Category: News

Earlier this year, Kurt Vile unveiled his new album Watch My Moves. Last night, he brought the song “Hey Like A Child” to Late Night With Seth Meyers in a relaxed performance.

“Hey Like A Child” is a nice dose of Vile’s twangy, cinematic sound, and his live rendition of it is even more colorful and calming as he sings nonchalantly: “Hey like a child you waltzed into my life / Hey like a mild high, I’m feelin’ fine.” It’s a great end-of-the-year reminder of the record that was released in the spring.

In April, Vile reviewed every one of his albums for Uproxx. About his most recent LP, he said, “I think my records are always enough of something new in my evolution. I’ve always got new things to say. I just think I’m emitting my personality and being comfortable where I’m at in my life. It’s a little bit cocky, and sometimes funny. But it’s also confidently played with dreamy chords, and it just puts you in the zone. All those things that I’ve become a master of, it’s what I’m doing and I’m cranking it out from my own house at this point. It’s just the way it is.”

Watch Vile’s performance of “Hey Like A Child” on Late Night above.

Selena Gomez said My Mind & Me, her Apple TV+ documentary, is “a bit on the serious side” on The Kelly Clarkson Show yesterday, and its titular single released this morning (November 3) backs up that descriptor in spades. The piano ballad arrived alongside an animated lyric video, and each line is more brutally honest than the last.

“Wanna hear a part to my story / I tried to hide in the glory / And sweep it under the table / So you would never know,” Gomez melodically sings in the first verse, which goes on to depict Gomez as “an accident people look when they’re passing” but “never check on the passenger” because “they just want a free show.” The acoustic chorus finds Gomez admitting to a constant fight with her mind but reclaiming her power and proclaiming, “I wouldn’t change my life / And all of the crashing and burning and breaking, I know now / If somebody sees me like this, then they won’t feel alone now.”

The 30-year-old singer and Only Murders In The Building actress wrote the powerful song with frequent collaborator Justin Tranter, Julia Michaels, and Ian Kirkpatrick.

With Clarkson, Gomez shared how difficult it was to chronicle in the documentary her 2019 stay at Boston’s McLean Hospital and her subsequent coming to terms with a bipolar diagnosis, but she tried to incorporate just as many positive or uplifting moments.

“It’s a very honest take on somebody who has to live with all of these things,” she said. “But I mean, the whole point, hopefully, is at the end, you’re like, ‘Well, cool, she’s gonna go live her life and do her thing. ‘Cause I am never gonna make one of these again.”

Vulture published an interview yesterday with Gomez and My Mind & Me director Alek Keshishian, and she similarly opened up about the challenges of filming such an unflinching documentary. When asked why they chose to hold off on making the doc around her 2016 Revival Tour, which bled into a career hiatus citing mental health complications stemming from lupus, Gomez said, “I wasn’t well. That’s actually the only answer. I wasn’t well, and I couldn’t continue. I had to cancel what I needed to cancel in order to live.”

All indications are that, on the other side of My Mind & Me, Gomez has arrived in a place where she knows how to better protect herself from the unrelenting pressures of celebrity. As for the single, Gomez told Variety at the doc’s premiere that she hopes to release more new music in 2023.

Watch the lyric video above.

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me hits Apple TV+ on 11/4.

Earlier this week, horror maestro (and Manifest superfan) Stephen King expressed what a lot of people were thinking about Elon Musk’s Twitter plans. King thinks that it’s a ridiculous idea for Musk to start charging for “verified” status, and the SpaceX CEO actually attempted to haggle over a price which he insists will exist. So, a mass exodus could happen, but in the meantime, King has revealed himself as a Tesla driver who still isn’t having this nonsense over blue-checkmarks.

King swung again at Elon, but first, he took a moment to praise the ingenuity of Tesla.

“Kudos to Elon Musk, who has begun a revolution in how the world drives and who has incredible visionary talents,” the Cell author tweeted. “I got an early Tesla and traded for another one. Wonderful cars (no autopilot for me, thanks). That said, when it comes to Twitter…”

Here comes a literary comparison for the ages. “Musk makes me think of Tom Sawyer, who is given the job of whitewashing a fence as punishment,” King continued. “Tom cons his friends into doing the chore for him, and getting them to pay for the privilege. That’s what Musk wants to do with Twitter. No, no, no.”

The whitewashing reference might actually be a double-edged sword. Although I’m definitely not attributing any hidden meaning to King’s words, Musk sure doesn’t mind whitewashing harmful and incendiary Twitter behavior under the guise of “free speech,” so we’ll see what comes of his intended Twitter revolution. In the meantime, King is wondering when Manifest will return.

