Category: News

Oasis rhythm guitarist Paul Arthurs, also known as Bonehead, has been diagnosed with tonsil cancer. He announced this on Twitter yesterday, writing, “Just to let you all know I’m going to be taking a break from playing for a while. I have been diagnosed with tonsil cancer. But the good news is it’s treatable and I will be starting a course of treatment soon. I will keep you posted how it is going.”

Now, he will not be playing the shows with Liam Gallagher which were scheduled for this summer. Gallagher responded with support on Twitter, writing: “Sending BIG love to the 1 n only Bonehead and his family wishing you a speedy recovery we’re all thinking of you rasta you’ll be back on stage bfore you can say r we doing Colombia LG x.” Other support erupted on Twitter from Arthurs’ bandmates; drummer Tony McCarroll wrote, “Big love Bone,” and bassist Andy Bell wrote, “Get well soon Bone.”

In October of 2020, the band’s classic hit “Wonderwall” become the first song from the ’90s to crack 1 billion plays on Spotify. It was also only the second song from before the year 2000 to surpass a billion streams. The other is Queen’s 1975 classic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which has over 1.3 billion streams.

Donald Trump swears he won’t be back on Twitter. While he’s been permanently banned from the bird site since the events of January 6th, pretty much everyone believes that, if Elon Musk does indeed buy Twitter, he’ll unban the former president from the platform. But Trump told CNBC that he was “disappointed by the way I was treated by Twitter” and that he “won’t be going back on.” Especially since he’s got his own thing going on with TRUTH Social, which he swears will be up and running “within the week. It’s on schedule. We have a lot of people signed up.” All of this makes Jimmy Kimmel laugh—with very good reason.

Ever since October 2021, when Trump announced that he was making good on his promise to create his own social media platform in the form of TRUTH Social, the entire endeavor has been—to quote Seth Meyers—a total “clusterf*ck.” On Tuesday night, Kimmel could hardly contain his laughter as he described the “very Trumpy situation” the former president finds himself in right now with regards to his social media shenanigans:

“[Trump] raised more than $1 billion to start this promising new right-wing media platform that looks exactly like Twitter. But now that he probably won’t be banned from Twitter anymore, because Elon owns it, he’s kind of stuck.

Trump has this TRUTH Social, which is such a disaster, he himself hasn’t even posted on it for 11 weeks… He claims he won’t go back on Twitter, but he 100 percent will go back on Twitter. And then this dumb new company he conned out of their money for will become like I guess the social media equivalent of a Radio Shack.”

Even worse, however, is that it’ll be “a Radio Shack run by Devin Nunes.”

Kimmel shared a clip of a seemingly very nervous Nunes being interviewed on Fox News, where he actually stated that Trump’s crappy site that no one can even log onto is “already getting more engagement, not only than Twitter, but also even Instagram.”

According to Kimmel’s math, that means “the four people who are on it have been liking each other’s posts.”

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 2:10 mark.

Elon Musk’s $44 billion new toy (a little social media joint called Twitter) is making all the right-wingers happy because, apparently, anything will go in terms of “free speech.” Presumably, Lauren Boebert hasn’t had a better day than when someone gifted her a gun for the first time, and Tucker Carlson’s already making sh*t up about what this all means for him. Still, all is not far-right fun and roses. Even though the deal will almost certainly go through without a regulatory snag in the U.S., the EU sent Musk a warning about not letting moderation rules be too loose. And generally speaking, Tesla’s shareholders also aren’t too excited by the “deal” news.

Jack Dorsey might be fine with all of this, but NPR reports that, as it turns out, no one’s entirely sure where Musk will get that $44 billion, and that’s drastically affected Tesla’s market share. This week, shares of Tesla fell 12.2%, which adds up to $125 billion in lost market value (although the stock did begin to creep back up early Wednesday). Here’s how NPR sums up the money-related fears:

When Musk announced he had secured the money to finance the transaction, he said he would cover $21 billion himself, with banks helping finance the other half.

