Category: News

In the original Game of Thrones series, characters were often warned that “The night is dark and full of terrors.” Well, the same holds true for the internet as the creative team behind House of the Dragon is finding out. Despite knowing full well that they cast beloved actor Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen, what they didn’t expect is for that love (and lust) to completely overlook every awful thing the ruthless prince does on the show.

Executive producer Sara Hess and director Clare Kilner recently opened up about watching House of the Dragon fans go nuts for Daemon in ways that Hess didn’t expect. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

He’s become Internet Boyfriend in a way that baffles me. Not that Matt isn’t incredibly charismatic and wonderful, and he’s incredible in the role. But Daemon himself is … I don’t want him to be my boyfriend! I’m a little baffled how they’re all, ‘Oh, daddy!’ And I’m just like: ‘Really?’ How — in what way — was he a good partner, father or brother — to anybody? You got me. He ain’t Paul Rudd.

Kilner, on the other hand, understands the appeal despite how awful Daemon can sometimes be on screen. Turns out his mischievous smile can go a long way in setting fire to one’s loins even after all of the murder.

“Matt is such a risk-taker in his performances and he’s got that little smile and, you know … you can’t help it!” she said. “He is charismatic. People love a baddie.”

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

The Austin City Limits Music Festival is, like the majority of music festivals, made up of several stages. Unlike most festivals, however, there’s a literal divide between the biggest stages and a smaller stage in the form of a road. But don’t let the size of the Barton Springs Stage, named after the best spot to take a dip and go sunbathing in the Texas capitol, fool you: it hosted two of the best performances during ACL Fest 2022.

Muna and Carly Rae Jepsen were booked only for weekend one of the two-weekend festival, but both acts brought enough energy to last several weeks. Muna is a force for good in this world, with members Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson preaching joyfulness and tolerance, especially for the LGBTQ+ community. They also make powerfully infectious indie-pop. On the energetic “What I Want,” Gavin regrets that she’s spent “too many years” not knowing what she wants, but she’s “gonna make up for it all at once.” That’s the kind of energy Muna brought to the mid-afternoon set; it was a safe space for dancing on your own.

That was true for Carly Rae Jepsen, too. The beloved-yet-still-underappreciated pop icon is touring behind her sixth album, The Loneliest Time, which comes out this Friday. (Yes, the same day as Taylor Swift’s new album, as she joked during the show.) She played six songs from the record, including the jubilant single (and hopefully a setlist mainstay) “Talking To Yourself” and the live debut of the title track, her yearning duet with Rufus Wainwright. But the biggest pops from the packed, eager crowd were for “Run Away With Me,” the best song on her best album (and for my money, the best pop album of the 2010s); the bluntly horny “Want You In My Room”; and “Cut To The Feeling,” the euphoric set closer. “Sing along with me! Because it is, in fact, the law,” Jepsen joked before launching into “Call Me Maybe,” her breakout single that’s better than 98 percent of all pop music but is only her, like, 12th best song. Speaking of queer icons who have defied the “one-hit wonder” label they were nearly imprisoned by…

Lil Nas X’s hour-long set was structured in three acts, REBIRTH, TRANSFORMATION, and BECOMING, complete with costume changes, backup dancers, and a prop golden horse. The rapper and social media expert is much more than his record-setting biggest hit, with four other singles that have cracked the Billboard Hot 100 top-10, but it was still a risky move to not save “Old Town Road” for the end of the set. Instead, it appeared during Act 1, potentially risking a mass exodus once the casual festival audience heard the one song they were for (this, sadly, happened for Carly Rae post-”Call Me Maybe”).

But, at least around me, no one moved. Everyone was there for Lil Nas X’s full set, not one song. The patience paid off: he delighted the crowd with a spirited and strained-voice rendition of “That’s What I Want,” interpolations of “Get Ur Freak On” by Missy Elliott and “Pony” by Ginuwine (with pelvic thrusts, naturally), and stage designs seemingly inspired by Lisa Frank folders and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Near the end of the show, the background screen read, “Long live Montero.” Long live Lil Nas X.

