“Music isn’t sports, no matter how much we want to rank and score it,” Grayson Haver Currin wrote late last year in a brilliant piece about how year-end lists might be losing their utility. And while I generally agree with this sentiment, lately I’ve been thinking about how music IS like sports, whether we like it or not. And it’s not just Billboard charts or Pitchfork scores that make it that way. It’s the constant competition for the public’s limited attention, where artists need to push themselves in relation to their peers to rise to the top, in hopes that quality and creativity reign, rather than being the loudest or best promoted.

In the recently omnipresent livestreaming space, it’s particularly tempting to compare efforts in relation to each other, and that makes the best music livestream moments stand out. On Friday, for example, YouTube was the place for a weekend dance party unlike any other. Producer extraordinaire Mark Ronson offered up his Love Lockdown: Video Mixtape, a 90-minute fundraiser for the World Health Organization that saw him spinning records from his past (or that he simply enjoys) with guest appearances from a number of the tunes’ contributors. A song like his latest (excellent) album’s title track, “Late Night Feelings,” found vocalist Lykke Li beaming in from her cell phone to give an intimate, psychedelic interpretation. There was a selfie-stick sporting “Dancing On My Own” rendition that saw Robyn rolling around on the floor, Dua Lipa presenting “Electricity” from what appeared to be her backyard, and even an Inception-style DJ set within a DJ set from A-Trak that would impress even Christopher Nolan.

Whether it was incorporating something as simple as the Kanye West music video from which the endeavor’s title was taken or something as batshit as Jurrasic Park‘s Sam Neill covering “Uptown Funk,” Ronson’s offering hit on elements missing from many of the livestreams that have populated the pandemic world. It demonstrated thinking outside the box. It sounded great. It used unprecedented times to create something that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise. It felt necessary and fun. It was worth sharing with friends, worth experiencing as a community, and provided lasting value that could stretch beyond this quarantined moment of human history.

If that sounds like a knock on the rest of music livestreams, it’s not meant to be. Since touring effectively ended in the middle of March, musicians big and small have been faced with their own unprecedented crisis. Fledging artists have seen a primary revenue stream disappear, while larger ones have rallied around their extensive teams suddenly facing financial uncertainty. And since then, many have been tirelessly offered up everything from solo acoustic performances and DJ sets to IG Live interviews and beat battles. Tegan And Sara started a project where they discuss Sara’s garden with fans. Erykah Badu is providing guided mediation. Even our own People’s Party debuted a live series, bringing the great interview style of Talib Kweli to an audience suddenly lacking for new content.

To criticize the livestream experiments that fall short feels both ungrateful and mean-spirited. Much of it looks to either serve fans or literally raise money for those in need. Most of the artists are offering up their time and creativity without expectations of personal monetary compensation. And while the most cynical lens can easily (and probably deservedly) mock Gal Gadot’s “Imagine” debacle or the recent UK-centric Foo Fighters cover that saw participants ranging from Sean Paul to Rag’n’Bone Man, doing so undercuts the environment that’s spawning such work. The world is frightening on levels that most have never experienced, and musicians are throwing everything they have against the wall to see what sticks.

There have been clear highlights over the last couple of months. Death Cab For Cutie leader Ben Gibbard has taken the time to give his catalog a close look for comforting home sets. The Verzuz series and Club Quarantine quickly captured social media’s attention by mixing viral moments with star-spotting in ways that feel as close to a real club experience as you can get without leaving your couch. Travis Scott’s next-level Fortnite appearance launched a now-No. 1 single. Virtual festival experiences like Warner’s PlayOn Fest or 100 Gecs’ Minecraft festival gave new meaning to communal moments. Coachella’s new documentary allowed for the world’s best music festival to own its usual weekend despite being postponed until fall. And though people like Mark Ronson are showing that artists are just scratching the surface with regards to what is possible in entertaining the socially isolated, Post Malone recently showed that innovation is only one way to capture the public’s attention and imagination.

