As the gold standard for children’s television, Sesame Street has never shied away from teaching young minds about sensitive topics, and it’s often recruited the beloved Muppets to get the job done. In a new series from Sesame Workshop, the “ABCs of Racial Literacy,” Elmo is introduced to new Black muppets, Wes and his father Elijah, who are part of a new initiative in teaching children about race and identity. Using its “science-based whole-child model” that Sesame Street is known for, the series has worked closely with researchers and experts to help children form a positive relationship with racial diversity.
Here’s the official synopsis for the first episode, “Explaining What is Race?” via Sesame Workshop:
When Elmo notices that some of the leaves in the park match his red fur and some match his friend Wes’s brown skin, he wonders how skin gets its color. Wes’s dad Elijah explains it’s from melanin—something everyone has in their bodies that gives us our skin, eye, and hair color. These things make us who we are, and many people call this race. But like the leaves on a tree, the colors are most beautiful when they are standing together!
Unlike most new episodes of Sesame Street, the “ABCs of Racial Literacy” is already available outside of HBO Max. The new videos can be found on the official Sesame Workshop page for “Coming Together,” its ongoing initiative to strengthen communities by giving parents the resources to have positive conversations with their children about race at a young age.
It’s been a quiet past several months for Kim Petras, who most recently popped up with a Kygo collaboration “Broken Glass” last summer. She back with new material today, though, as she has guested on a remix of “Jenny” by Finnish group Studio Killers.
“New material” is only sort of accurate. For those unfamiliar, Studio Killers is a virtual band similar in nature to Gorillaz (coincidentally, today marks the 20th anniversary of Gorillaz’s self-titled debut album), featuring virtual members Chubby Cherry, Goldie Foxx, Dyna Mink, and Bipolar Bear. They’ve been around for a while, as their self-titled debut (and currently only) album came out back in 2013.
“Jenny” first appeared on that album and was a successful single at the time, peaking at No. 2 on the Finnish charts and at No. 3 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Digital Songs chart. So, fans of the band have been familiar with this song (minus Petras’ new contributions) for nearly a decade now. That said, the song has found a new audience recently thanks to it being part of a TikTok trend.
The band also noted they have new music “coming soon,” so for the first time in a long time, there may be more to come from Studio Killers.
Listen to the new version of “Jenny” above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
After over a month of teasing his new song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” Lil Nas X shared the video today — and it sure is something. A colorful, fantastical video, the clip offers such mythological imagery as angels and hell, where Lil Nas X seduces the king demon, only to kill him and take his crown. While such visuals were exciting to some fans, there were plenty of critics who spoke out against the video — and Nas was more than up to the challenge of shooting down the backlash.
One outspoken commenter took issue with the devilish character that Nas seduces in the video, as well as Nas’ sartorial choices. “Basically he is riding the Devil,” the critic complained. “Explain how this visualization is supposed to be interpreted by the youth? Should all men dress androgynously and sleep with satin [sic]?” Nas, who quoted the disingenuous tweet, simply replied, “Yes.”
In a more sincere explanation, Nas shared a letter written to his 14-year-old self, revealing that releasing “Call Me By Your Name” was “very scary for me.” He acknowledged that “people will be angry” and that “they will say I’m pushing an agenda,” but admitted, “I am. The agenda is to make people stay the f*ck out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be.”
After getting a few hours of sleep, he returned to once again troll his critics. “y’all love saying we going to hell but get upset when i actually go there lmao,” he joked, before revealing that the “Montero” video is just the beginning — his debut album, also named Montero “drops this summer.” Meanwhile, he has yet to respond to FKA Twigs fans who claim he ripped off her “Cellophane” video.
y’all love saying we going to hell but get upset when i actually go there lmao
Despite the pandemic’s persistent pandemonium, Tate McRae was able to turn the trash year of 2020 into a time of professional triumph. After the drop of her debut EP All The Things I Never Said last January, the 17-year-old Calgary native was christened “one to watch” by Uproxx, Rolling Stone, Forbes, and more. Following the release of the melodic “Tear Myself Apart” (written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell), and the Billboard-charting hit “You Broke Me First” (which would become 2020’s fourth most-streamed song by a female artist), she earned an MTV VMA nomination for Push Best New Artist during the summer.
