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It finally dawned on me about halfway through The Northman that the name of the protagonist, “Amleth,” an 8th century Viking prince on a mission to avenge the death of his father at the hands of his uncle, might be a play on “Hamlet.” Maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake. Maybe that’s why I can rarely fully appreciate Shakespeare. When I’m watching a Shakespeare adaptation, I usually find myself thinking “Why couldn’t they have done a little more, you know, adapting?”

And yet here was The Northman, doing what I’d always wanted a Shakespeare adaptation to do: make me feel the way people who love Shakespeare must feel when they watch it, the way Shakespeare’s patrons must’ve felt in his own time. The Northman is like that, this grand goth spectacle with a story that moves like music and characters who are as much fable and myth as they are people, recognizably human but slightly unknowable and awe-inspiring, like old testament gods.

Admittedly, that makes The Northman sound a lot more cerebral than it actually is. Make no mistake, director Robert Eggers (who co-wrote the script, with Lamb co-writer Sjón) is certainly a cerebral guy, who attempted to resurrect a dead dialect for his debut feature, The Witch. Yet The Northman feels more like the movie Glenn Danzig would’ve made if Glenn Danzig was the Danzig of Misfits fans’ imagination (rather than a sort of goth Tommy Wiseau).

The Northman is Shakespeare, but it’s also a movie about muscular shirtless men growling at each other. For me, it was near perfect. “The director of The Witch made a Norwegian black metal Hamlet starring Alexander Skarsgard” is the kind of simple declarative sentence that functions as the rave it’s intended to be.

This is a movie in which a seer tells Amleth that he will one day have to choose between love of his kin and hate for his enemies. Because this is a Robert Eggers movie, you can practically hear Danzig bellowing “I CHOOOOSE HAAAAAAAATE” over chugging power chords. The Northman is a beautiful goth fantasy, not a fairy tale, and logic will always take a backseat to lurid violence and operatic conflict.

Alexander Skarsgard plays Amleth, and well, he’s kind of an intense guy. In the opening frame, adolescent Amleth greets his father (Ethan Hawke), returning from battle. A ghoulish jester/prophet played by Willem Dafoe (absolutely as great as that collection of words would suggest) takes them deep into a cave for some kind of ceremony where they pretend to be wolves. Ethan Hawke burps. Young Amleth farts. Success! But just when they’re about to really get their dog-man on, Amleth’s uncle, officially listed on IMDB as “Fjolnir the Brotherless” (Claes Bang) murders Amleth’s father and carries off his mother, Gudrún (Nicole Kidman).

Young Amleth escapes his attackers (gorily, somehow), hops in a boat, and rows seemingly straight out to sea. With every stroke he repeats his vow to kill his uncle, avenge his father, and save his mother like an Arya Stark incantation.

We skip from there straight to adult Amleth, living in the land of Rus and carrying on the various family traditions: raping, pillaging, shirtlessness, bellowing. He’s graduated from wolf cub to bear, belonging to a pillaging troupe who growl like bears before sacking mud-caked villages (God, so much mud). According to Eggers, there’s nothing 8th-century Vikings liked more than taking psychedelic drugs and growling like animals in a sort of Scandinavian equivalent of the Haka. It’s the BERSERKER legend at its most stylized. (It should be noted that both berserker, “bear warriors,” and úlfhéðnar, “wolf warriors,” are ideas taken directly from history).

Upon discovering that Fjolnir the Brotherless has emigrated to Iceland, Amleth disguises himself as a slave, complete with branded skin, in order to gain passage. Did I mention Amleth is kind of intense? He willingly gives up his status as a prominent bear warrior to become the lowliest of the low, a slave, just so that he can murder a dude who has already been exiled to a barren wasteland. This is exactly the kind of guy whose contemporary ancestors heard English heavy metal and didn’t realize the satanic thing was a bit, so they invented Norwegian black metal and started burning down churches and killing each other.

On the slow boat to Iceland (God, that must’ve sucked) Amleth meets a Slavic witch (“Olga of the Birch Forest,” played by Anya Taylor-Joy). The two kind of hit it off, and thus, all the pieces for Amleth’s big choice between family and vengeance are now in place.

