Category: Worldwide

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill (formally known as the Parental Rights In Education bill) continues to work its way through the state’s legislature, all while SNL‘s Kate McKinnon treated it as ridiculously as the backlash to the controversial bill would demand. The state’s mask-hating governor, Ron DeSantis, has continued to defend the bill’s content (as the bill’s nickname goes, it would prohibit “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity”), and the fallout has been, well, huge.

People wondered why Disney, which obviously has a huge presence in the state that houses Disney World, hasn’t said jack about the bill. Also, criticism landed upon how the conglomerate has donated to politicians who support the bill (a move denounced by Abigail Disney), and finally, CEO Bob Chapek has explained why people who were waiting for a statement only heard the sound of crickets. Via The Hollywood Reporter, Chapek asserted that corporate statements can be “counterproductive”:

[Y]ou deserve an explanation for why we have not issued a statement. We are going to have a more fulsome conversation about this at the company-wide Reimagine Tomorrow Summit in April, but I will preview that discussion now as it is so timely.

As we have seen time and again, corporate statements do very little to change outcomes or minds. Instead, they are often weaponized by one side or the other to further divide and inflame. Simply put, they can be counterproductive and undermine more effective ways to achieve change.

The “counterproductive” descriptor probably isn’t going to do much to convince LGBTQ+ Disney employees. To that end, Chapek declared that he “want[s] to be crystal clear” in that “I and the entire leadership team unequivocally stand in support of our LGBTQ+ employees, their families, and their communities.” He added that Disney’s working to be more inclusive. That, uh, is apparently part of why Minnie Mouse recently wore a pantsuit, but Chapek did concede that “the very need to reiterate that commitment [to inclusiveness] means we still have more work to do.”

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Pamela Anderson has been taking back her narrative lately after she was recently portrayed in the Hulu series Pam & Tommy. The actress/model recently announced she would be working with Netflix to share her own story in her own words. Now, Anderson will be making her Broadway debut in the iconic musical Chicago.

Anderson will play Roxie Hart from April 12th to June 5th at the Ambassador Theater in New York City. “From Baywatch to Broadway. I am inspired by the unexpected,” Anderson said of the role. “This is it, and I will not hold back anymore. I am letting go. I am ready to see what I’m capable of. For Chicago, I’ll be putting all my cards on the table. I am doubling down — on me.”

The actress has been keeping a low profile over the last few years, playing a few cameo roles in various TV shows and movies. The world has found a renowned interest in Anderson after Hulu’s miniseries brought her life (and scandals) to light. In true Anderson fashion, her Chicago character Roxie Hart is known for her fair share of scandals (well, murder) and how she chooses to change the narrative surrounding the death of her lover.

Anderson added that playing Roxie will be a ‘sweet escape’ for the star. “Playing Roxie Hart is a dream fulfilled. Performing Fosse, you don’t have time to get in your head. You can’t dance, sing, and think at the same time. There is freedom, a unique joy in knowing it’s all about the work. Playing Roxie Hart is a sweet escape for me.”

Making the theater experience as immersive as possible is rarely a bad thing. Unless, of course, you bring live bats into the equation, which is exactly what happened during a showing of The Batman in Texas on Friday. While Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz brought some long overdue sexiness to superhero films, a winged creature had other plans as it flew around the ceiling of an Austin theater, eventually prompting management to pause the film and offer refunds as it struggled to get the little guy out.

However, while those efforts were initially unsuccessful, some theatergoers were actually on board with the live bat action and stuck around to finish the film. Via KXAN:

“Local animal control was immediately contacted, and they have been overseeing the situation to ensure guest, associate and animal safety,” Heidi Deno, the general manager for Moviehouse & Eatery told KXAN.

The theater offered to give refunds, but a majority of the crowd opted to stay and watch the film, “bat and all,” according to the KXAN viewer who took the video.