On Friday, April 24, America’s favorite genre-defying teddy bear, Post Malone, unveiled his contribution to the livestream world: a Nirvana covers set. When it was announced earlier that week, there was quick brushback from rockists sure that Posty was not meant to hold a candle to the alt-rock titans. Even with Courtney Love giving her blessing for the charity event, plenty were skeptical as to what, if anything, Posty could offer the classic songs. But once the 90-minute performance commenced, it was clear that Post Malone wasn’t just taking up space for bored music fans to wade into the weekend. Instead, he delivered the definitive moment of the quarantine music experience.

Malone showed he meant business with the great backing band, anchored by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. He crafted a setlist that expanded beyond a few well-known Nirvana hits and showed the depth and breadth of their catalog. He pounded beers, smoked cigarettes, cracked jokes, and featured solid sound and camera work (those last two were particularly refreshing). He simply had a blast sharing the music that he loves, and likewise, people had a blast watching him. Word of mouth quickly spread on social media that this was a performance that had to be seen, with a level of enthusiasm that is rare for livestreams. Fans are surely grateful for all the content musicians had been giving up until that point, but Post Malone showed that the potential to bring people together was still unexplored.

Post Malone’s Nirvana set was unpretentious and filled with joy, enough so that Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic tweeted out his emotional response during the set. And, it ultimately achieved its goal in raising more than 4.3 million dollars for the WHO. As someone that witnessed one of the rare Nirvana semi-reunion performances, I can honestly say that Post Malone held a candle to the real deal, giving the best interpretations of Nirvana songs that have been heard outside of the original band. Who would have thought that would be something we’d experience together during this genuinely terrible time? And along with Ronson’s inventive set a week later, these appearances argue that we’ve yet to see the limits of what can be achieved by musicians during this particularly dark and weird time. Creativity is the ultimate currency of the artist, and only after several weeks of testing the water and thinking on the fly are we seeing lasting, memorable moments. It’s possible that it won’t be viable to see live music in person for many more months, if even this year. And while the ramifications of that on everyone from the musicians to the extended members of the music industry is hard to overstate (in short: it’s bad), there is some solace in the fact that there will continue to be livestream creations that extend what we have thought is possible.

We’re about two weeks out from another quarantine milestone: Charli XCX is releasing a collaborative effort that she has crafted with her fans entirely during social isolation. Whereas the majority of new songs released in the past couple of months are holdovers from before the pandemic, Charli has very publicly been making an album that couldn’t have existed at any other time. It is to be seen whether the album will be more than just a timestamp from the months that people were confined to their homes, but the music has so far shown an eagerness to transcend that, created in the public eye on social media and with frequent livestreamed updates. Like Ronson and Posty, Charli is trying to take a big step in owning this particular moment, in setting the bar higher, in creating art meant to last and be remembered instead of providing a momentary distraction. It has always felt a bit vapid to look at times of political unrest or, as we are experiencing now, a health and financial crisis, only to ponder “the great art that will come out of it.” But in a time that feels like a content bombardment, there is comfort in knowing that the best is yet to come and that great artists are rising to the occasion. Sports might be generally on pause right now, but in the music world, winners are still emerging.

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

As we reported late last week, Sam Lloyd — who played the lovable, down-in-the-dumps lawyer Ted on Scrubs — passed away after a long battle with cancer. It’s another coincidence (an unfortunate one, this time) for Zach Braff and Donald Faison’s new Scrubs rewatch podcast, Fake Doctors, Real Friends, about a sitcom that keeps dovetailing with our reality.

Zach Braff, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, and others paid tribute to Lloyd on social media on Saturday after learning about Lloyd’s passing. Meanwhile, in Braff and Faison’s first podcast episode since the news broke, the two devoted the first few minutes to Sam Lloyd.

