Category: News

Taylor Swift brought Big Red Machine duo Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon into her Folklore/Evermore universe in 2020. Here in 2021, the roles have been reversed, as Swift features on a pair of new Big Red Machine songs, from the upcoming album How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?. One of them, “Renegade,” was shared recently, and now it has secured Big Red Machine its first placement on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: On the chart dated July 17, “Renegade” debuts at No. 73. As Pop Crave notes, the song is Swift’s 137th song on the chart, which adds to her record for the most all-time among female artists.

This comes after Swift helped Vernon secure his first top-10 single last year, with her Bon Iver-featuring Folklore cut “Exile,” which peaked at No. 6. Vernon’s previous Hot 100 high came as a guest on Kanye West’s “Monster,” which topped out at No. 18 in 2010. Similarly, Swift also boosted Dessner’s other band, The National, to its sole Hot 100 appearance with the Evermore collaboration “Coney Island,” which achieved a peak at No. 63.

Dessner recently said of “Renegade,” “It’s as good as anything [Swift and I have] made together, I think. It’s also something that I, emotionally, was really struck by the first time I heard it, just the way she talks about how anxiety and fear get in the way of loving someone or create an inability for someone to love. And I think it’s incredibly relatable, but it’s expressed in the context of this fairly experimental sound world, although I think we leaned into the… The way it came together as a song, it just really, I think, sums up the whole the Big Red Machine record.”

How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? is out 8/27 via Jagjaguwar/37d03d. Pre-order it here.

Hideo Kojima is one of those video game developers that follows the beat of his own drum. As the person most famous for working on the Metal Gear Solid series he’s well known for being someone that is willing to push the envelope in his games to the point that he does occasionally have to be pulled back in a little, to keep his ideas outside the realm of the extreme.

That was most noticeable than when he went off to form his own studio, Kojima Productions, and released Death Stranding. The game was certainly unique but met a lot of criticism for being a game that wasn’t exciting to play and sometimes called a “walking simulator.”

In an effort to address those complaints, Kojima Productions is releasing a follow up to Death Stranding called Death Stranding: Director’s Cut and it will feature more combat and an expanded story. Of course, when everyone saw the title, our first reaction was to ask what in the world would Kojima ever cut from one of his games? Well, he answered that question recently on Twitter on Monday. Sort of.

According to Kojima, these weren’t really cuts, but more additions that he wanted to make that he finally has time to add. He doesn’t even want to call it a Director’s Cut, but instead a “Director’s Plus.”

At first Kojima’s comments don’t really make a lot of sense. If it’s content they wanted to put in the game, but couldn’t, then it’s a cut right? However, Kojima is someone that has always been infatuated with movies and filmmaking. Some critics of Metal Gear argue that the games are more like movies and less like video games because of the extremely long cutscenes in a handful of the titles. He’s always looking at video games from a film perspective so it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to call his game a Director’s Cut if it technically isn’t that.

All of this leads to the question of why didn’t they just call it a Definitive Edition or one of the many other titles that video games use for when content is added to an already-existing game. The short answer is because that’s not what they wanted to call their game. Does that make sense? No, but this is Kojima and if he wants to call his game a Director’s Cut, Plus, or Death Stranding: Ultra 4K HD Definitive Cut Mega Edition then who are we to stop him?

Bleachers has shared a brand-new NPR Tiny Desk (home) concert. The stripped-down set was filmed outside Electric Lady Studios, the same spot where they recorded their forthcoming third studio album, Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night. During the performance, led by super producer Jack Antonoff on piano, Bleachers debuted the album’s opener, “91,” a somber, contemplative track bolstered by plenty of sax. (We have saxophonists Zem Audu and Evan Smith to thank.)

Later, the group followed “91” up with two more album cuts: “Stop Making This Hurt” and a Bruce Springsteen-less rendition of “Chinatown.”

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Antonoff described the emotional, post-break up headspace he was in as he started work on Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night.

“I was writing for a long time. The early process was, I got out of a relationship [with Lena Dunham], and I felt an amazing amount of darkness and depression. I fell in there. But the moment it starts to open up and you see a piece of light is a really amazing place to write from. There’s a lot of desperation in these songs, and I realized, ‘Oh, that’s the same feeling of being from New Jersey, that desperation of wanting out, of I want to break through into another part of my life.’ So that’s when I started to see the framework. And then a really amazing thing happened when the pandemic hit. It was like the final piece of the album, because everything I’m talking about in the songwriting is about sort of dreaming of a next place.”

Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night arrives 7/30 via RCA. Pre-order it here.

When her beloved dog, Kovu, went missing two years ago, Aisha Nieves was devastated. She had loved him since she adopted him at 7 weeks old, and the two were inseparable.

“He was like my baby,” Nieves told WFMZ News. “He would go with me everywhere, he would sleep in my bed.”

But in 2019, Kovu disappeared from Nieves’s yard one day after escaping through a hole in the fence, and a frantic search for him led nowhere.

“I was four months pregnant with my younger son at the time,” Nieves told The Morning Call. “I had a lot of emotions going through me. I was crying, thinking the worst, thinking somebody kidnapped or hurt him. I was just devastated. He was there for me through everything, heartbreaks, ups and downs, and now he was gone. It was so hard to accept.”

For the past two years, Nieves has grieved the loss. She finally decided to start looking for a new dog for her two sons to enjoy.

By chance, Nieves was scrolling through the local Humane Society’s website listing of dogs available for adoption when she saw a golden face she recognized. Noticing a distinctive scar above his right eye, she knew it was Kovu.

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“I thought, ‘Wait, that can’t be him.'” she told The Morning Call. Then, I saw the little scar over one eye, the scar from when he got caught in a gate, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s my baby, that’s Kovu!'”

She said she was literally shaking when she recognized his face.

She didn’t, however, know if Kovu would recognize her after two years apart. It’s clear from Kovu’s reaction, though, that she needn’t have worried. Watch this:

Watch: Reunited with her lost dog after 2 years

www.youtube.com

Kovu had been adopted from the Humane Society a few months after his disappearance, but the family who adopted him had to surrender him when they faced eviction. He’d been back at the shelter for just six days when Nieves spotted him, and when he saw her, he knew her immediately.

“He was screaming, trying to get away from the guy holding him and run to me,” Nieves told The Morning Call. “Then, he just jumped on me and we started kissing and hugging. He sat on my lap. I told him, ‘Yeah, buddy, you’re going home. I’m so sorry this happened. Never again am I losing you.'”

Dogs and humans have 11,000 years of history together, with dogs being the first animals humans took as pets. And some people’s bonds with their doggos are extra tight, which appears to be the case with Kovu and Aisha. He was so excited to see her, and it’s clear that this reunion was just what both of them needed.

For as much as being a part of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe can bog down some of its more stellar films (see our Black Widow review), there’s one way in which being an MCU movie is a huge asset to all their beloved characters: spinoff series. While not every hero and villain is lucky enough to get their very own solo film, Black Widow star David Harbour (who you might also know as Stranger Things‘ Hopper) has his fingers crossed.

According to an Insider interview, Harbour is hoping to reprise his role as the Red Guardian and is “down for more” appearances in the MCU. When asked just where he’d like his character’s story to go, Harbour even offered up a few ideas:

“I have two ideas. One is seeing Red Guardian back in his prime. That’s interesting to me. But the other is going off this story, having this experience with Natasha and having this beautiful end when he takes her hand and says “I can’t even speak to you because I would mess it up.” When he finds out that she was on that cliff with Hawkeye and maybe the version of the story he hears is that Hawkeye pushed her off or something, it’s a moment when Red Guardian turns back to the guy he was. He now wants vengeance for her. That I feel would play well.”

Considering Black Widow broke pandemic box office records and had some pretty major stars in its supporting roles (Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz…), it might not be too much of a stretch to assume they will be popping up again in the coming years. Who knows, we could even see David Harbour make an appearance in the upcoming Hawkeye series coming to Disney+ which, thanks to Black Widow, we now know more about — including why Black Widow‘s Yelena (Pugh) will be in it. In the meantime, it looks like we’ll have to binge a whole lot of Stranger Things and watch Black Widow on repeat to get more of Harbour killing it as everyone’s favorite awkwardly charming fathers.

In 2018, Nicole Austin landed a hell of a gig at Cascade Hollow Distilling (formerly George Dickel Distillery) — taking on the dual role of General Manager and Head Distiller. This dream job didn’t come through happenstance. Austin has a degree in Chemical Engineering from Manhattan College, which led to her becoming the Master Blender for Kings County Distillery in New York in 2010 — where she helped define the award-winning whiskey’s style. Her whiskey knowledge runs deep and her time at Cascade Hollow has already helped reshape the future of one of the most iconic Tennessee whiskey brands.

