Category: News

The music world is less than two weeks from the release of Billie Eilish’s sophomore album, Happier Than Ever. Since announcing it in May, Eilish has kept her fans happy, dropping five singles: “My Future,”Lost Cause,” “Your Power,” “Therefore I Am,” and “NDA.” Now, the singer returns with a new acoustic performance with Finneas

Eilish and her brother, who doubles as her frequent collaborator, shared a stripped-down performance of “Your Power.” In the video, the two sit next to each other while Eilish elegantly sings the track’s lyrics, with Finneas providing supporting vocals as he strums away at the guitar.

The video comes after the singer admitted to always thinking about her past words. “I said so many things then that I totally don’t agree with now, or think the opposite thing,” she said to Vogue Australia. “The weirdest thing is how nothing ever goes away once it’s on the internet. Every interview I did when I was 15 is still out there, and I think about it constantly.”

Prior to that, Eilish shared behind-the-scenes clips and photos from her “NDA” video shoot, in which viewers can see her mom nervously watch her shoot dangerous scenes for the video, which resulted in the singer receiving a few bruises.

You can watch their performance in the video above.

Happier Than Ever is out 7/30 via Interscope. Pre-order it here.

With both an album (Sour) and a single (“Driver’s License”) enjoying long runs at the top of the charts, Olivia Rodrigo took a victory lap this week at the White House. The singer met with President Joe Biden, where she urged the youth to get vaccinated, met with Dr. Fauci ,and read funny vaccine tweets along with the commander-in-chief. All in all, it was an eventful week that ends well, too: Sour returned to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for the chart dated July 24.

This is the second consecutive and fourth overall week that Sour topped the Billboard albums chart, which it achieved with 83,000 albums units — a slight decline from last week’s 88,000. Sour is now the first debut by a woman in over 11 years to spend four weeks at No. 1 since Susan Boyle did it with her 2009 album, I Dreamed A Dream. That singer’s reign spanned six consecutive weeks, from December 12, 2009 to January 16, 2010.

Sour also passed Justin Bieber’s Justice to become Spotify’s most-streamed album of 2021, which came shortly after she released her concert film, Sour Prom. She recently discussed the misogyny she’s dealt with in the past. “I feel like I’m surrounded by people who really respect me and treat me with kindness,” she told NME in May. “I’m really lucky in that regard and I hope that my generation of artists can really forge a path for younger artists.”

Bruce Springsteen’s fans have spent the better part of the last century trying to figure out the correct lyrics from a line on “Thunder Road,” a song from the singer’s 1975 album Born To Run. On the song, The Boss sings, “The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves/ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.”

Well, at least that’s what many believed Springsteen said on the Born To Run effort. For what it’s worth, those exact lyrics were included on the liner notes for Born To Run and on every official lyric sheet since the song’s release, but according to the singer’s longtime manager, those lyrics are incorrect.

Rather than “waves” as the lyrics state, Jon Landeau says “the word is ‘sways,’” per an email to The New Yorker’s David Remnick on Sunday. “Any typos in official Bruce material will be corrected.” Landeau added, “By the way, ‘dresses’ do not know how to ‘wave.’ That’s the way he wrote it in his original notebooks, that’s the way he sang it on Born To Run, in 1975, that’s the way he has always sung it at thousands of shows, and that’s the way he sings it right now on Broadway.”

To add to Landeau’s point, “sways” rather than “waves” was the word uses when Springsteen quoted the song in his 2016 autobiography, also titled Born To Run, which helped kick off the debate.

Jim Belushi has had a pretty interesting and diverse career. He’s done comedy, he’s done action. He’s been a movie star, a TV star. Nowadays he’s a cannabis farmer. He has great Tupac stories and he’s very open to learning more about anime. One thing you may not remember is that he did two seasons on SNL, where he made history, of sorts: He was the first cast member to be fired then rehired. In a new interview with Vulture (in a bit teased out by IndieWire), the performer says that his stint almost broke him, but it wound up making him a better person in the end.

Belushi was on the longtime sketch show from 1983 through 1985, following in the footsteps of his older brother John, whose own stint made him a legend. At one point he was briefly canned by then-executive producer Dick Ebersol. When asked why, Belushi did not sugarcoat it.

“I was out of control,” he told the publication. But he saw it as a wake-up call. “It was the best thing to ever happen to me. I was out of my mind. I was throwing a fire extinguisher at Dick Ebersol, a hissy fit.” The experience inspired him to get his stuff together. “I went back to him with my tail between my legs. I drop the ego, I got humble. I stopped drinking the rest of that season.”

He added, “Dick put me in my place, rightfully, and had the courage to do it. I came back; I begged [him] for forgiveness, and he put me on probation. My wife at the time said, ‘You thrive on probation. You were on probation from freshman to senior year of high school. You operate better with boundaries.’”