At one point, Lil Nas X acknowledged that he hadn’t played in Austin since 2019. “If I don’t see y’all for another three years,” he added, “I hope y’all have the motherf*cking best years of all time.” At the very least, Lil Nas X, along with Muna and Carly Rae Jepsen, gave three of the motherf*cking best sets at ACL 2022.

The ACL Music Festival will return to Austin on October 6-8 and 13-15 in 2023.

Family Guy is one of the longest-running shows in TV history: It’s been airing on-and-off since 1999 and has nearly 400 episodes in its run. In fact, the 400th episode will be in the show’s 21st season (which premiered in September) and it’s inspired by artists like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez.

According to Variety, the episode will feature Stewie developing an obsession for a famous pop star. Seth MacFarlane himself, who isn’t as hands-on with writing the show these days as he used to be, pitched the idea to the show’s producers.

Co-showrunner Rich Appel said of the episode, “That’s not a story that would have even occurred to us to tell five years ago, that phenomenon of fans of artists like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez — you name them — who are just really so devoted, that they adopt their viewpoints.”

Fellow showrunner Alec Sulkin also noted, “It’s always very fun to to come together and make each other laugh, which is really the main part of our job. Family Guy, in particular, is a show that’s known for its humor, its edgy humor and sometimes its dark humor. So, it was just a great group of people to be laughing with at a time when so much was uncertain.”

Swift herself (but voiced by actress Ursula Taherian, not Swift) appeared in the 2016 Family Guy episode titled “Chris Has Got a Date, Date, Date, Date, Date.” In it, Chris asks Swift to go to the school homecoming dance with him and she surprisingly accepts the invitation. It is later revealed, though, that Swift was using Chris to help inspire her songs trashing him. Swift also appeared in a brief gag in the 2014 episode “3 Acts Of God.”

There’s not much when it comes to Gomez’s presence in the show, although she has been mentioned on it here and there.

The family of George Floyd has apparently followed through on a rumored plan to file suit against Kanye West for his comments about the late Floyd, who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis who knelt on his neck for nearly 10 minutes. Floyd’s death galvanized protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020, his dying words — “I can’t breathe” — becoming a rallying cry for the protestors.

However, on a recent episode of the Drink Champs podcast, West stated incorrectly that Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose, parroting white supremacist propaganda designed to undermine the fight for justice in Floyd’s name. The trope, which was based on findings from an autopsy report that mentioned possible recent use of the drug, plays on existing racist stereotypes of Black people as drug addicts in order to deflect the blame for Floyd’s death away from the officers’ use of excessive force — essentially blaming the victim, and undermining protests for justice (which is the whole point).

However, multiple autopsies confirmed that Floyd died from a heart attack caused by asphyxia — the inability to breathe.

Now, according to a press release from the Witherspoon Law Group and Dixon & Dixon Attorneys at Law, Roxie Washington, acting on behalf of her minor child, the sole beneficiary of Floyd’s estate, has filed suit against Kanye West, seeking $250 million in damages. The suit argues that Kanye’s comments on Drink Champs consituted “harassment, misappropriation, defamation, and infliction of emotional distress,” and also names West’s “business partners and associates,” according to the press release.

In the wake of the backlash against the podcast airing, NORE apologized, saying, ““I felt like I could control the interview. And I learned early on that I [couldn’t]. As a Black man, I feel like I failed. As a human, I feel like I failed.”

Ryan Murphy is on a Chicago Bulls in the late 1990s-like run right now.

Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Murphy’s controversial limited series starring Evan Peters as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, is one of Netflix’s biggest shows ever. But it fell to the second spot on the streaming service’s top-10 list this week. What replaced it at the top of the chart? Another Ryan Murphy series.

Variety reports The Watcher, the mystery-thriller that’s based on a real-life case, “racked up a chart-topping 125 million hours watched in its first four days of availability.” Meanwhile, in its third week of availability, Dahmer was watched by subscribers for 122.8 million hours. It’s now at “824.2 million viewing hours since its September 21 premiere, and stands as the second most-watched English-language series Netflix has ever had, second only to season four of Stranger Things.” Maybe it’s happened before, but I can’t think of another instance where Netflix’s two biggest shows are from the same creator… who’s also a producer for the streaming service’s fourth biggest movie at the moment.

