The five-year break didn’t deter fans from jumping into the 23-track project. In fact, the hiatus grew their love for the songwriter even fonder. Despite SZA not having the chance to collaborate with Bad Bunny, Frank Ocean, and Billie Eilish, the features that did make the cut, including fan-favorite Phoebe Bridgers, there’s still one artist “PSA” singer might love to join forces with.
Although the singer has publicly declared her love for “About Damn Time” time singer Lizzo on numerous occasions, her musical “GOAT” (greatest of all time) is someone outside the boundaries of genres. During an interview with EW, SZA revealed her GOAT is actually, Björk.
When asked about an interpolation of Björk’s “Hidden Place” appearing in her song “Forgiveless,” SZA replied, “I’ve always loved Björk. She’s the GOAT to me. From the way she was beating up reporters to the way she emotes in her music, she’s just the realest b*tch alive.”
The interviewer, Owen Myers, goes on to ask how SZA discovered Björk’s music, to which she answered, ” [An] iPod I found had a bunch of music, and her music was on there. But I had already been listening to it because we did dances to it in high school. I was part of a company called Special Dance, and we did a dance to ‘Jóga.’”
(Emily In Paris spoilers will definitely be found below.)
Netflix’s Emily In Paris (which hails from primetime soap-opera king Darren Star) remains frustratingly watchable, and to its credit, Season 3 went several places than relationship territory. Emily Cooper is now firmly entrenched with French life, and she’s learning the language and making actual professional strides. However! There’s no avoiding the fact that the show’s bread and butter happens to be Emily’s will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic with Chef Gabriel.
Amazingly, the show has been able to keep that question alive despite the fact that Emily and Gabriel already slept together in the Season 1 finale. From there, they both moved onto others because, for whatever reason, both parties thought it would be best if Gabriel kept stringing Camille along. Likewise, Emily decided to screw with Alfie’s heart, and this season, and Camille pulled a Daphne From The White Lotus and had her own affair. Also, Gabriel got sloppy drunk and revealed that he’s still super hung up on Emily. But! Gabriel suddenly decided to propose to Camille, and all of this was just so very dumb, but in the Season 3 finale, Camille left Gabriel at the altar. She did so while delivering a speech about how he’s obsessed with Emily, and then Alfie got mad and left the building. Good for him.
In other words, there’a a lotta broken hearts to mend in Season 4. The real surprise, though, was that Emily and Gabriel had a quiet moment when they seemed to accept their that (as with the Borg) resistance is futile… which led to Gabriel revealing that (and this is certainly why he proposed) Camille is pregnant.
[Cue cliffhanger face.]
What could possibly come next? Season 4 is definitely happening, and Camille knows everything. Granted, she should have already known what was up from that dirty skillet discovery, but yeah, girlfriend was willfully blind. It happens, but it’s a little rage-inducing how Gabriel and Emily wouldn’t break up with their respective significant others.
Netflix
So, Season 4 will likely pick up with Gabriel attempting to juggle the out-in-the-open status of his love for Emily with his impending (or newfound) fatherly duties. Camille’s family has money, so they could really rake him over the legal grills, but I can’t see the show getting that dark and heavy. And I don’t know how much longer the writers can possibly draw out the love triangle/quartet, but viewers hadn’t yet tired of it before this season, so who knows?
The real question here is this: how Gabriel can remain so appealing despite being a terribly written character. He’s not even slightly tortured or nuanced and doesn’t compare to Carmy from The Bear in terms of having an intense drive for his work. Camille lands like the ultimate pushover, and now, there’s going to be a child involved in this mess, and Emily somehow remains likable despite screwing over her so-called friend and being a pretty bad friend to Mindy, too. The show’s inherent addictive nature, however, is a testament to the sleight of hand that this show performs, and you can bet that people will be waiting for and wondering about Season 4.
Emily In Paris Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.
Feid faced an online leak this year when his album surfaced months in advance. The rising Colombian star combated another leak last night (December 20) when his song “Yandel 150” circulated online. So, he released music video for his alluring collaboration with Puerto Rican icon Yandel shortly after.
Feid had planned to release his album in December, but an online leak forced him to release it in September. He dropped the LP with the title Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo Te Pirateamos El Álbum, which translates to “Happy Birthday Ferxxo We Pirated Your Album.” The album went on to become the biggest of Feid’s career. Thanks to hits like “Normal” and “Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo,” he appeared at No. 48 among the 50 most-streamed artists of the year on Spotify.
