Category: News

One of the challenges of livestream concerts is that part of the appeal of traditional concerts is being in the room. Sharing the physical space with the artist and other fans all enjoying an exciting communal experience is a paramount part of the experience. That actually kind of makes Gorillaz the perfect group to thrive in this medium, since they (meaning 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel) don’t exist in physical real-life space. Now, finally, they’re doing it: Gorillaz (joined by Damon Albarn) have announced a trio of livestream concerts, “Song Machine Live.” The performances will be their first shows in two years.

There will be three broadcasts between December 12 and 13: One targeted towards viewers in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand; one for North and South America; and one for the UK, Europe, and Africa. Tickets for each show (which are on sale now) cost $15, or $30 for access to all three livestreams, or $40 for a four-pack of tickets that comes with a “virtual party pack including digital backgrounds, screensaver, a custom countdown to the show and a pre-show playlist.”

It hasn’t been announce what guests will be joining the broadcast (if any), but the group has a large pool to draw from. Featuring on Song Machine songs are St. Vincent, Schoolboy Q, Elton John, Beck, Robert Smith, and many others.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The WNBA announced its first three major awards for the 2020 regular season on Thursday, as A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces was named league MVP after leading her team to the No. 1 overall seed in the playoffs in her third season. In addition, Cheryl Reeve of the Minnesota Lynx earned Coach of the Year honors for the third time in her career, while No. 16 overall pick Crystal Dangerfield, also of the Lynx, became the franchise’s second consecutive Rookie of the Year.

Wilson beat out Breanna Stewart of the Storm for MVP honors this year, as Las Vegas narrowly beat out Seattle for the first seed in the playoffs on the final day of the regular season. Stewart, the 2018 MVP, missed the final two games of the season, which may have pushed Wilson over the edge among a national panel of 47 reporters and broadcasters. Wilson averaged 20.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 2.0 blocks this season as a dominant force inside for the Aces.

This trophy is the latest of many for the 24-year-old, who won an NCAA championship and the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in 2017 as well as Rookie of the Year just two seasons ago. Wilson also was an All-Star in each of her first two WNBA seasons. After All-Star center Liz Cambage opted out and starting guard Kelsey Plum rupture her Achilles’ tendon, Wilson led the thinned-out Aces to an 18-4 record in the WNBA Bubble, receiving 43 of 47 possible first-place votes.

Chicago Sky guard Courtney Vandersloot, who set a new WNBA record with 10.0 assists per game this season, was the only player besides Wilson and Stewart to earn a first-place vote.

Reeve won a tight race for Coach of the Year, earning 25 of 47 votes — edging out Vegas coach Bill Laimbeer who got 17 votes– after leading the Lynx to the fourth seed in the league following the departure of the legendary Seimone Augustus and in spite of prolonged absences by 2019 All-Stars Sylvia Fowles and Odyssey Sims. Among those that Reeve built around with those two out this season was Crystal Dangerfield, who earned Rookie of the Year honors after averaging 16.2 points and 3.6 assists per game, starting 19 games for Minnesota, in a sensational inaugural campaign for the 16th overall selection.

The former UConn star becomes the first second-round draft pick in league history to win Rookie of the Year. Dangerfield ran away with the ROY race, taking home 44 of the 47 first place votes. Fourth overall pick Chennedy Carter of the Atlanta Dream finished second with two votes, while Satou Sabally of the Dallas Wings received one vote.

The awards were announced Thursday afternoon on ESPN’s The Jump.

Rhode Island rapper Gizmo rages out in a vein-popping performance of his song “100 Eyes” for UPROXX Sessions. Coming from his Argus Panoptes EP, named for the many-eyed giant in Greek mythology, “100 Eyes” sees Gizmo threatening would-be enemies with overkill, warning them “I don’t do eye for an eye / F*ck all that sh*t, bitch, I’m leaving you blind.”

With metal-esque, violent imagery and an angry delivery, Gizmo might push some folks back on their heels. Fortunately, judging from the “f*ck racists” t-shirt he wore to the studio on shoot day, it seems that aggression is directed towards a very specific target. Gizmo’s over-the-top, gruesome imagery finds its roots in the horrorcore subgenre kickstarted by The RZA’s Gravediggas group in the early ’90s and whose adherents include Eminem and a young Tyler The Creator.

Watch Gizmo’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “100 Eyes” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s new performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too..

Jerry Harris, the breakout student from Netflix’s Emmy-nominated cheerleading series, Cheer, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of producing child pornography.

He is accused of “enticing a 13-year-old he met on social media to send him photos and videos, even meeting up with the boy at a cheerleading event for oral sex,” according to the Daily Beast. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.

