Deep into this trailer for Scrooge: A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit (Johnny Flynn) sings a song whose lyrics seem to consist solely of the phrase “I love Christmas!!” so it’s very, very easy to relate to Scrooge on this one.
Voiced by Luke Evans in this version for Netflix, everything seems like it follows the original Dickens tale to the letter. Scrooge is mean, sees some ghosts, and gets a lesson about changing his crotchety ways before he dies alone and smothered in ectoplasmic chains. Familiarity is comforting! Plus, writer/director Stephen Donnelly and his design crew have come up with some cool looks for the three ghosts. The best is the flame-headed Ghost of Christmas Past (voiced by Olivia Colman), but they’ve even run a little wild with Jacob Marley (voiced by Jonathan Pryce).
And that cast is solid. In fact, Evans’ voice work here should make all red-blooded movie fans want a live-action version where he plays Scrooge, shoving his way past joyful children and being smarmy to other-worldly mentor figures.
In a case of great minds thinking alike, even the other new iteration of the classic tale (Ryan Reynolds’ Spirited) includes musical numbers. Maybe it’s a matter of having to throw the kitchen sink at an old favorite to renew its relevancy. Or maybe people just like singing and dancing. I know what Scrooge would say.
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol hits Netflix December 2nd.
With Halloween behind us, we’ve officially slipped into the Holiday drinks season. Say goodbye to divisive pumpkin spice and hello to refreshingly sweet peppermint, spiced, and cookie-flavored beverages. The winter months are like the Super Bowl for coffee chains, this is the time of year when all the big brands put their best foot forward and offer customers new limited-time flavors by greatly expanding their menus. Unlike springtime or summer, when it’s cold out that means we get new iced drinks and new hot drinks.
Drinking a hot tea latte in the middle of summer is hell. But sipping a sweet warm, and spicy drink during the winter months can be pure bliss.
Collectively, Dunkin’, Starbucks, and Coffee Bean — three of the biggest coffee chains, all with a multi-state presence — have 15 drinks, including Peppermint Mocha, Caramel Brulee Lattes, Macadamia White Chocolate Lattes, and Cookie Butter Cold Brews just to name a few. And while that’s exciting, there is no way all of them are winners. So what’s worth your time and what’s not? We found out by trying each new drink and ranking them in our ultimate holiday drinks ranking. Find out which of these seasonal treats are actually worth your money and which should be reserved for your office frenemies below.
15. Dunkin’ — Peppermint Mocha Signature Latte
Dane Rivera
Tasting Notes:
The combination of minty peppermint and rich chocolate is the flavor of the season but unfortunately for Dunkin’ they’re the worst at it. The peppermint in this drink is way too pronounced, giving off a sort of chemical top note that hovers over some sugary sweet chocolate.
The sweetness of the chocolate doesn’t taste natural in any way; it tastes more like straight sugar than chocolate and that’s a problem.
Dunkin’ offers this drink in both hot or iced form, but we chose the hot since that’s the way Dunkin’ advertises it. In retrospect, I’m not sure that’s the best move considering the additional chocolate drizzle and dusting of hot chocolate powder Dunkin’ finishes this drink with ends up immediately sinking to the bottom, requiring you to constantly stir it between drinks.
The Bottom Line:
If the holiday season has you psyched for peppermint mocha lattes, skip Dunkin’s. It’s the worst.
I promise the other peppermint mocha drinks on this list aren’t bad, but Coffee Bean’s blended Peppermint Mocha is right up there with Dunkin’s Peppermint Mocha Latte. Which is to say, bad. This one has the opposite problem from Dunkin’s, it’s not overly minty to the point of tasting like chemicals — it’s not minty enough.
A rich chocolate flavor dominates this drink with the slightest minty aftertaste. The mint is so faint that if nobody told you this was supposed to be peppermint, you just wouldn’t taste it. There is also something off-putting about a blended mint drink, it’s not the proper form factor to luxuriate in the refreshing characteristics of mint. This just ends up feeling like a major miss.