The reason I love Robert Eggers is that he tells stories in such a way that the fantastic is real. The characters in The Witch and The Northman don’t battle spirits and demons and have prophetic drug-fueled visions because Eggers is taking liberties, they do these things because that’s how people in the 8th and 16th centuries genuinely understood their world. For them, the fantastic was reality. That’s how Eggers treats it, and if we the audience get to live deliciously in the process, so much the better.

The Northman is one of the few movies I’ve seen in which the Shakespearian style of operatic plotting, with characters whose choices are meant to evoke the poles of human nature and ring of universal truths, actually works. That’s largely because Eggers’ vision is so unabashedly extreme and fully realized that it works as spectacle even when the characters behave more like ancient legends than people (and I suspect this is exactly how Shakespeare’s plays were intended to function).

The language itself isn’t necessarily Shakespearian, and, thanks to a combination of muddy sound mix and foreign actors attempting fictional accents, it’s at least 35% unintelligible. Nor is it overtly comedic, but it carries with it the unmistakable whiff of a screenwriter who was having fun. There was zero chance I wasn’t going to love a movie that allows Alexander Skarsgard to growl the line “Fjolnir is fortunate that a woman’s tide is the only blood that flowed inside his house tonight.”

Thank God for Robert Eggers. He’s one of the best we’ve got. I can’t wait to rewatch The Northman with the subtitles on.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.

Welp, it finally happened. Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter. After the Tesla CEO rejected an offer to join the social media company’s board of directors, analysts predicted his was laying the groundwork for a hostile takeover. That day has arrived. Musk has offered Twitter a $41 billion cash offer along with a plan to take the company private.

“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” Musk said in a letter to the company’s board. Via Reuters:

Musk, who calls himself a free-speech absolutist, has been critical of the social media platform and its policies, and recently ran a poll on Twitter asking users if they believed it adheres to the principle of free speech.

“My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” Musk added.

Musk’s offer arrives after a week of messiness. Following Twitter announcing that Musk rejected the company’s offer to join the board of directors, which raised speculation that he didn’t want to submit to a background check, the Tesla CEO was sued by shareholders a few days later over his failure to report to the SEC that he purchased more than 5% of Twitter’s shares. However, that clearly has not impeded Musk’s hopes to takeover the company.

You can read Musk’s full letter to Twitter’s board below:

Chairman of the Board,

I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.

However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.

Elon Musk

(Via Reuters)

On April 20, 2021, almost a year ago today, Michelle Zauner (of Japanese Breakfast fame) released Crying In H Mart, her debut book that was a runaway success. It’s a vulnerable work, in which Zauner discusses her mother’s battle with cancer and eventual death. Now, as the book approaches its one-year anniversary, Zauner has taken a moment to share some thoughts on it and her mother.

In a tweet consisting of screenshots of her Instagram Story, Zauner starts with a screenshot of Crying In H Mart on the New York Times Bestsellers List and notes, “Next week my little book will have been out in the world for one whole year. And as of today it has spent 38 WEEKS on the @nytimes Bestsellers List [exploding head emoji].”

The next slide features a photo of Zauner’s mother and reads, “Thx for looking out for me 엄마,” with the Korean word translating to “mom.” The text continues, “I love this photo. I make this face all the time. This is the face I’m making rn thinking about how crazy it is that a book where I basically just unearthed our family’s greatest tragedies and tried to make sense of the wreckage has gone on to become this runaway bestseller.”

The next photo is of Zauner crying and she wrote, “And all the tears I cried and all the days I wanted to give up because I felt too stupid and sad to finish.” The final image is of a young Zauner and her mother, accompanied by the text, “And now the world has fallen in love with your character and cries for you too.”

Find Zauner’s post above.

For those who channel the power of Mariah Carey in every aspect of their lives, Mimi is finally giving the Lamb-ily a look at her creative process. Carey has partnered with Masterclass for a nine-video online series, in which she shows writers how to take care of their voices, work around samples, and navigate the music industry. As part of her Masterclass, Carey has released a re-recording of one of her fan-favorite cuts, “The Roof,” this time, featuring singer Brandy.

“The Roof” was first released as a solo track on Carey’s 1997 Butterfly album. “The Roof” failed to chart in the US, but the song and its video remain a fan favorite.