Harris’ arrest comes after a USA Today report that Harris was under investigation by the FBI for soliciting sexually explicit photos and sex from minors, including twin teenage brothers who were 13 years old at the time; Harris was 19. The Daily Beast acquired the criminal complaint, which alleges that “one of the boys sent Harris ‘over a dozen photographs and videos’ between December 2018 and March 2020, including shots showing his ‘penis and anus.’ In turn, Harris allegedly sent the boy photos of his penis, as well as a video of him masturbating.” Harris initially denied the allegations before reportedly admitting that he had exchanged the sexually explicit photos with the minor:

The teenager told authorities he met up with 21-year-old Harris at a cheerleading event both were attending, where Harris “solicited oral sex” from the boy in a bathroom. The teenager also “reported a second attempt by Harris to meet… for an in-person sexual encounter when Minor-1 was at a cheer competition that Harris also attended.”

Harris is expected to make a federal courtroom appearance in Chicago on Thursday.

(Via The Daily Beast & USA Today)

Aaron Dessner found himself in a new world when he worked with Taylor Swift on her revered new album Folklore. It turns out that she may have found her way into his world as well: In a new Billboard interview, Dessner suggests that Swift may make an appearance on upcoming material from his Big Red Machine project. At the very least, it seems like she offered Dessner her thoughts on it.

Dessner was asked if there was any material of his own that he didn’t want to offer to Swift when they worked together, and he responded, “Definitely. It was more that there were some songs that are specifically one thing or another. The Big Red Machine stuff is quite far along — and actually, Taylor has been amazing [at giving feedback]. I’ve shared all of that stuff with her, and she has been really helpful.”

That prompted a follow-up question about whether or not Swift will be included on a Big Red Machine song in one way or another, and Dessner answered with a laugh, “I can’t really say, so I guess I’ll say neither yes nor no.”

Swift’s album actually offers somewhat of a preview of what a Swift/Big Red Machine collaboration could sound like, as Justin Vernon co-wrote and features on the Dessner-produced “Exile.”

He also talked about his initial approach to collaborating with Swift, saying, “Well, I’ve definitely listened to all her records — I do that from time to time, just binge-listen to certain things — and I could tell she’s a savant. She’s such a performer, but so gifted as a writer. She told me upfront, ‘Don’t try to be anyone other than yourself,’ because she was really gravitating toward the emotion in the music. She didn’t want me to try and be Max Martin or Jack Antonoff. I didn’t go obsess over ‘Shake It Off’ or something. I had a lot of music that I’d been writing when she approached me, and I just sent a folder because she asked. Hours later, [she sent back] ‘Cardigan.’ It was an unusual vein that we struck.”

Read the full interview here.

With the internet aflutter with those trying to preorder their Playstation 5’s in the past 12 hours, it made sense to wonder when exactly the new generation Xbox models were going to come out. Thanks to a report by Kotaku, we no longer have to do so.

According to the gaming website, both the Series S and the Series X will be available for preorder at 11 AM EST/8 AM PST on September 22nd (a date we’ve known about for a little bit) at every major retail website including Amazon and Walmart. Which for those who missed out on Sony’s next gen console, makes this likely the last chance for gamers to get their hands on a next-gen console at launch.

The fragmented release of the Playstation 5 preorders allowed Microsoft to throw a jab on Twitter about allowing everyone the chance to preorder. The universal release allows gamers the chance to prepare instead of playing whack-a-mole on retail sites.

It’s fair to ask that because there is a concrete time for everyone to preorder their consoles on the internet, does this make it more likely that bots will eat up most of the preorders online? Or will this buck the trend that we’ve seen everywhere else on the internet and will regular people get a fair shot at preordering one? We’ll find out on the 22nd, and may the odds ever be in your favor if you’re chasing one of the new Xbox consoles.

The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are respectively priced at $499.99 and $299.99 and officially launch on November 10th.

Tucker Carlson, who recently blamed Lindsey Graham for Trump confessing his COVID-19 lies, is fuming mad after his latest pandemic report put him in the crosshairs of fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram. A video of the Fox News host promoting a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus is man-made is now flagged with warning labels by the two social media giants, and Carlson is not happy.

“Facebook has censored our video with a Chinese whistleblower. Big tech wants control over the facts you see,” Carlson griped on his Wednesday night episode.