Austin’s got her work cut out for her, though, as George Dickel’s path has been pretty bumpy over the years. The former late-1800s grocery store blend saw great highs pre-Prohibition. But over the past century, it’s been shuttered, born again, shuttered a second time, and changed hands. In Austin, the company has found a leader who is cognizant of its history while remaining tapped into the 21st-century whiskey scene. She’s also willing to take risks — a spirit that was underscored by the release of George Dickel Bourbon just this year, though the shingle has long been associated with “Tennessee whiskey.”

When you speak to Austin about the juice coming off her stills and resting in rickhouses in Tullahoma, Tennessee, you can feel that you’re speaking to someone who is craft-oriented. Recently, I chatted with her about how she navigates warehouses full of whiskey she didn’t make but has to blend, the state of whiskey’s regionality, and what excites her on the horizons.

What’s the difference between Cascade Hollow Distilling and George Dickel?

It’s a good question. The distillery is in a valley, called Cascade Hollow, which is the site of the original distillery. George Dickel, the Tennessee Whiskey brand, has been around since 1870. And George himself actually ran the general store in the city of Nashville. He was a German immigrant and he and his wife, Augusta, ran the store together. And as was quite common at that time, the folk would buy whiskey and spirits from local distilleries, small farm distilleries, or larger operations all over. And they would blend it or flavor it at the store and sell it under their own brand. This was very typical in the mid to late 1800s.

So George Dickel Tennessee Whiskey is the brand, right?

Right.

The distillery, Cascade Hollow, produces whiskey mainly for George Dickel, but of course, you can have other brands that come out of there. That’s particularly common in the U.S. — to have several different whiskey brands that originate from the same distillery. They could be made the same way and blended differently, or possibly the distillery could run different mashes at different times to make different things.

So when you’re looking at your operations, you know George Dickel’s going to take up X amount of time, but then also we have to get enough barrels for other products or brands. How do you look at your day-to-day when you’re balancing all of that?

It’s one of the most challenging things. For a year, you’re making a plan of how to make Tennessee whiskey, what we need, how much time could we spend making other things? And you kind of have to predict — because whiskey takes a long time — so you have to predict five, ten, 20 years in the future what you think you’re going to need and produce against that.

It’s actually quite a complex process. Obviously, you lose whiskey every year. It’s just evaporation that’s called the angel share. So you have to plan, how much do I need to distill today to sell the amount I think I’ll need to sell of that product in four years? And that’s different than the amount you need to distill today to sell something in eight years since the angel’s share is going to be different.

When you look at the older barrels in your warehouses, you’re dealing with juice that was laid down before you were the distiller. Do you ever go back into those and sort of find, “I get what you were going for here, but this isn’t quite what we’re going for now”? Or are you surprised by all the gems? How do you process dealing with some else’s whiskey that you have to build your whiskey on?

It’s a bit of both. Plans change, right? And when you look into the crystal ball and try and predict the future, we’re hardly ever right. So you always have to deal with that.

It’s always the question of, “how do you take what you have and try and do the best job you can do to make it fit the whiskey that you want to make today?” And some of that is exactly as you describe it, discovering some gems, that you’re like, “man, those barrels have been sitting there for a while. Just because they didn’t fit Dickel 12, they’re still lovely!” So, maybe I can come up with a brand that could utilize them better.

And then sometimes it’s instances of balance, right? What’s important right now, and how do I use the whiskey to its best potential?

So how does that apply to George Dickel in the bottle?

I would say at George Dickel, we have some extra challenges because this distillery has such a checkered history. It’s been shut down, then turned back on at various times. It’s passed through different ownership. And it’s always been a little bit of an underdog, sort of under-appreciated brand.

That all makes the challenge particularly difficult in this case — because it’s not an even, steady supply, which makes it even harder to sort those things out. This is why I’ve done a lot of one-offs, limited-time offerings. Those are the whiskeys that I can be confident in the quality of but wasn’t necessarily making any promises about repeatability. That’s one of the reasons I could release the Dickel Bourbon, because I had to get to that place of being confident that not only could I make this one blend once, but that I had the whiskey to be able to repeat that again next year.

What was the process behind you putting together a bourbon, as opposed to a Tennessee whiskey release?

When I took the role here, my job didn’t exist before. Various people have held different titles, like Head Distiller over the years. But this particular role of being a General Manager and Distiller has responsibilities on the brand, marketing, and sales sides, as well as production. Because of that, I had this unique position and this unique opportunity to make sure that nothing changes — make sure that Dickel 12 stays the same every year and that Dickel classic tastes the same every year, which is actually quite hard to do. When I came in, I had to look holistically at everything and think about what’s the best way to use this whiskey?