The Bottom Line:
The flavors never really come together in a way that makes sense. This feels like a drink Coffee Bean makes just because it has all the ingredients on hand. It makes us wonder if anyone working there bothered to taste it before marketing.
Starbucks’ Caramel Brulée Latte is incredibly redundant. There isn’t a lot of difference between this seasonal favorite and Starbucks’ year-round Caramel Latte, it has a slightly more brown-sugar-forward flavor to it, coming across as a touch less sweet and more earthy and dark.
Trust me, that sounds a lot more interesting than it tastes.
All this drink really offers is the crunchy caramel brûlée topping which, when served in a hot drink, gets soggy and loses its crunch. Opting for having it iced doesn’t really solve that problem, either. Sure, the topping stays a bit more crunchy but it stays floating at the top and never travels through your straw — so it’s more decoration than anything functionally drinkable.
The Bottom Line:
If you love Starbucks’ Caramel Latte this might be a fun way to experience the flavor in a slightly different form, but you’ll end up just wishing you stayed with the stock Caramel — it has a better flavor.
The Iced Sugar Cookie Almond Milk Latte doesn’t taste nearly as delicious as its name suggests. The drink combines Starbucks mild blond espresso with sugar cookie flavoring and almond milk and is topped with red and green sprinkles. Again, the sprinkles are entirely decorative here — you’ll get a few through your straw if you stir it in but mostly it just floats there in your drink.
That’s not the main issue, the real problem here seems to be the almond milk. I love almond milk but it dominates the flavor profile here, giving the drink a weird plant-forward flavor that doesn’t pair well with the sugar cookie syrup. It comes across as blunt and lifeless on the palate, like none of the flavors should be together.
The Bottom Line:
It sounds delicious but the flavors never complement each other the way they should. It tastes more like straight almond milk than anything else.
Whether or not you like this drink is going to be entirely dependent on how sweet you like your coffee. Dunkin’s Cookie Butter Cold Brew is so sweet that it might as well not be coffee, you don’t get any of the mellow low acid flavors of cold brew coffee here, it just tastes like a liquified cookie.
The primary flavor here is brown sugar with a buttery lift that tastes a lot like chocolate chip cookies. The drink is topped with cookie butter cold foam, which is creamy, sweet, and delicious but it’s also just more cookie flavor on top of a drink that tastes entirely like cookies. I never thought I’d say this but… it’s too much damn cookie.
The Bottom Line:
If you’ve ever wanted to drink a liquified cookie, order this, you’ll love it. But since it tastes nothing like coffee, we have to rank it low.
Is this ranked too high for plain coffee? Maybe, but Dunkin’s seasonal Holiday Blend is pretty good stuff. The mouthfeel is silky smooth with a flavor that combines smokey and sweet molasses notes with a dark cherry finish. I ordered this coffee black and it had enough natural sweetness to it that I could drink it straight without cream or sugar.
The Bottom Line:
A pretty great-tasting coffee blend. Maybe there isn’t much to it that speaks to the season, but who cares? It tastes great and if you like coffee with or without cream or sugar, this is a great brew.
I’m really confused about Starbucks’ obsession with crumbs. Like the Caramel Brûlée latte, the Chestnut Praline is also topped with spiced praline crumbs, which sound delicious, but again, get pretty soggy in the drink and don’t really add to the flavor at all. This is a purely decorative ingredient, but it’s most often served in a cup with a lid.
What am I missing here? Starbucks’ press image of this drink looks undoubtedly delicious but the drink in real life looks interchangeable with the Caramel Brûlée.
At least the Chestnut Praline offers something a bit different flavor-wise. This drink has a pronounced nutty and buttery flavor which makes Starbucks’ bitter over roasted espresso a lot more palatable.
The Bottom Line:
Smooth, nutty, and buttery (if partially superfluous). A delicious winter-themed addition to Starbucks’ bloated menu.
8. Dunkin’ — Toasted White Chocolate Signature Latte
Dane Rivera
Tasting Notes:
This is hands down Dunkin’s best seasonal addition to the menu. It’s creamy, with a vanilla-heavy rich white chocolate body that is elevated with generous caramel drizzle and a spicy and earthy cinnamon sugar peppering this whipped cream.