However, the facts are not on Carlson’s side. The controversial video from Carlson’s Tuesday night broadcast was captioned, “Chinese whistle-blower to Tucker: This virus was made in a lab & I can prove it,” which set off internal triggers inside Facebook as part of the platform’s ongoing initiative to prevent the spread of misinformation about COVID-19. Via Variety:

On the warning labels placed over Carlson’s posts on Facebook and Instagram, the company links to three fact-checking articles on the issue: two from FactCheck.org — “Baseless Conspiracy Theories Claim New Coronavirus Was Bioengineered” and “Social Media Posts Spread Bogus Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory”— and one from USA Today, “Coronavirus not man-made or engineered but its origin remains unclear.” The consensus among pandemic experts is that COVID-19 appears to have originated as a bat-borne virus in China before it mutated and jumped to humans.

While Facebook and Instagram took a pro-active stance against Carlson, the video is still actively shared on Twitter with no warning whatsoever. As for YouTube, there is simply a link at the bottom of the video directing users to the Center for Disease Control’s website. There is no mention of the YouTubed video containing misinformation, or that it promotes a conspiracy theory published by non-profit groups with ties to far-right figure Steve Bannon.

(Via Variety)

It’s often been said that pop music is formulaic — or, more recently algorithmic, because the zeitgeist — but when a Twitter user posted a video of himself playing songs from The Weeknd on a mini-piano, users on the app went nuts debating just how true of the Canadian singer’s catalog that aphorism is.

The user in question was Andrew Huang, a self-declared “music human” who is best-known for his “Song Challenge” video series on YouTube (ironically, he too is Canadian, from Ottawa). Known for making music with unconventional tools and techniques, Huang posted a video playing the chord progressions of songs from The Weeknd’s catalog, positing in the caption, “Every Weeknd song uses the same 4 notes.” The songs played included “Tell Your Friends” and “Often” from Beauty Behind The Madness, “Reminder” and “Starboy” from Starboy, and “Heartless” from After Hours.

It didn’t take long for fans to rev up their best arguments for whether the video was accurate, inaccurate, good, or bad. A number of replies explained why The Weeknd does this in musical theory terms, with one clarifying that ‘the man found his key signature” and pointing out “some Broadway singers even have parts written specifically for them in their prefered key signatures.”

Others had some fun with the conceit, using it to make fun of both pop music and its critics, while others used it to criticize what they perceived as a lack of songwriting growth from The Weeknd, despite his ever-increasing popularity. There’s a pretty good pun in there too.

Still others just used the opportunity to marvel at the talent and hidden complexity of songwriters like The Weeknd and the fact that they are able to create so much diversity with just a handful of notes (there are only so many keys, chords, and sounds the human brain can interpret as music, yet we’vve been reinterpreting them for centuries and they all sound different — mostly). Meanwhile, one responder summed up the hype in one clever observation, remarking that while Huang never gave commentary on this tendency by The Weeknd, Twitter commenters have rivaled songwriters in their ability to turn basically anything into an argument.

Check out more replies below.

Though the Cavaliers are out of the spotlight right now as the NBA playoffs wrap up, Kevin Love is not backing away from his space as one of the faces of mental health activism in sports. He wrote a new essay in the Players Tribune on Thursday entitled “To Anybody Going Through It,” which details his continued fight with anxiety, depression and anger, as well as examples of how he’s coped during a difficult year.

“Even after all the work I’ve tried to do on myself over the last two-and-a-half years, some days are just brutal,” Love writes.

Without basketball for going on seven months, Love has had to re-examine his relationship with his career and the game, and what truly is fulfilling. The absence of the NBA as well as the challenges of the pandemic have been difficult on Love, and he writes that he expects it’s been difficult for many. Being unable to work or having the routines of everyday life disrupted is hard.

From Love:

“Way before I was in the NBA or even in college, my self-worth was all about performing. I was what I did, which I think a lot of people can relate to, whether they’re a chef or a lawyer or a nurse or whatever the profession. I just happened to play basketball.

When I wasn’t performing, I didn’t feel like I was succeeding as a person.”

As he continues to be outspoken about mental health, Love also wants fans to know that his openness does not equal complete recovery. The process is long, with many steps back that can counter incremental progress. Love tells a story of a simple day walking into an appointment with a therapist in which he felt far more at peace and comfortable in his own skin than any on-court accomplishment, even the 2016 title in Cleveland. But he notes that he’s dealing with plenty of challenges to this day, and especially this year, in balancing that comfort with missing basketball and the state of the world.

The topic of mental health has jumped to the fore in sports the past week or so in regard to Dak Prescott, who expressed many of the same feelings as Love in an interview with Graham Bensinger. Despite athletes returning to competition and the sports news cycle in full gear once again, Love puts into context the challenges that exist even for the successful and famous.