So I did a massive review of literally every aging lot that we had in our warehouse that was over four years old. It was thousands of samples, which was fun. But on the back of that, I was able to get a better understanding of what we had and what these whiskeys might be capable of.

I didn’t come in necessarily with any ideas of what I wanted to achieve. What I wanted to understand was what do we have in our warehouses, and then start to make notes and kind of think about where that could lead.

I started to notice we had a lot of whiskeys that, to me, reminded me a lot more of a typical balanced lovely bourbon. I think that had I not come around, their destination would have been to be blended in against those bigger, bolder barrels and sort of lost forever. I thought, what a shame. They’re really lovely on their own. They deserved their own bottle to shine.

So because I had the opportunity, also as the general manager, I was able to make that happen. I said to the team, “I think we should go create this new brand of Dickel Bourbon.” I chose to use that word because I felt like it was the most honest description of what’s in the bottle, it tells someone who’d buy it exactly what they can expect it to taste like, which is a lovely balanced bourbon, vanilla forward, toffee, some fruit and cherry notes. It’s what you would expect from a nice bourbon.

I’m a huge fan of Tennessee whiskey. I grew up in the era where Tennessee whiskey is what you had on your home bar, and Kentucky bourbon is what you kept in the garage under the sink for when you were on your own.

The good old days.

There was a clear differential in the quality and there still is that today, no matter how much marketing from Kentucky is used. Do you feel like you’re fighting against the barrage of how mammoth Kentucky bourbon has become? Or are you just like, “Fuck it, I’m doing my own thing and the whiskey is going to speak for itself?” Or is it even something you worry about?

I definitely do worry about and pay attention to that. I will fully admit that when I was first becoming really passionate about whiskey, Tennessee whiskey was not a category that I really paid much attention to. I really wasn’t paying much attention to it until where we were trying to create our own regional designation in New York in the form of Empire Rye. And that really forces you to sit down and really think about what the value of a regional identity really is.

It’s really quite hard to do. So that’s when I looked at Tennessee whiskey because they had historically been so successful at it. But in some ways, I think they were almost too successful at separating themselves from bourbon. Because, of course, Tennessee whiskey is bourbon, right?

Right.

The foundation of the Tennessee whiskey’s rules literally copies and pastes the bourbon statute. So Tennessee whiskey is a regional identity of bourbon that utilizes the Lincoln County Process and is made in the state of Tennessee. And I think that thread was lost a little bit.

I’ve been talking about that for a few years, but I think a lot of real bourbon enthusiasts are maybe missing out on some of these really excellent, beautiful bourbons because they’re sold under the “Tennessee whiskey” moniker, and they think that that’s somehow something different. So I think that connection has value, and I definitely believe there’s room for everything to exist in the world. I think it’s exciting that the shelf is getting more diverse.

We’re getting all these regional designations, it’s fun. It’s more good whiskey in the world. Why would you not want that?

You come from the craft world and you can see what’s happening in Washington, Texas, back in New York, Indiana, etcetera. What have you seen recently that’s excited you about the direction of whiskey or distilling?

You know what excited me recently, I was a judge for the American Craft Spirits Association for their competition and there was a whole category of hopped whiskeys. There are a lot of historic roots of using hops in whiskey. But I totally admit, I always kind of rolled my eyes at it. It was like, these don’t taste good and they’re never going to taste good. And I was judging them and there was one that was amazing, Wigle Hopped Whiskey. It tasted so good.

That’s what I love about what’s happening in American craft spirits right now: It’s surprising. For everything you think you know right now about whiskey, there’s probably someone out there right now plotting how to defy you. I take great delight in that. I love to be proved wrong.

Chvrches have unveiled a new single, “Good Girls.” It’s the latest preview of their highly anticipated fourth LP, Screen Violence, and follows earlier single “How Not To Drown” featuring The Cure’s Robert Smith.

A glistening, reverb-heavy track containing feminist themes, “Good Girls” appears to echo the lyrics from Frankie Valli’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” with lead singer Lauren Mayberry singing, “Good girls don’t cry / And good girls don’t lie / And good girls justify but I don’t / Good girls don’t die / And good girls stay alive / And good girls satisfy but I won’t.”