What remains unclear is how he will come up with that money — whether he will sell some of the Tesla shares he owns, borrow against them, bring in additional investors, or all three.

Beyond that wildness (buying something with astronomical ticket value and no idea how to finance it), shareholders apparently fear that Musk will grow “distracted” by Twitter (that’s fair because, already, the dude does tweet a lot). And there’s the chance that his “free speech” crusade will ruffle Chinese government feathers and affect operations at Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, where workers apparently had to sleep on the floor amid the ongoing Covid lockdowns, which have already hampered production by about 50%.

The sleeping-on-the-floor thing has nothing to do with the stock prices, but boy, Musk has made some weird sleep-related headlines lately. Even though the context is completely different, I can’t stop thinking about how Grimes recently revealed that Musk declined to replace a mattress with a giant hole. Hmm.

(Via NPR)

For her solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig was nominated for two Oscars. For her follow-up, Little Women, she was nominated for another Oscar. So, naturally, for her next film, the three-time Academy Award nominee is making a movie about Barbie.

But this is no ordinary movie about the Mattel doll that lives a fantastic life in plastic. This is a Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Will Ferrell, Issa Rae, Michael Cera, and Margot Robbie look-alike Emma Mackey, with a script from Gerwig and Noah Baumbach (of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted fame). Let’s go party.

Warner Bros. released the first image from Barbie this week during CinemaCon. It shows Robbie in a 1960s-style outfit, complete with matching dress and polka dot headband, sitting in a pink Corvette. But where’s Gosling’s Ken? My guess: he’s stuffed in the trunk. Robbie did describe her goal with the movie as being “whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different — the thing you didn’t know you wanted,” and Barbie pulling a Goodfellas on her long-time boyfriend would count as “something totally different.” Honestly, I’ll be disappointed if this doesn’t happen now.

The reactions to the image are overwhelmingly positive:

Barbie opens on July 21, 2023.

Fame has its perks, but one drawback is that sometimes, people will go ahead and just make things up about you. For example, in recent days, a supposed Billie Eilish quote has been making the rounds online, crediting her with saying, “When I got rich, I started balling my eyes out. I wanted to be poor so I can relate to most of my fans. I still want to be broke and poor, it looks really fun and cute.”

Given that Eilish doesn’t typically say insensitive things like that, it would seem the quote is fake. Indeed, it is, as Eilish fans may remember it actually circulated, and was quickly debunked, last summer.

When the quote initially made the rounds last year, multiple publications (like Snopes, Reuters, and USA Today) fact-checked and confirmed it was not something Eilish ever said. Rather, it originated from a parody Twitter account posting fake news about Eilish. Finneas also confirmed the quote wasn’t real, tweeting at the time, “Fake obviously. Honestly I just wish they’d label this account satire like the onion or something. I have no problem with a joke as long as people know it’s a joke.”

As far as things that Eilish has actually said, she recently declared she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t win any of the seven 2022 Grammys for which she was nominated.

Last month, The Black Keys announced that their 11th studio album, Dropout Boogie, would be released on May 13th. The duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Dropout Boogie at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Studios in Nashville with a host of collaborators. While the album’s lead single, “Wild Child,” was released concurrently with the album announcement, the Akron, Ohio natives have wasted little time in introducing the world to the album’s next offering, “It Ain’t Over.”

A spirited tune with boom clap drums, a sweet guitar line, and distinct keys, “It Ain’t Over” is actually inspired by a special kind of organ. Carney mentioned in a tweet how his Uncle Ralph Carney (a decorated multi-instrumentalist himself, who played with Tom Waits, co-wrote the Bojack Horseman theme with his nephew, and passed away in 2017) helped inspire the sonic direction that The Black Keys took on the track.

“We built this song around an Optigan,” Carney said in his tweet. “Ralph Carney showed me way back in 1996 if you flipped the discs over they played in reverse. After the first two bars of this I flip it into reverse. Thanks uncle Ralph. Miss you.”

