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Kim Petras and Sam Smith claimed Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for their collaborative No. 1 hit “Unholy” at the 2023 Grammys last night, February 5 — making Petras the first-ever openly transgender woman to win the award. Petras and Smith celebrated by giving a devil-themed, risque performance of “Unholy.”

Not everybody was happy for them. More specifically, Republicans were really upset to see Smith in latex thigh-highs and Petras singing from inside a burning cage.

“This…is…evil,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted.

He was joined in his pearl-clutching by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene: “The Grammy’s featured Sam Smith’s demonic performance and was sponsored by Pfizer. And the Satanic Church now has an abortion clinic in NM that requires its patients to perform a satanic ritual before services. American Christians need to get to work.”

And several other conservative voices chimed in:

Host Trevor Noah seemingly foresaw the outrage and poked fun at it during the CBS broadcast.

“No, Mom, it wasn’t the actual devil,” Noah said while sitting aside Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck and pretending to be on the phone with his mother after Smith and Petras’ “Unholy” performance. “No, they were just dressed as the devil, Mom. […] Yeah, you did warn me about Hollywood.”

Greene is actually lucky to have her Twitter high horse. She was temporarily locked out of her account in early January after unauthorized use of Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.”

No one knows the reason behind the dispute that split Migos, but it doesn’t appear that Takeoff’s death has made Quavo and Offset ready to settle it yet. According to TMZ, it actually escalated last night at the Grammys, where the two men were involved in an altercation backstage and had to be separated when Quavo refused to allow Offset to participate in his tribute to their fallen bandmate.

Meanwhile, according to TMZ’s sources, it was not Offset who started the fight, which makes sense considering the comments Quavo and Takeoff made over the past year regarding his falling out with the group. While Quavo and Takeoff spoke about “disloyalty,” it seemed that Offset had angered them in some way, leading to their making a joint album without him. Fans have speculated that it was Offset suing their label, Quality Control Music, that set things off; others believe that there was a romantic tryst between Offset and Saweetie, who was previously dating Quavo.

Whatever the reason, many fans were disappointed that the two remaining Migos were unable to reconcile their differences for the tribute. However, it looks like the tribute provided another wedge between them, making a Migos reunion less likely than ever.

The most recent episode of HBO’s The Last of Us introduced fans to the show’s newest villain — Melanie Lynskey. We kid, we kid. Melanie Lynskey is an icon and a hilarious sh*t poster on Twitter, but the character she plays in Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin’s big-budget videogame adaptation is villainous … terrifyingly so.

In episode four’s “Please Hold My Hand,” Lynskey’s Kathleen took control of the narrative after Joel and Ellie made a poorly-timed detour in Kansas City. Though the character doesn’t exist in the game, Kathleen and her group seem to be modeled after the Hunters, a vicious, take-no-prisoners band of scavengers controlling Pittsburgh post-outbreak. The location has changed but Kathleen and company are still out for blood on the show, having overthrown FEDRA in their local QZ and currently hunting traitors who may have helped the government when they were still in power.

But there’s one name in particular that keeps popping up during the episode, a man that Kathleen is willing to do almost anything to find. Who is Henry and why is he so important to the group’s de-facto leader? We still don’t know, but the episode does hint that Henry, like the doctor Kathleen holds at gunpoint when we first meet her, is a QZ resident who aided FEDRA, ratting on his neighbors in exchange for certain perks. In fact, Kathleen seems to think it was Henry who gave FEDRA the ammo they needed to find her brother, imprison him, and beat him to death in his cell.

Lynskey told EW that it’s his death that’s fueling her current quest for vengeance.

“Imagine growing up as the sibling of Jesus and being like, ‘My brother’s the greatest human being. He’s leading the world. He’s the kindest, most decent person. I don’t think I’m that great of a person. I don’t really need to be anything in particular because I have this person by my side,’” she said. “And then somebody brutally kills him and it’s so unfair. Who are you after that?”

A war criminal? That’s how the role was pitched to the actress by the showrunners and she said fans should expect her to do even more terrible things before Henry is found.