Yesterday, Feid posted on Twitter that he noticed that “Yandel 150,” his collaboration with Yandel, leaked online. “Well, the the song with Yandel leaked.” he wrote. “What do we do? Should we release it?”
Bueno se filtró el tema tan sapohp con YANDEL , que hacemos? Lo sacamos?
Yandel ended up releasing the music video for “Yandel 150” last night. He sings the sexy reggaeton romp alongside Feid in a strip club. Both artists serenade the exotic dancers who have their full attention.
Yandel featured on Feid’s Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo Te Pirateamos El Álbum. They previously teamed up for the song “XQ Te Pones Así.” Over the weekend, Feid was a special guest at one of Wisin y Yandel‘s farewell concerts in Puerto Rico. He announced that next year he will headline a show by himself at the iconic El Coliseo where the concert was taking place.
For the better part of the year, it seemed like the ubiquitous heartthrob reigning over all of our algorithms and plastered on every magazine cover would be Harry Styles. At first, I was a bit irritated, never having been too fond of him. But as I watched more videos that came up, I became disarmed, giggling as he talked to fans from the stage and danced in glittery outfits. He’s perfectly wholesome. He passes all of the purity tests. He’s not overly sexual, but when he is, he’s talking about giving women head (he hasn’t outwardly admitted it because that would be too much, but he’s vaguely confirmed it as the meaning of “Watermelon Sugar”). When the “As It Was” singer took a water bottle to the nuts and a skittle to the eye, it was painful to watch.
Is this what we want? An undeniably good figure that poses no challenges? No moral ambiguity? Enter Matty Healy of The 1975, who announced Being Funny In A Foreign Language in July. Now that’s a polarizing man. If he took a water bottle to the nuts, fans would cheer. They would celebrate and say he deserved it. And there’s something beautiful in that.
We’re in the midst of an era where the internet is divided into two insufferable sectors of overbearing liberals and agitative edgelords. The fun thing about Healy is that he’s probably pissing both of them off. One minute he’s making a joke about grooming, and the next he’s pushing for his fans to show up to polls to vote.
Being Funny In A Foreign Language reflects this duality, containing some of the most powerful, emotive instrumentation you’ve ever heard in your life (the outro of the opener, the fuzzy guitars in “About You”) and probably the weirdest sentences to ever exist in a song (“Don’t f*ck it / You muppet,” “John’s obsessed with a fat ass / And he’s 10 years old”). There’s now a whole TikTok trend of fans ranking the weirdest lyrics on the album.
Even since I started writing this very article, many things have happened. First, Healy received criticism for posting pictures of his fans on his Instagram Story and calling them the “hot girls of the tour.” There’s a distinct irony in getting upset over something like this. Part of the attraction of The 1975 is that being a part of the fan base means instantly becoming a hot girl — a Tumblr-native, knee socks-sporting, cigarette-smoking hot girl. The aesthetic is as important as the music is; wearing a white top and a black American Apparel skirt to the show is basically the dress code. Those who criticize Healy say he shouldn’t be doing this “at his big age,” as if a 33-year-old rock star is supposed to be well-behaved. Again, is that what we really want?
It’s not like that’s not problematic; criticism, especially against Healy, is often warranted. There was a lot of damage done in the 2014 Tumblr scene that catapulted The 1975 into fame. It glorified bad habits, the worst probably being the prioritization of skinny bodies. In many ways, it feels like these harmful values never left the community, and that’s worth acknowledging. However, there has been a lot of criticism of Healy for kissing fans, which is rather counterproductive. Some are claiming there’s an obvious dynamic between a celebrity and a fan, but every situation has dynamics. People can only make attempts toward a semblance of balance — like Healy literally checking a fan’s ID before kissing her. It all boils down to this current obsession of stripping women of agency and painting them as victims because it is easier to do that than believe that they are autonomous and can feel active desire. Women literally hold up signs with requests ranging from “be my first kiss” to “spit in my mouth,” yet when Healy complies he is portrayed as doing something bad to them rather than fulfilling their wants.
