Category: News

Adele revealed in a recent Q&A with fans that we’ve been pronouncing her name entirely wrong… Well, most of us anyway. A fan from London filmed a video question for the “I Drink Wine” singer, who then praised her for saying her name the right way. (It’s spoken more like uh-dale, rather than the standard uh-dell.) In recent years, quite a few other popular musicians have come forward to share how to actually say their names — whether it’s first, last, or both. Or, in Adele’s case, just a single stage name.

Here are some other artists you might be mispronouncing.

Ariana Grande shocked fans after sharing that her last name isn’t spoken as “gran-deh.” Instead, it’s “gran-dee,” as she noted in an interview for Beats1 Radio in 2018. “I grew up saying ‘Grand-ee’ and I think of my grandpa and I wish I said ‘Grand-ee’ more,” Grande shared. The pronunciation is the Italian one, although many have just Americanized her last name, including her brother.

Björk is another common musician that people probably pronounce incorrectly. The ones most used are “bejork” or “bee-york,” but the Icelandic musician has spoken it herself: “bee-yer-kh.”

Pop star Rihanna revealed in an interview with AJ Hammer on YouTube that it is, in fact, pronounced “Ree-ann-uh” rather than ree-ah-nah.”

The band Bon Iver has corrected fans on the group’s name too. While it was inspired by a French term for “good winter,” it isn’t exactly. The proper way to say it is “bone e-vare.”

Other honorable mentions of names to double-check include the band Haim (Hayh-uhm), Macklemore (spoken with “le” instead of “el”), Hozier (hose-ee-er), and Kid Cudi — who opened up about his real last name.

“We’re going to do this right now. I really want everybody to learn how to pronounce my last name. This has been bothering me for 13 years. I know I kind of confuse everybody with my rap name. It’s ‘MESS-cud-e,’” he said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last December.

Kanye West is continuing his Anti-Semite Tour 2022. After having his Instagram account suspended on Tuesday (again) for taking aim at “Jewish business people,” Ye doubled down on his anti-semitic rhetoric on Parler, the right-wing free-for-all social media site he wants to purchase. Despite the fact that he claims to be a friend to the Jewish community, Donald Trump is still standing by West — which came as little surprise to Jimmy Kimmel.

On Tuesday night, Kimmel broached Ye’s latest controversy and shared that Trump, a.k.a. “Kanye West Wing,” had taken a moment to weigh in on the matter. “[Trump] pretends to be an ardent supporter of the Jewish community,” Kimmel said, “but when given the chance to denounce one of his only celebrity fans, it seems like Don-ye is sticking with Kanye.”

Kimmel played a clip from Trump’s recent appearance on The Chris Stigall podcast, in which he heaped praise on the rapper — mostly for saying nice things about him to Tucker Carlson. “I was very honored, in a sense, because he said all those great things about me on Tucker Carlson,” Trump told Stigall, before allowing: “He made some statements — rough statements — on Jewish. You heard them and you know them well… He’ll be fine. I think he’ll be fine.”

“Right, right,” Kimmel responded. “He made some rough statements on Jewish, but I think he’ll be fine. That’s nice. Are you fine? Because it seems like you and Kanye could maybe use a padded vacation together.”

But, as The Wrap reported, Trump didn’t just stop at brushing off West’s antisemitic rants. The former president also went full racist when he commented on how articulate West is. “He’s a very different kind of a guy,” Trump continued, “and it’s very interesting to hear him on Tucker Carlson because you never hear him in long sentences. He was actually very sharp and very, very smart… I was impressed by a lot of what he said.”

You can watch Kimmel’s full segment above, beginning around the 7:20 mark. And read more of Trump’s interview here.

Yves Tumor has shared a frightening new video. For their latest single, “God Is A Circle,” Tumor is removed from their grave, and wreaks havoc throughout the town, in the Jordan Hemingway-directed video for the song.