McRae’s appealing, genre-bending approach is only bolstered by a winning combination of engaging lyricism and irrefutable stage presence. Although she became a music sensation seemingly overnight, her entertainment industry takeover is nearly a decade in the making, thanks to an impressive run as a commercially-successful dancer.
“When people say, ‘Oh, she dances,’ it blows my mind because that’s my original thing,” the doe-eyed multihyphenate tells Uproxx over Zoom. “I always used to say ‘I’m a dancer who sings, not a singer who dances.’ That’s how it always went.”
McRae began dancing at the age of six, and despite “hating classes” during that time due to the constriction of her boundless energy, she was able to go from being “a backrow dancer” to a front-and-center star. (“I was super terrible in the beginning,” she laughs before taking a sip of her Starbucks drink.) At age 11, she joined her mother’s company YYC Dance Project and underwent ballet instruction at the School of Alberta Ballet, the home base of the Alberta Dance Company.
Through “training [her] ass off” and learning her history, McRae’s control, awe-inspiring flexibility, and magnetic performance ability quickly developed. She’s not a one-trick pony either, as she’s shown great skill in the contemporary, jazz, and hip-hop dance styles. (Tate’s music videos and performances, choreographed by Michelle Dawley and herself, also feature her versatile moves. The visual for “Stupid” features hip-hop tinged isolations — movements independent from other parts of the body — while her contemporary chops are on full display in “That Way.”)
After taking over Canada’s dance scene, it only made sense for McRae to bring her talents to the United States. She was crowned “Best Female Dancer” at the Dance Awards in New York City, not once or twice, but thrice (2013, 2015, and 2018). In between her training and accolades, she found time to perform on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and on Justin Bieber’s Purpose World Tour. This merely scratches the surface.
In 2016, McRae became the first Canadian finalist on the hit reality series So You Think You Can Dance, working with Emmy Award-winning contemporary choreographer Travis Wall, husband and wife hip-hop duo NappyTabs, and salsa dancer Stephanie Stevenson during her time on the show. She was second-runner up overall, a massive accomplishment given the competitive nature of her season, which featured dancers ages 8 to 13 for the first (and as of now, only) time.
Post-SYTYCD, McRae continued to work on her own choreography by uploading videos to YouTube for a weekly series called “Create With Tate.” After a recording glitch during a late-night dance session in 2017, however, the segment inadvertently kicked off her music career.
“I had it set in my brain that I needed to post [something] because I made this commitment to my supporters, so I locked myself in my room and I wrote,” she says of penning the piano-driven “One Day” that night. McRae has had an interest in poetry and storytelling since she was young, and her interest in songwriting developed around age 14. However, uploading videos of her original work “wasn’t [her] intention.”
“’One Day’ was one of the first songs I wrote that was actually well put together and in the right structure,” she continues. “It was this round-up of emotions, and then an accident for it to even do anything.” By “anything,” she means garnering 35 million YouTube views, a gold certification in Canada, and a deal with RCA Records upon the track’s official release. Call it a modern-day, fairytale-like break into a notoriously-tricky-to-enter field.
These days, McRae is focused on the upcoming release of her second EP, Too Young To Be Sad, slated to drop on March 26. The six-track project features the calm, acoustic “I Wish I Loved You In The 90s,” the sunny, ukulele-assisted “R U Ok,” and “You Broke Me First,” which has over 800 million streams and has been used in over one million TikTok videos.
McRae says her first EP felt like an “intro” into the music world, and that her latest offering is a continuation of her developing style and sonic personality. While she’s got understandable apprehension surrounding the release of Too Young To Be Sad — “You never know how people are going to react,” she explains — she’s hopeful that fans will resonate with the content as she works to grow her artistry.
“The crazy thing is that I’m still trying to find my sound,” she reveals, adding that she doesn’t want to be “labeled” or placed into one genre. “I think there are a million different ways that you can play around, and a different million different artists [to work with] that will shoot you in different directions. But I can’t really define what I do [musically]. I think it changes every month… You can do so many things nowadays.”