Still, it sounds like his whole stint was a kind of trial by fire. “SNL’is the hardest thing I ever did, and that’s including divorce,” he said. “I survived it, barely.”

Belushi’s return didn’t last that long. After his second season, Lorne Michaels, who had departed the show in 1980, returned five years later, and proceeded to overhaul the cast and writing staff. But it all worked out in the end: In 1986 alone, Belushi appeared in four big movies, earning acclaim for About Last Night… and Oliver Stone’s Salvador and becoming a bankable name for the silver screen.

He also discussed his brother John, who was one of SNL’s original cast members and who famously left early. He recalled giving him a hard time: “John did four years and he quit. I said, ‘What the f*ck, man? What are you quitting for?’ He said, ‘Jim, it’s like high school: Senior year, you’ve got to move on.’”

(Via Vulture and IndieWire)

Everyone makes mistakes when playing video games. Whether it’s jumping the wrong way into a bottomless pit, or just forgetting to look at the time and watching the opposing player run out the clock, we’ve all made mistakes that made us want to uninstall and never play the game again. However, most of us are not professional players. The large majority of us log in on the weekends or play a few rounds after work or dinner.

Call of Duty League players on the other hand live and breathe their game and the kinds of mistakes they make when playing don’t even come close to the ones us average players do. That’s why this clip of Los Angeles Thieves player Johnathon “John” Perez is stunning to witness. In a round of search and destroy he was planting the bomb when he felt some suppression fire, so he wisely moved out of the way and threw a grenade in response. The problem is that grenade landed right in front of the wall he was hiding behind killing him instantly. The kill feed added insult to injury by stating “mistakes were made” next to his accidental death.

Unfortunately for Perez, it didn’t get much better. The Thieves went on to lose the game of Search and Destroy giving the Paris Legion a tie in the best of five series at 1-1. Very unfortunate for him, but the 2016 Call of Duty World League MVP should be able to bounce back. You don’t become a pro by letting mistakes like this get you down. Still, for the rest of us, while shocking to see happen in this kind of environment, it’s nice to know that even the very best at COD sometimes blow themselves up too.

Last month, Dame Dash was hit with a lawsuit from Roc-A-Fella Records after he attempted to sell an NFT of Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt as well as his stake in Roc-A-Fella Records. Dash owns one-third of the company along with Jay-Z and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, which brings some confusion for the lawsuit.

So far, a judge has blocked the NFT of Reasonable Doubt Dash tried to sell and shut down an attempt from him to stop a meeting between Jay-Z and Biggs. While the matter is far from solved, Dash spoke with HipHopDX to share his thoughts on the lawsuit.

“From my perspective, it feels like this was all done to devalue this asset,” Dash said to HipHopDX’s Kyle Eustice. “I just don’t understand why. What’s odd is that they knew I was only trying to sell one-third, but they’re trying to say I tried to sell the whole thing. But we all know that that’s not the case, so why do they keep saying it? The question is, why is it such a big deal? Why is everyone so scared for me to sell my one-third?”

Dash then addressed Biggs and Jay directly. “Honestly, I think this is corny,” he added. “If there’s an issue, just call me. Why do I have to hear it? Why do I have to get sued? Biggs, Jay, call me and tell me what the play is but if you swing on me, I’m going to have to swing back. And when I say that, I’m saying now that I’m looking under the hood, it looks crazy, but I just do believe that I don’t need all of this.”

He then spoke about an issue he recently discovered with Reasonable Doubt.

“And then insult to injury, just very oddly, we look at Spotify and we see that it says ‘Copyright owned by S. Carter,’” Dash says. “And we’re like, ‘The copyright is owned by Roc-A-Fella, Inc.’ I’m looking at the ledgers and they’re not showing anything that reflects income from any streaming service. So where does that go? I just want to know who authorized that. That’s all I want to know.”

He then revealed that he was offered $1.5 million from the co-founders for his stake in Roc-A-Fella before adding:

When they offered me the 1.5, I was like, “Let me see the books. Let me see how much it’s making.” When I looked at the ledgers, I was like, “Yo, I don’t see any income coming from streaming services.” And then I look on the streaming services and it’s on the streaming service. I don’t remember authorizing any of that. So we’re sitting here thinking, “What’s the long game here? Why f*ck with me?” If I want to sell my third, then you don’t have to be my partner. What’s the problem? You’re making shit up. Why not call me?

You can read the full interview between Dash and HipHopDX here.

LeBron James has read your lackluster review of the new Space Jam sequel, but what matters to him is its box office success. The NBA superstar who took the reins from Michael Jordan in the Looney Tunes sporting universe posted a simple message on Twitter for critics who didn’t seem to enjoy Space Jam: A New Legacy nearly as much as everyone hoped.

The film, which was widely panned, hit HBO Max and theaters this weekend 25 years after the first film debuted. James sat courtside on Saturday night at Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and ABC even brought up the poor reviews of the film when they showed him on the broadcast.