Early on in the song, they ponder their existence, singing, “Sometimes It feels like there’s places in my mind that I can’t go / There’s people in my life I still don’t know, yeah / Wander ’round I just feel like a ghost in a well” in the song’s opening.

They continue this theme, later singing “Sometimes it feels like there’s pieces of my heart that I can’t show / There’s parts of me I still don’t even know yet / I wander ’round I just feel like a nobody,” by way of chilling, haunting, and brooding vocals.

Tumor collaborated with Hemingway several times over the course of his career. For a New York Times profile on Tumor, Hemingway said of his longtime friend, “Yves Tumor is the rock star of our generation. The way he acts, that’s something that’s not taught.”

Tumor also shouted out Hemingway in an Instagram post.

“Makes me beyond emotional and honored to be able to work with such brilliant and aggressively talented people,” Tumor said of Hemingway and crew in the post’s caption.

Check out the video for “God Is A Circle” above.

Rudy Giuliani better dust off his ginormous golf shorts and rest up — because there might be a lot more Cameo videos in his future. On Monday, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia rejected Giuliani’s request to see a defamation lawsuit brought against him by two Georgia election workers dismissed.

The original lawsuit was filed in 2021 by election workers Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who told their story in harrowing detail to the January 6th Committee (and the millions of people watching the hearings) about how they have been targeted, harassed, and threatened by Trump supporters. Freeman, 62, was even forced to move out of the home she had lived in for 20 years as scores of Trump supporters sought her out there — including Kanye West’s publicist, who reportedly told Freeman that if she did not confess to voter fraud within 48 hours, she would be arrested and sent to jail.

But as David Wickert writes for The AJC:

The judge cited numerous false claims Giuliani made about the election workers in the weeks after the election. Among other things, Giuliani accused them of “ballot stuffing,” “cheating” and “stealing the votes.”

Howell determined that a reasonable jury may conclude that Giuliani, Trump and others created a plan to sow doubt in the outcome of the 2020 election by launching a misinformation campaign, which included accusing Freeman, Moss and others of participating in election fraud schemes.

In her ruling, Howell talked about the “increasingly outlandish paranoia from those claiming the election was being ‘stolen’” and stated that Giuliani “propagated and pushed that false narrative.”

Which means that the door is now open for other election workers who became the target of rabid MAGAs to finally get their day in court. Provided Giuliani actually shows up.

(Via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

While performing in Argentina last night (November 1), Coldplay brought out one of the country’s top pop stars as a surprise guest. Tini joined Chris Martin to sing one of the band’s latest hits

As Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres World Tour moves through Latin America, the band have shared the stage with artists from the countries they visit. In September, Martin brought out Colombian singer Manuel Turizo during the band’s tour stop in Bogotá. The guys continued the trend in Buenos Aires, Argentina with Tini.

While Martin was performing “Let Somebody Go” on the piano, Tini joined him onstage. She took over the parts of the duet that were originally recorded by Selena Gomez. Tini then belted out her heartbreaking ballad “Carne y Hueso” as Martin played the song on the piano.

After the concert, Tini reflected on her time with Coldplay in Instagram stories. She expressed her gratitude for the moment that she shared with Martin.

“I still can’t believe it,” Tini wrote in Spanish. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this opportunity. It was the most unforgettable night of my life.”

“Carne y Hueso” will be featured on Tini’s next album along with her hits “La Triple T” and “Miénteme” featuring Maria Becerra. Last month, she jumped on Elena Rose’s “La Ducha” remix with Becerra, Becky G, and Greeicy.

Coldplay is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

You’ve almost certainly heard a popular phrase or seen a meme that originated in a video game. Even if some have fallen out of popularity, such as “The Cake Is A Lie” from Portal, we still are well aware of the cultural impact from it being shouted across comment sections everywhere.

Still, it’s very possible there are people out there who don’t know the origins of these phrases. Yes, they know they’re from video games, but what games are they from and why did they become popular? We decided to lay out the origins of three that you’ve probably seen over the years.