What is definite, however, is Tate McRae’s natural affinity as a performer. Her experiences as a poised dance ingenue put her well beyond her years, resulting in her disciplined approach as she transitioned into a full-fledged musician. Though she’s an entertainment industry veteran at this point, she expresses her desire to continue elevating as an artist and creative force.
“I feel like I’m noticing now how much it all kind of pays off,” she grins while discussing how her passions have worked in tandem. “I’m the biggest workhorse, and that’s how dancers are. The dance mentality is working under pressure and working hard.”
“I’ve especially learned a lot about my voice — that has been super crucial for me,” she adds in regard to how her confidence has grown as an artist and person. “I get in my head a lot, and I think it’s because I’m so focused on what I’m doing that I doubt myself. But I’m super proud of everything I’ve done. I’m so happy that everything’s out there.”
Too Young to Be Sad is due 3/26 on RCA. Get it here.
A decade in the rearview, 2011 has revealed itself to be a very interesting year for indie rock. There are several albums that were considered to be very important in the moment, but have, in the years since, faded from the spotlight to become not much more than asterisks. Remember Whokill? How about Wild Flag?
That said, there are still some albums that stand the test of time today: self-titled efforts from Bon Iver and Joyce Manor, Real Estate’s Days, M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. In this episode of Indiecast, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen are reflecting on the first year of the 2010’s to determine which albums still have that staying power.
In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen is vibing with Green To Gold, the latest album from 2010’s stalwarts The Antlers. Hyden, on the other hand, is plugging his new retrospective on Stone Temple Pilots’ Tiny Music. Check that out here.
New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 33 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.
Vic Mensa‘s triumphant comeback continued today with the release of his I Tape EP, the follow-up to his August V Tape release. To accompany the new EP, Vic also shared the fiery “Fr33dom” video with TDE singer Zacari. The video finds Vic Mensa once again in conflict with the authorities, as viewed through the framing device of a child’s room filled with posters of revolutionaries. In one scene, Mensa stands victorious over one of the greatest symbols of the establishment, Uncle Sam, clad in boxing trunks and gloves.
Vic’s two most recent projects have highlighted his redefined role as a rebel with a cause. Whereas prior efforts saw him position himself as a punk rock rabble-rouser along the lines of a Sid Vicious, all chaotic energy and self-destruction, he seems to have shaken off that outlook on newer tracks like “Shelter,” on which he reunited with longtime friend Chance The Rapper.
His community-focused efforts have taken the forefront of his artistic messaging, and he continues to promote them despite some setbacks — like when his nonprofit was robbed of $40,000 worth of donated sneakers on New Year’s Eve. In all, though, watching him tap into his socially conscious roots has been an encouraging sight.
Watch the “Fr33dom” video above.
I Tape is out now on Roc Nation Records. Get it here.
Maya Rudolph returns to her Saturday Night Live roots this weekend but this time as the host, and she’s bringing along musical guest Jack Harlow. In a new preview for Saturday’s episode, Maya’s joined by Harlow and SNL cast member Chris Redd, who thought it was his own birthday until Rudolph reminded him that she’s the host, so therefore, it’s her birthday. The hilarious actress and comedienne then burst into eloquent tribute to spring, and it’s hard not to notice a little bit of Rudolph’s Emmy winning voice work as Big Mouth‘s Connie the Hormone Monster in there. Although, it wasn’t in the preview, SNL fans can probably expect more of Rudolph’s other Emmy winning performance as Kamala Harris when this week’s episode hits.
As for Harlow, he was mostly quiet during the preview, but he’s been pumped for his first time performing on SNL ever since the news dropped back in February. “I grew up watching SNL with my family every weekend,” Harlow tweeted at the time. “I vividly remember seeing Kanye perform Love Lockdown and Heartless in 2008. Thank you for making this happen. Another dream come true.”