Opening up about the single, Mayberry said in a release:

“The opening line (‘killing your idols is a chore’) was something I wrote after listening to some friends arguing about the present day implications of loving certain problematic male artists — I was struck by the lengths that people would go to in order to excuse their heroes and how that was so juxtaposed to my own experiences in the world. Women have to constantly justify their right to exist and negotiate for their own space. We’re told that Bad Things don’t happen to Good Girls. That if you curate yourself to fit the ideal — keep yourself small and safe and acceptable — you will be alright, and it’s just not f*cking true.”

Check out “Good Girls” above.

Screen Violence is out 8/27 via Glassnote Records. Pre-order it here.

There’s some unofficial rule out there in the comic-book movie realm that says this: part of the game of playing a superhero (or supervillain or antihero) means that Instagramming one’s “jacked” physicality is part of the game. Well, The Rock (who is generally ripped already, every day) is taking those “jacked” photos very seriously. He recently posted a rear view photo of his pumped-up state, and his legs are looking more ripped than usual, and it’s (partially) because he’s finally shooting his long-gestating Shazam! spinoff, Black Adam.

The Rock previously wrote that he’s invested “[a]lmost two years of hard core, intense training, diet, character prep and execution” on this antihero role, and now, The Rock’s getting real by ever-so-slightly shading those who cut corners to look jacked in their superhero costumes. Yep, he’s posting another view from the back to do so, although this one isn’t as cheeky. More relevantly, he’s pointing out the “the intricate and beautiful textured detail” of Black Adam’s body suit while adding that “(this is not your typical DC or Marvel padded muscle suit).”

Well… fair enough? Sure, it sounds a little braggy, but The Rock is nonetheless beloved. People love him when he’s in the ring calling people “jabronis” and shouting about what he’s “cooking.” They’re still gonna love him when he’s bragging about his muscles because, hey, he does the work. However, I find it very hard to understand what’s going on in the below photo. The Rock made sure to tell everyone that he got up early enough to smile at 3:46 am, which is… whew. I hope The Rock finds some time to relax.

There are plenty of absurd dating shows in paradise to watch these days, with the Bachelor franchise dipping into that aesthetic yearly and Too Hot To Handle horning it up on Netflix. But HBO Max wants in on the mix, which is why they sent Nikki Glaser to paradise with a bunch of dudes to film FBoy Island.

We now have a trailer for FBoy Island, and boy does it live up to the expectations the subject matter requires these days. There are hunky dudes in swim trunks, eligible ladies picking between them, and a “twist” of sorts: some of these guys are nice, while the other ones aren’t nearly as nice!

“He’s really cute but he looks like he’s going to ruin my life,” one of the three women tasked with nice guy-hunting says at one point.

There’s lots of fella footage here while Lizzo’s “Boys” fittingly plays in the background. And while there’s a montage of guys saying “bro” and astute observations like “he looks like a guy that has two phones” there’s also a brief clip of a man apparently smashing a mango, or some sort of stone fruit, with just his bicep.

I mean, what more do you really need to see here? Sure, there’s a cash prize on the line, which means deception and what will almost certainly be a thorough exploration of who is Here For The Right Reasons. But if we’re going to see fruit explode due to muscle twitches in the trailer, the sky’s the limit to the shenanigans here.

FBoy Island starts streaming on HBO Max on July 29.

On July 13 and 14, BTS will enjoy a two-night run on The Tonight Show, guesting on both the Tuesday and Wednesday episodes this week. It turns out that when they visit Jimmy Fallon tomorrow, the group will still have the No. 1 song in the country: On the newest Billboard Hot 100 chart, dated July 17, “Butter” is still No. 1 and continues its seemingly unending run.

The song is now in its seventh week in the top spot. During the tracking week reflected on the chart (ending July 8), “Butter” enjoyed 29.1 million radio airplay audience impressions (an increase of 6 percent) and 10.8 million streams in the US. Additionally, it sold 108,800 copies.

The band wrote on Twitter, “We can’t believe this is really happening to us [crying emoji] Thank you SO MUCH x.”

Aside from BTS, another group that’s excited about the success of “Butter” is the American Butter Institute. Alan Bjerga, the institute’s Chief of Communications, recently told Billboard, “My main reaction was, ‘Great!’ It obviously doesn’t hurt to have your product associated with the top band’s song of the summer. […] The future of US butter sales is in exports, and to have arguably the biggest band on the globe giving a thumbs-up in song can’t be anything but good.”