And Healy is aware of this — of the subconscious purity embedded into our minds, no matter how progressive we pretend to be. Before performing “Somebody Else” at one show, he rambled about the way our culture has demonized resentful feelings of sexual ownership that occur post-breakup: “If you’re a bloke, you have those feelings and you feel like a bit of a misogynist or something like that. But if you’re a girl, the narrative is that you’re just some crazy b*tch,” he said. “And the truth is, is that neither of those are true. Sexual ownership after you break up with someone is just a phenomenon and it’s got nothing to do with politics or how woke or privy you are. It’s just your genitals.” This is a fact most people can’t accept — a lot of things cannot be explained, especially not through Twitter threads. Somehow, The 1975 are able to capture the nuanced nature of everything, not providing answers but helping with the general direction.
Something else that happened: Healy deactivated his Twitter. This is tragic for me as I was hoping to insert some of his tweets like I did in my review of their Madison Square Garden show (“might start working on my handwriting cos some of these tattoos are f*cking dog sh*t,” I quoted). But that’s fine considering “Part Of The Band,” the grabbing lead single of the LP, reads like a chronically online Twitter thread: “Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? / Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke / Calling his ego imagination?” From name-dropping Arthur Rimbaud to mumbling about being canceled, Healy achieves his goal of coming off as unbearable, like a Red Scare listener you meet in the smoking section of a show and get stuck in a conversation with. But Healy has proven himself to be too thoughtful and genuine to be written off as a vapid, arrogant pseudo-intellectual. Their 2020 album Notes On A Conditional Form opens with a speech from Greta Thunberg about climate change. “People” from that record begs for young people to take action: “Wake up, wake up, wake up / We are appalling and we need to stop just watching shit in bed.” Eating raw meat on stage was a simultaneous commentary on masculinity and successful attempt to irritate the general public.
Just the opening track of Being Funny In A Foreign Language serves as a mélange of zeitgeist humor and charming earnestness. He sings about QAnon and boners in an effortless flow against shameless LCD Soundsystem-ripped piano and ends it with the poignant, apologetic refrain: “I’m sorry if you’re living / And you’re seventeen,” repeating it over and over. On “Human Too,” he grasps for personhood: “Don’t you know that I’m a human too?”
The title “Being Funny In A Foreign Language” accurately encapsulates the essence of the band’s appeal. Sometimes it feels like Healy’s jokes are ones only he can understand, with some close fans let in on them. If you get it, you get it. If you don’t… that sucks because he’s probably all over your algorithms, fueling your resentment and confusion. At the end of the day, these conversations are more interesting than anything Harry Styles has ever done.
For years, Gabriella Wilson has garnered accolades and thrilled audiences as the multi-talented but mysterious R&B chanteuse HER, but recently, she’s said she wanted to step out from behind the persona and let us get to know the real, well, her. She started rocking the shades and going by the SEO-confounding mononym as to create a kind of alter ego to protect her from personalized scrutiny and keep the focus firmly on her music — much like a comic book superhero donning a mask and colorful spandex to protect their loved ones from their enemies.
Well, the ruse worked — maybe a little too well. Because even after racking up half an EGOT (the collective title for a winner of all four major performance awards, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and becoming the first-ever Black-and-Filipina Disney princess in the Beauty And The Beast 30th Anniversary Celebration on ABC, fans were still befuddled by a recent Instagram photo of the 25-year-old San Franciso native without her signature shades. In fact, they couldn’t help but compare her to possibly the most iconic bespectacled superhero, Superman — although in his case, he’s more super when he takes his glasses off instead. Some jokers even photoshopped some shades back onto the pic, instantly recognizing her again, while others added references to Hannah Montana and Perry The Platypus (different strokes, I guess). Even Gabby herself had to get in on the action, responding, “I don’t get it either tbh” with a slew of laughing emojis. Check out some of the responses below.
Clark Kent was onto something because I did not recognize her without the glasses https://t.co/duga2T48PP
— Tiffie Targaryen, First of Her Name (@TiffieStarchild) December 21, 2022
Sure you might be busy this holiday season, but are you “Dave Grohl busy”? Last week, the Foo Fighters leader found time to join Billie Eilish on stage in Los Angeles for a song. Then yesterday, Grohl played Foo Fighters classics and a Nirvana rarity as part of an acoustic session for the Letters To Santa benefit. Meanwhile, his and producer Greg Kurstin’s The Hanukkah Sessions is in full swing, dropping a new performance on each of the eight nights of the Jewish holiday. Judd Apatow and Pink joined Grohl and Kurstin for the first two editions of the series this year and night three, features Kurstin’s bandmate in The Bird And The Bee, singer Inara George, taking the lead with Tenacious D’s Jack Black and Kyle Gass on backing vocals.