In one of the Masterclass videos, Carey can be seen coaching Brandy throughout the process of arranging and recording the track.

“I’ve never let cameras in when I am creating — not when I’m writing, and especially not when I’m singing,” said Carey in a statement. “But now I’m taking MasterClass members into my studio to show them how they can write and produce music using their voice and become anything they want to be as long as they create, re-create, reimagine, and reinvent.”

The new version of the roof will be released exclusively with the Masterclass. Fans can access the Masterclass via a $15 monthly subscription to Masterclass, and can also take online lessons from Usher, St. Vincent, and Timbaland.

Some of the chapters for Carey’s Masterclass include “Writing With Samples,” “Producing With Your Voice,” “Taking Care of Your Voice,” “Surviving in the Music Industry,” and “Lyricism: Write About the Realness.”

“Mariah is simply a genius,” said David Rogier, founder and CEO of MasterClass, in a statement. “She’s one of the greatest artists of all time. In her class, Mariah is opening up her studio for the first time ever, teaching members how to use their voice throughout the music-making process, including in the studio and while navigating the industry.”

Check out the trailer for the Masterclass above.

There are few things Jimmy Kimmel derives more pleasure from than finding new reasons to poke at Ted Cruz, and this week gave him a doozy of a story. While giving a talk at Yale University recently, a young man named Evan stood up and asked the Texas senator a question that seemed straightforward enough: “Assuming it would end global hunger, would you fellate another man?”

While Cruz was visibly taken aback by the question, which rendered him absolutely speechless, Kimmel sees this brave exchange as proof that the future might be in safe hands after all. “Most people my age don’t have anything nice to say about the kids nowadays,” Kimmel explained. “They say they’re lazy and entitled and too sensitive. But then a young man like this comes around [and] it gives you real hope for the future of this country.”

While Cruz attempted to recover, his co-host—political pundit and Yale grad Michael Knowles—took one for the team, so to speak, and decided to try and knock young Evan down a peg by conservative-splaining that, “Like a typical left-wing undergraduate, you are engaging in consequentialist ethics” before answering “absolutely not.”

Kimmel suspects that if Cruz had answered, and been honest, “Only if that man was Donald Trump” would be more accurate. Still, he thinks it was “a really good question,” especially as “Ted Cruz can unhinge his jaw like a rat snake.”

You can watch the full clip above.

Wheel of Fortune hosts Pat Sajak and Vanna White have been attached at the proverbial hip since the early 1980s. That’s over 7,000 episodes. There’s only so much left for them to banter about during the end credits wrap-up, but Sajak found a new topic of conversation during Wednesday’s episode: watching opera while naked, as one does.

After professional opera singer Ashely Fabian dominated the main game and bonus round, taking home $67,410 in the process, Sajak asked White, “Are you an opera buff at all?” She responded, “Yes. I’m not a buff, but I like opera.” Her answer caused Sajak to wonder, “Have you ever watched opera in the buff? I’m just curious.” White laughed at the harmless Laugh-In-style joke, but not everyone at home was as amused.

“Maybe it’s time for Pat to retire. Totally inappropriate to ask if Vanna watches/Ed opera in the buff. Please!” one Wheel of Fortune-watching Twitter user wrote, while another tweeted, “These are filmed three months in advance. They could edit this crap. Please Pat. Retire. You have lost your filter.” (Sajak is at his best when he loses his filter.)

But others have made the point that it’s an innocuous joke among long-time friends, including one who wrote, “It’s a joke you can ask anyone, of any sex, of any age, and that’s the context it was used in. Just a harmless question between friends referencing the same words that were just used.”

You can judge for yourself below.

The Kardashians is off and running on Hulu, and so, they’re everywhere all over again. The show seems, so far, like a slightly more polished version of what the family did on E!, and Kourtney’s constantly making out in the background with Travis Barker. More than likely, people will tune in, but on the subject of tuning in, there’s one moment in particular that people are discussing, and it goes back to Kim hosting SNL. Back when that announcement happened, Debra Messing decided to speak out about how she didn’t necessarily feel that Kim belonged on that stage.

“Why Kim Kardashian?” Messing had tweeted. “I mean, I know she is a cultural icon, but SNL has hosts, generally, who are performers who are there to promote a film, TV show, or album launch. Am I missing something?” Messing then later clarified that she didn’t realize that The Kardashians was in the works, and that “I was not intending to troll her.”