The Optigan (later known as an Orchestron) is an electronic keyboard that operates with sounds that are pre-programed on an optical disc. It’s a pretty cool machine and you can hear it all throughout the new track.

Listen to “It Ain’t Over” above.

Dropout Boogie is out 5/13 via Nonesuch Records. Pre-order it here.

The Black Keys is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Back in 2016, The Range’s James Hinton released one of the most creative electronic albums of the year in Potential. Hinton presented IDM-leaning productions, cut with spliced in sounds of internet clips that spoke to him, sometimes haunted him, and just plain piqued his imagination. That was six years ago and Hinton relocated from Brooklyn to Vermont’s Green Mountains, seeking creative isolation before he knew that the world was about to offer him a heavy dose of that. Come June 10th, Hinton will finally put out the next album from The Range in Mercury, and it follows a distinct conceptual path for his surreal, dreamy soundscapes.

On “Urethane,” the album’s latest single, Hinton rides a sample from “Ice Rink,” by UK grime rapper MIK, a track that originally appeared on a 2015 compilation by British independent label Chip Butty Records. The track has grime, footwork and even hardcore rave vibes, but it’s the lyricism that inspired Hinton.

“The lyrics ‘last year man got left in the dark — ’cause man didn’t really have nothing to say’ hit me hard as I was feeling pretty left out and forgotten,” Hinton said in a statement. “I had moved from the thick of it in Brooklyn to rural Vermont, and in late winter 2019 and I felt like I had a mutually agreed upon separation from the world. Those lyrics were defiant to me and I liked that as a way of fighting back against that feeling.”

The video for the track directed by Stevie Gee and Essy May features animation reminiscent of the classic Johnny Quest cartoon. Hinton explained that it speaks to the album’s title and how the clip’s story arc presents mercury as the most valuable commodity in the world. The characters are pitted against an err…mercurial antagonist and their triumph is highlighted by what Hinton describes as “the ever-changing form that mercury can take, flowing, moving and morphing… as well as themes of change, decay, growth and rebirth.”

Watch the video for “Urethane” above and check out the album artwork and tracklist for Mercury below.

1. “Bicameral”
2. “1995”
3. “Urethane”
4. “Ricercar”
5. “Not For Me”
6. “Relegate”
7. “A Tree Day”
8. “Balm”
9. “Cantor”
10. “Every Good Thing”
11. “Violet”

Mercury is out 6/10 via Domino Records. Pre-order it here.

The Phoenix Suns found themselves in an unexpected position heading into Game 5 tied at 2-2 with the Pelicans, struggling to separate themselves from the West’s 8-seed with Devin Booker sidelined with a hamstring injury.

On Wednesday night, it was their veteran leader in Chris Paul who came out and set the tone early, hitting six of his first eight shots in the first half to help push the Suns to a double-digit advantage early on.

Around Paul, the other Suns, who had been cold from three all series, warmed up and Phoenix was able to dart out to a 13-point advantage at the half, one that would’ve been larger had it not been for the efforts of Brandon Ingram on the other side.

In the second half, Paul cooled off but the Suns were still able to extend their lead thanks to a takeover from Mikal Bridges, who caught fire from three and also provided his usual spectacular defense on the other end.

The Suns took a 17-point lead in the third quarter, but New Orleans once again refused to go away, chipping that down to an 11-point deficit at the end of the quarter behind Ingram’s continued shot-making and some timely buckets from Jonas Valanciunas and Larry Nance Jr.

Early in the fourth quarter, it was more of the Mikal Bridges show, as Phoenix once again started the quarter strong, pushing their lead up to 13 with eight minutes to go.

However, as has been the case all series, the Pelicans would not simply fade away after a Suns run, and like in Game 4, rookie Jose Alvarado provided a key boost in helping cut the lead down to as few as seven midway through the quarter with a three, a tough finish at the rim, and his second 8-second violation forced against Chris Paul.