“[Mazin] said to me, ‘I hope you’re not offended, but I would love for you to play a war criminal,’” Lynskey said of her initial call with the creator before diving into her character’s villainous transformation in episode four. “She found out that she was quite heartless and so she was able to be pretty effective in a way that maybe wasn’t because she didn’t care about people. That’s a very interesting dynamic.”

(Via EW)

Austin Butler didn’t see his family “for about three years” to prepare for his role as Elvis Presley in director Baz Luhrmann’s chaotically entertaining Elvis. “I had months where I wouldn’t talk to anybody. And when I did, the only thing I was ever thinking about was Elvis. I was speaking in his voice the whole time,” he added. Butler still hasn’t gotten rid of the accent, eight months after the movie came out. Sure, he got nominated for an Oscar — but at what cost? To sound like Uncle Jesse for the rest of his life?

Meanwhile, Matthew McConaughey probably showed up to the studio shirtless to record his dialogue for Agent Elvis, a Netflix animated series in which Presley, voiced by the Magic Mike actor, “trades in his jumpsuit for a jetpack to battle the dark forces that threaten the country – all while holding down his day job as the King of Rock and Roll,” according to the official plot synopsis. The show was created by John Eddie and Priscilla Presley, Elvis’ ex-wife (their daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, sadly passed away last month).

In the trailer for Agent Elvis, Elvis lands on the moon, beats up bad guys, and yells at a monkey. It’s not as wacky as Tom Hank’s Colonel Tom Parker voice, but it’s close.

Agent Elvis premieres on Netflix in March.

Melanie Lynskey made her The Last of Us debut in Episode 4, “Please Hold My Hand,” where she took on the role of Kathleen, the seemingly cold-blooded leader of a group of human survivors in Kansas City. As for the significance of Kathleen, not even fans of the hit video game know where her story is headed because the character was created entirely for the HBO series.

According to an interview with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the idea of Kathleen came from a need to give the “Hunters” in the game a more nuanced approach than simply cannon fodder for Joel and Ellie. Via ScreenRant:

You have to kill a lot of people in that video game, but for us, violence was quite serious, and we didn’t want to numb people to it. And so when enemies come, it was important for us to ask the question, “Well, why are they enemies? What do they want?” They’re not just evil people. From their point of view, this all makes sense, and it’s justifiable, and that was an interesting thing to explore.

“Everybody’s trying to survive, everybody’s trying to live life to the fullest way they can,” Druckmann said. “But often, the goals are competing with each other, and that’s where the interesting things happen and the different philosophies of how to survive or do the ends justify the means.”

While Kathleen may be an all-new addition to the series, the concept of the Hunters is not. In the game, Joel and Ellie are ambushed by the human survivors in Pittsburgh while the HBO series has switched things up by moving the action to Kansas City where the Hunters have overthrown the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) and taken over the quarantine zone. However, the presence of Kathleen adds an interesting wrinkle to the story, so it’ll be interesting to see what transpires as whatever the heck is going on in that basement reaches a boiling point.

(Via ScreenRant)

We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of “The Slap.” Last March, Will Smith waltzed on stage during the 2022 Oscars and slapped Chris Rock after Rock made a distasteful joke about Jada Pinkett Smith. And though Rock declined to file charges, Smith is banned from attending the Oscars for the next decade.

Smith is not banned from attending the Grammys, though, and people noticed his absence on Sunday night, February 5. The 2023 Grammys featured a medley performance celebrating hip-hop’s 50th anniversary. The segment was directed and produced by Questlove, introduced by LL Cool J, and narrated by Black Thought.

DJ Jazzy Jeff was one of many legendary artists to perform, but where was Smith, aka/fka The Fresh Prince?

Questlove told Entertainment Tonight that Smith was “99.4 percent” committed to performing, “but they started shooting Bad Boys 4 this week, so he couldn’t make rehearsals.” Questlove added, “He wanted to do it.”

