GoneTrending

The world learned yesterday that iconic Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor died at 56 years old. Shortly before her death, though, she filmed and shared a video in which she talks about making new music.

The official Twitter account for O’Connor is @SineadOConnor, but a recent pinned tweet directs to her more personal account, @786OmShahid. There were apparently some who were unsure about the legitimacy of the @786OmShahid account, so on July 9, O’Connor verified her identity by sharing what would end up being one of the final videos of her during her lifetime (perhaps the final one).

In the video, she starts, “I said I’ll make a video because some of you are saying you don’t believe it’s my account: it is my account. But fret not, I’m going to be a good girl [laughs].” After talking some about her son’s 2022 death, she showed off her London apartment. That included a new acoustic guitar hanging on the wall that she said she was “going to write some tunes on.”

In 2021, O’Connor changed her mind multiple times about leaving music, first retiring, then backtracking, then retiring again. Her final album was 2014’s I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss. In 2020, she released the single “Trouble Of The World,” and in 2022, she featured on “Tears From The Moon” by Conjure One.

The cause of O’Connor’s death has not yet been determined, but The Guardian reports that per a statement from Metropolitan police, “The death is not being treated as suspicious.” A statement shared by O’Connor’s family reads, “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”

In 2015, Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge founded an entertainment company called To The Stars, which later expanded to become To The Stars… Academy Of Arts & Sciences. That version of the company famously got into extraterrestrial research, and now it’s being credited for reinvigorating interest in and bringing legitimacy to UFO studies. In fact, DeLonge and To The Stars were mentioned during this week’s congressional UFO hearings, and DeLonge is pretty happy about it.

He wrote on Instagram yesterday (July 26), “The UFO Hearings today made history. I am so proud of the three witnesses today that blew the lid off the UFO secrecy that has been intact for decades. [Ryan] Graves, [David] Fravor and [David] Grusch are HEROES. I appreciated the shout-out during the hearing, but so many were involved with @tothestars.media to make this happen.”

He then hocked some merch, concluding, “Get your shirt now, and remember that we at To The Stars changed the world. Www.ToThestars.Media.”

As for the DeLonge mention, that came via a statement from Fravor, a retired US Navy commander. He said:

“In the weeks that passed, I was made aware that Lue [Elizondo] had left the Pentagon in protest and joined forces with Tom Delonge, Chris Mellon, Steve Justice, and others to form To The Stars Academy. It was this organization that pressed the issue with leading industry experts and USG officials, worked with Leslie Keane, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helene Cooper to publish the articles in the New York Times in December 2017 admitting the USG was looking at UAPs and removed the stigma of the UFO topic, which led to us being here today.

Those articles opened a door for the government and the public that cannot be closed. It has led to an interest from our elected officials who are not focused on ‘little green men’ but on figuring out what these craft are, where are they from, the technology they possess, and how do they operate.”

Elsewhere, DeLonge shared somebody’s tweet that reads, “I used to have a friend that would say that Tom DeLonge being into aliens was something you would only hear out of a movie and she was so right bc this movie just got to the good part where the guy who’s nuts is actually not nuts and is the one who was right all along.” DeLonge added, “And, I have a lot more to say [sunglasses emoji].”

Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Last July, Animal Collective performed “King’s Walk” during their impressive NPR “Tiny Desk (Home) Concert,” which followed their album Time Skiffs. Uproxx‘s Steven Hyden called that one the quartet’s “comeback record.”

By October 2022, Animal Collective canceled their European and UK tour dates scheduled for November because of “obstacles related to COVID and the economy.” It set them up for another comeback, which they seem primed to deliver in the form of Isn’t It Now?, revealed on Wednesday, July 26, as Animal Collective’s next album due out September 29.

The announcement was coupled with the release of “Soul Capturer.” A press release detailed the song’s inspiration, explaining, “An anthem for our existential online malaise, it calls to mind whatever it is that seduces you — drugs, sex, an old friend you know better than to trust, and absolutely and unequivocally the Internet and how it can make you feel so low about even your absolute highs.”

The press release also notes that Isn’t It Now?‘s 64-minute runtime makes it “the longest Animal Collective album ever.” Check out the album cover art and tracklist below.