In the new clip taken from The Hanukkah Sessions live show at Los Angeles’ Largo at The Coronet venue, George, Grohl, Kurstin, Black, and Gass take on 10cc’s “The Things We Do For Love.” While we still have a dearth of Hanukkah songs within the holiday music spectrum, The Hanukkah Sessions is dedicated to songs by Jewish musicians.
“Once referred to as the ‘biggest Jewish band to come out of Britain,’ 10cc’s MOTs Godley, Crème and Gouldman recorded a ton of hits,” Grohl and Kurstin wrote in the video’s caption. Gass and Black provided high-pitched backing vocals to George’s lead in a delightful revue of the tune.
Watch Grohl, Kurstin, George, Black, and Gass perform “The Things We Do For Love” above.
Maggie Rogers surprised fans with a new live performance of “Different Kind Of World,” the closing track from her recent album, Surrender. Filmed in Paris through Blogothèque and director Hugo Jouxtel, the video opens with Rogers happily engaging with her friends at a dinner table. Eventually, she grabs her guitar to treat everyone to the song.
“It’s like an end-of-dinner prayer,” Rogers says in the video. “On the recording, there’s all this noise. So, everyone can do their own version of that.” She explains that her friends can tap on the table or do whatever while eventually explaining the vocal notes as a call-and-response. It works out wonderfully, as her friends add some gentle backing vocals to the uplifting song.
“I feel like thinking about the state of the world has always been a part of my record process. It’s because I am a part of the world,” she told NME about the song. “I don’t know how you go through the pandemic, or the election, or the amount of social change the last couple years, and not have it be a part of what you’re thinking in some way.”
Watch Rogers’ live performance of “Different Kind Of World” above.
Yes, the year is winding down. Not that long ago, that would have meant the bourbon release schedule was winding down too. That’s not so much the case anymore. The world of bourbon rests for no one these days, and that means there are tons of new bourbon releases hitting shelves as we count down the last moments of 2022.
All of this is to say that it’s time for one last “new bourbon blind taste test” before the calndar flips.
For this blind taste test, I’ve grabbed 12 bottles of new bourbon whiskey. These bottles have either just dropped (some mere days ago) or are new bottles that “officially” dropped a month or two ago but are only hitting shelves right now. Fortuna Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, for instance, was released back in September but only went wide this week on liquor store shelves outside of Kentucky.
That makes the lineup today the following bottles:
Bardstown Bourbon Company Origin Series Bottled-In-Bond Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
George Dickel Tennessee Whisky Reserve Cask Strength Aged 17 Years
Uncle Nearest Single Barrel Premium Whiskey Barrel No: 007
Frey Ranch Malted Grain Series 100% Malted Corn Bourbon Whiskey
When it comes to the ranking of these bottles, I’m going on taste alone. Luckily, these were all stone-cold-killer bottles of bourbon. So even the “last place” bourbon whiskey is a goddamn fine pour of whiskey. That said, the space between each of these whiskeys is very small with the top half all being stellar. Long story short: it’s a good time to be a bourbon lover, folks.
Let’s dive in!
Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months
The nose draws you in with a sense of light pepper next to bog notes of dark citrus, powdered cacao, and stewed peaches with classic bourbon vanilla, orchard fruit, and an oaky vibe. The palate is a mix of apricot jam cut with nutmeg and cinnamon next to a deep sense of bruised peaches, pear cores, and red berries with a mix of spiced peach tobacco wrapped around dry wicker and cedar bark. The end leans into the sweet and spiced stone fruit while the tobacco slowly fades through sweet caramel and vanilla buttercream toward a silky finish.
This is just really f*cking good.
Taste 2
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Old oak-filled cellars and creamy vanilla mix with sourdough bread crusts and aged corn kernels, damp rye, and a sense of old vanilla wafers. The palate is full of winter spice and mulled wine with a focus on star anise, cardamom, cinnamon, and a whisper of saffron with a burnt orange vibe. The end has a nuttiness that leads back to those old grain silos from the nose with vanilla wafer tobacco spiciness on the finish.
This was nice and tasted like a very old Tennessee whiskey.
