Category: News

Jack Antonoff has become the go-to producer for some of the most critically-acclaimed pop stars of the current era, and his flourishes are all over Lana Del Rey’s newest album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club, released only a few months ago. But now it’s time for his own project, Bleachers, to take the spotlight again. Late last fall the band shared their first song in two years, “Chinatown,” — which, rather magically, features fellow Jersey troubadour Bruce Springsteen — and the B-side track “45.”

Little did we know back then that one of the lyrics in “Chinatown” was actually an Easter egg revealing Bleachers’ next album title: “Stop Making This Hurt” is the single that formally introduces the band’s next record, Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night, but close listeners might’ve already latched onto that phrase in “Chinatown” last November. Now, it’s officially a part of Bleachers lore, and the album will be released later this year, on July 30. As for the new track, it’s the third song we’ve heard off the record, and it too features the lyric/album title “take the sadness out of Saturday night.” We love a theme.

Here’s what Antonoff had to say about the song:

“‘Stop Making This Hurt’ is what you get when we are not allowed to go play for our people. it’s a line that had been ringing in my head for years. i fell into a dark place after a loss and then starting to have that feeling of rage towards the depression — which is when you know there’s a way out. started looking at the people close to me in my life and finding all the ways we keep ourselves from breaking through. ‘Stop Making This Hurt’ started ringing more and more in my head. then the pandemic hit and i got the band in a room and we played like we may never play again. at that point it took on another meaning. found myself banging at the door of the next phase of my life and to open brings up all the darkness from the past and what’s holding you back. i could intellectualize it for days but what i’m truly left with is a voice in my head shouting ‘Stop Making This Hurt.’”

Kudos to Antonoff for working through all that, and for putting it out into the world in song form. Check out the dance-party-in-a-diner video above and the full tracklist below. But wait: In even more exciting news, there will also be a tour! It kicks off at Antonoff’s Shadow Of The City festival in New Jersey. Those dates are below as well.

1. “91”
2. “Chinatown” Feat. Bruce Springsteen
3. “How Dare You Want More”
4. “Big Life”
5. “Secret Life”
6. “Stop Making This Hurt”
7. “Don’t Go Dark”
8. “45”
9. “Strange Behavior”
10. “What’d I Do With All This Faith?”

09/11 — Ashbury Park, NJ @ Shadow Of The City
09/12 — New York, NY @ The Rooftop
09/13 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
09/15 — Columbus, OH @ Express Live
09/17 – Milwaukee, WI @ Summerfest
09/18 — Newport, KY @ Ovation
09/22 — Boston, MA @ Leader Bank Pavilion
09/23 — Philadelphia, PA @ Skyline Stage at The Mann
09/24 — Washington, DC @ Anthem
09/25 — New York, NY @ Gov Ball
09/28 — Birmingham, AL @ Avondale Brewery Company
09/29 — Tampa, FL @ Jannus Live
10/03 — New Orleans, LA @ Fillmore
10/05 — Houston, TX @ House Of Blues
10/06 — Dallas, TX @ House Of Blues
10/11 — Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
10/13 — San Diego, CA @ Humphrey’s
10/15 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium
10/16 — San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic
10/19 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox SODO
10/20 — Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
10/22 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Union Event Center
10/23 — Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom
10/24 — Kansas City, MO @ Uptown
10/26 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fillmore
10/27 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee
10/28 — Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
10/30 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian
10/31 — Detroit, MI @ Fillmore
11/02 — St. Louis, MO @ The Factory
11/03 — Cleveland, OH @ House Of Blues
11/04 — Grand Rapids, MI @ 20 Monroe Live
11/06 — Harrisburg, PA @ Harrisburg University @ XL Live

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

Matthew McConaughey has always been a mercurial figure—even as he has finally seemed to grow into his role as a famous actor by trading in titles like Failure to Launch and Surfer, Dude for more prestige projects like Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective. Yet, as his Lincoln car commercials continue to prove, the best way to describe the McConaughey brand might just be “kind of weird.” Which makes the idea of the Oscar winner successfully mounting a campaign to become the governor of Texas… well, a little frightening to some people.

Yet the rumors that the Dazed and Confused scene-stealer is considering going up against Greg Abbott and making a run for the role of Texas governor go beyond speculation at this point. As Politico reports, “McConaughey has been quietly making calls to influential people in Texas political circles, including a deep-pocketed moderate Republican and energy CEO, to take their temperature on the race and to talk about seriously throwing his hat in the ring, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.”

