchenko. We have guys that won the title also before in the domestic league. Obviously not in the Prem, we know, but you’ve gotta believe in it, right? If you don’t win it, you won’t have the experience of winning it. You have to start one day, right? A lot of people (were) asking questions to City. They answered. Now people are going to ask questions about Arsenal. We have to answer.”
There are three months left in the season, and the Gunners have the best team in the world breathing down their necks. They’re not the only Manchester club with aspirations of lifting the title — an old foe of Arsenal’s, Manchester United, are five points back as of this writing, although the Gunners have a game in hand on both clubs.
The English top flight has shown us time and time again that the title race will never lack drama. But in the face of all of that, Arsenal’s sights are set on winning the league for the first time since 2004, and the greatest player to ever wear the club’s shirt can’t help but feel like there’s something special brewing at the Emirates.
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