“Sam Lloyd, who plays Ted the lawyer on our show, has passed away,” Faison began. “For me this is really heartbreaking. Sam was a very, very amazing person. He was a part of a band called The Blanks, and I remember realizing that Sam wasn’t just a really funny actor. He was a really talented singer. He was a very good basketball player. He was also a good friend.”

“He was the nicest man I think I have ever met,” Braff added. “He was so sweet and kind, and he just loved to laugh. He would come on, and he would play that super nerdy lawyer character, but we would all just crack up so hard with Sam.”

Despite appearances, Lloyd was also an “amazing” basketball player.

“I used to play in a league [for actors],” Faison added. “I would try to recruit Sam every Sunday to play for my team, but he would say, ‘No, because the Patriots are playing, and I can’t miss the Patriots.’ I always thought he could be such a secret weapon, because no one would have expected that Sam Lloyd could play basketball that well. He was an assassin on the court. A killer on the court.”

Braff also mentioned that, like his character on Scrubs, he found true love later in life, and that he had just had a baby. Before passing, Lloyd was able to be with his son on his first birthday.

“We love him, and we know the fans do, as well,” Braff added, directing listeners to the GoFundMe page devoted to raising money to help care for Lloyd’s wife and son after Lloyd’s death.

Source: Fake Doctors, Real Friends

Isiah Thomas popped back up in episode five of The Last Dance. The previous week spent a ton of time discussing Thomas and the Bad Boys-era Detroit Pistons, with a special emphasis on that team’s desire to physically and mentally challenge Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls when they’d meet in the postseason. He wasn’t as prominent in this week’s first episode, but Thomas still made a cameo.

One of the main plot lines on Sunday involved the Dream Team, which infamously did not include Thomas even though he was one of the best players in the league. The belief has long been that Jordan specifically demanded that Thomas not make the squad, something Jordan denied. Michael Wilbon, then of the Washington Post, pointed out that a number of players had issues with Thomas, which did not help his case.

Wilbon went onto ESPN’s The Jump on Monday and said that “nine of those guys” on the Dream Team objected to Thomas making it, which is a pretty huge claim, seeing as how 12 players went to Barcelona on the squad. Soon after, Wilbon took to Twitter to apologize to Thomas for getting this “dead wrong.”

Thomas thanked Wilbon for offering up this correction.

While it’s been nearly three decades since the Dream Team took international basketball by storm, it was evident in the episode that Thomas still takes his snub from the squad personally. As a number of people have pointed out, the team’s chemistry was a major reason why it was able to run opponents off the floor, and Thomas very well might have caused issues due to the amount of players with whom he had beef. The real number is unknown, but at the very least, we now know that nine guys did not express an aversion to Thomas making it.

I would have had to have been actively on fire to not take the opportunity to talk with Jerry Seinfeld about his new Netflix special, 23 Hours To Kill (which is streaming now) on a Zoom conference call when it was presented to me. When I was 15, I threw a sad solitary comedy nerd party for the series finale of Seinfeld, thumbing through a copy of some purported “complete” guide to the show during commercials while hoping the end would never come. I also devoured/memorized I’m Telling You For The Last Time, his 1998 HBO special and album/swan song for many of his classic bits. And then I waited (for a while) for whatever was going to come next, delighting in twice nightly reruns of Seinfeld (that doubled and tripled my experience of watching every episode) and blips like the Comedian documentary and Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. But, perhaps more exciting than the opportunity to talk comedy with Seinfeld was the chance to experience Jerry Seinfeld on a Zoom call.

So many questions rush into your mind when you think about the dynamics of that, powered by the perception of his tastes and temperament. Would he be in a very expensive suit or is he secretly an athleisure guy when at home? What does his Zoom bunker look like? Was it an airplane hangar with 74 vintage Porsches? What if he used the Seinfeld living room virtual background? And what about… the stuff? That’s the medicine cabinet snoop for our time — knick-knacks, shelving, and the internal judgment of those things. And, indeed, I did spend too much time staring at the wall unit behind Seinfeld while waiting for my turn as other writers on the call asked him questions.