Taste 3
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
The nose opens with a sour leather sense next to salted toffee, almonds, and dark chocolate next to old sweet oak with caramel tobacco just kissed with dried chili and old dark cherry. The palate is bold with a sense of cinnamon bark, whole nutmeg, star anise, and allspice next to sweetgrass and cherry cream soda and plenty of ABV warmth. The end has a sense of salted black licorice and dried chili with a rummy plum pudding and tons of dried and brandy-soaked fruits that eventually become very creamy with a sense of brandy butter.
This is delicious.
Taste 4
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Fresh orange blossom and nasturtiums mingle on the nose with honeycomb next to stewed plums with hints of clove and allspice. The palate is luxurious with a sense of salted caramel, cherry Dr. Pepper, and sticky toffee pudding with plenty of winter spice, dark orange zest, brandy butter, and black-tea-soaked dates. The end has a sense of plum pudding with burnt sugars and orange tobacco kissed with star anise and clove and rolled up with wild sage and cedar bark and wrapped in old leather pouches.
This is another excellent whiskey.
Taste 5
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Dark chocolate-covered hazelnut, chili pepper, and orange with a maple syrup sweetness over cinnamon toast with a hint of sharp spearmint. The palate has a sense of that hazelnut tied to cinnamon bark and black cherry tobacco with a twinge of firewood bark resting in rich black dirt next to dry dark chocolate just flaked with salt. The end has a sense of old boot leather and cedar chocolate boxes just emptied and refilled with spiced cherry tobacco and eggnog-infused espresso beans.
Yeesh, what a run — another winner!
Taste 6
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
There’s a sense of soft and sweet grains — think caramel drizzled over grits or Cream of Wheat — with toffee butterines, red berries, and ripe apricots next to tangerine and pear pie. The palate has a sense of deeply creamy caramel, apricot jam, marmalade, and vanilla white cake with a butterscotch frosting that gives way warm ABVs with a hint more of that sweet graininess cut with rum raisin. The end is full of soft and sweet spice and orchard wood barks next to molasses-kissed tobacco.
Yup, delicious.
Taste 7
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Pecan dark chocolate nut clusters mix with burnt orange, spiced and sweet mulled wine, and rum-raisin with a touch of fresh cedar on the nose while a deep leatheriness draws you in. The palate has a sense of Nutella over scones with a Cherry Coke on the side while singed cedar and cherry bark mingle with clove-studded oranges and a dusting of freshly cracked black pepper. The end has a nice spicy warmth and a touch more of that singed wood next to spicy cherry tobacco.
This is yet another really nice whiskey.
Taste 8
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Wow, this nose is wild. It’s full of dark brown sugar vanilla pods and winter spices that start to lean toward chili and cumin and then a sense of a well-seasoned pork butt before it goes into the smoker — it’s kind of like raw leather. The palate is classic bourbon with a rich vanilla white cake frosted with buttercream next to bold dark cherry, woody notes of dry reeds, and salted caramel with a twinge of orange oils. The end has a mild sense of tangerine flesh and star fruit that leads back to warm ABVs and dark winter spices layered into fresh tobacco and old cedar bark.
This is a wild ride that ends up pretty classic.
Taste 9
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
The nose is classic bourbon with a balance of caramel, vanilla, cherry, and sweet wood that’s cut with plenty of dark winter spice. The palate is largely the same with a sense of stewed plums and marmalade next to an almost malty note tied to the vanilla and spice. The end has a nice sweet oakiness that leads back to dark caramel and cherry tied to tobacco leaves and humidors.
This was really nice, standard bourbon.
Taste 10
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Fresh butterscotch and orange dark chocolate balls, apple cider, and a nice sharp cinnamon and clove spiciness present on the nose. The palate opens with that orange dark chocolate, brown sugar sweetness, and a touch of powdery white pepper next to ground cinnamon and star anise-heavy mulled wine. The end has a slight minerally edge with a dash of black pepper and creamy butterscotch next to apple cider spiked with cinnamon and orange rinds.
This was light and very easy to drink.
Taste 11
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Rich and dark cacao powder next to burnt caramels, black licorice, old vanilla pods, and old leather boots appear on the nose with a dash of fresh nutmeg and clove. Lush salted caramel and a rich sense of honey loaded with cinnamon sticks and a black cherry cola drive the palate before a pinch of black pepper arrive, adding a bold ABV heat. The end has a cream soda feel with spiced nut cake and mince pies over a Cherry Coke cut with chocolate sauce that’s just kissed with chili pepper tobacco.
This is pretty tasty and hot. I think a single cube would have made this one pop!