For those keeping score at home, Questlove apparently doesn’t hold grudges. Smith’s slap occurred as Rock was presenting the Oscar for Best Documentary. The award went to Questlove for Summer Of Soul, and Smith later apologized to Questlove for overshadowing his first Academy Award.

Smith posted a video last July apologizing not only to Questlove but to Rock, Rock’s mother, Rock’s entire family, his own family, and more.

“It really breaks my heart to have stolen and tarnished your moment,” Smith said to his “fellow nominees” in the video. “I can still see Questlove’s eyes. It happened on Questlove’s award, and you know, it’s like, ‘I’m sorry’ really isn’t sufficient.”

Watch the 50-year hip-hop anniversary tribute below.

Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul have played Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, Better Call Saul, and now, a Super Bowl commercial. No, Big Meth didn’t spend $7 million to promote the good side effects of the deadly drug. Instead, the Vince Gilligan-directed ad is for PopCorners, which comes in six signature flavors. “Seven! You make seven!” Tuco (Raymond Cruz) yells at Walt and Jesse in the commercial. “We’re gonna eat a lot of snacks together.”

You can watch it above, and again during the Super Bowl on February 12th.

“It was also very secretive, Cranston told Entertainment Weekly about filming the commercial. “NDAs were signed. We did our wardrobe calls at our own houses, so we didn’t have to be in public. Then we had one day in a studio, and it was very closed down, very private, very secret — and then out in the middle of the desert for the second day… I don’t think there were too many leaks in our enterprise there.”

As for whether Cranston thinks this is the final time he and Paul will play their Breaking Bad characters, he said, “So we’ve stopped saying, ‘This is the last time we’re ever going to do this.’ Who knows? It could be. I’m not sure, but… you know, we’ll just leave it to the fates.” Maybe we’ll see Jesse give up Los Pollos Hermanos for Raising Cane’s during next year’s Super Bowl.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Last night’s Grammys featured a performance from Sam Smith and Kim Petras, who got theatrical with their “devilish” rendition of “Unholy.” The performance was a knockout, but it’s par for the course that something will upset conservatives during the course of the annual event. Remember when people got mad at Lady Gaga for her 2015 performance that was supposedly filled with Illuminati references? Yeah, that happens. And Ted Cruz was all too willing to lose it over Sam Smith’s inferno-evoking set full of whips and chains and a reference to Samara from The Ring.

(To be fair, Ted Cruz allegedly likes other costumes more. So there’s that.)

“Unholy” did win the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, and surely, Sam Smith does not care that some conservatives are anything but happy about any allusion to the darker side. That’s exactly what’s happening on social media, and Ice Storm Weasel Ted Cruz (who maybe should be worried about other things, like his state’s failing power grid) was quick with a complaint: “This…is…evil.”

Naturally, people fired back at Ted and told him to “clutch pearls harder,” but also, this Footloose joke hit the mark.

Earlier in the evening, Ted let the world know that he was unhappy about the Pfizer ad at the end of Smith’s performance. Is that a suggestion that vaccination is “evil” as well?

People also dragged Ted for freaking out, not remembering how controversial Kid Rock used to be, and yes, ignoring his own state.

Like most Republicans, Donald Trump spent all last week attacking Joe Biden for not immediately blasting the Chinese spy balloon out of the sky. Never mind that the Pentagon repeatedly stated that blowing up the large metal object that was as long as three buses could cause significant property damage and/or death. Republicans wanted a show of strength, ding dangit, and Trump would’ve given it to them.

However, when Biden did destroy the balloon the second it made out to the ocean, Trump suddenly changed his tune and started attacking Biden for not pursuing a more diplomatic route. Namely brokering a deal over an imaginary pilot that Trump now thinks could’ve been inside the balloon. Via Truth Social:

Who sends a Billion Dollar blimp, with the most sophisticated equipment in the World, and large enough to hold ten cars or 3 large buses, into a complex pattern over the United States, without it quite possibly being manned, such as the “manned spacecraft?” China should have been called to ask. If “no,” shoot it down, if “yes,” negotiate the greatest deal EVER!