However, the Pelicans could never fully reel the Suns in, as Phoenix had an answer every time they got within seven. Whether it was a Paul midrange jumper or this Cam Johnson dunk in semi-transition, New Orleans was unable to get the requisite stops to pull off another comeback win.

It was an encouraging game for a few reasons for the Suns, none bigger than seeing Mikal Bridges find his form offensively after a rough go of it in the first four games. Bridges finished with 31 points (a new playoff career-high), five rebounds, four blocks, and three steals, punctuating the win with a pair of dunks in the final minute to get the Phoenix crowd on its feet.

Chris Paul finished with 22 points, 11 assists, six rebounds, and three steals, bouncing back from a 4-point outing in Game 4 and giving Phoenix the steadying presence early on they needed to settle in to a pivotal game. Deandre Ayton likewise had a strong start with a 10-point first quarter and finished with 19 and nine rebounds, as he continues to do battle inside with Jonas Valanciunas (17 points and 14 rebounds).

For the Pelicans, Ingram had 22 points, five assists, and five rebounds, but could not find his stroke down the stretch as Bridges bothered him with his length. CJ McCollum had 21 points, eight rebounds, and five assists, but likewise struggled with efficiency, needing 22 shots for those 21 points. As the series shifts back to New Orleans for Game 6, the Pelicans will hope being back at home can settle the nerves early, while the Suns will look to sustain four quarters of strong play on the road this time after feeling like they gave one away in Game 4.

Mike Lindell is running low on allies. While the MyPillow mogul was riding high back in early 2021, hanging out at the White House in an attempt to help outgoing president Donald Trump hang onto his desk in the Oval Office, no one seems all that interested in Lindell anymore—especially since he was slapped with a $1.3 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems a year ago. Enter Steve Bannon: Trump’s former campaign manager has been happy to give Lindell a platform to air his many grievances and grudges, and it’s made for some pretty quotable content.

Most recently, as Raw Story reports, Bannon invited Lindell onto his “War Room” podcast, where the pillow man laid into Newsmax, Fox News, and other right-wing media outlets for ignoring his latest crusade: ridding the country of its voting machines.

“Since Friday, since this case dropped, the left media is the ones that have picked it up!,” Lindell told Bannon. “You have Business Insider, Newsweek, these guys did articles. Where’s Fox News? Where are they to report this?”

While the fact that the mainstream media (hello!) seems more interested in covering Lindell’s increasingly wacky lawsuits more for the entertainment value seems lost on him, Bannon seemed to be having some fun by pushing the matter. When he asked Lindell what reason outlets like Fox News and Newsmax would have for not covering his latest lawsuit, his answer was simple:

“Fox, I believe they’re just traitors to the country. And I believe Newsmax are cowards. Simple as that—cowards and traitors, cowards and traitors.”

You can watch Lindell and Bannon’s interview above.

(Via Raw Story)

For the majority of three hours, Tuesday night’s matchup between the Minnesota Twins and the Detroit Tigers was relatively normal. The Twins led most of the night after three early runs generated by Max Kepler, and the Tigers took the advantage on a three-run bomb from Javier Baez in the eighth inning. With Minnesota playing at home at Target Field, however, the Tigers had to secure three outs in the bottom of the ninth frame, and that is where the madness began.

After two walks to open the inning, Kepler was retired, bringing Miguel Sano to the plate. From there, one of the more chaotic final plays of a baseball game that you will ever see commenced.

First, the ball was smoked by Sano, but Tigers right fielder Robbie Grossman certainly had a play on the ball that would’ve given the Tigers a valuable second out in the inning. The ball caromed over his head, though, and that seemingly created a bases loaded situation for Minnesota. Then, the Tigers essentially did everything wrong, botching a potential rundown and finally losing the game when catcher Eric Haase flipped the ball into left field, allowing two runners to score.

It was mania.

With the victory, the Twins improve to 9-8 on the season, while the Tigers slip to 6-10. There is, of course, no guarantee that Detroit would’ve wiggled out of a bases loaded jam if chaos didn’t occur, but this is one for the ages, and the Twins will take it.