Rudolph’s hosting gig also arrives on the heels of news that she’ll be starring in a new comedy series for Apple TV from creators Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard, who Rudolph worked with on Amazon’s Forever. The untitled show will feature Rudolph as Molly, “a woman whose seemingly perfect life is upended after her husband leaves her with nothing but 87 billion dollars.” Sounds rough.
If any Marvel Cinematic Universe fan felt skeptical about whether introducing Phase Four on the small screen would go well, WandaVision dashed any such fears by midseason, but I gotta say this: Disney+ keeps upping its own game, and it’s already doing so marvelously with Episode 2 of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. That is to say, whereas WandaVision was a mediation on trauma, through which Wanda Maximoff felt compelled to escape into unreal-land, Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes are here with a major reality check. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, and it’s important to point out that while WandaVision was never trivial by any stretch, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is certainly tackling things on a more real-world scale. Look, people (myself included) were obsessing last month over silly Mephisto, and now, we’re watching systemic racism in action as it unfolds in the MCU. Not only did the debut episode show a Black man (Sam is also a veteran) being pressed to relinquish the shield (and Sam also struggled to secure a bank loan after helping to save the world), but this week, sh*t gets even realer.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of Marvel fun here, which is mainly illustrated through Sam and Bucky’s antagonistic, begrudging buddy-comedy chemistry, and the way that’s woven into the reality of what it’s like to be Black in America is stunning. Take, for example, the scene where cops mistake the slightly grumbly banter between Sam and Bucky as the former “bothering” the latter. Bucky finds himself insisting that, nope, he’s not being bothered, and then the cops realize that they didn’t recognize a pair of Avengers. Not only that, but they tried to explain that they didn’t realize that they were trying to arrest Falcon because he wasn’t wearing his wings and carting around props. It’s not a good look, but it’s an accurate one.
Plenty of social media attention is rightfully landing upon that scene, along with the other heavy hitter, which is the introduction of Carl Lumbly’s mystery character, who is (as suspected) Isaiah Bradley, a.k.a. the first Black Captain America and a Black veteran. Isaiah explained to Sam and Bucky that he received the super serum decades ago and was subsequently criminalized and imprisoned by the U.S. government for 30 years. His story is a one-man stop in worldbuilding and adds a lot of texture to what we see Sam going through in his post-blip life (after we also learn that, unlike Tony Stark, the other Avengers didn’t make out so well financially).
Disney+/Marvel Studios
As Bucky later revealed to Sam, he knew about Isaiah’s plight for years, but he never publicly revealed what happened because the guy had gone through enough already. That says a lot. It’s also worth noting that when the Isaiah Bradley character surfaced in comic form (in 2003’s miniseries, Truth: Red, White and Black), his backstory went way back to the 1940s and acted as a scathing commentary upon the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that took root during that era. There’s no telling if we’ll see Isaiah again on the series, but regardless, his cultural resonance weighs heavily upon Sam’s current treatment by the U.S. government, cops, and the system at large. Once again, a Black Cap is being pushed down, so a white dude (no offense intended to Steve Rogers, who clearly wasn’t aware of what Isaiah went through) can carry the shield and be all shiny for the American public. I love that Bucky isn’t being subtle at all about how he feels.
Disney+/Marvel Studios
Speaking of the new white guy, John Walker, lordy. The former U.S. Agent can’t even be bothered to walk with his own two legs after the group’s confrontation with the Flag Smashers.
Disney+/Marvel Studios
And about those Flag Smashers… Again, this series is throwing out a real-world threat (as opposed to the “big three” that Sam and Bucky discuss earlier in the episode “androids, aliens and wizards”). Essentially, the Flag Smashers stand for everything that’s opposed to the Captain America mantle. The group’s a bunch of anti-patriotic, chaos-spreading bank robbers who are tearing through Switzerland before heading to Munich and Slovakia. They want to remove the world’s borders and destroy the concept of nations, and somehow (the answer to this mystery remains to be seen), they got their hands on some sort of super serum. They’re led by Karli Morgenthau, who hails back to the 1980s, comics-wise as the MCU’s Flag-Smasher villain, but there are some changes to update the story to make sense in 2021-ish. Yes, this militia-esque group strikes some parallels with what we’re seeing in the U.S. today, even though the group’s wreaking havoc in Europe on the show.