Well, Kim decided to make another TV moment out of this mess by responding on The Kardashian by referring to Messing only as “[a] girl from Will & Grace.” She complained that Debra had come for “another female,” which Kim says she wouldn’t do, especially “to tear people down.”

Here’s Kim’s full quote:

“I’m the underdog. Everyone just thinks I’m a ditz. A girl from Will & Grace came out and said that she has no idea why I would be chosen as a host. But it’s like, why do you care? I don’t comment to tear people down, especially another female. Like, if that’s what you think, dude, then, like, cool. Like, tune in.”

It’s well within Kim’s right, of course, to respond in an on-air fashion, but she does, however, easily forget that airing this grievance will likely make people think about how Kim decided to blanket-diss those women in business who she believes “need to get your f*cking ass up and work” because “[i]t seems like nobody wants to work these days.” That piece of advice didn’t go great (in fact, not even close). Yes, Kim addressed Messing before she had doled out her own “advice” to women, and Kim has also tried to say that those quotes were “taken out of context.” Yet she’s accusing Messing of tearing women down, and that’s pretty much what Kim Kardashian did when she straight-up told females to get off their butts and, ya know, “work.”

The chaotic superhero film performance has been around for decades. It peaked with Willem Dafoe’s committed performance as the Green Goblin in 2002’s Spider-Man and extended to the protagonist with Tom Hardy’s passionate performance as journalist Eddie Brock in 2018’s Venom. A decade and change into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and this overwhelming sea of superhero IP, it’s more challenging than ever to create a superhero film or television show that’s singular. As the genre has evolved, some accomplished actors have begun to embrace the chaos like Dafoe did twenty years ago with performances that challenge the norms with performances that go far beyond being hot, having a nice body, and saying things like “avengers assemble” or making snappy pop culture references. Robert Pattinson, an actor known for his bombastic performances, brought emo energy and exemplary mouth acting to his performance as Bruce Wayne/Batman in The Batman. On Moon Knight, the latest television series entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Disney Plus, Oscar Isaac, an actor with natural irresistible charisma and a subtle performance style, is unleashing absolute chaos with an indescribable energy and unbelievable level of commitment.

Isaac plays Steven Grant, a meek British man who works at a museum gift shop. Steven Grant is gentle but manic. He is a humble, mumbling, chronically fatigued Brit who thinks that having a chain on his bed is a red flag, says things like “later gator,” and owns a one-finned fish. He wears oversized clothes in muted, sad colors. Essentially, he is the last person anyone would expect to be the avatar for the Egyptian moon god Khonshu. But alas, he is. In episode two of Moon Knight, Steven runs through the halls of a storage unit facility, being chased by Khonshu. He’s whimpering in his weird high pitched non-specific British accent which is more of a combination of all of the British accents in Love Actually than a real British accent. His eyes are wide, his forehead sweaty, his mouth as wide as possible. Steven Grant is terrified, but Oscar Isaac is having the time of his life. Isaac puts his absolute all into routine action scenes by filling them with existential dread, confusion, and anxiety through inventive facial expressions and body language making it one of the most interesting performances in MCU history only two episodes in because it’s actually interesting.

Behind Steven Grant – or more accurately behind the mirrors Steven Grant looks into – is Marc Spector, an alternate personality. Marc is the polar opposite of Steven: confident, controlled, violent, and aware of the Egyptian god avatar thing. Marc has the kind of personality that would be expected from a guy who looks like Oscar Isaac, and the type of personality expected of a Marvel character. Somehow, against all odds (the odds being Isaac’s face) Isaac pulls off both Marc and Steven, effectively playing a freaking loser and the stoic, mysterious hero. Playing two characters in one is an art, and a challenge not many actors accept. Lindsay Lohan did it best in 1998’s The Parent Trap in one of the greatest performances ever captured on a camera. On Moon Knight, Isaac is channeling Lohan.