As for how the bat got in, the theater believes it was a prank and will be stepping up its security and bag checks to make sure nobody else smuggles in a live bat and tries to make it watch Batman, which is admittedly, kind of funny. That said, nobody get the same idea for Spider-Man because spiders are the devil. Don’t even think about it.

You can see video of the live bat in action below. (WARNING: There’s an f-bomb dropped at the beginning.)

(Via KXAN)

Kanye West’s past nine solo studio albums (all of them except The College Dropout) have topped the Billboard 200 chart. He released his latest LP, Donda 2, last month, and unless something changes, it will break Ye’s No. 1 streak. Not only that, but it’s currently not allowed to appear on the chart at all.

Billboard notes that as of right now, Donda 2 is not eligible to appear on any of their charts. They explain:

“[T]he album is being sold with a device that can be used for other means besides the playing of the album. As such, the Stem [Player]/Donda package would fall within Billboard’s latest merch bundle policy, where albums sold with merchandise are not chart-eligible.

Since the Stem Player is a fairly new concept, however, people familiar with the matter from both Billboard and MRC say they plan to continue to monitor its evolution as it relates to chart eligibility.”

Currently, Donda 2 is only officially available via the Stem Player and has not yet appeared on a streaming platform or for sale in any other way. While the first Donda album was released on the Stem Player, it was also made available on streaming services, making it eligible for Billboard chart inclusion.

A video shared on social media over the weekend seems to show a captured Russian military commander admitting that soldiers have been lied to about the true reason for invading Ukraine.

Lieutenant Colonel Astakhov Dmitry Mikhailovich, along with two other soldiers, was taken captive by Ukrainian forces as Putin’s ongoing invasion of the country has begun to stall. Mikhailovich gave a statement to reporters, essentially apologizing for his country’s actions and revealing that his fellow soldiers have been “brainwashed” into believing they are liberating Ukraine from a non-existent fascist regime.

“This is genocide,” Mikhailovich said in a televised address (via The Daily Mail), explaining he only realized that Putin’s explanation for the all-out assault on the country was a lie when he saw his two favorite professional boxers take up arms for the resistance. Mikhailovich said Russian leaders told soldiers that “nationalists and Nazis had seized power” in the top levels of Ukraine’s government, a story he realized wasn’t true when he witnessed regular civilians fighting back against Russian military units and bombs being dropped on heavily-populated civilian cities.

“Obviously, this information was unilateral information,” the colonel said, admitting he was ready to “go to jail” for his part in the invasion. “I feel shame that we came to this country. I don’t know why we were doing it. We knew very little. We brought sorrow to this land.”

Though it’s likely that the captured commander issued these statements under some type of duress, they match previous sentiments expressed by other captured Russian soldiers. Mikhailovich ended his address by begging for mercy for his fellow soldiers in captivity and urged Russians currently fighting in the country to take a hard look at what Putin’s been telling them.

“You are in a tense situation, going against your own commander. But this is genocide,” he said. “Russia cannot win here anyway. Even if we go until the very end. We can invade the territory but we cannot invade the people.”

(Via The Daily Mail)

With their new video for “Roll The Dice,” Sunflower Bean put a bow on a two-part money heist story arc that they built on the previously released clip for “Who Put You Up To This?.” Both songs are from their upcoming album, Headful Of Sugar, which comes out on May 6th and has the band taking a cynical, no-holds-barred look at the world and operating on their own terms.

“Nothing in this life is really free,” Julia Cumming and Nick Kivlen sing in unison on “Roll The Dice.” Money flies amid debauchery, bar brawls ensue, and the band conclude the two-part visual motif.

The message is clear: “Almost everyone we know struggles with money,” the band said in a statement. “The traditional routes towards success and stability in America have severely narrowed. The only way to get ahead is to take big risks and roll the dice.”

Watch the video for “Roll The Dice” above and check out Sunflower Bean’s expanded tour dates below.