Hopefully, we’ll find out soon who helped to serum the Flag Smashers up. It probably wasn’t Baron Zemo? God only knows, but we see him imprisoned at the end of the episode with Sam and Bucky en route for a little conversation. Speaking of conversations, every single line between Sam and Bucky was great. Even while they’re bantering about The Hobbit, it’s delightful to listen to these two squabbling. We even got some “couples therapy” for them, which was a real treat for the ‘shippers out there who surely enjoyed them inadvertently rolling around in a field together.
Disney+/Marvel Studios
A few side notes: (1) Sharon Carter got a mention this week, and she needs to show up soon; (2) I must say that I did not enjoy any of the Bucky-in-peril moments. Thank god he’s got that Wakanda-crafted vibranium arm now, right? We all know what happened the last time Bucky fell off a massive, high-speed vehicle: HYDRA-city.
Disney+/Marvel Studios
Disney+’s ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ streams new episodes on Fridays.
Phoebe Bridgers is generous with her guest spots, in that she sometimes pops up on songs by artists who aren’t on the same tier of mainstream popularity as she is, like when she featured on a Charlie Hickey song earlier this year. Now she’s back with another collaboration and this time, it’s on Luminous Kid’s “Mountain Crystals,” on which Bridgers provides some vocals.
Towards the end of the song, Bridgers contributes a brief spoken-word verse, on which she says, “I see your love from across an ocean of obstacles surrounding my brain / There’s a blinking light of freedom will you flick the switch , I’m going insane / The light and darkness turns to days of storm in a passing train / Just hold me, will you? / Will you just hold me?”
Luminous Kid says of the track, “I think the more role models and queer experiences that exist in popular culture, the better. If a song or a work of art can make a sad and trapped young queer person feel better about themselves, then it is a step in the right direction.”
Luminous Kid, by the way, is photographer and visual artist Olof Grind, who took the photo for Bridgers’ Punisher album cover.
This guest spot sort of lines up with what Bridgers said in a recent interview regarding her record label Saddest Factory, in which she spoke about wanting to take a break from focusing on her own music for a while: “This album cycle has been so, so long that I think the next thing that I want to do… I started a record label over lockdown, which is so dumb, but I did. So we have some cool stuff that I’m working on and [I] can’t wait to kind of take a back seat and work on somebody else’s records for a while.”
Listen to Luminous Kid’s “Mountain Crystals” above.
Cheap Trick is an American rock ‘n’ roll institution.
Formed in Rockford, Illinois in 1973, they were grouped with the era’s reigning arena-rock kingpins by the time they went multi-platinum with the landmark live album, Cheap Trick At Budokan, in 1979. But the band always had an acerbic, sneakily subversive edge lurking beneath their larger-than-life, cartoonish persona. They might have shared a producer with Aerosmith in the ’70s, but Cheap Trick felt closer to punk. Dig deep into their catalogue and you’ll find songs about serial killers, suicide, middle-aged pedophiles, pot-smoking parents, and other darkly comic snapshots from the underbelly of Middle America.
The band’s main songwriter is guitarist Rick Nielsen, whose dweeby stage clothes and knowingly ridiculous performance gimmicks — the multi-neck guitars, the dozens upon dozens of tossed-off picks — are complemented by a deeply sarcastic sense of humor and an unmatched ability to chronicle suburban kinkiness. His songs are a big reason why Cheap Trick remains a common touchstone for a wide range of artists who would never otherwise commingle. They’ve toured with Queen and Guided By Voices, and have been covered by Taylor Swift and Big Black. I have personally seen Nielsen play his signature song, “Surrender,” on separate occasions with both grunge gods Pearl Jam and emo upstarts The Get Up Kids. As Nielsen himself puts it, “We’re a lot of people’s fifth favorite band.”
On April 9, Cheap Trick will release their 20th album, In Another World. Ahead of that, I asked Nielsen to share his thoughts on nine of the band’s most significant albums. As usual, he didn’t hold back, speaking candidly about his band’s many ups and downs.