The MCU is not completely absent of notable performances: Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany worked their way to deserved Emmy nominations for their performances on WandaVision. Tom Hiddleston shook the entire franchise up with a performance so good that his character, Loki, was brought back from the dead several times and then got his own TV show. Jake Gyllenhaal gave a frenzied charisma to Spider-Man: Far From Home’s tech villian Mysterio. Chaos and disorder is exactly what the MCU – which has exhausted itself with its sameness – needs right now. With his unpredictable, in-depth and slightly deranged performance on Moon Knight, Oscar Isaac is elevating MCU heroes to a new, actually interesting level.

Given everything that’s been going on in her life, Britney Spears understandably hasn’t been super active when it comes to releasing new music and performing. Now she says she doesn’t have the same enthusiasm for the business now as she once did, saying it’s been “ruined” for her.

In an Instagram post yesterday, Spears wrote:

“Being a stay-at-home mom not having people do my hair and makeup .. waiting and waiting in those dressing rooms with my dad and the weirdest woman ever in every f*cking dressing room I was in for 14 years … I look back now and I’m like ‘how did I do that ???’ Honestly just the thought of being in the same building as them let alone the same room makes the hair on my arms stand up !!! They’ve ruined the thrill of the business for me 100000% !!! Let’s make it a 10 year break [crying laughing emojis] [monkey covering eyes emojis] …”

Elsewhere in the post, she noted she’s considering starting a podcast and wrote about parenthood.

Find Spears’ post below.

“I’ve never been a makeup junky I will confess … getting tons of lipsticks from different companies … well I never got a thrill out of that !!! But I will be honest and say … that has changed !!! I never thought I would say this but I am a makeup junkie !!! From 1-10 … I’m probably a 5 makeup junkie !!!

Being a stay-at-home mom not having people do my hair and makeup .. waiting and waiting in those dressing rooms with my dad and the weirdest woman ever in every f*cking dressing room I was in for 14 years … I look back now and I’m like ‘how did I do that ???’ Honestly just the thought of being in the same building as them let alone the same room makes the hair on my arms stand up !!! They’ve ruined the thrill of the business for me 100000% !!! Let’s make it a 10 year break [crying laughing emojis] [monkey covering eyes emojis] …

with a baby on the way my thought this morning was ‘I’m so scared to make a mistake … Will I be thoughtful enough ??? Will I be instinctive enough ???’ My mom and I always butted heads … she was a mindful mother which that’s all there is in LA … If anyone was sick … she would talk on the phone with a doctor for 40 minutes before using her own brain … but let’s be MINDFUL and talk about it !!!

Now ME … I always got judged and was told I was doing the wrong thing … Yet when I was 8 years old and had no lie a 104.3 fever … I was in my brother’s bunk bed and wasn’t moving well … My mom came in there only 1 time and I knocked the fever myself !!! In Los Angeles it’s about the children but at the time I was growing up … it was all about respecting your parents … I washed my mother’s back everyday of my life when she asked for ice water so I brought it to her in seconds !!!

Jesus Christ how things have changed !!! The generation today doesn’t even acknowledge others or say hi with a smile because they are always looking down on their phones !!! I can’t even tell you how many times I did shows where young girls literally had their backs turned around looking at their phones … whatever that’s how it is now ver …

another example of instinct vs. mindfulness … Jayden had an extremely high fever one time … my heart went into my stomach because he. had never been this hot before !!! His little eyes were so lazy … do you think I called a doctor ??? He was 9 and I picked him up like a baby and brought him all the way upstairs to my room and put his little body in the tub lukewarm … not too cold .. not too hot … he was still hot so l got a cold compress and put on his head and gave him a fever reducer … I took him out of the tub and he had chills !!! ‘Chills … Mamma I’m too cold…’ I put a heating pad at his feet and kept a wet compress on his head … I let him lay there for 20 minutes and then I repeated it … his fever went down the second time I bathed him !!! I tried to put crackers or anything in his system but he didn’t want it .. so | slept with him that night and when he woke up … he was eating pancakes like nothing happened !!!

God knows I’m no saint but the media destroyed me when I first became a mother … My first record came out when I was 16 and I got pregnant at 24 … I thought about it last night … was a baby raising 2 babies with 17 cars outside my house !!! I didn’t know how to play the game … I didn’t even know how to dress or fix my hair !!! I was clueless and I wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree either !!! I know that’s no excuse but it is what it is … I do know from the outside and by what was said in the news people were like ‘WTF is going on with her ???’