My position on award shows like the Emmys and the Oscars is pretty simple: I think the whole exercise is very silly, this attempt to find an objective winner in a totally subjective format, but I also think that, if we’re going to insist on doing it (and it sure seems like we are), then we might as well try to get it right. It’s a good policy in a lot of ways, but mostly because it allows me to be dismissive of the things I don’t care about while also getting unreasonably angry about the things I do. It’s good to bake a little hypocrisy into your positions. Gives you some wiggle room. It’s why I never understood how “have your cake and eat it too” is a bad thing. Try to stop me from eating my own cake once I have it. Seriously. I dare you. You might lose a finger.

All of which is to say that I’m mad about the Best Song category at this year’s Emmy awards. Look at this list of nominees.

• The Black Godfather, “Letter to My Godfather” — Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo
• Euphoria, “All For Us”‘ — Labrinth
• Late Week Tonight With John Oliver, “Eat Shit, Bob” — David Dabbon, Joanna Rothkopf, Jill Twiss, Seena Vail
• Little Fires Everywhere, “Build it Up — Ingrid Michaelson
• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, “One Less Angel” — Thomas Mizer, Curtis Moore
• This is Us, “Memorized” — Siddhartha Khosla, Taylor Goldsmith
• Watchmen, “The Way It Used To Be” — Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

I bear no ill will toward any of these nominees and wish them well in this and all their future endeavors, but you see the problem here, right? The glaring omission? I assume you picked up on it by now because you clicked on the article and saw both the headline and large image at the top of the page, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway: How the hell is “Misbehavin’” from The Righteous Gemstones not on this list?

Come on!

You remember “Misbehavin’,” right? I’m sure you do. In fact, I bet you just got it out of your head as recently as last week. And now it’s back in there because I mentioned it again. I’m sorry but also you are welcome. It’s so good and fun that it’s almost a good thing to have it stuck in your head for weeks at a time. Very few songs can pull off that trick. Usually, after about four or five hours or so you’re ready to scream and banish the songs to the fiery depths of hell forever. Not with this one. I just listened to it again for maybe the 200th time and I still giggled at “Runnin’ through the house with a pickle in my mouth.” It might be my favorite song from any television show this year. It’s kind of perfect because, like, on one hand, it’s such a weird and specific example that it barely makes sense, but on the other hand, picture a little boy running around his house with an entire pickle in his mouth and then picture his mom chasing after him and shouting “Stop running around the house with a pickle in your mouth!” Misbehaving confirmed.

I refuse to believe all of these songs are better than “Misbehavin’.” I don’t even need to listen to them to know it. It’s not the only upsetting omission, either. “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” was such an invasive little earworm that I had it buried in my skull for a week despite the fact that I did not watch a single episode of The Witcher. And while I’m glad to see a song from Watchmen get nominated, I’m annoyed that it wasn’t “Nun With a Motherfucking Gun,” which I had been calling “The Regina King Doing Cool Stuff Song,” because it usually played while her character was… well, doing cool stuff. But their title is good, too.

If you want to be very technical about this, I suppose you could point out that this song does not have any lyrics, and is therefore not a great candidate for a category with the full title of “Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics,” but please consider this: the song’s title contains a twelve-letter cuss word that Regina King’s character shouted multiple times on the show. There’s nothing stopping us from creating a remix with her shouting emmeffers over the instrumental track. Bingo bango, problem solved

But mostly, this is about “Misbehavin’.” Watch the video again. Watch how Walton Goggins and Jennifer Nettles sell it. Look at their extremely on-point “Christian sibling duo singing an upbeat song about the dangers of Satan” energy. And then remember that the song was actually an important part of the plot. It was a big deal! This wasn’t some song someone else sang in the background while other action took place. It was performed in its entirety by two important characters and played a large part in explaining the strained relationship between the main family and their primary antagonist. How does that not get a nomination?! I’m so angry I could… I could… okay, I’m probably not going to do anything beyond writing this article, but still. I am doing that. Which is kind of a lot for me. We’re coming up on 1,000 words here.

Are there more consequential snubs to focus on? Sure. Rhea Seehorn did not get a Best Actress nomination for her work on Better Call Saul, which is madness to a degree that it taints the entire proceedings. How can we take any of this seriously if they can’t even get the simplest part correct? It’s like when the Oscars didn’t nominate Paddington 2 for Best Animated Movie. I mean, these are layups. These are gimmes. Or, to put it all another way that I’m going to apologize for ahead of time and again afterward…

Could have picked the good ones
Picked some others anyway
Misbehavin’

Yeah, again, I don’t feel great about that, but they forced my hand. This all could have been avoided so easily.