1. “Soul Capturer”
2. “Genie’s Open”
3. “Broke Zodiac”
4. “Magicians From Baltimore”
5. “Defeat”
6. “Gem & I”
7. “Stride Rite”
8. “All The Clubs Are Broken”
9. “King’s Walk”

Isn’t It Now? is out 9/29 via Domino. Find more information here.

Selena Gomez was vulnerable as ever in last November’s Apple TV+ documentary My Mind & Me. While promoting the film, Gomez graced the cover of Rolling Stone and told the publication, “My only friend in the industry really is Taylor [Swift].” Francia Raisa appeared to unfollow Gomez in the aftermath and comment on the aggregated quote, writing, “Interesting,” which led people to assume it had caused a rift in their long-standing friendship.

Gomez put that speculation to bed by commenting on a TikTok reaction, saying, “Sorry I didn’t mention every person I know.” On Wednesday, July 26, she let everyone know that their friendship is alive and well again.

“Happiest of birthdays to this special human being,” Gomez wrote in an Instagram carousel. “No matter where life takes us, I love you. [red heart emoji] @franciaraisa”

In 2017, Raisa donated her kidney to Gomez, who needed the transplant because of her battle with the autoimmune disease lupus.

This March, Gomez expressed her undying gratitude to Raisa for the selfless act an in episode of Dear… on Apple TV+. Midway through the episode, Gomez detailed the disorienting diagnosis and the subsequent vile weight-shaming she received from fans and the press before addressing the kidney transplant.

“I was terrified for my life completely,” she said. “I know that there’s crazy waiting lists. I know that it’s an insane process. I know that that would require so much from me that I wasn’t sure I was prepared to do.”

Gomez added, “My best friend — her name is Francia — she said, ‘No, I’m absolutely getting tested,’ so within three days, she went to do it, and she was a match. And it was one of those moments where I felt watched over. I know I was so, so, so lucky. … I will never, ever, ever be more in debt to a person than Francia.”

On Wednesday afternoon while attempting to speak to reporters, Mitch McConnell froze up for about 30 seconds before being escorted away. No matter what you think of the Speaker of the House, it’s a disturbing video, showing someone appearing to lose control of their neurological functions, and while in public.

And yet McConnell wasn’t whisked away to a hospital and it’s unclear if he was attended to by a doctor. Instead he returned shortly thereafter to answer reporters’ questions. His staff claimed he was simply “lightheaded.” It’s also unclear if it has any relation to the injury he suffered earlier this year.

Later that evening, McConnell returned to the halls of the Capitol to briefly — very briefly — talk with reporters, even claiming he’d landed a zinger when he received a worried call from sitting president and frequent sparring partner Joe Biden.

“The president called to check on me. I told him I got sandbagged,” McConnell cracked, referring to Biden tripping over a sandbag last month at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.

Reporters repeatedly asked McConnell if he was okay and if he had any inkling about what happened. He only repeated, twice, that he’s “fine” before moving on.

After the incident, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, who has not examined McConnell, speculated that he might have suffered a “neurological event,” maybe even a stroke.

(Via Mediaite)

It’s quite common for people to fantasize about their wedding day—the ceremony, the bridal party, the dress, the cake—and some people spend months or even years meticulously planning every detail. People even spend thousands of dollars hiring wedding planners to make sure that the big day stays fully organized and all the moving parts come together without a hitch.

But no matter how well you plan, sometimes things that simply can’t be predicted happen. And how you and your beloved handle the hitches and glitches on your wedding day can say a lot.

Especially when that hitch or glitch is something major…like watching the beautiful, four-tier wedding cake—the one you spent time choosing and lots of money creating to share with your wedding guests—come crashing to the ground right in front of you.

That’s what happened to one couple who eagerly watched as the caterers who were carrying their wedding cake tripped on their way into the room, sending their cake to an untimely demise in spectacular fashion.

The video, shared by @the.sarik on Instagram, is only about 10 seconds long, but it tells a whole beautiful love story in the reactions of both the groom and the bride.