It offers the intense sweetness of Dunkin’s Cookie Butter but has a rich coffee finish that isn’t overpowered by the added flavors. It tastes a little cheap in comparison to the white chocolate-based drinks offered by both Starbucks and Coffee Bean but it’s still pretty damn good.
Starbucks’ white chocolate is a bit more complex than what Dunkin’ has to offer. You still get that vanilla-infused flavor, but there are more pronounced natural cocoa notes here, giving this flavor an earthy edge with a toasty finish that makes it come across as more complex on the palate. Starbucks’ decorates this drink with “red sugar sparkles and crispy white pearls,” which is a fancy way of saying…”sugar.”
Does it need extra decoration? Not at all, especially if you’re ordering the drink hot, but I suppose it does make the drink look a bit more festive.
The Bottom Line:
A more complex white chocolate flavor than what Dunkin has to offer, but if you want the best white chocolate holiday drink, go with our next choice.
6. Coffee Bean — Macadamia White Chocolate Ice Blended
Dane Rivera
Tasting Notes:
A delicious mix of sweet velvety white chocolate and nutty macadamia notes. The drink ends with a sweet vanilla finish that is complemented by dark chocolate swirls around the walls of the cup. For the best results, mix your straw in a couple of times and work that sauce into the drink itself.
Coffee Bean says this drink is topped with hazelnut crunch, I didn’t get any of that in mine for some reason but I hardly cared considering how delicious this marriage of flavors was.
The Bottom Line:
Yeah, it’s a blended drink during the coldest months of the year but it’s so damn delicious it’s worth the brain freeze.
This drink is so incredibly smooth and mellow. The peppermint serves as the perfect complement to this blend of Dutch chocolate and buttery coffee. The layer of cream that tops this drink is a nice touch, but it’s a bit too airy to taste quite as luxurious as I think Coffee Bean wants it to come across.
The Bottom Line:
So smooth that Rob Thomas and Santana should write a song about it.
This is an improvement over Coffee Bean’s blended version of this drink. It has that same velvety rich white chocolate and buttery macadamia combo, but this one tastes a lot less like a cookie. Coffee Bean’s espresso is bold and round, with natural notes of chocolate and toasted nuts, and that pairs excellently with the sweeter notes of macadamia and white chocolate.
All of the flavors here are wonderfully complimentary.
The Bottom Line:
Everything the cold blended version of this drink offers, with a more pronounced coffee flavor.
Coffee Bean may have much better espresso than Starbucks, but we have to give the cold brew crown to the ‘Bucks. This Irish Cream Cold Brew is wonderfully luxurious, the sweet cream has a sweet vanilla flavor and a rich and thick consistency that serves as a flavor filter for the coffee to pass through.
Irish cream-flavored syrup provides most of the sweetness, combining chocolate and vanilla flavors that are just begging for a splash of Irish whiskey. In a perfect world, Starbucks would splash some whiskey in this drink for you, but we don’t live in that world so you’ll just have to do it yourself.
The Bottom Line:
A delicious marriage of flavors that comes across as supremely rich and luxurious. The best cold-brew-based holiday drink currently on the market.
Starbucks’ Peppermint Mocha is its flagship winter drink, and for good reason. This is a perfect marriage between rich chocolate notes and cool mint — offering a refreshing lift at the aftertaste. Because Starbucks has to be extra, they topped this drink with “dark chocolate curls” which as you imagine, melt immediately because this is a f*cking hot beverage.
But you know what, I’m not mad at it. The crumbles of the other drinks didn’t melt so much as get soggy, but the dark chocolate actually incorporates itself into the drink, doubling down on the chocolate flavors. There is a reason this is Starbucks’ signature winter drink.
Admittedly, the idea of a tea latte (brewed tea + milk + vanilla) is a lot less exciting than a traditional coffee-based latte, but no other drink screams “winter” quite like Coffee Bean’s Winter Dream Tea Latte. This latte has a shifting flavor that never gets boring, it starts off sweet before moving into spicy territory thanks to a combination of allspice, star anise, cinnamon, black tea, and rooibos, with Coffee Bean’s sweet vanilla powder and just a touch of milk.