Here’s what I learned: Jerry Seinfeld appears to have a mammoth vinyl collection. Like, a literal wall of sound. I could only make out two albums that were fronted out for display: Lenny Bruce — Carnegie Hall and The Incomplete Works Of Carl Reiner And Mel Brooks. Given more time and more questions, I might have asked about the import of those specific albums to Seinfeld. Absent that, my takeaway is that they reinforce the idea that he prefers things with a history to them. His near entire post-Seinfeld on-screen career is built on that, blending bafflingly beautiful vintage cars with simple pleasures like a long chat with friends over coffee and shared reverence for the craft and history of comedy in the aforementioned Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. Is he a classicist or is he just uninterested by shiny new things?

In the new special, Seinfeld offers some guidance, but there are holes: “I don’t want to grow, I don’t want to change, I don’t want to improve at anything, expand my interests, meet anyone new, or learn anything I don’t already know,” he says. That sounds utterly curmudgeonly, but here he is virtually in front of me, sitting on a Zoom call, adapting. The special offers additional proof that things aren’t so clear cut. Because the act of releasing something new and trying to make an audience laugh breaks the mirage of gentle misanthropy and qualifies as a strive toward getting better at something. Oh sure, Seinfeld demures over modern conveniences and social quick keys, but he’s also subtly delivering a message that, intentionally or not, cuts through the idea of a bold red generational dividing line. Quite beautifully, while there are certain places where youngs and olds can’t meet in the middle, by and large, we should all realize that we’re unified in our exasperation for so much of life’s petty annoyances, inconveniences, and obligations.

While Seinfeld isn’t directly plugged in to pop culture ephemera, he’s still aware of it. I ask him if he knows that he played a small role in the most recent episode of The Last Dance docuseries and he says that he does, but only because his 14-year-old just told him. In the episode, Seinfeld gets to hang out in the locker room with the great Michael Jordan during his farewell tour (briefly). He also draws light parallels between himself and Jordan when interviewed at that time; a moment when both were allegedly walking away from highly lucrative and celebrated careers. If you’ve seen the series (or his somewhat salty Hall Of Fame speech or read Wright Thompson’s brilliant ESPN profile of him from 2011), you know that Jordan is and always has been somewhat consumed by his competitive nature. His heart, mind, and soul still operate as if they are actively a part of the best basketball player alive, but his body can’t hold up its end of the bargain.

Comedians don’t necessarily fade because their bodies fail them, but it is easy to get cut off by a culture that is designed to drift away from us all, eventually. To not have that happen and to continue making people laugh at a high level, the solution is as simple as it is difficult — you’ve got to paddle harder. And so Seinfeld does, even while being outwardly unimpressed by aspects of the technoculture.

“I’m intensely competitive, but not with other people. I feel like I’m competing against the natural forces of the universe, which is to be lazy, to not work, to coast and not do things that make you nervous,” he tells me before recalling a lesson learned from his father, Kal, who was a sign maker and small business owner on Long Island. “I think inertia is the key physical aspect of human experience… To always be thinking about inertia. My father always used to quote the first law of relativity, Newton’s first law: ‘a body at rest tends to remain at rest.’ But when he said a body, he meant the human body. So yes, I do compete very hard against myself to like, okay, this is how much work you did last week. I want to see more this week. That’s the game I like to play and I’ve gotten more intense about it actually at this stage of my life. Because I feel the end of time more clearly.”

The end of time and, of course, normality, feels like a more clear concern to a lot of us in this frightening and weird moment. Seinfeld sees it and the effect of it, mentioning the work his wife, Jessica, is doing through Good+ to help people already impacted by poverty. And he surely knows comedians that are worried about their future as road warriors. It’s natural to wonder how COVID will continue to influence comedy, specifically, what makes people laugh and if they even want to. This special is, in fact, a bit of a test case, with myriad jokes born from observations about pre-COVID living.