Taste 12
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
The nose boldy meanders through floral and citrus-forward notes with an almost dank hoppiness next to savory melon, dry smudging sage, and a hint of lard-filled tamales that then leads to cherry and vanilla. The palate leans into fresh honeycombs next to orange and grapefruit peels soaked in apple cider with a fleeting sense of anise and then a massive note of dry and earthy corn husk takes over everything. The end really leans into the floral and citrus dank with a bold sense of a corn field right after the harvest when everything is still green driving the finish toward an earthy and corn-filled close.
This whiskey is a unique concept from out in Nevada. The bourbon is made with 100% malted corn that’s grown and malted at Frey Ranch. That corn has to be grown in the summer to save it from frost. Once fermented and distilled, the hot juice rested for exactly five years and 10 months before it was batched and bottled as-is with a touch of local water.
Bottom Line:
This is tasty but supercharged with corn notes on the palate. If that’s what you’re looking for, then this is going to be your jam.
11. George Dickel Tennessee Whisky Reserve Cask Strength Aged 17 Years — Taste 2
George Dickel 17 is back! This whiskey is made from Dickel’s classic Tennessee mash of 84% corn, 8% rye, and 8% malted barley. That hot juice is then left to rest in a single-story warehouse in Cascade Hollow for 17 long years. Finally, the perfect barrels were picked for batching and bottling completely as-is — yes, this is cask strength at 46%.
Bottom Line:
This is really tasty, especially if you’re looking for a heightened Tennessee whiskey experience.
This high-rye bourbon from out in Colorado was blended especially for the holiday season this year. The juice is rested for three years high up in the mountains before it’s batched and cut with that iconic Colorado Rocky Mountain glacial water for bottling.
Bottom Line:
This is the perfect base for a wintry old fashioned.
Backbone is made with classic MGP whiskey. That juice is hewn from a mash of 74% corn, 21% rye, and 5% malted barley that’s five to seven years old. The barrels are shipped down to Bardstown, Kentucky, where they are batched and bottled as-is with proofing or filtering.
Bottom Line:
This was great, standard bourbon. I’d lean towards using it in boozy cocktails.
This new single-barrel release is made with juice distilled, aged, and bottled at the Nearest Green Distillery in central Tennessee. The single barrels are chosen for their exact flavor profile and greatness and bottled completely as-is with no filtration or cutting with water to maintain that barrel’s greatness in the bottle.
Bottom Line:
This is where things start getting really good. This is a solid sipper that needs a rock and nothing else really.
The last batch of Booker’s of 2022 is a nod to Booker Noe’s father, Pinkie Noe. The juice in the bottles was created from barrels from the middle/sweet spot of four warehouses. The average age of the batch ended up being 6 years, 10 months, and 10 days old when it was bottled completely as-is.
Bottom Line:
This was so different that the last release. I mean that in a good way. If you’re smoking some pork products this holiday season, then this is the whiskey to pair with that.
6. Pursuit United Blended Straight Bourbon Whiskeys Finished with Toasted American and French Oak — Taste 7
The latest release from the Bourbon Pursuit team is a blend of four to six-year-old bourbons. The three bourbons involved are a Finger Lakes whiskey (70/20/10 corn/rye/malted barley), an MGP bourbon (60/36/4 corn/rye/malted barley), and an undisclosed Tennessee whiskey (80/10/10 corn/rye/malted barley). Those whiskeys were finished in both American and French toasted oak barrels before batching and bottling with a touch of Kentucky water.
Bottom Line:
This is a great sipper that makes one hell of a Manhattan.
5. Starlight Distillery Single Barrel Bourbon Whiskey Finished in Rum Barrels — Taste 6
This crafty Indiana bourbon is made from a high-corn mash bill. That spirit is then aged for about five years before it’s transferred into used Barbadian rum barrels for a final maturation. The whiskey was then bottled as-is.
Bottom Line:
This is an excellent sipper that really gets better with every taste.
This rare release from Rabbit Hole is a five-grain bourbon that’s made with some unique grains. The standouts are chocolate malted wheat from Germany (4%) and chocolate malted barley (3%) from the U.K. combined with 70% corn, 13% rye, and 10% malted rye. That juice rests in Kentucky until it’s just right for batching and bottling completely as-is in only 1.365 bottles.