Imagine Chai tea without the overwhelming cardamon notes with a more pronounced cinnamon flavor and you’ll be in the ballpark of Winter Dream. There is something so satisfying about this flavor combination, it’s comforting and sweet, with spicy notes that dance on the tongue between sips.
The Bottom Line:
The ultimate winter treat, the Winter Dream Tea latte just tastes like the holiday season feels. It’s Christmas in a cup. With its shifting flavors, there isn’t a single sip of Winter Dream that you won’t enjoy.
The NBA is not especially great at keeping its alternate jerseys under wraps ahead of whenever they are announced. Regardless, on Thursday morning, the league unveiled its full roster of City Edition uniforms, the final group that needed to be announced during the 2022-23 season. Here’s what all of them look like:
The 2022-23 @Nike NBA City Edition collection. Combining the heart and soul of hoops culture.
Some of them are very, very good. Others are flat out bad, while others are just boring. Maybe inoffensive is a nicer word. But the one thing you can certainly say about all of them is that they exist, and today, we are going to highlight the 5-best jerseys that Nike and teams cooked up for the upcoming campaign.
Any time the Pelicans have a chance to do a cool, Mardi Gras-inspire jersey, they should. Really, that extends to any New Orleans team — I am looking at you, Saints.
Regardless, the Pels going with a jersey inspired by the colors of Mardi Gras is nothing new. The concept continues to be very good, and the deep purple base for these makes the green, yellow, and light purple stripes across the chest stand out. There is something to be said for not blowing a layup, which New Orleans did here.
San Antonio hosted the 1996 NBA All-Star Game, which gave us some of the best uniforms in All-Star history. The ones on the right, look at them, they’re great.
Doing something with these will always be a good idea. Doing these specific uniforms: also a good idea. They take the general color scheme, a very unique one, and run with it without just making a complete replica that has SPURS on the front. There’s also a special court for these nights.
AIRPORT JERSEYS. This is going to be the preferred uniform for any sportswriter, in large part because none of the jerseys are inspired by Marriott. These are a really cool concept and I generally like how they were executed — the teal stripe across the front pays homage to the carpet at the Portland airport, while the airport code is PDX. The color scheme — black base, vibrant teal, white/gray letters and accents — really pops, too.
2. Washington
The Washington Wizards’ City Edition unis honor the city’s celebrated cherry blossoms in a pink to blue gradient design. pic.twitter.com/jnUK6bujJn
Generally, Washington’s entire schtick is bad. The Wizards, as a nickname, is very weird since there are no wizards in the nation’s capital. Despite that, the team has a red, white, and blue color scheme. It has never made much sense to me.
What does make a ton of sense to me, however, are their City Edition uniforms, which pay tribute to the iconic cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. The pink-to-blue gradient looks quite good, and just generally, these do not look like any other uniforms in the NBA. Pink is a color that doesn’t always work when it is the star of the show. These do, though, in a big way.
I might go as far as to say that these are among the best jerseys in American professional sports right now. These are unbelievable. The font, the colors, the little “Peach Tree” on the front of the jerseys, everything is perfect. Even the court that they have for the nights they wear these is sensational.
The Los Angeles Lakers fell to 2-9 on the season with their second loss of the season to the Clippers on Wednesday night in L.A., moving into sole possession of the NBA’s second worst record with the loss — only the Houston Rockets (2-10) have been worse.
Making matters worse was the groin injury suffered by LeBron James in the fourth quarter, who is now listed as day-to-day with an adductor strain but isn’t expected to play their next game on Friday against the Kings. James’ injury further complicates what is already a murky immediate future for this Lakers team, and only adds to the difficulty this front office faces in trying to decide what moves to make during this season.
There was an expectation that the Lakers would do something after the first month-plus of the season, particularly once players who changed teams this offseason are eligible to be traded on December 15. The problem is, it’s not clear if the Lakers season will be salvageable by December 15, as they’re trending towards disaster and could very well be almost completely removed from the playoff conversation before we even reach Christmas, particularly if James is out for anything approaching an extended period of time.