While there are varying opinions as to whether “The McConaughey Years” could be a good thing for the Lone Star State, there’s one indisputable and somewhat troubling fact about the actor’s seemingly newfound interest in politics: No one really knows what he stands for. As Meridith McGraw wrote in Politico:

“What’s less clear is what kind of platform McConaughey would run on or even which party banner he would run under. McConaughey has been peppered with questions about politics and news of the day while promoting his memoir, Greenlights, but overall, has been vague about his political leanings, saying little about specific issues or policies.

The political calculations for a decision about party affiliation would also be tricky.

‘The question is: Would he run as a Republican? A Democrat? Independent? And where is he on the political scale? He says he has a funny phrase about being a hardcore centrist, but what party would he run under?’ said [Karl] Rove.”

While McConaughey has been peppered with questions about his political ideologies in recent months, he has so far successfully evaded giving any firm answers to where he stands… on pretty much anything. Which, while totally on-brand for McConaughey: The Actor, leaves a lot to be desired in a potential gubernatorial candidate.

Still, McConaughey has confirmed that he’s definitely considering going head-to-head with Abbott. When asked about his political aspirations on Today in March, McConaughey said that he’s definitely thinking about it, noting:

“What I’ve gotta choose for myself is, I want to get into a leadership role in the next chapter of my life. Now, what role am I gonna be most useful in? I don’t know that that’s in a political position, or if that’s me as a free agent. It might be me as a free agent. So that’s something I’m personally working on is what is my position of most use in a leadership role.”

[Insert your own alright, alright, alright joke here.]

(Via Politico)

As part of the rollout of Coldplay’s new era, they have introduced a new written language. Furthermore, it appears that’s not the only way the group is trying to get creative with their presentation: They want to use emojis as song titles, but it seems streaming services aren’t on board with that.

During a recent appearance on Radio X’s The Chris Moyles Show, the titular host asked the band’s Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland if he could get some information that nobody else knows, and Martin responded:

“I’ll give you something, Chris. We’re trying to figure this out right now: We’re trying to have the first album ever with some tracks that are just called emojis, but it’s proving tricky because of all the service providers. Some of them say, ‘We can’t do that.’ You literally have ten million songs in one box. Let us have a picture of an apple for a song or something like that. So that’s in negotiation.”

The help site for DistroKid, a platform that allows artists to put their music on streaming services, has a page about songs not being accepted on streaming services due to title formatting issues. The list of issues that prevent a song from being accepted includes things like “strange things in parenthesis” and “odd punctuation.” The page says nothing about emojis, but if the aforementioned title elements are prohibited, then it would stand to reason that emojis are also a no-go.

Perhaps this song title situation is the reason why Coldplay hasn’t yet officially announced a new album. In another recent interview, Martin did everything but confirm an album is on the way, saying, “We’re not supposed to say, but there won’t not be one.”

Check out the full Radio X interview above.

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

Emma Watson has only appeared in three movies over the past five years, Beauty and the Beast, The Circle, and Little Women, where she played one of Bob Odenkirk’s little women. But she hasn’t retired from acting, despite a Daily Mail report that claimed she had gone to “dormant.” It reads, “That appears to be movie-speak for she’s ‘given up acting.’ I can reveal the Harry Potter star, who has been famous since she was nine, has decided to step back from the limelight to spend time with rumored fiancé Leo Robinton.” Her manager denied the rumor, telling EW that while his client’s “social media accounts are dormant… her career isn’t,” and on Monday, Watson herself addressed the report.

“Dear Fans, rumours about whether I’m engaged or not, or whether my career is ‘dormant or not’ are ways to create clicks each time they are revealed to be true or untrue,” she tweeted. “If I have news – I promise I’ll share it with you. In the mean time please assume no news from me just means I’m quietly spending the pandemic the way most people are – failing to make sourdough bread (!), caring for my loved ones and doing my best not to spread a virus that is still affecting so many people.” She added:

I am sending so much love to you, hoping you’re ok and as well and happy as you can be in these strange times. And again, thank you to everyone working so hard to keep us safe and well.
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It’s the first time Watson has tweeted since August 2020. If only Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling used social media that infrequently…

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump famously—and repeatedly—told voters how he surrounded himself with “the best people.” In the five years since, Americans have looked on as Trump and many of his closest colleagues have been investigated, arrested, and even jailed. Seth Meyers, for one, is not surprised.

Meyers dedicated Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment to the MAGA crime family, with particular attention paid to Matt Gaetz, Joel Greenberg and Rudy Giuliani. He kicked the segment off by noting the number of Trump or Trump-adjacent associates who have stumbled into legal troubles in the last few years:

“Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the MAGA crowd seems to have a lot of criminals in it. I don’t want to make generalizations, but there are more criminals—or alleged criminals—in Trump’s inner circle than there are in a motorcycle gang or a Hollywood PTA meeting.”