The answer (and he probably knows this) would be November 4. When will the show return again with its final batch of episodes, though? I’m hoping for Netflix and Jeff Rake to time the finale to the show’s oft-mentioned “death date,” although June 2024 is an awfully long time to wait.

Rina Sawayama is having a big year, after unveiling her new album Hold The Girl and bringing those songs on the road on one of the most anticipated tours of this fall. Though she’s been unstoppable, something came in the way of her New York show at the Great Hall at Avant Gardner last night.

“Brooklyn, I’m so sorry to have to cancel the show tonight,” the singer wrote on Twitter. “I’ve been on vocal rest where possible for 5 days and have had steroid injections but during the last hour I gradually started to lose my voice. This has never happened before and I’m so sorry if u have travelled far.”

She added, “plz hold on to ur tickets if u can, my team r working hard in trying to reschedule this date. as u know performing live is my favourite part of what I do so this is absolutely heartbreaking and I can only apologise if I let u down. We will update as soon as possible @avantgbk.”

Most fans are understanding, insisting that she rest and take care of herself. Hopefully she’s able to reschedule it soon without missing any forthcoming tour dates. So far, she’s still set to play in Boston tonight.

Here’s a fact that might make you question the space-time continuum: The French indie-pop band Phoenix has been putting out albums for more than 20 years.

To quote Keanu in The Matrix: “Whoa.” In your mind, it’s possible that Phoenix only dates back to their 2009 commercial breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Or maybe you got on board when the earworms from 2006’s It’s Never Been Like That started sneaking into commercials. You certainly wouldn’t peg Phoenix as a middle-aged indie band by looking at lead singer Thomas Mars, who has scarcely aged a day since the band dropped their 2000 debut United. Back then, he was a boyishly handsome French dude crooning frisky electro-rock tunes in a convincing American accent. And here he is, on the forthcoming Alpha Zulu (due Friday), still sounding like a boyishly handsome French dude, even with his 46th birthday looming later this month.

While Spoon is normally pegged as indie’s requisite “mind-numbingly consistent rock band,” Phoenix is another strong contender for that distinction. Over the course of seven albums, they have perfected a breezy sonic template that is one part sleek Strokes-ian guitar rock and one-part mathematically precise synth-pop, and infused with a thoroughly stylish sensibility that derives from their country of origin.

It’s a sound that seems effortless upon first listen, but clearly is not. As Mars and bandmate Laurent Brancowitz explained during a recent interview, Phoenix albums tend to be as difficult to make as they are easy to enjoy. When asked to do an overview of their discography, the word “pain” came up several times. But as we’ll see, the journey has been worth it.

United (2000)

Thomas Mars: We were struggling to find our place a little bit. It was a tense time because we had so many ideas of how it should sound like, and it’s impossible in reality to make it exactly the way you imagine it. It would be sad if you could exactly imagine how it should be. It never works this way. So it was tense. It was sleepless nights trying to understand how we could keep this under our control. And it was pressure because studios were really expensive. We didn’t have that much money. We were on a budget. Ultimately it was resolved because Philippe Zdar came to the rescue and mixed this album with us.

Laurent Brancowitz: We were swimming upstream at that time. We were fighting the whole universe just to achieve this thing we had in mind. I think nowadays we would know who we could turn to to make it sound the way we wanted to sound. But back then it felt that nobody was doing it and that the whole world would be a kind of conspirator to prohibit us from realizing this dream.

TM: We all watched the same documentary about the making of Sgt. Pepper. That documentary was sort of the ideal version of what a studio life is like. It was not their first record, obviously, but there were at a moment where experimentation turned out to make new classics. So we set the bar a little too high, I think. We didn’t have George Martin.

Alphabetical (2004)

LB: This one was the hardest to make.

TM: Pure pain.

LB: For a year we were stuck. It became almost crazy working on one or two songs for ages. We were kind of lost in the difficulty of a second album. For a long time we were in a dark cave and at some point it was becoming dangerous. The turning point was when we finished a song that we had recorded in a big studio in Paris, and we realized it was really bad. We threw it away and suddenly things became so much easier. There was this long process of creation and destruction.

TM: The way we work, there’s a lot of entropy. It’s a testament to having something that’s a little bit timeless. You listen to it for a few years to see if it will pass the test of time. I think we figured this out more than ever on Alphabetical because we spent so much time with the songs. It took a long time to just be able to turn this into a record that you can listen to.