Murphy has one other title on this week’s Netflix Top 10: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, which was No. 4 on the English-language movies chart with 20.1 million hours watched in its first full week of availability, down from second place with 35.4 million hours during the Oct. 3-9 viewing window, which it was available for five days.

Your move, Shonda.

(Via Variety)

Elon Musk can’t seem to stand by his memes lately. In the past 24 hours, the theoretical future owner of Twitter has deleted two tweets involving him partnering up with Kanye West, the theoretical future owner of Parler. The latest example arrived Tuesday when Musk fired off meme figuring Trump, West, and himself as the Three Musketeers. In the photo, the three of them are crossing swords with the words Truth Social, Parler, and X, Musk’s proposed social media platform that will envelop Twitter. In the caption, Musk wrote, “In retrospect, it was inevitable.”

However, according to Mediaite, Musk only left the tweet up for an hour before deleting his cute little meme. You can see a screencap below:

As noted earlier, this isn’t the first time that Musk has run from one of his memes. A day earlier, he reacted to the news of Kanye purchasing Parler by posting a Dragon Ball Z meme of the two of them together. In a follow-up tweet, Musk teased “Fun times ahead!!” before deleting both. But again, the internet is forever:

As for why Musk would tie himself to West following his recent antisemitic remarks that even Musk himself said was “concerning,” the answer is pretty simple: attention. Lots and lots of attention. Musk is a well-known troll on social media, and in recent days, he’s been dangerously dabbling in serious topics including the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In short, if making memes where he teams up with Trump and Kanye will get people talking about Elon Musk, Elon Musk is going to do it.

(Via Mediaite)

There is trouble in paradise regarding Jay-Z’s partnership with Bacardi: The spirit company is being sued by the Brooklyn rapper through his company SC Liquor and is demanding “total financial clarity,” according to documents obtained by TMZ.

Since 2011, Jay-Z has co-owned top-shelf cognac company D’Usse with Bacardi. Despite the rapper shouting out the brand in his music, the recent lawsuit might hint that something is right between him and his partners. TMZ reports that Jay-Z’s company has asked for “all books and records, the location of all warehouses storing D’Usse barrels, bottles and accessories … as well as all info regarding Bacardi’s physical inventory and its inventory process.”

The rapper has been quiet on the situation thus far. Still, one sentence from the lawsuit stands out, alleging that SC Liquor needs to “monitor the conduct of [Bacardi’s] business to protect SC’s rights as” a partner in the company.

However, despite the tension between him and Bacardi, the “Family Feud” rapper has other prospects on the horizon.

Earlier this month, Jay-Z and his Marcy Venture Partners company invested $16.5 million in a new fully-robotic pizza-making truck called Stellar Pizza. Customers can place an order through an app, and the pizza truck robot will receive it and make the entire pizza toppings and all. It’s then cut and boxed, all for as low as $7, according to Rolling Stone.

What’s worse than one idiot walking around with an honorary police badge and thinking he’s a cop? How about a lot more of them!

As NBC News reports, the brilliant minds behind Herschel Walker’s senatorial campaign in Georgia are leaning into his imbecilic insistence that holding an honorary police badge makes him an actual law enforcement officer. Despite the ongoing mockery of the moment during last week’s debate against Raphael Warnock, when Walker proudly held up his toy badge and announced “I am work with many police officers,” Team Herschel has decided to try and spin this embarrassing gaffe into a publicity bonanza.

Yes, if you’re lucky enough to witness Walker’s upcoming stump speech in Macon, Georgia on Thursday, you might just walk away with an imitation version of Herschel’s own imitation badge — a copy of a copy, if you will — emblazoned with the words “I’m With Herschel” (provided they arrive in time).