The media has always been EXTREMELY rude to me … so I woke up this morning saying to myself ‘do i need to do a podcast during this pregnancy instead of therapy ???’ And I mean it !!! Is my instinct just as it was when I helped Jayden ??? It’s instinct !!! Something to declare all these crazy mixed emotions and hormones … I don’t want to be an angry pregnant person eating donuts every morning … then I thought about it … It’s going to be ok !!! Just be me and stop trying so hard !!!

So I reeled it in came back to reality and realized becoming a makeup junkie isn’t so bad !!! It’s the little things in finding myself that I’ve honestly missed for the last 14 years !!! It’s time for me to indulge into thinking … books … makeup …. classic movies … great conversation … and the best sex ever !!! Sex is great when you’re pregnant.

It’s going to be ok and now that @ArianaGrande sent me this unbelievable packaging with her new makeup line @REMbeauty … I believe my day is set !!! Yes I’ve put it on already and I’m not lying … it’s pretty awesome !!! The colors are not only subtle and cool but the way it lays on your face is like silk … literally !!! Thank you Ariana for this amazing gift. I needed eyeshadow !!! How did you know ??? God bless …”

It’s been nearly three weeks since the tragic passing of Taylor Hawkins, but the news is still difficult to process. Watching a video of his final performance with Foo Fighters just five days prior to his death on March 25 only compounds the cognitive dissonance. The 50-year-old drummer looks tan, lean, and at least 10 years younger than his actual age. He is gregarious, magnetic, and charmingly affectionate to his band leader and best friend, Dave Grohl. He is a rock star at the height of his powers. Seemingly invincible. But only seemingly.

Among the last of the absurdly popular stadium rock bands, Foo Fighters have been so ubiquitous for so long that it’s easy to take them for granted. But the reaction to Hawkins’ death over the past several weeks testifies to their reach. Even if you don’t consider yourself a fan, you likely know at least a couple of their radio-conquering anthems: “Everlong,” “My Hero,” “Best Of You,” “Times Like These.” “Learn To Fly.” When I wrote last year about the best Foo Fighters songs, I realized that my engagement with them was less casual than I imagined. As Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers did for a previous generation, Foo Fighters have specialized in the kind of broadly appealing rock songs that people incorporate into their lives often without realizing it, as if by cultural osmosis. You don’t have to work to like their music. You just do.

While they were forged by Grohl in 1994 as a one-man project in the wake of another famous tragedy involving a different bandmate, over time Foo Fighters evolved into an actual band that added up to something more than just a vehicle for their celebrity frontman. And Hawkins had a lot to do with that. The drummer in a band started by the most admired drummer of his generation, Hawkins quickly established a dynamic with Grohl that was both little brother and partner-in-crime.

It would be a stretch to call Hawkins the co-frontman of Foo Fighters, but he was clearly the second most prominent guy in the band, even more than the other former member of Nirvana in Foo Fighters, Pat Smear. This was communicated on stage whenever Hawkins stepped out from behind the drums to sing Queen’s “Somebody To Love,” complete with Freddie Mercury-style vocal gymnastics. And it came across in interviews, in which Hawkins was usually the only other Foo seated next to Grohl as figureheads of the band.

Hawkins was, in a sense, the band identity for Foo Fighters, the person who made this one-time solo venture feel like a real gang. But more than that, Hawkins earned his share of the spotlight. If you have a handsome blonde who can still pull off drumming shirtless well into middle age, you put him where the audience can see and appreciate him. Anything less would be rock ‘n’ roll malpractice.

All of this prompts a delicate, uncomfortable question that only Grohl and his partners can answer. There is, of course, no rush to answer it. Grief is a long, hard road, and it will have to be traversed before this question can be pondered. It might take one month. Or one year. Or 10 years. But eventually, the following will have to be addressed: Can Foo Fighters continue as a band without Taylor Hawkins?

As someone who spends a lot of his professional life (and even a good part of my non-professional life) thinking about rock bands, I admit that this question has been on my mind lately. But it felt inappropriate to bring it up in the immediate aftermath of Hawkins’ passing. Some might say it’s inappropriate even now. Death in general is the one topic that is universally upsetting for those of us who remain among the living. I’m no different in that respect. Thinking about Taylor Hawkins dying at such a young age puts a pit in my stomach.