That hasn’t changed how current Lakers stars view things, as Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report wrote “key players” (and it’s not hard to figure out who those would be) still want L.A. to trade their two remaining draft picks in 2027 and 2029 for immediate help. The problem is, the Lakers, probably rightfully, don’t see that as a guaranteed path to title contention.
With the team’s trajectory trending south, sources indicate the front office is unlikely to attach those picks to a potential trade out of concern that such a transaction would not significantly change the course of the season.
It is not universally believed internally that a trade for Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner and sharpshooter Buddy Hield would move the needle to title contention, sources say.
That’s probably true, but unless James finds himself on the shelf for a considerable amount of time, the Lakers brass is going to have a very difficult time convincing him to punt on his 20th season in the league. That’s probably the smart thing to do as an organization, but only in a vacuum that doesn’t factor in the last two offseasons as self inflicted wounds that took L.A. from the literal champs to a complete non-factor in the West by virtue of sheer stupidity.
As such, after inking James to a two-year extension this offseason, the Lakers have tethered themselves to James for the remainder of his career (at least it would seem) and allegedly promised him they’d do what it takes to maximize his chances of getting a fifth ring. To this point, that has not happened and as they face the reality of this season already being on the precipice of being a lost year, they will have to make a choice about where their priorities lie and deal with the fallout of a situation of their own making.
Kim Petras made history last month when she and Sam Smith’s hit single “Unholy” rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In the process, Petras became the first publicly transgender solo artist to top the Hot 100, while Smith is now the first publicly non-binary solo artist with a No. 1 song. A pretty amazing accomplishment for the two LGBTQ+ artists.
Petras is expectedly getting some much-deserved attention and in a new interview withi-D, she spoke about the plans for her next album. The release will follow both her first No. 1 hit in “Unholy” and her latest EP, Slut Pop, which came out this past February. Petras explained that work has already begun on her next album and in her delightfully risqué manner, says that it’s currently, “A really pretty skeleton.” Adding that, “It’s got the wig on. Braids with ribbons, but it’s still a skeleton — a hot slutty skeleton!”
She went on to say, “I know the songs, and I know the order of them, but I just have to go finish them. It’s a very eclectic world of new people that I’ve worked with, so it’s [a case of] fitting into their schedule.” Those new people include superproducer Max Martin and Dua Lipa producer Ian Kirkpatrick as well. She called Martin her “idol” and spoke more about their collaboration throughout the interview. Check out the whole thing here.
The Chair, Killing Eve and Grey’s Anatomy star Sandra Oh is returning to television soon. Deadline reports that the Golden Globe-winning actor who is also a 13-time Emmy nominee has joined a drama series adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel The Sympathizer in a recurring role alongside actors Kieuh Chinh and Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen.
The project is produced by and will also co-star Robert Downey Jr. The series is a collaboration with HBO and A24. HBO ordered the series in July 2021, and the series is currently in production. The story is an espionage thriller and satire that follows the struggles of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his exile in the United States. It is described as a “blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping spy novel and a powerful story of love and friendship.”
Deadline reports that Oh will play Ms. Sofia Mori, “a liberated feminist who in the midst of a love triangle begins to awaken to the complexity of her own Asian American identity.” Downey, Jr. is set to play multiple roles that will serve as the main antagonists that all represent the different forms of the American, white establishment. The main cast also includes Hoa Xuande (Cowboy Bepop), Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le, Vy Le, and Alan Trong.
Unless you’ve been living in the wine cellar of Dr. Oz’s temporarily abandoned New Jersey mansion, you’ve likely heard that the much-predicted “red wave” everyone was talking about ahead of Election Day never materialized for the Republicans. And if you’re anything like Seth Meyers, you likely have a favorite GOP villain whose race you were watching with particular morbid interest. In The Late Night host’s case, that candidate happened to be gun-lovin’ Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who may soon be dusting off her resume and looking for work.