03/08 — Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar^
03/10 — Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop^
03/11 — Louisville, KY @ Zanzabar^
03/12 — St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway Nightclub^
03/14 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/15 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/16 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/17 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/19 — Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
03/20 — Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle
03/21 — Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall
03/30 — Cambridge, UK @ Junction 2
03/31 — Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
04/01 — Manchester, UK @ Strange Waves Festival
04/02 — Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
04/04 — Newcastle upon Tyne, UK @ Newcastle University
04/05 — Nottingham, UK @ Rescue Rooms
04/06 — Birmingham, UK @ Mama Roux’s
04/07 — London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
04/09 — Bristol, UK @ Thekla
04/10 — Portsmouth, UK @ The Wedgewood Rooms
04/11 — Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2
04/29 — Albany, NY @ Empire Underground
04/30 — Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
05/05 — Washington, DC @ Union Stage
05/06 — Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes
05/12 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
05/14 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
05/19 — Ferndale, MI @ The Loving Touch
05/20 — Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
05/21 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
05/22 — Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
05/24 — Grand Rapids, MI @The Pyramid Scheme
05/25 — Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
05/26 — Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
06/01 — San Diego, CA @ Music Box SD+
06/02 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre+
06/04 — San Francisco, CA @ The Independent+
06/07 — Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios+
06/08 — Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre+
06/09 — Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile+
06/11 — Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theatre

* with Empath
^ with Barrie
+ with Palehound

Headful Of Sugar is out 5/6 via Mom + Pop. Pre-order it here.

Snoop Dogg is officially joining FaZe Clan. He will be a member of their board of directors, and also talent. This means that we may get to see Snoop Dogg do some really fun collaborations with other members of FaZe Clan as well as be a part of the rising esports brand. FaZe is one of the most popular names out there and Snoop joining them only makes sense when you consider that he’s always had at least some involvement in the world of video games.

Snoop has his own Twitch channel, has appeared in multiple games over the years, and is someone that is always trying to be on the cutting edge of what’s cool and new.

“It only makes sense to partner with FaZe Clan as both a team member and on the Board of Directors,” Snoop Dogg said in a release. “The youth identifies with their brand and that’s something my son Cordell knew, which is why he brought us together.”

“As I’ve been watching what FaZe Clan has been building in the gaming space, I knew there was a natural connection with what my dad has been doing,” Cordell Broadus said. “When I look at the two brands, I was inspired by the synergy they could create so I brought them together in this partnership. I can’t wait for the world to see what we are about to do.”

This is a partnership that is going to not only allow Snoop Dogg and FaZe Clan to do some really cool things in the world of video games but use their combined platforms to help out their communities. Beyond becoming a talent
member of FaZe Clan, Snoop Dogg will also launch a community outreach program centered around charitable activities that support youth. An example of the two working together actually occurred during Super Bowl weekend when FaZe members played in a co-branded FaZe Clan x NFL flag football game and for each team’s participation, and $25,000 per team was donated to youth sports. FaZe Clan’s donation went to Snoop Dogg’s Youth Football League.

After 2018’s And Nothing Hurt, Spiritualized announced their ninth studio album, the aptly-titled Everything Was Beautiful, which was set to come out on February 25 of this year. The lead single was an epic, nearly seven-minute song “Always Together With You” that stayed true to their ethereal, out-of-body-experience type of sound. There was also the folky “Crazy.” The album, though, was pushed back; it’s now set to arrive on April 22. The newest single, “The Mainline Song,” is out today.

The track is lengthy as well, approaching six minutes, and J Spaceman’s vocals don’t enter until the second half. There are layers upon layers of sound and clamor; there are noises like simmering and echoing, and it all makes up a kind of boisterous celebration. It’s hard to tell what instruments are involved, especially because the whole album has 16 different instruments throughout the songs. Spaceman also employed more than 30 musicians and singers, making this album less of a piece of music by one band but more of a collaborative effort by an orchestra. Everything Was Beautiful was made during the pandemic, when Spaceman was experiencing what he calls “beautiful solitude.” The album so far, though, sounds far from lonely or isolated; it feels intact with humanity and extremely connected.