Do A Barrel Roll

Star Fox 64, Nintendo 64

One of the odder ones on the list, because it isn’t entirely clear why it’s a meme. “Do a barrel roll!” originates from Star Fox 64, when the character Peppy Hare tells the player to — shocker — do a barrel roll. It’s just a phrase that he says to teach the player how to play the game. There’s nothing particularly weird or interesting about it besides the fact that the voice acting, like everything in this game, is hammed up.

The reasoning for why it became such a popular meme dates back to message boards collectively agreeing to call into radio shows and troll hosts and say “do a barrel roll!” Ah, that classic 90s and early 00’s humor that none of us miss. While the origins themselves are very early internet, its impact on video game memes can’t be understated as it’s managed to have strong staying power.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Zero Wing, Mega Drive

“All your base belongs to us!” is another phrase that has appeared in comments sections for ages, but its origins aren’t quite as well known. The phrase originally comes from the American port of Zero Wing for the Mega Drive, where an extremely poor translation was created for the game’s intro. It features wonderful phrases such as “What happen?” and “Somebody set up us the bomb.” The one that really caught on was “All your base are belong to us.”

This can once again be traced back to message forums. A catchy song focused on the “All your base are belong to us” portion of the intro was created and quickly became a meme. Eventually, that meme spread across the web until it became a regular part of the internet lexicon. It’s not used as much today as it once was, but it’s still pretty well known.

Press F To Pay Respects

When Call of Duty first started having players interact with cutscenes through button presses, it was a very novel idea. It made players get more involved and spend less time putting their controllers down. However, as most things with yearly releases do, the novel idea became a little overplayed until one moment in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was so ridiculous that players everywhere quickly turned it into a meme.

The scene features the player-controlled character attending the funeral of a fallen soldier. Everyone touches the casket, which is when the game prompts the player to push a button to pay respects. F was the key that players on PC were designated to press, and soon, a meme was born. Now, any time someone has something bad happen to them across the internet, you can see people everywhere responding with “F” in reference to this moment.

Mike Lindell’s one-sided war against voting machines is still going strong and his latest offensive tactic seems to be *checks notes* violating privacy rights at the polls.

In a truly weird flex, the MyPillow founder claimed that he planned to station watchers and cameras at every voting site in every county to ensure the upcoming midterm elections would be fair and accurate. Now, this isn’t the first time the pillow czar has tried to influence the current election process. He previously demanded that members of MAGA nation show up and vote on the day of the midterms to “overrun the algorithms,” whatever the hell that means. But, this is the most bizarre rant he’s launched so far regarding the far-right’s efforts to monitor our electoral process because they’re still sore that Donald Trump lost the presidential election two years ago.

“We are watching from every angle,” Lindell screamed at his co-host Brannon Howse during a recent taping of his show. “There’s people in every state, every county, every precinct. They might think you can’t look and see what’s going on inside that black box but we can. We have cyber guys watching this.”

Lindell apparently employs quite a few “cyber guys,” but so far none have been able to help him prove voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election … or guarantee people will actually attend his ridiculous “Cyber Symposiums.”

“This election, it’s all eyes. We have all the camera angles,” Lindell continued as Howse struggled to get a word in. “Maybe this time around the judges and the left media and even the right media, Fox News and Newsmax will actually report if [there are] machines involved in this election to steal another election.”

From there Lindell descended into a tirade about Fox News’ reporting practices, aggressively questioning the host who sort-of laughed along with a conspiracy-loving pillow magnate. Brannon, blink twice if you’re okay.

Now that Machine Gun Kelly is back rapping on songs like EST Gee’s “Death Around The Corner” (which had fans feeling conflicted upon its release), he seems very keen on convincing people he never actually stopped for success.

That’s probably because it’s such a common narrative in the music world and it very much seemed like he followed the blueprint to a tee. In the past, artists like Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, and Post Malone have drawn criticism from using hip-hop to gain their initial popularity, then switching to “safe” genres or breaking out their acoustic guitars in order to engage that coveted Middle American demographic. (For what it’s worth, this criticism is probably a little overblown, even if it accurate.)

However, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, MGK insists that he never “departed, left or switched” up on his rap career, despite releasing a pair of albums in the pop-punk/alt-rock mode at a time when he was under tremendous scrutiny for going toe-to-toe with “rap god” Eminem. “I’m talented as f*ck and I added on to my catalog of four great rap albums,” he said. “So what I did was I added on, never departed, left or switched. Because in the same year I was the most viewed YouTube video putter-outer with all rap, which was my lockdown sessions, which gained more views than almost any of my other videos. And it was hundreds of millions of views of me rapping.”

He elaborates that he “picked up my cell phone and put this thing on and wrote my ass off and rapped my ass off weekly, giving YouTube reactors ways to make content and giving audience members at home who are like, ‘Maybe I didn’t even like him, but he’s the only content coming out right now, so I’m going to watch it just to see what’s going on.’ And then you watch it and you’re like, ‘Damn, he’s actually saying some shit.’ I was rapping. And then later on we dropped a number one album that was a pop-punk album. So when they say ‘departed’ or when they say, ‘Oh, man, you switched.’ Motherf*cker, are you dumb?! That’s literally telling you two plus two doesn’t equal four. It’s on paper, it’s black and white, it’s right there in front of you.”

Multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Mikaela Straus, better known as King Princess, continues to dig her footing deeper into indie pop one track at a time. Since breaking out onto the scene with the song “1950,” the Brooklyn native shows no signs of letting up. On new album Hold On Baby, King Princess has officially found her musical pocket and stopped by NPR’s Tiny Desk to share it with fans.

Supported by a full band which included Antoine Fadavi (on drums), Kaela Sinclair (on keys and supporting vocals), Logan McQuade (on bass), Zack Page (on guitar), and Asaf Rodeh (on guitar and supporting vocals), in just over 15 minutes, King Princess takes both the in-studio audience, as well as viewers at home, on an emotional roller coaster set to a few of the album’s stand out tracks.

Opening with “Cursed,” King Princess mainly recounts the death of a toxic friendship as she sings, “Well, it had to end / but endings lead to better things / like sleeping again / oh, ’cause it’s a curse to be your friend.”

Before transitioning into the next number, “Winter Is Hopeful,” King Princess shares her excitement to be finally have made it to the platform, exclaiming, “this is so cool! I’ve always wanted to do one. And now I get to. That is f*cking cool man.”

As the band begins to play, King Princess reveals the track was originally titled “Quinn,” after her girlfriend. However, after receiving strong protest from her as she felt it was “too obnoxious,” the song was renamed.

The set closes with a performances of “Let Us Die,” which was co-written by Mark Ronson. King Princess’ performance is raw, vulnerable, and poignant — the makings of a perfect Tiny Desk concert.

Watch the full performance above.

King Princess is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

With The White Lotus Season 2 in full swing (Theo James pun intended), Aubrey Plaza and Jennifer Coolidge are making the promotional rounds as their characters, new and returning respectively, get embroiled in the show’s psychosexual mystery. While talking to IMDb On the Scene, the two were asked if they have any acting superstitions to go along with this season’s theme of “bad omens and mythology.” Turns out, Plaza does have a little quirk that she picked up from John C. Reilly, and it’s apparently been very helpful but maybe not always practical.

You know, John C. Reilly gave me the greatest advice for acting, which is always pee first before you do the scene. Never do a scene where you have to pee, because somewhere in the back of your mind you’re going to be just slightly affected by the impulse to want to pee yourself. I demand to pee before every performance and at every intermission! I hate myself…

As for Coolidge, she shot down a playful rumor that she sleeps with a script hanging above her head. Instead, she’s found that the best acting trick for her isn’t an empty bladder. It’s age.

“You know what is true is that there’s something cool about knowing when you’re older that you can’t really control it,” Coolidge said. “And I feel like that’s the best thing that you have going for you.”

The White Lotus airs new episodes Sunday on HBO.

(Via IMDb on YouTube)