In the midst of sharing all the biggest stories from the midterms, Meyers admitted that “By far the most dramatic — and my favorite — example of how poorly things went for Republicans [Tuesday] night is the shocking development in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, where Lauren Boebert is, as of this taping, trailing her Democratic opponent in a race that absolutely no one thought would be competitive.”
Meyers went on to describe his totally understandable reaction to this news:
I’m not saying I was excited last night when I saw those results. But I did rush into my kids’ room at 3 a.m. to shake them and scream, ‘Wake up! Lauren Boebert is losing!’ And they know who she is because I tell them if they don’t eat their vegetables, they’ll get a visit from The Boeberdook.
By the way: If you’re confusing her with Sarah Palin, who’s also running for congress this year in Alaska, don’t worry. They’re both losing. So you don’t even need to keep them straight.
You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 4:05 mark.
Christina Aguilera is getting real (but will hopefully stay “dirrty”) for a documentary film. One of the biggest trends these days is pop girlie documentaries, which are more accurately propaganda films that make a very famous woman who sings look good while showing their darkest, rawest footage (or at least the version they’re okay with people seeing). Subjects include the likes of Selena Gomez, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, and more.
Deadline reports that Aguilera, who rose to fame in the late 90s with her pop hit “Genie in a Bottle,” is the subject of a documentary that’s been filmed over the past 18 months. In Aguilera’s defense, unlike some of the other pop girlies, she has been in the business for decades and long enough to see a lot of changes in the music industry. She has released nine studio albums and has gone on multiple world tours. Ting Poo is directing the doc for Time Studios and Roc Nation. Poo co-directedVal, a documentary about actor Val Kilmer. The project is the second from Time Studios and Roc Nation, following a Megan Thee Stallion docuseries announced earlier this year.
According to Deadline, the doc offers “unprecedented access to her life story, opening up her personal archive for a look into the past and present, from her early days as a pre-teen Disney star to her current recognition as an international icon with one of music’s most celebrated voices.”
“We are beyond excited to extend our creative partnership with Roc Nation through this film,” Time Studios’ Co-Head of Documentary Loren Hammonds said in a statement. “Christina has been such an enduring talent and inimitable entertainer throughout the years. Hers is truly one of the great voices of our time, and this is the perfect moment for her story to be told. We are incredibly honored that she has chosen to work with Time Studios and Roc Nation to finally share her truth with the world.”
“Christina Aguilera is one of the most iconic artists of our time, whose music has inspired millions of people around the world,” director Ting Poo said in a statement. “I am truly honored to tell the story of the person behind the music because I know it will equally inspire.”
A Twitter hypothetical has fans wondering which member of the 2016 XXL Freshman Class would win in a Verzuz hit battle — and one, in particular, has garnered a lot of attention for saying he’d take it outright. Over the weekend, 21 Savage, who recently released the joint album Her Loss with Drake, participated in a fan chat on Clubhouse, where he asserted that he’d beat every other member of the 2016 Freshman Class — which included members like Anderson .Paak, Denzel Curry, Lil Dicky, Lil Uzi Vert, and Lil Yachty — in a hits battle.
Then, in another chat on the game-streaming app Twitch, Savage stuck to his guns when he was asked about the viral response to his controversial statement. When the host, streamer Kai Cenat, challenged him by naming Kodak Black specifically (fair, considering Kodak’s run of hits including “No Flockin’,” “Super Gremlin,” and “Zeze,” despite Kodak’s many, many transgressions against basic human decency), Savage didn’t hesitate. “I’m smoking Kodak,” he said. “He be acting like I aint got the shit. That what be the problem. N****s be forgetting. I don’t know what n****s be thinking. Before all this Drake sh*t, I been having hits. I been had diamond songs. I’m probably the only n*** of this generation to go platinum with no features.”
Be that as it may — and it’s more accurate than not, thanks to tracks like “A Lot,” “Bank Account,” “Rockstar,” and “X,” among others — Kodak wasn’t too happy about the assertion, firing back during an Instagram Live stream. “21 don’t want the smokes,” he said. “That n**** ain’t say nothing yet. I done DM’d that n****… I done hit Verzuz. Don’t be capping on this internet… 21 don’t want the smokes.”