Cheap Trick (1977)
It came out during the disco era, which was not our kind of music. But, luckily, [producer] Jack Douglas had heard about us, and he came to see us. His in-laws lived in Waukesha, Wisconsin, so he planned on being there. We had a show at Sunset Bowl — it was a bowling alley, and a place we had played at a number of times. He came there, and he liked us. I think he made a call that night or the next morning, and said, “You’ve got to sign these guys.” It’s like, here’s Jack Douglas, he did Aerosmith, all this good stuff!
We liked punk. We liked the Sex Pistols. But we never tried to be anybody. We never thought, “Let’s be like those guys,” like a lot of bands do. They try to be what the flavor of the month is. And it’s like, I don’t know what month we picked.
In ’76, we went to New York, and started working at the Record Plant. I think we did 20-something songs in six or seven or eight days. I’m not sure how many days it was. So, we had to cut it down from what we had done. When we started to do the sequencing, it was like, everything should be side one and side A, because we didn’t have any side B or two. That’s one of the little dopey details that we felt about ourselves.
We had to change a few titles on there to pass clearance. “The Ballad Of TV Violence,” that was “The Ballad Of Richard Speck.” The record label was worried we’d get sued by the relatives of Richard Speck. [Ed. note: Speck was a serial killer apprehended in 1966. He died in 1991.] All we were doing was telling a story. But it was like, well, TV violence — I thought that was going to be something that people would complain about soon enough. When I think about it, it was a wise choice.
So, it had some fun stuff on there. When we did that record, I sent it to Tom [Petersson, Cheap Trick’s bassist] and said, “Should I have a different name for songwriter on there?” Because it had “Mandocello,” and then you had “The Ballad Of TV Violence.” It was like, it can’t be the same guy doing it. It seems like it was written by different people. But it’s the same person, just a different emotion for a different song.
People would say, “Well, where do you get the inspiration from?” I said, “Well, maybe The National Enquirer. Half of it is farfetched, and the other half is probably half-true.” Plus, I always liked the idea of a double and triple entendre. You don’t want it to mean something where that’s all it means. Like, the song “Oh, Candy” — Marshall Mintz was this photographer that we had who committed suicide. “Oh, Candy, why did you do it? You didn’t stick a needle in your vein.” So, we made it into a pop song. But if we said, “Hey, Marshall Mintz, what did you do it?” it wouldn’t make any sense. So, I tried to make it into something else.
In Color (1977)
I think we got a pretty good review of the first record, but it didn’t sell anything. Nobody knew who we were, except a few of our fans that had come see us live. We were building a pretty big following in Chicago, Milwaukee, and the Iowa area. We used to drive to Minot, North Dakota, and play at the Dutch Mill, four or five sets a night, seven days in a row, and there was usually nobody there. And they were telling us to turn it down all the time, after every set. “Would you turn it down?” “Yeah, okay, we will.” We never did. And we were playing all original material.
Tom Werman, who was head of A&R at Epic, was also a staff producer. He had been doing Ted Nugent and I don’t know who else. He was chosen to produce us, because they wanted a more commercial song or whatever. We said we liked the Sex Pistols, and he hated the Sex Pistols. So, it’s like, uh-oh, we’re in trouble here.
We’d record, and then we’d go on tour while the record was still in fresh paint. I’d play my last note, and I’d get on the bus. So, we never heard the final mixes that were on the actual album. Werman put stuff on there, like the piano on “I Want You To Want Me,” and it wasn’t the way we played it live. All of a sudden, it’s out, and the record company execs, they’re all happy. Instead of making us sound like The Who, we sounded like The Guess Who. And that record didn’t sell very well. But we were picking up a little bit. We were getting on good shows, because lots of bands, like Kiss and Queen, wanted us.
Heaven Tonight (1978)
Heaven Tonight was the second album we did with Tom Werman. When I write something, I try to make it as good as possible. I thought about things in my life. My mother wasn’t in the WAC, the Women’s Army Corps, but I had an aunt that was. The opening line, it’s like a rock ‘n’ roll line, “Mother told me, yes, she told me I’d meet girls like you.” Don’t go over there. Those kids are bad. They have knives.