That so many of Trump’s associates have been arrested, jailed, and/or convicted (with or without a pardon) speaks to the fact that they might not be very good at crime. Case in point: Greenberg, Gaetz’s longtime pal and so-called “wingman” who was in court on Monday and pleaded guilty to six federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. As part of Greenberg’s plea deal, he promised to fully cooperate with the prosecution. This, of course, is bad news for Gaetz, the Florida congressman who is already at the center of a handful of allegations and sex scandals—the latest being that he snorted coke with an escort at a wild party following a pro-Trump rally in 2019, where Nestor’s daddy pumped up the crowd with a speech.

Greenberg, of course, was the recipient of those late-night Venmo transactions from Gaetz back in 2018—the one where Gaetz sent Greenberg $900 and Greenberg then sent that exact same amount of money out to a trio of young women using “Tuition” and “School” as the explanations of the cash. “It would have been less suspicious to just use a bunch of eggplant emojis,” Meyers deadpanned.

But Gaetz wasn’t Meyers’s only target: In addition to pointing to Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, Meyers turned his attention to one of his favorite nincompoops, Rudy Giuliani. According to Meyers, who has never missed an opportunity to break out his Rudy impression, Trump has been ignoring Giuliani’s requests for help while he’s being investigated by the FBI for his shady Ukraine shenanigans. The former president is being pressured to “hang Giuliani out to dry in his hour of need.” Meyers had some thoughts on this:

“If anyone needs to be hung out to dry, it’s Rudy Giuliani. He always looks like he fell into the city aquarium and got squirted with squid ink. Second, I’d imagine every hour in Rudy’s life is an hour of need. The dude butt-dials reporters, got tricked by Borat, and doesn’t know the difference between up and down.” (That clip, at 5:43, is worth watching on repeating.)

According to Meyers, if Giuliani is truly surprised that Trump isn’t standing by and up for him, that’s on Rudy. “What did Rudy think was going to happen? His client is famous for not paying his bills and turning on everyone around him.”

Giuliani is reportedly asking Trump to issue a “strongly worded” statement that confirms Rudy’s interactions with Ukrainian officials were all on the up and up and on behalf of the then-president—which Trump is reluctant to do. “Rudy’s like a hitman who thinks it will help his case if the guy who hired him talks to the cops,” Meyers said.

You can watch the full segment above.

Nick Jonas had a bit of a scare over the weekend: TMZ reported that on Saturday night (May 15), Jonas was hurt while filming a new show and his injuries were severe enough that he was taken to a nearby hospital via ambulance. The publication also noted that by Sunday night, Jonas was back home and ready to appear on Monday’s episode of The Voice. Sure enough, he was on the show last night and he addressed his injury, revealing that he cracked a rib in a bike accident.

Host Carson Daly asked Jonas how he was feeling and Jonas responded, “I’m feeling OK. I’ve been better, but I’m doing all right. Cracked rib from a spill on a bike and a few other bumps and bruises. I just want to go ahead and say that in case I’m not as physically enthusiastic as I usually am.”

He then addressed Blake Shelton, adding, “Blake, please don’t make me laugh too much, because it kind of hurts to laugh.” Shelton quipped, “You’re just trying to get sympathy votes on this show, that’s all you’re doing.”

While Jonas was on last night’s The Voice episode, that won’t be the case for that much longer: After the current season, he will be replaced by Ariana Grande.

On Friday afternoon, BuzzFeed published a story in which the outlet detailed how their reporters had uncovered Joe Biden’s “secret” Venmo account—and few people were as shocked by this tech-savvy turn of events than Jimmy Kimmel. On Monday night, the Jimmy Kimmel Live host devoted several minutes of his opening monologue to the story, which detailed how Biden, who maintained a small list of less than 10 “friends” on Venmo, used the app to send money to his grandchildren.

While Kimmel found the whole thing funny, mostly because, at age 78, the folksy president is hardly the typical Venmo user. For the most part, the app is looked at as a way for Millennials to split the cost of a pizza or pay for their portion of the rent. But given the sordid reasons politicians like Matt Gaetz have used Venmo, Kimmel admitted that “it’s weird to hear about a politician using Venmo to pay teenagers for something other than sex.”

Kimmel commented on how easy it was for BuzzFeed to apparently track down Biden’s now-deleted account, which reportedly took less than 10 minutes to do. And jokingly shared some of the services rendered Biden used the app to pay for:

Kimmel wasn’t done yet though:

“If somebody said to you, ‘What are the odds Joe Biden has Venmo?,’ you’d be like, ‘Well, there’s no way,’ right? This is like finding out the Pope wears VR goggles.”