Lorde has spent much of 2022 on tour in support of her latest album, Solar Power. She has a few music festival performances remaining before finishing off the tour in 2023. And for all of the triumphs that have been documented on this run of concerts (from unexpected songs to using her platform to spread awareness of important causes) her successful tour hasn’t come without its challenges. Namely, in April, the tour was briefly postponed as the “Green Light” singer dealt with laryngitis.
But she’s been incredibly communicative with fans via her newsletter and today, was extremely candid once again in documenting her broad look at the concert touring industry. While she acknowledged that she’s personally doing well financially on tour, her breakdown of the challenges that most other artists — and the industry in general— face, was heartfelt and insightful. “I’m lucky. But for pretty much every artist selling fewer tickets than I am, touring has become a demented struggle to break even or face debt,” she said.
Her post was very detailed and well-reasoned. “Let’s start with three years of shows happening in one,” she began, before embarking on a breakdown of how much more expensive it is to tour in a post-pandemic world. “To freight a stage set across the world can cost up to three times the pre-pandemic price right now…Ticket prices would have to increase to start accommodating even a little of this, but absolutely no one wants to charge their harried and extremely-compassionate-and-flexible audience any more f*cking money.” She cheekily acknowledged that artists are, “…a collection of the world’s most sensitive flowers who also spent the last two years inside.” But was frank in saying that, “All we want to do is play for you.”
Check out more from her newsletter post below.
“I don’t know how much you’ve been following the live music industry conversation, but lemme hit you with a five minute explainer, cause I think it’s interesting, and good to know about if you’re going to concerts at the moment. Basically, for artists, promoters and crews, things are at an almost unprecedented level of difficulty. It’s a storm of factors. Let’s start with three years’ worth of shows happening in one. Add global economic downturn, and then add the totally understandable wariness for concertgoers around health risks. On the logistical side there’s things like immense crew shortages (here’s an article from last week about this in New Zealand), extremely overbooked trucks and tour buses and venues, inflated flight and accommodation costs, ongoing general COVID costs, and truly. mindboggling. freight costs. To freight a stage set across the world can cost up to three times the pre-pandemic price right now. I don’t know sh*t about money, but I know enough to understand that no industry has a profit margin that high. Ticket prices would have to increase to start accommodating even a little of this, but absolutely no one wants to charge their harried and extremely-compassionate-and-flexible audience any more f*cking money. Nearly every tour has been besieged with cancellations and postponements and promises and letdowns, and audiences have shown such understanding and such faith, that between that and the post-COVID wariness about getting out there at all, scaring people away by charging the true cost ain’t an option. All we want to do is play for you.
Profits being down across the board is fine for an artist like me. I’m lucky. But for pretty much every artist selling less tickets than I am, touring has become a demented struggle to break even or face debt. For some, touring is completely out of the question, even if they were to sell the whole thing out! The math doesn’t make sense. Understandably, all of this takes a toll — on crews, on promoters, and on artists. You’ll notice a ton of artists cancelling shows citing mental health concerns in the past year, and I really think the stress of this stuff is a factor — we’re a collection of the world’s most sensitive flowers who also spent the last two years inside, and maybe the task of creating a space where people’s pain and grief and jubilation can be held night after night with a razor thin profit margin and dozens of people to pay is feeling like a teeny bit much. Me personally? I’m doing pretty good. You guys have come to the shows in such mammoth numbers (we sold almost 20,000 tickets in London, like what the hell) and not having crippling stage fright hanging over me for the first time is such a fucking blessing that you could tell me I had to cycle from city to city and I’d still be loving it. But I’m not immune to the stress — just a month ago I was looking at a show that was pretty undersold and panicking, only for it to sell the remaining 2000 tickets in ten days. Wild stuff.
I wanted to put all of this in your minds to illustrate that nothing’s simple when it comes to touring at the moment, and if your faves are confusing you with their erratic moves, some of this could be playing a part.”
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