When I ask Seinfeld directly about whether people will want to laugh about the mad experience of quarantines and social distancing when this is all over or whether they’ll want to snap back to laughing about the mundane and terribly missed minutiae of life upon which he has built a career, he doesn’t offer a straight answer. I think, because he doesn’t have one. He’s discussed it with friends, relaying a thought from Colin Quinn about how he thinks “people are going to be sick of it by the time we get into those venues and [they’re] not going to want to hear about it.” But then he adds his own, very simple, and not unexpected addendum. “A great joke is a great joke. If you have a great joke about the virus…”

And then Seinfeld does what he has always done: he sees a topic, he absorbs it, and he spits out a joke like some kind of machine.

“What I’ve been saying about it is I think if I was another virus, I would be intensely jealous of this virus coming up with this two weeks of no symptoms idea. Like the most brilliant bit ever that a virus has thought of. That we can spread without them knowing that we’re in there. And so, yeah, I think, you know, the virus has got some very clever stuff.”

It’s funny, I laugh, and then afterward I realize that, when all is said and done, whether people want to laugh at this moment or something completely unrelated, Jerry Seinfeld will likely fill his time trying to find the right joke.

’23 Hours To Kill’ is available to stream on Netflix now.

Melbourne indie-rockers Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are powering through the pandemic by rolling out Sideways To New Italy, their upcoming album they announced in March. Today, they’ve return with “Falling Thunder,” the latest single from the album.

The breezy and driving song comes across like a less tranquil version of a Real Estate track, and the band’s Tom Russo says of the song’s vertical video:

“Our friend Jamieson Moore shot the footage of Sicily, Sardinia and the Aeolian Islands on her phone while on vacation last year. The Aeolian Islands is also where my and Joe Russo’s ancestors are from. We were also planning to shoot the band playing in Eolian Hall in Melbourne (it’s a community hall founded by Aeolian immigrants). We got some practice footage but by the time it came to shoot the band, we were on lockdown. So it’s turned out as a kind of a love letter to a particular place.”

He also said the song is “about pushing on through the relentless march of time, against the constant cycle of seasons. And the way people change and relationships change. It’s set in that time when autumn is turning into winter and the trees are getting bare.”

Watch the “Falling Thunder” video above.

Sideways To New Italy is out 6/5 via Sub Pop. Pre-order it here.

Australian songwriter Gordi continues to preview her delayed sophomore record Our Two Skins with the fervent single “Volcanic.” Written in a time where she was grappling with her identity amid a Christian family and Australia’s same-sex marriage vote, “Volcanic” sonically represents an intense swell of emotions.

Reflecting the quietly intricate cadence of her formerly-released singles, “Volcanic” gently murmurs with urgency. An exhalation of synth tones hums under Gordi’s rich delivery. “I have these moments where I panic / When I shut down and go manic / So eruptive and destructive like within I am volcanic,” she sings.

In a statement, Gordi detailed the inspiration behind the single, saying it’s about the drama surrounding her experience with anxiety:

“It speaks to a rush of anxiety – about why, about what is real and what is not, about the drama of it, about the vortex of it. When it surges you can feel paralysed and out of control at the same time – ‘shut down’ and ‘manic.’ Its self-destructive nature can be so crippling. I wanted the song to feel like a wave of anxiety. The tempo never changes but the piano solo starts at half-time and rushes until it is double the speed, though the beat never changes. And then suddenly; it’s over.”

About the record as a whole, Gordi said the idea of transparency woven through the album: “A big theme of the record is: there’s nothing to hide behind. We didn’t have all the bells and whistles. You’re just standing there, with your hands in your pockets going: this is me. This is it. This is all I have.”

Watch Gordi’s “Volcano” video above.

Our Two Skins is out 6/26 via Jagjaguwar. Pre-order it here.

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Alabama Shakes vocalist Brittany Howard recently pivoted towards solo music with her soulful record Jaime. Now, Howard is bringing her musical influence to the airwaves: The singer has partnered with Sonos to create a curated station of music that inspires her.