Naturally, Trump has no idea how anything works. For starters, the balloon was absolutely unmanned. As for its “complex pattern,” it literally just followed the jet stream across the country because, again, it was an unmanned object with limited navigation based on the direction of the wind. There would be no secret hostage waiting inside for President Deals.

It also should be noted that Trump’s sudden change of tone arrives after conflicting reports that three spy balloons entered U.S. airspace during his administration. While his former administration officials have denied their presence, a new report now claims the Pentagon never informed Trump until after he left office. Probably because he would’ve demanded to blow them up over Tampa.

(Via Donald Trump on Truth Social)

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw PinkPantheress and Ice Spice link up and Yves Tumor start a new era. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters. Also find our Uproxx HQ Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly with the best new music, at the end of this post.

PinkPantheress and Ice Spice — “Boy’s A Liar Pt. 2”

PinkPantheress and Ice Spice are two of the most meteorically rising stars of the past few years, so it makes sense that they’d link up on something. They did last week on “Boy’s A Liar Pt. 2,” a new take on PinkPantheress’ tune that sees Ice’s laid-back style play well with the upbeat song.

GloRilla — “Internet Trolls”

Online haters are a real consideration for high-profile musicians these days, and GloRilla gave them a piece of her mind on “Internet Trolls.” She says on the track, “Sometimes, I think they be forgettin’ the internet a fairytale / Teach that n**** for the people, but in person, he a b*tch / They be gangster on the booth, but in them papers be a snitch.”

Caroline Polachek — “Blood And Butter”

Polachek unveiled the tracklist for her upcoming album Desire, I Want To Turn Into You last week, including a song featuring Grimes and Dido. Beyond that, though, Polachek is on her own, like on new single “Blood And Butter,” on which she continues testing boundaries with off-kilter percussion and even some bagpipes.

Skrillex and Nai Barghouti — “Xena”

Skrillex has been getting after it this year, with new releases seemingly every week. That includes last week, when he dropped the Nai Barghouti collaboration “Xena,” of which Uproxx’s Lexi Lane notes, “Barghouti’s sole vocals open the song before the fierce electronic beat is added as a layer — and then eventually gets an instrumental break to shine.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra — “Layla”

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is currently readying V, which will be their first album in about four-and-a-half years when it comes out next month. They announced the double-LP last week, when they also shared “Layla,” a breezy number that pulls influence from Hawaiian music.

Yves Tumor — “Echolalia”

Yves Tumor is approaching Fiona Apple territory with the title of his newly announced album, Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds). Uproxx’s Alex Gonzalez describes the new, more concisely titled single “Echolalia” as “a dreamy, psychedelic track on which he recalls an intoxicating love.”

Lil Keed — “Long Way To Go”

It’s been nearly a year since Lil Keed died at 24 years old in 2022. At the time, he was on the rise and working on a new album, and now, some posthumous material is making its way out into the world. “Long Way To Go” was shared last week, and in a statement, his mother said, “This song holds a special place in my heart and as you guys will see it will reflect on many aspects of Keed’s journey here on Earth.”

NLE Choppa — “Champions”

The mood in Memphis is sour right now following the death of Tyre Nichols, and Memphis native NLE Choppa is taking action, like when he led a recent peaceful protest. He also addressed the situation on “Champions,” on which he raps, “I hate to struggle but it make me harder / I made it far but I wanna go farther / This not for me / This for my son and my daughter / My family tree in that order.”

Dreamville, JID, and Lute — “Ma Boy”

It turns out that Dreamville will be bringing the Creed III soundtrack to life. That reveal was made last week and the label also shared the first look at the OST: JID and Lute’s “Ma Boy,” a lively number fit to serve as pre-fight hype music.

Karol G and Romeo Santos — “X Si Volvemos”

Karol G’s upcoming album Mañana Será Bonito is set to arrive soon, and last week, she held fans over with the Romeo Santos collaboration “X Si Volvemos.” Uproxx’s Alex Gonzalez notes that on the song, “the two have no regrets about parting ways, but with their unmatched sexual chemistry, they can’t resist coming back to each other.”

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