So, I took stuff from my life and embellished it. By then, I was 29 years old or something, and I was the oldest guy in the band. I still am! Growing up, every kid I knew, their parents were weird. Whether they were hippies or straight or religious nuts or whatever, every parent is weird. “Hey, you want to come over to my house?” “No, your parents are weird. Do you want to come to my place?” “No, no, your parents are weird!” You’ve got to know how to stretch the truth with your parents. You’ve got to listen to them, but you don’t always have to heed it. That’s “Surrender” — don’t give yourself away. Don’t turn into one of them.
Cheap Trick At Budokan (1979)
We were starting to get some popularity because of playing with Queen and Kiss, the tours in ’77. When we played with Queen, we opened up two of the shows in Milwaukee and Madison. I think Thin Lizzy was supposed to open for them, but I’m glad they didn’t because we got the chance to open for them.
The Japanese press were there for Queen, because they were huge there. But the Japanese press liked us, too. After the show, they asked me to write an article, what’s it like to tour with Queen. I’m so full of crap, I’ll write anything. What do I know? We used to make fun of every band, and Queen was one of them. But we didn’t on those two nights.
After I wrote the article, it came out in Japan and we started getting fan mail. And there were caricatures of ourselves in the Japanese magazines. We were kind of easy to draw funny. And then we had a number one hit with “Clock Strikes Ten.” And it’s like, only in Japan! Holy cow, what a great place. And then we started getting more and more fan mail. We hadn’t even been there. But I thought they were the smartest country on Earth.
So, in ’78, around the Heaven Tonight record, we went there, and it was like Beatlemania for us. They loved Cheap Trick! We flew coach from Chicago, and here were 5,000 kids when we landed. I thought, “Who in the heck’s on this plane?” We were in the back of the plane, a little late getting off. They were standing on top of the terminal screaming, and it’s like, “Wow, gee, careful there.” After we go through customs, the security people put us in these taxi cabs, and all these taxi cabs chased us from the airport all the way to where our hotel was. People were screaming, hanging out the windows. It was like, “Wow, this is cool.”
At that time, it was Tom and myself in one room, and Bun E. and Rob in the other room. We were sharing rooms then, but it was better than the U.S. because we’d probably be sharing a room for four people instead of two and two.
Every show we had was sold out. We didn’t know what the Budokan was. The Budokan made us famous, but we made the Budokan famous. I think Robin said, “Here’s a song from our new album,” and it was.
Dream Police (1979)
That was the last album we did with Tom Werman. I liked him. He was great. I’m friends with his family and his kids, and it was great to work with him. He was always encouraging. We liked it heavier, that was all. When we had the orchestra stuff on that record I went in to help conduct the strings, because Werman didn’t even show up for that part. The musicians would look at me like, “This little wise ass.” But I was right. I knew music through my parents. Not that I liked their kind of music, but I just knew a wrong note from a right note. But some of the orchestras, they could sense that they were taking criticism from a ding-a-ling. But again, I didn’t care. It was my song.
All Shook Up (1980)
We had asked George Martin to produce our record. He and Geoff Emerick came to Madison, Wisconsin, in the middle of winter. I can’t believe we had the balls to ask him. But he actually came there, in a big snowstorm, and saw us in Madison, in a rehearsal place. Full Compass Studio, I think it was. And he liked what we were doing. Musically, he knew more than anybody I had ever worked with, and besides my father, he was the smartest man that I worked with. I became friends with him, too.
We’re from Rockford, Illinois, and he’s worked with The Beatles. Jesus! But he listened to my ideas, and I think we hit it off really well. We were one of the first bands to play at AIR Studios in Montserrat, in the British West Indies. That’s the same place in The Police video where they’re jumping up and down in the studio. After we finished the basic tracks, we flew to London, and that was the first time we flew on the Concorde. It was like, we’re it.