Titled The Encyclopedia Of Brittany, the new Sonos Radio station begins streaming today (May 5). It features commentary by Howard along with an eclectic mix of music that is prompted by her own influences and obsessions. Howard says her Sonos station includes a wide range of music that has inspired her from childhood up until now:

“The Encyclopedia of Brittany is a collection of songs that weaves in and out of my personal education of music and how one goes about making it. There are beloved songs from my earliest memories of childhood to things I’ve just recently discovered. One song can be so drastically different from the next, because all that is necessary to make this list is a song that made me think, ‘wait, what is this?’ at one point in my life. I’m excited to share this with you and I hope you find something new here that can inspire you as well.”

Just ahead of the new station’s launch, Howard announced her curated project on social media.

Along with Howard’s Sonos station, the streaming service also announced that Thom Yorke will have his own curated station. The service is also passing the aux cord to other musicians like Phoebe Bridgers, Jamila Woods, Khruangbin, Soccer Mommy, Vagabon, Whitney, and more with guest DJ opportunities.

The Encyclopedia of Brittany is available now via Sonos. Learn more about Sonos Radio here.

Lil Dicky has gone from barely accepted punchline of hip-hop to cornering the market on comedy television acclaim thanks to his semi-autobiographical FX show Dave. Based loosely on his own life and experiences maneuvering on the outskirts of rap stardom, Dave became a sensation after its fifth episode, “Hype Man,” revealed the show’s emotional center and willingness to tackle serious topics alongside its dick jokes and awkward, fish-out-of-water scenarios involving Dicky’s encounters with cooler, more established rappers.

Dicky himself — or Dave, as he has stated he actually prefers to be called — posted a long caption on Instagram reflecting on the show’s success and his personal philosophy, which might well be equated to “shoot your shot.” While he acknowledges in the post that privilege has played a part in his rise to stardom, so too has his boldness — to succeed or to fail, you first have to try, which is what he clearly wants to impress on his followers, who he thanks for believing in him from the beginning.

“This picture was captured of me during the first shoot day of season one,” he reveals. “If I look overwhelmed, it’s because I was.
I had never written a script before. I actually downloaded the screenwriting software for the first time to write this season. I had never acted before. Never executive produced before. Never done anything beyond make rap songs and videos.”

However, he continues, “A lot of people believed in me. Many of you did from the start of my career. I could tell that it wasn’t just about my music, you guys actually liked and believed in ME. As a person.” The takeaway, he writes, “Let me be a prime example when I say that things are totally possible in life. I had no legitimate reason to believe I could be a successful rapper. But I believed, and then I became that. I had no real reason to believe I could make a great tv show without any experience. But I believed, and I believe we achieved that.”

Read Lil Dicky’s full caption in the embed above.

For a musician who is used to being on the road and otherwise staying busy with their hectic careers, this quarantine era can be a period of restlessness for some. Artists are finding ways to stay occupied, though, and for St. Vincent, that involves performing from her home.

Yesterday, she hopped on Instagram to share a quick cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days.” The Houses Of The Holy track is originally a guitar-driven rocker, but St. Vincent’s take is a stripped-down acoustic affair. She downplayed the whole thing, writing in the video description, “The moderately-played, half-remembered partial-cover of Led Zepplin’s ‘Dancing Days’ that the world has been clamoring for FOR YEARS at long last.”

This isn’t St. Vincent’s first cover in recent days. Back in January, she joined Foo Fighters and a bunch of other artists for a Grammys tribute concert in honor of Prince. That show was broadcast a couple weeks ago, and St. Vincent offered a funky rendition of “Controversy.” Also this year, St. Vincent launched a line of comfort-focused athletic clothes for women, and she launched her Shower Sessions podcast, in which she interviews artists in a bathroom.

Watch St. Vincent perform “Dancing Days” above.

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