Watch:

See on Instagram

First of all, hope those waiters are OK. But secondly, staying calm and making the most of a bad situation is a huge character plus, and this groom clearly has those qualities in spades. You can see in the bride’s face that she knows it, too.

“Her eyes show that she knows she got the right guy,” wrote one commenter.

“The way he just called her to eat is just phenomenal,” shared another.

“‘Cake is still cake.’ Yelling at those waiters won’t solve anything, but it can ruin their whole lives,” wrote another. “They know their mistake, and they can be corrected privately. May the reaction of this man be an inspiration to us all, to care for the feelings of other people more than material things.”

“Of all the things that could ruin a wedding day, I’m glad the husband knew this didn’t have to be one of them,” shared another.

When unpredictable things do happen, it’s largely the reaction of the people involved that determines whether they become tragic tales or entertaining stories. If what we saw in the video is any indicator, this couple will be telling their grandkids someday about how the guys carrying their wedding cake tripped and ruined it, and how Grandpa’s response won Grandma’s heart all over again.

Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek is one month out from Haunted Mountain, his third solo studio album and his first via 4AD. Meek has been gradually mounting his album rollout for the better part of two months, beginning with the title track in late May and “Paradise” in late June.

As that pattern would suggest, Meek wasn’t going to let July end without releasing another single. His latest is “Cyclades,” a folksy nostalgic tune filled with vivid anecdotal lyricism about his dad’s past motorcycle crash in Siskiyou County and his mom’s similarly scary experience in Greece.

“These are all true stories, or at least as I was told, or remember them being told,” Meek wrote on Instagram. “There’s a thin line between history and mythology. Our lives are made of an endless myriad of unfinished stories, of every encounter of billions of people at the center of thousands of years in each direction. the telling is secondary.”

Meek also announced new tour dates across the US, Japan, and Korea. Tickets for his added US dates will go on sale beginning this Friday, July 28, followed by Korean shows going on sale on August 1 and Japanese shows on August 8. All dates and ticketing information can be found here.

Listen to “Cyclades” above.

Haunted Mountain is out 8/25 via 4AD. Find more information here.

Warning: This post contains some minor spoilers about Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, which is good and which you should go see on as big a screen you can find.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens with a bizarre sight (and sound): A de-aged Harrison Ford as a younger Indy…who surreally speaks with the gravelly rasp of an 80-year-old man. In another timeline it wouldn’t have been the only summer movie this year to sport de-aging tech. At one point the Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One crew toyed with using it on Tom Cruise for scenes set about 30 years in the past. They thought better of it. But if they had they would have done the same for another actress a handful of years younger than him.

In a new interview with Empire (as caught by /Film), director Christopher McQuarrie reveals they thought about casting Julia Roberts as Ethan Hunt’s doomed lover, seen in flashbacks that take place before he joined IMF. Explains McQuarrie:

“I said, ‘OK, if I were doing this sequence, it would be Tom in, say, 1989. It would be Tony Scott’s ‘Mission: Impossible.’ That’s who would have been directing the movie before Brian De Palma, you know, in that era. We looked at ‘Days of Thunder’ and we looked at the style of it, and we started thinking what would it look like if Tony Scott had shot this, and who would it have been? I looked back at who was the ingenue, who was the breakout star in 1989? And right around then was ‘Mystic Pizza.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God. Julia Roberts, a then-pre-“Pretty Woman” Julia Roberts, as this young woman.’”

Eventually cooler heads prevailed — that and bills for what using de-aging tech would look like, on top of Robert’s potential payday. McQuarrie realized that “if you put two of them in a shot together, or three of them in a shot together, it would have been as expensive as the train by the time we were done.”

And so they did the cheaper, simpler alternative: They kept the flashbacks short and hyper-cut, so you never see young Ethan Hunt’s face, nor that of Esai Morales’ baddie.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is now in theaters.

(Via Empire and /Film)

Lizzo is among music’s foremost newsmakers, but she’s repeatedly proved that she’s a diligent observer of the news cycle as well. Between contributing to the Barbie soundtrack and headlining her ongoing Special Tour, Lizzo somehow had time to comment on congressional developments.