In the context of a band, the proper way to address the loss of a member boils down to another delicate, uncomfortable question: Is it more respectful to break up, or to carry on? Is it a better tribute to recognize how vital this person was by packing it in? Or is it a more fitting honor to continue, and keep that person’s memory alive in arenas and stadiums around the world? This is to say nothing of weighing the personal toll of playing in a band without your close friend vs. giving up the very thing that has defined your musical life for decades. None of this is easy, and I feel for those closest to Hawkins as they try to move forward without him.

Grohl and Hawkins bonded over their nerdy obsessions with rock history, so surely they were aware of previous legacy bands who lost their famous drummers, and how those groups reacted. These examples, inevitably, offer no coherent path forward. In 1978, Keith Moon of The Who died at the cruelly young age of 32, and was swiftly replaced by Kenney Jones and, much later, Zak Starkey. Two years later, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin died, also at the age of 32. But unlike The Who, Zeppelin was shuttered almost immediately. Robert Plant, Bonham’s best friend in the band, was most adamant about not continuing without him. On his podcast last year, Plant admitted that he still dreams about hanging out with Bonham, more than four decades after his passing.

More recent examples offer similarly conflicting models. When Neil Peart passed away in 2020, it effectively ended Rush, the Canadian power trio he joined and elevated 46 years prior. But when Charlie Watts died in 2021, the Rolling Stones quickly committed to touring with new drummer Steve Jordan, who had already been announced as a sub for the ailing Watts before he succumbed to cancer. Mick and Keith made sure to salute Watts every night via a video montage that played before they came on stage. And then the show went on without him.

Neither as young as Moon and Bonham nor as tenured as Peart and Watts, Hawkins was solidly in the prime of his life. When the Foos played their final show with Hawkins in Chile, they appeared to be the most obvious inheritor of The Stones’ legacy of regularly touring the world’s biggest venues well into your senior years as weathered ambassadors of meat-and-potatoes stadium rock. It seemed possible, if not likely, that Hawkins had another 20 or even 30 years of rock stardom ahead of him. For a man who was also a husband, father, brother, and friend, the loss of a career perhaps shouldn’t be counted among the costliest forfeitures upon his death. But given how much Taylor Hawkins clearly relished being a rock star, it is a profoundly sad waste nonetheless.

As for the people he left behind, I felt sickening pangs of sympathy this week after revisiting the 2011 documentary Foo Fighters: Back And Forth. The film offers a reminder that for much of the ’90s, the band was a revolving door of members swiftly joining and exiting. That includes the drummer who preceded Hawkins, William Goldsmith, who quit acrimoniously in 1997 after Grohl re-did all of his drum tracks for the second (and in my mind best) Foo Fighters album, The Colour & The Shape. Grohl split timekeeping duties with Hawkins on the next album, 1999’s There Is Nothing Left To Lose, but after that he ceded the drummer’s chair to Hawkins, a testament to his undeniable chops and musical flair.

But the surest sign of Hawkins’ place in the band occurred in 2001, when he overdosed on heroin in London and went into a coma for two weeks. In the film, Grohl talks about sitting at Hawkins’ bedside at the time. The memory causes him to choke up. And then you see relief come over him when he recalls the moment when Hawkins finally woke up. His soul mate hadn’t slipped from his grasp after all.

This scene now is all but unwatchable, as Grohl’s band remains mired in a surreal limbo in which they are somehow, simultaneously, canceling tours and winning Grammys. Foo Fighters are still technically a band, but they currently feel like a body without a soul. Seeing Grohl break down at the thought of losing Hawkins in 2001 makes the idea of continuing as Foo Fighters now seem impossible. Though any scenario in which Foo Fighters aren’t playing for tens of thousands of people somewhere in the world also seems inconceivable. Maybe Dave could sing and drum at the time? Maybe a rotating cast of Hawkins’ friends — Chad Smith, Stewart Copeland, Stephen Perkins — could temporarily fill the void?

As fans, we don’t get to make the decision. For that, we are fortunate. There are no good choices at a time like this. In a deeply unfair world in which vital and beloved people perish well before their time, everything manages to feel wrong.