“Herschel Walker has been a friend to law enforcement and has a record of honoring police,” Gail Gitcho, Walker’s campaign strategist — and the person who ordered said badges — told NBC News. “If Senator Warnock wants to highlight this, then bring it on. It just gives us a chance to talk about Herschel’s support of law enforcement and law enforcement’s support for him. It’s a great issue for us.”

What Walker’s team might not have realized is that by simply placing an order for 1,000 replicas of the badge Walker carries, they’re also further emphasizing how meaningless the trinket is in terms of holding any real power. Nor does it erase the candidate’s long history of domestic abuse, including the time he allegedly held a gun to his wife’s head.

“I am work with many police officers” indeed!

(Via NBC News)

This week on Fresh Pair, Harlem capo Jim Jones stops by to chop it up with Just Blaze and Katty Customs as they reveal another new custom pair of sneakers made just for the “We Fly High” rapper. As always, they ask him for a top five; this time, it’s top five most stylish rappers. Jim’s interesting answer includes not just one of his peers in Fabolous but also quite a few contemporary hitmakers.

Like previous Fresh Pair guests T.I., The Game, and Jadakiss, Jim Jones knows a thing or two about his top five subject. As a member of The Diplomats, Jones was known for being a trendsetter in the early 2000s; the group’s distinctive uniform became a street staple, leading to a lasting nostalgic fondness for their throwback jerseys, over-the-top patriotism, and overall in-your-face aesthetic.

Later, Jones became known as an independent star in his own right with albums such as On My Way to Church, Harlem: Diary Of A Summer, and Hustler’s P.O.M.E. (Product Of My Environment). Most recently, he released a pair of mixtapes earlier this year called Gangsta Grillz: We Set The Trends with DJ Drama and The Lobby Boyz with Maino.

Watch the exclusive clip above and check out the full episode of Fresh Pair with Jim Jones Wednesday at noon PT.

Taylor Swift is scheduled to the brim in promotion of Midnights, her tenth studio album primed to put pop in a chokehold come Friday (October 21). Adding to the hype is a newly circulating list of songwriters credited across all 13 tracks.

Predictably, Jack Antonoff co-wrote 11 songs. Antonoff has been a production staple for Swift since her officially crossover into pop with 2014’s 1989. The two have worked closely together on Reputation (2017), Lover (2019), Folklore (2020), Evermore (2020), plus Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in 2021 and last autumn’s Red (Taylor’s Version).

“Lavender Haze,” the album’s opener, and “Karma” were co-written with Zoë Kravitz, a longtime friend of Swift’s who detailed last year she had been working on her own solo album with Antonoff. Both of those tracks are attributed to Antonoff, Kravitz, Swift, Mark Anthony Spears (better known as Sounwave), Jahaan Sweet, and Sam Dew. Sounwave, an acclaimed producer/songwriter and day-one Kendrick Lamar collaborator, is perhaps just as interesting as Kravitz’s inclusion.

And of course, everyone has had time by now to wrap their heads around “Snow On The Beach” featuring Lana Del Rey — the album’s only feature — but now we know Del Rey co-wrote that track with Antonoff and Swift.

William Bowery makes his triumphant return on “Sweet Nothing.” Joe Alwyn’s pseudonym was first spotted as a credited songwriter on Folklore tracks “Exile,” Swift’s collaboration with Bon Iver, and “Betty.” After internet sleuths desperately tried to figure out who William Bowery was, Swift confirmed during Disney+’s Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions that it is her boyfriend of six years.

A pivotal piece from Folklore and Evermore (maybe) not translating coming along the Midnights ride? Aaron Dessner. The National and Big Red Machine member was heavily involved as a co-producer and co-writer on both 2020 albums, and he helped produce April 2021’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and last November’s Red (Taylor’s Version). Swift has raved about their musical chemistry. Earlier this year, Dessner produced Swift’s “Carolina” single for Where The Crawdads Sing.

Maybe Dessner is too busy writing songs with Ed Sheeran, or maybe he was still a producer on Midnights without also songwriting on the album. Everything Midnights will assuredly surface in the coming weeks.

Midnights is out 10/21 via Republic. Pre-order it here.