This whiskey — a revival of a centuries-old dead brand — is from the new company founded by Heaven Hill’s Andrew Shapira with partners Pablo Moix and Peter Nevenglosky, based around the Rare Character Whiskey shingle. The whiskey in the bottle is rendered from six barrels of six-year-old whiskey that’s expertly batched and bottled with just a touch of local Kentucky water.
Bottom Line:
This whiskey is so classically “bourbon” that it’s hard not to fall in love with it instantly.
2. Bardstown Bourbon Company Origin Series Bottled-In-Bond Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey — Taste 1
This brand-new release from Bardstown Bourbon Company is 100% their own juice. The whiskey is made from a wheated bourbon mash bill — 68% corn, 20% wheat, and 12% malted barley — down in Bardstown, Kentucky. The whiskey spends about six years mellowing before it’s just kissed with local water and bottled at 100 proof.
Bottom Line:
This is going to be huge next year. It’s damn near a perfect pour of whiskey.
This year’s Parker’s Heritage starts off with Heaven Hill’s classic bourbon mash bill of 78% corn, 10% rye, and 12% malted barley. From there, it’s all about where and how that whiskey aged. The lion’s share, 67% of the blend, comes from a 13-year-old double-barreled bourbon from the 5th-7th floors of Rickhouse Q. 33% of the blend comes from a 15-year-old bourbon that was aged on the 2nd and 5th floors of Rickhouse II. Those barrels were batched and then bottled 100% as-is without any filtering or proofing.
Bottom Line:
This is Heaven Hill at its peak. This is a magnificent pour of whiskey. Make sure to take your time with this one. Add a little water, nose and taste some more, and really let it bloom on your palate. It’ll be worth the effort.
Part 3: Final Thoughts
Zach Johnston
This was one hell of a lineup of bourbon whiskeys. There wasn’t a fault in the bunch. Each of these offers a little something different, but the top six were all quintessential pours of bourbon.
Since Parker’s Heritage is pretty fleeting (very allocated and pricey), I’d highly recommend grabbing that Bardstown Bourbon Company or Fortuna release. They’ll be your best bet to ring in the new year with an amazing bottle of bourbon in your hand.
SZA has been giving fans lots of cinematic visuals lately. Fans got a kick out of her “Big Boy” skit on Saturday Night Live, and her Lakeith Stanfield-assisted visual for “Shirt” has also received much praise.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, she expressed the desire to participate in other cinematic projects and even teased some of the visuals she has on the way.
“I would love to act more,” she said. “I’d love to learn another craft and get to lose myself in another way creatively. I’m in an Eddie Huang movie that is coming out, with Chloe Cherry from Euphoria and a couple of other people. I don’t know if the whole cast is announced, so I’ma keep quiet. It’s an action comedy: An assassin is trying to kill me, but we fall in love instead. It should be pretty silly.”
Film seems to be a recurring motif across SZA’s latest album, SOS. On a particular track called “Kill Bill,” in which she fantasizes about killing her ex, she takes inspiration from the Quentin Tarantino film of the same name. Elsewhere in the interview, she revealed that the song’s upcoming music video will be loosely inspired by the movie, Kill Bill.
New York Knicks broadcaster Wally Szczerbiak had some choice words for Tyrese Haliburton after a recent Knicks win over the Indiana Pacers. Szczerbiak, a one-time All-Star selection who played for four teams in his career, blasted Haliburton for being a “supposed, wannabe, fake All-Star.” It is unclear why he did this — it seemed to be a way to uplift Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle in their efforts to make it to the All-Star Game — but even then, Szczerbiak really went in.
Haliburton got the chance to respond to Szczerbiak during an appearance on Taylor Rooks’ podcast, and he made one thing clear: He’s not 100 percent certain who Wally Szczerbiak is.
Tyrese Haliburton responds to Wally Szczerbiak calling him a “wannabe All-Star”
“I have no clue!” Haliburton said when Rooks asked what he did to Szczerbiak. “I know the name Wally Szczerbiak, I couldn’t tell you where he played, I couldn’t tell you what he did as a basketball player. I don’t know, he had a lot to say about me, and I was really questioning, like, first, who is this, and why is he talking about me like this?”
Haliburton went on to say that he doesn’t ever recall explicitly saying he wanted to be an All-Star and for people to vote for him, then attributed Szczerbiak’s rant to him being excited after a Knicks win and trying to get attention.
Haliburton is in the midst of a breakout campaign, averaging 19.5 points and 10.7 assists in 33.4 minutes per game for the Pacers this season.
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