Usually we go in the studio and have demos that are the first ideas. The songs are almost there and if you don’t complete them right away, the rest of the task is the tallest mountain to climb. Also, reproducing the charm of the demo is really hard to do, and it took us many years to know what decision to make. Sometimes you keep the first take on certain things.

It’s Never Been Like That (2006)

LB: The Berlin record.

TM: It felt like shooting a movie. We were on location for two or three months, and living in an apartment that was very strange. It was a set for a reality TV show — a cooking show — that didn’t happen. The kitchen was huge and the bedrooms were tiny. We never ate one meal in that kitchen because we were eating at the studio.

LB: We try to record in a space — a physical space but also a mental space. It’s connected in our memories to a specific collection of images. I’m very sad for the Beatles who recorded everything in Abbey Road because I’m sure everything is melted together.

We did it in an old abandoned radio station. The place was very beautiful and very eerie. It was like ghosts walking in there. Also, it was a moment of change in our lives. Thomas was very much in love, I remember. So there was this energy, I think you can hear it in the record. We did it in the smallest amount of time. When we went to Berlin we had zero written and zero music. A few months later, I think it was, the album was finished.

TM: We couldn’t go back home and not think of the record. We were all with each other all the time. I think that’s why the record was done so quickly. We had to figure out the puzzle day and night and we never took a break from it.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)

TM: We changed management, record companies, everything. We started this record with no one holding our hand. There were these four songs that we had — “1901,” “Lisztomania,” “Lasso,” and “Armistice,” I think — and we would play them for managers. We saw that these four songs had something special right away. If they didn’t want to sign us on their label, we knew they had no taste.

It was exciting but it was also painful, because the brothers were losing their dad at the time. It was the beginning of adult life in a way, with responsibilities and losses coming into our lives.

LB: It was both painful and joyful. When you are a musician, every song is like a puzzle. Those songs, I think, we served them in an elegant way.

TM: We were really confident. I was convinced that “Lisztomania” would be the way bigger song than “1901.” But it was really “1901” that caught people’s attention, especially in the U.S. And “Lisztomania” became a hit after.

LB: It was a moment where the world was changing and with the internet and blogs. The power came back to the people and all those gatekeepers, the big radio stations that rule the world, they were kind the disappearing. It felt good.

Bankrupt! (2013)

TM: As soon as there’s a recipe, we get rid of it. At some point we talked about Bankrupt! being “Ludwig Von Phoenix” — that was the thing that we should not do, “Ludwig Von Phoenix.” So we were going as far as possible from that.

LB: It’s a bit cynical. There’s more acid. We knew people would listen to it, so we felt a responsibility to be as demanding as possible. I don’t know why. It’s a strange psychological move. But those songs are really dense and with lots of layers.

TM: Yeah, there’s many, many layers.

LB: Deck was always arguing, “It’s too complicated guys.” And we were resisting but I think in the end he was right. Even we have trouble remembering every song.

TM: I was in the U.S. and I missed the first three days of mixing. When I came I was like, “I should have never missed the beginning of this.” It seemed clear that Phillippe was going one way and Deck was going one other way and that it was hard to reconcile both their opinions. So yeah, it’s an album we didn’t enjoy making as much.

Ti Amo (2017)

TM: Our first concept album. It had a theme and it had a very strong visual cue. It’s one of our most playful records. I have good memories of being at the center of Paris and the museum making this album.

LB: It’s a very sweet record and very nostalgic.

TM: It was also tainted because when we were there, the terrorist attack happened in Paris. There was a slight pause where we thought about whether making music was worth it. We’re not essential workers so it felt like it wasn’t the time for music. Then we realized it’s the only thing we know how to contribute. If you are not an essential worker, you either become one or you might as well be an epicurean.

Alpha Zulu (2022)

TM: Every album we make is a reaction to previous one. As we were digging into this one, we realized that we were putting the songs that had the least in common together. We tried to open the spectrum as much as possible and make a little bit of a Frankenstein. It’s similar to United because we played with all musical styles and genres on the record. It has this playfulness and this idea that you stretch the fabric as much as you can. Also, the pandemic gave us time to be inspired again because we didn’t see each other for a long time. It just hit the reset button a little bit more than with the previous albums.

LB: I resisted bringing in Ezra Koenig. I resisted a lot. It’s not because I don’t love this guy. Tell me one classic song that is a duet.

TM: The idea that two people coming together will make a song better is not necessarily true.