Listen to “The Mainline Song” above.

Kanye West is one of the more outspoken artists in music today, but he’s far from the only one. One of his peers who has developed a bit of a reputation for picking fights with other musicians is Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, who has never been known to hold his tongue. He’s never been a fan of some of Kanye’s more outrageous stunts, either, vehemently refusing Kanye’s claim of being the world’s “greatest living rock star” in 2015. More recently, it seems Kanye has once again got Taylor’s goat, prompting him to thrash the recently-divorced rapper in an interview with Metro UK.

This time, he’s taking issue with Kanye’s Donda 2 release tactic of selling the album exclusively through his $200 stem player, which Taylor characterized as “pompous and ridiculous,” going so far as calling Kanye a “f*cking moron” over it. The stem player, which separates the music into four separate tracks or “stems,” allows fans to transform the music as it plays, controlling the volume on each track and allowing some degree of speed and sound reversing. To Taylor, this is akin to “releasing all the parts for a car and sending them to people’s houses and going there, you got a free car, now you’ve got to figure out how to build the goddamn thing.”

Contrary to Taylor’s comments, the album is pre-downloaded in full and the touch controls merely allow fans to play around with how each song plays — i.e., lowering drums or vocals (my personal favorite use for it so far). Although his words suggest a slight misunderstanding of how the stem player works, Taylor’s got another point as well. “You’re assuming that the audience has the access and same technology that you have but you’re a f**king moron for doing that. Are you serious? It doesn’t work that way. The thinking that that’s a smart thing to do just shows you how convoluted and off the f**king property Kanye West really is.”

“When you’ve got that much money and that much people around you telling you exactly what you want to hear, your concept of reality just goes right out the f*cking window,” he continued. “People can’t afford their f*cking apartments for f*ck’s sake. It’s not right. It’s just so pompous and ridiculous.” He’s kind of got a point there; as fans have already programmed emulators to get around having to buy the players. Even Nipsey Hussle still kept his $100 mixtape, Crenshaw, free to stream while also running his “proud to pay” campaign, and he offered value besides periodic patches of an unfinished project. And while Kanye claims that the stem player returns profits and control back to artists, he has yet to demonstrate how the $200 devices really benefit anyone other than himself.

With the second Florence And The Machine song release in as many weeks, Florence Welch is taking a forceful look at femininity. Whereas “King” looked lyrically at shattering traditional female roles, the newly-release “Heaven Is Here” doubles down with a furiously choreographed video featuring a cast of talented women that was filmed in the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv.

“‘Heaven Is Here’ was the first song I wrote in lockdown after an extended period of not being able to get to the studio,” Welch explained in a statement. “I wanted to make something monstrous. And this clamour of joy, fury and grief was the first thing that came out. With dance studios also shut it was my dream to one day create choreography with it. So it’s one of the first pieces of music I have made specifically with contemporary dance in mind.”

Recorded in Kyiv in November of 2021, the video sees Welch flanked by a group of dancers in a studio in the currently war-torn city. The way they enact the impassioned dance (choreographed by Ryan Heffington) is equally as affecting as Welch’s lyrics: “More catholic taste than the Devil, all gilded and golden. Yes, I’m your girl. Hell, if it glitters, I’m going.” It’s the second Florence And The Machine video in a row directed by Autumn de Wilde.

Welch explained in an Instagram post that two of the dancers are actually sheltering in Kyiv right now. “To my brave and beautiful sisters Maryne and Anastasiia. I love you. I wish I could put my arms around you. Strength,” she said in the caption. She also shared a link to support Ukraine via Rescue.org.

Watch the video for “Heaven Is Here” above.