When we were all in Montserrat, nobody could get through to us. I had my wife there and my two kids, Erron and Miles, they both learned how to swim there. And Daxx was in her tummy at that time. But nobody could get through on the telephone, except Tom’s wife from Beverly Hills. It was such a distraction. She’s having trouble with their new house they had there. It was like, concentrate on what we’re doing! So, actually towards the end, I ended up playing bass on “Baby Loves To Rock.”[Ed. note: Petersson left the band before All Shook Up was released, and later re-joined in 1987.]
We finished the day that Bon Scott died. I know because we were big fans. I wrote a little verse in “Love Comes A-Tumblin’ Down” about Bon. And I had George Martin give us his voice. “I’m hoping to live longer, aided by the supreme healing force of music.” I got him to do that, and he didn’t want to do it. “But come on, George! I’m your pal now!”
Later on, John Lennon was trying to fatten up the sound for Double Fantasy. So, [at the invitation of the album’s producer Jack Douglas] we went in and we played “I’m Losing You” and “I’m Moving On.” If you listen to our versions, as opposed to the versions on Double Fantasy, Double Fantasy sounds like a lounge band. We didn’t fit with that, but it was like, they wanted that sound. But John at one point said to Jack and Bun E., “God, I wish we would’ve had him on ‘Cold Turkey.’ Clapton choked up.” Really. I called him John. Bun E. called him Mr. Lennon.
Lap Of Luxury (1987)
There’s records that nobody liked where there’s always something good on them. A lot of work goes into them. I remember we finished an album once, and the record company, before it came out, was like, “Just wait till the next record.” What?
It was a bad time for me, because I had written 99 percent of the stuff. And here’s the record company and the management and the record producer all saying, “We need you to get some outside writers.” Oh, thank you. We had done cover songs. But it was stuff of our own choosing. But now they wanted outside writers. I kind of get it, but at the same time, it’s like, for a songwriter, to say we’ve got to get other people, uh-oh. Guitar player’s leaving soon, too. So, it was rough. Nobody defended us except us.
“The Flame” is a terrific song, and Robin sings it great, and my solo’s not too bad. It’s good. Probably more good than bad on it. But the reason I “hated” it, as the story goes, is that it was the 10th song where the record company and producer said, “You’ve got to record this.” We recorded about 10 different things. It’s like, “Why didn’t we do this one first?”
How did I feel about the music scene of the late ’80s? I use this line all the time: We never progressed. We never tried to be something that we weren’t. That’s too difficult. It’s like trying to remember the lie. Wake up in the middle of the night and all of a sudden you’ve got an English accent.
Rockford (2006)
It was fun to do. When we go in and record stuff, we do it all live. I don’t think we ever did more than three takes on any song. We know what we are, and we aren’t trying to do something that we can’t do. Usually when I write songs, I always do them in keys where I don’t have to look at the neck. I want to look at the audience. Who wants to see a guy noodling down there, not moving?
I’m a musician. I’m supposed to be poor. But the fact is that we have a career. We always work. We always will work. We just kept going at it. We make records for ourselves, so if we do something dumb, it’s our fault. We must have agreed to do something that’s not us. It’s like, “Hey, we’re Cheap Trick. We’re thrilled that anybody likes us.” We’re a lot of people’s fifth favorite band. If we’re at the top, it’s like, don’t you like Led Zeppelin?
In Another World (2021)
The more I hear it, the more I like it. When you’re doing it, I don’t compare it to this or that unless it’s a direct steal from somebody or a direct steal from ourselves. We started it on Big Machine, and then as we were doing it, BMG wanted it. What’s this, record companies clamoring over us? We’ve been around so long, we’re never going to be the next new thing. We don’t know how to dance. We’d lose on American Idol or any of those shows. We’d never make it. But, they get what we do. There was no interference.
I like the rock stuff. “Summer Looks Good On You,” that’s a fun one. I like “Boys & Girls & Rock ‘n’ Roll.” They’re all kind of different.
I think we’re respected because we never gave up. We made every mistake there is — we’ve had success, we’ve had failure, but we keep going. To me, that’s success, the fact that we’ve done 6,000 shows and played seven nights a week, for no money, in awful places. But we always believe in ourselves.
In Another World is out via BMG on April 9. Get it here.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.