LB: Thomas always wants to invite someone to just change the timbre. And we are always resisting.

TM: He is a friend that’s intimate enough that he can say no. That was the key thing. That’s the reason why we didn’t involve anyone before. I know him enough so that he doesn’t have to say yes.

LB: We try to avoid studios because they are very vanilla. We are always looking for something a bit special. I look at buildings and I always think, That would be a nice studio. But some old insurance company owns it. I always feel that it’s very unfair that all those great buildings are just filled with the boring institutions. But the Louvre, in the center of Paris, it’s amazing. So that was the ultimate spot in Paris. When I looked for an apartment to rent, I wanted to be in working distance of the Louvre. So when this opportunity appeared to record, it was too good to be true almost.

TM: If you’d open a window, there would be someone coming in the studio five seconds later to make sure that no one was coming to steal anything. But they let us build a studio inside the museum. And not only we were living a dream that we pictured as teenagers, but then the pandemic hits. So all of a sudden we were on our own in this place. It was very surreal.

One of the year’s biggest (and silliest) scandals, along with James Corden v. Balthazar and the Don’t Worry Darling rumors, is whether Kim Kardashian “literally ruined” Marilyn Monroe’s dress after wearing it to the Met Gala. There are conflicting stories, but all the drama surrounding the iconic outfit was nearly prevented, as Kardashian revealed on Hulu’s The Kardashians.

During the episode, appropriately titled “What’s More American Than Marilyn Monroe?,” Kardashian explained the steps she took before trying on the famous gown. “If this does not fit me, I can’t even try the original,” she said about a replica of the dress. “So I’ve Googled her measurements, I’m looking at my measurements. The width of my shoulders and my body makes me like a shapeshifter. I can squeeze into anything.” Including the duplicate, which was good news for Kardashian; if it didn’t fit, her backup plan was that “I’ll be in my SKIMS pajamas, at home, eating.”

As for the actual dress…

At lunch with her sisters Khloé and Kourtney, Kim gave them an update — the real dress came, and it didn’t fit at all. “They just pulled the whole thing from me. And I’m fuming,” she said. Footage showed Kim trying on the actual dress, and it was a bit of a contrast to the prototype that had gotten her so excited.

“When I went to put it on it wouldn’t even go on over my hips, and I was just like devastated,” she told her sisters. In the clip, she talked to her team, saying, “You know what, I’ll try everything, and if I really get 10 pounds down, then we’ll try it again.”

Kardashian wrote the owners of the dress a “groveling, begging email,” but “they were very firm. I just found that out today, so I’m devastated.” She was determined, however, and after eating “so clean and so perfect” for three weeks and a Rocky-like montage of working out, Kardashian was allowed to be Marilyn — for five minutes.

Kim should have worn this instead.

Pete (and Guy Fieri) would have liked it, at least.

(Via People)

After the infamous Amber Heard trial, Johnny Depp appears to be making his way back to the spotlight. This summer, he made an eyebrow-raising cameo as a floating astronaut at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards. Now, it looks like he’s again heading back to the music world, this time by linking up with Rihanna for the upcoming Savage X Fenty show on November 9.

TMZ reports that per “production sources,” Depp will pop up in the Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 fashion show. He apparently won’t walk the runway, but will instead be the focus of a “star” moment; Cindy Crawford and Erykah Badu have popped up in the same capacity during previous shows, but Depp will be the first male to ever do it.

Rihanna and her team reportedly invited Depp to take part and both sides were thrilled to make it work. Depp has apparently already filmed his part of the show and he apparently sports a “cool and chic” look.

Phoebe Bridgers, meanwhile, probably won’t be working with Depp any time soon: She recently noted of the Depp/Heard trial, “If Amber Heard exhibited any neurotic behavior, it was held against her. Then Johnny Depp, out of his mouth, admitted some of the most violent, crazy sh*t in court, and it’s somehow like, people aren’t surprised? That whole situation was so upsetting to me, that it was treated like a fandom war. Laughing at someone crying in court? It was disgusting.”

Professionally speaking, Takeoff, the Migos member who was shot and died at 28 years old a few days ago, went out on a good note: He and Quavo released their first album as a duo, Only Built For Infinity Links, in early October. It was critically well-received and a commercial success, so far peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 chart (although it remains to be seen how Takeoff’s passing will impact the album’s placement on the next rank). If you ask 50 Cent, though, now is the time for Quavo to tweak the album.