On Wednesday, July 26, former Air Force Intelligence Officer David Grusch testified to Congress before a House Oversight subcommittee. Per the Associated Press, Retired Maj. Grusch asserted that “the US is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reserve engineers unidentified flying objects [UFOs]” and “likely has been aware of ‘non-human’ activity since the 1930s.” The Pentagon has denied his claims.

According to NBC News, Grusch also claimed “he has interviewed individuals who have recovered ‘non-human biologics’ from crashed UAPs” — opting to use “non-human” in favor of “alien.”

After the news broke, Lizzo tweeted (or Xeeted?), “Aye.. I know there’s a lot of pop culture news and memes going on rn but… THE GOVERNMENT JUST STATED *UNDER OATH* THAT THEY ARE IN POSSESSION OF UFOs AND NON-HUMAN ALIEN BODIES YALL WTF.”

It’s far from the first (or, surely, last) time Lizzo has used her social media account to process news in real time. In March, she tweeted about transphobia in relation to racism. A separate March tweet drew attention to anti-LGBTQIA legislation and Jim Crow laws.

As for Wednesday’s news, Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge was delighted to hear someone else believes “aliens f*cking exist.”

Watch the full hearing below.

Blink-182 and Lizzo are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In January, Samia released Honey, her sophomore album. “The whole record watches the singer/songwriter stepping into the most confessional version of herself as possible,” wrote Uproxx‘s Danielle Chelosky at the time. “The vignettes are endearing; it’s particularly relatable on the title track, when she sings about going to a Porches show in Brooklyn after a long week.”

On Wednesday, July 26, Samia made the title track all the more captivating by releasing “Honey (Maya Hawke Version),” the latest in her series of Honey Reimagined singles.

“When we were recording ‘Honey’ for the album, we added this ironic depth by turning what was originally a painful song into a kind of campfire sing along — big bouncy guitars, a happy melody, that endless refrain,” Samia said in a statement. “So I was eager to hear what Maya would do with it. Surprisingly, she stripped all of the campfire away. In her version, you can hear every bit of the desperation in how spare the production is. Exploring these new vantage points in my own work is exactly what draws me to the Reimagined concept.”

Hawke added, “It’s an amazing thing when a favorite person writes a favorite song. I was honored to be asked to cover ‘Honey,’ and I wanted to bring out the sadness I felt behind the celebration. I loved working with Will Graefe as a producer. I’ve never recorded a song without him and experiencing him as a producer was even better.”

“Honey (Maya Hawke Version)” follows “Charm You (Blondshell Version)” from late June. Per press release, Hovvdy, Ruston Kelly, and “more TBA” will also feature in Samia’s Honey Reimagined series.

Listen to “Honey (Maya Hawke Version)” above, and see Samia’s upcoming live dates below.

08/11 — San Francisco, CA @ Outside Lands Festival
08/24 — Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theater %
08/25 — Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom %
08/26 — Port Townsend, WA @ Thing Festival
09/02 — Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival
09-03 — Stadbury Hall, IR @ Electric Picnic Festival
09/05 — London, UK @ O2 Forum
09/30 — Philadelphia, PA @ Mann Center *
10/01 — Columbia, MD @ All Things Go Festival
10/03 — Nashville, TN @ Ascend Ampitheater #
10/04 — Nashville, TN @ Ascend Ampitheater #
10/09 — Jacksonville, FL @ VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena
10/10 — Tampa, FL @ Midflorida Credit Union Amphitheatre
10/12 — Nashville, TN @ Paradise Festival @ Brooklyn Bowl ^
10/15 — Irving, TX — The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory #
10/16 — Oklahoma City, OK @ Beer City Music Hall &
10/18 — Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre &
10/19 — Fort Collins, CO @ The Aggie &
10/21 — Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room &
10/22 — Des Moines, IA @ Wooly’s &
10/23 — Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi &
10/25 — Detroit, MI @ Shelter &
10/26 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Club AE &
10-27 — Columbus, OH @ A&R Bar &

% with Raffaella
* with Boygenius
# with Noah Kahan
^ with Briston Maroney
& with Venus & the Flytraps