Perhaps that’s a bit of corporate chiding here, as Disney owns ESPN and not the Warners feature that essentially dove into every intellectual property the company has. And there’s also the fact that it was matching up against a Disney-owned Marvel feature, Black Widow, for supremacy at the weekend box office.

James had a simple message on Twitter amid news that Space Jam would top the box office on its debut weekend.

“Hi haters” with a smiley face doesn’t make people actually like the movie, but it certainly shows that people were curious how Warners would handle the sequel to one of the most beloved basketball movies of all-time. That film, mind you, wasn’t exactly Oscar material no matter how charming that Pulp Fiction reference was. So maybe LeBron and the folks that put all that intellectual property on display know what they’re doing after all.

Kid Cudi is someone who has oftentimes taken an unorthodox approach to things. His music and his style have always been his own and he’s rarely conformed to what society expected from him. So it came as no surprise when he took the Saturday Night Live stage earlier this to perform “Sad People” while wearing a dress custom-made by Virgil Abloh and designed to emulate the one Kurt Cobain once famously wore. While Cudi has no problem with standing out in a crowd, the rapper is certainly putting his foot down to those who try to criticize him for it as recently he did on Twitter.

After sharing a picture of himself wearing a Mandalorian helmet and throwing up the peace sign with painted nails on Instagram, Cudi was forced to turn off the ability to add comments on the post after some were displeased with the colorful addition to his hands. He then took to Twitter to share a piece of his mind with critics.

“Turned my comments off on Instagram,” Cudi wrote. “Seems people really have a problem w me painting my nails. I got tired of blockin so many accounts. I really need u to understand, if u dont like me doin this or anything I do, please dont buy my albums, dont come to my shows. F*ck all the way off.”

You can check out Cudi’s original Instagram post and his tweet above.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have blessed us with a good amount of weird baseball already this season, but in this case they had an extremely good day thanks to a meltdown from the New York Mets. Two of the National League’s most chaotic teams squared off on Sunday and early on saw a player quite literally throw a fair ball away to allow three runs to score.

With the Pirates already up 3-0 in the bottom of the first inning and the bases loaded against struggling pitcher Taijuan Walker, Kevin Newman swung and hit a dribbler that initially was in foul territory. And then, well, everything went wrong for the Mets. The ball was spinning on the line, and slowly moved back into fair territory.

Walker, somewhat bizarrely, tried to sweep it back into foul ground to avoid the ball moving into play. Even though they could have gotten a force at home with the bases loaded and a rare out in the inning, that’s a thing he decided to do. Which was blown up when the umpire declared the ball fair before he threw it way into foul territory.

As the Pirates all circle the bases, the Mets do… several things that do not stop the other team from scoring. Some argue that it was a foul ball, while the rest stand around looking at the ball laying in foul territory but still live. Three Pirates score, Mets manager Luis Rojas ran out to argue and was immediately ejected when he bumped the umpire. But the play still stood, and the Pirates were up 6-0 in the first.

Even Jon Stewart said the Mets are trying to kill him.

It’s important to note that the Mets blew a 6-run lead to Pittsburgh on Saturday night, losing on a walk-off grand slam. So maybe Stewart isn’t being as hyperbolic as you might think here.

The Milwaukee Bucks moved one game away from an NBA championship on Saturday night with a thrilling Game 5 win in Phoenix that saw Giannis Antetokounmpo once again create the signature moment — alongside Jrue Holiday — on the emphatic alley-oop finish that proved to be the dagger after Holiday ripped the ball and the game away from Devin Booker.

For the second straight game, Booker had 40 points in a losing effort as his Herculean efforts on the offensive end just weren’t enough to withstand the more balanced onslaught from the Bucks, who finally got a complete offensive performance from their Big Three. For much of the game, Booker’s backcourt mate was quiet offensively, as Chris Paul continued to struggle with the ball pressure and size of Holiday, but came alive in the fourth to serve as the catalyst for Phoenix’s comeback effort that fell just short.

Much has been made this postseason about Paul finally making his first Finals in his 16th season and the Suns have been open about wanting to get him to that championship, but in the moment the furthest thing from their minds is Paul’s legacy. That didn’t stop a reporter on Saturday night for asking arguably the worst question of the Finals when, with Booker and Paul at the podium, someone asked Booker how frustrated he was for Chris after the loss. Booker, unsurprisingly, wasn’t interested in even acknowledging the question.

There are times for legacy questions and times to talk about how folks feel about their teammates, but moments after a loss to go down 3-2 is not the time to ask the guy who just scored 40 in said loss for whether he feels bad for their teammate moving a loss away from falling short of a title. Everyone on the Suns wants to win a championship this year, not just Paul, and if anything, Paul’s presence on the team makes them all acutely aware of how rare these opportunities present themselves. So, a fair warning to my fellow media members, if the Suns lose Game 6, don’t ask anyone other than Chris Paul about how difficult that loss is for Chris Paul.