You can watch the full monologue above (the Biden bit starts around the 3:06 mark).

The Los Angeles Lakers are getting ready to try and make a massive run through the play-in and playoffs to defend their 2020 championship, starting with a showdown with the Warriors on Wednesday night for the 7-seed and a series with the Suns.

L.A. is finally getting healthy at the right time, with LeBron James insistent his ankle tweak on Sunday night was nothing, Anthony Davis playing some of his best basketball of the season, and Dennis Schröder back from health and safety protocols. When the Lakers take the court on Wednesday night, they hope they’ll be back to normal and back to the form they showed early in the year when at full strength, but one player will be making a bit of a change.

While Schröder is back on the court, you won’t see him in a large chunk of his sneaker collection. The Lakers point guard had been among the many players who are fans of Nike’s Kyrie line, but as he said recently as he was going through his shoe collection, after his on-court kerfuffle with Irving back in April, he won’t be wearing them going forward and plans on giving away all of his Kyries.

It’s not a huge change for this season, as Schröder has been wearing a lot of Kobes during his time in L.A., but for someone with 30-plus pairs of Kyries it’s certainly a sizable chunk of his rotation. Dennis is far from the first player to stop wearing someone’s sneakers, but usually guys will do that in games they’re playing against the player whose signature they typically wear. In this case, Schröder is making this change wholesale, so if you wear a size 12 and have a way to get in touch with him, there’s some sneakers available.

Maybe you remember Parler. It was the least offensive of the far right, “free speech” social media services that stood in opposition to the mainstream likes of Twitter — which is to say it was pretty awfully offensive. It seemed to die after the failed MAGA insurrection of January 6, many of whose participants used it to help coordinate their attack. Some four months later it was back on places like Google and Apple that had once banned it — but only Apple is asking them to shape up.

As per Vox, Apple allowed the app version of Parler back into the fold, but with a major caveat: Its “anything goes” approach had to end. Users operating on it on iOS could no longer spread hate speech or incite violence. Posts will be monitored by an AI program, and it will label offending posts as “hate,” making them unavailable over their service. It’s something! Though perhaps nothing would be better.

It’s also more than their rival is doing. Though the app remains banned in the Google Play Store, Android users can still bypass it and download the unfiltered version to their phones. Unencumbered by AI police, they can let rip with racial slurs and whatever else might get them flagged on Apple’s “Parler Lite.”

Mind you, even the Apple version of Parler can be dangerous. As Vox points out, there’s “the risk that people use the Apple version of Parler to attract followers, and then organize violence on the non-Apple versions of Parler.” The truce, though, is not necessarily long-lived: They’re still being monitored by the tech giant over the long run, and things could always — and easily — get out of hand.

Parler all but disappeared from the internet on January 9, when Apple, Google, as well as Amazon, who hosted its services, cut ties with them, in response to the events of January 6. It returned in mid-February, having found an alternative to Amazon but still without an Apple- or Google-okayed app.

One other thing: In addition to getting back on Apple, Parler also announced a new CEO. His name is George Farmer, and he’s the former chairman of Turning Point UK, the British wing of the conservative organization that targets students. His wife? Rightwing firebrand Candace Owens. When that news broke, some found it even worse than the return of Parler.

Meanwhile, others noted things had returned to normal over at Parler.

(Via Vox)

Baseball is a sport that often feels safe, as it’s not a contact sport in the way football and hockey (or even basketball) are, and the slower pace of play can lull you into a sense that there isn’t danger. However, with how hard guys throw and how fast the ball comes off of the bat, the moments where those things get away from someone are unsettling reminders of just how dangerous it is just simply hitting and pitching.

Earlier this season, Bryce Harper got a scare when he took a fastball to the face, but was able to get a hand up and pull his head back in time to avoid a direct hit. On Monday Mets outfielder Kevin Pillar wasn’t as fortunate when a 94 mph fastball from Braves pitcher Jacob Webb got away from him, riding up and in to Pillar’s face where it hit him square in the nose in a terrifying scene in Atlanta.

[WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO]

That Pillar was able to get up and walk off the field as quickly as he did seems like a minor miracle, but he was bleeding profusely from the bridge of the nose where he got hit. You could see Webb’s immediate reaction was to snap around and crouch to the ground in horror, clearly feeling awful for what just happened and hoping that Pillar would be OK. Freddie Freeman and everyone else on the infield had the same reaction, as the sound it made when it hit Pillar was awful. Webb was very shaken up in the dugout afterwards, being spoken to by his pitching coach and manager.

Hopefully Pillar will be alright long-term, but he will surely miss some time and the work to get back both physically and mentally from that kind of moment is going to be a process. We’ll provide further updates when made available on his injury and status.