In an Instagram post shared last night (November 2), 50 wrote, “This is really how it goes @quavohuncho you have to position this Album correctly for Take Offs Legacy, go make a couple changes and address everything all artist make the best music out of painful moments. R.I.P to pop smoke [dove emoji] R.I.P to TakeOff.”

The text accompanies a video of music executive Steven Victor on Rich Kleiman’s Out Of Office podcast (as Complex notes), discussing 50’s involvement on Pop Smoke’s successful 2020 posthumous album Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon. Victor said in part:

“I gotta say that I don’t think […] if I never had this conversation 50, I don’t know if this album would’ve came out. So when [Smoke] passed, 50 kept trying to get in touch with me. So I finally went to go see him. I couldn’t listen to [Smoke’s] music, and 50 was like, ‘Yo, you’re being selfish. You can’t let your emotions or you being in this depressed state stop you from executing the plans you guys had. Three weeks ago, you guys were in my office talking about taking over the world. He passed away, but who’s going to keep his legacy going? Who’s gonna make sure his music comes out so he can take care of his family?’ He’s like, ‘That’s on you. I get you’re sad and all that sh*t, but this ain’t the time for that.’”

Quavo has yet to publicly address Takeoff’s death, but Offset recently changed his Instagram profile picture to a photo of Takeoff.

The Lakers entered Wednesday night’s game against the Pelicans desperate to string together some positive performances, and through one half of play it looked like they might get that, leading 56-44 at the break.

However, Zion Williamson and CJ McCollum led a second half comeback that saw the Pelicans take control late in the fourth quarter as the L.A. offense bogged down. It seemed like the dagger might have gone in when a questionable Lakers possession saw LeBron dribble into a fading, contested midrange that missed off the rim, leading to a runout dunk by Larry Nance Jr. put the Pelicans up three.

After Lonnie Walker IV (who was the star of the night for L.A. with 28 points) missed a good look from the corner to tie with 1.7 to go, it all but felt like a formality that the Lakers would slip to 1-6 on the season. However, rookie Dyson Daniels could not make either of his free throws to put the Pelicans on top by two possessions, and the Lakers were able to advance the ball with 1.4 on the clock. From there, Austin Reaves delivered a perfect pass to Matt Ryan in the corner, who the Pelicans somehow lost on an Anthony Davis screen inside the arc despite being up three.

As the Lakers broadcast pointed out, the Pelicans shouldn’t have been doing anything but worrying about three-point shooters in this circumstance, and as such, it should’ve been more important to keep someone attached to Ryan rather than Davis at the elbow. They didn’t, and Ryan was able to get a falling three off before the buzzer to force OT.

In overtime, the Lakers took the early lead on Walker’s fifth three-pointer of the night and never looked back, as the Pelicans simply couldn’t finish anything, with the dagger coming after Zion left a finger-roll short on a 5-on-3, allowing Anthony Davis to get a wide open dunk on the other end to put the Lakers up five. New Orleans would get a shot up to force double overtime, but a stepback from McCollum went begging and Davis dribbled out the clock for a 120-117 Lakers win.

It’s a gutting loss for the Pelicans after fighting back to take full control, needing just one free throw to ice the game, and it’s particularly tough for the young Daniels who had been inserted for his defense. As for the Lakers, they now own their first winning streak of the season at two games, and while it wasn’t the prettiest close to the game, they get some positive vibes going really for the first time all season.

Swerve Strickland might be hopping in the AEW ring with Bow Wow, but he was with Rick Ross on Wednesday night’s AEW Dynamite.

Tony Schiavone said he was “really thrilled” to be standing with Strickland and platinum recording artist Ross. “Wait, wait, the biggest boss Rick Ross,” Ross playfully corrected and let out a scream. And when Schiavone began pressing Strickland on something he did last week, Ross interjected again: “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We keepin’ it positive here today. I’m here for one reason and one reason only. I wanna make this clear — making sure Swerve is not only the biggest wrestler in the industry but also the largest recording artist in the world. That’s why we here. We’re celebrating today, and that’s why we’re here. Biggest!”

Keith Lee entered the proceedings, prompting even more hilarity involving ignored texts, cheating accusations and a tease of an “8-man tag” next week.

The segment was positively met online:

Baltimore Ravens All-Pro quarterback Lamar Jackson was also in attendance, which checks out because the event was held at Baltimore’s Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena.

AEW (All Elite Wrestling) has successfully crossed over with hip-hop before. DJ Whoo Kid, Fabolous, and Trina stopped by the Dynamite Grand Slam just last month, and Snoop Dogg made a splash in January 2021.