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Grammy award-winning artist HER is always making history. The latest of her achievements is her role as Belle in Disney’s 30th celebration televised special of Beauty And The Beast. She is the first Black and Filipina woman to play that role, and she was nothing short of amazing when it took place last night (December 15).

Not only was her singing crystal clear and enchanting, but she even shredded on an electric guitar, making it seem effortless, donning the character’s iconic yellow princess gown and her own signature shades while descending the stairs. The event was definitely one of the most breathtaking performances to witness, which one can tell just from this short clip posted by ABC below.

When discussing her role on Good Morning America, Wilson said, “I never thought I could be a Disney princess.” She later added, “Of course, every little girl wants to be a Disney princess, but I’ve never seen one that looks like me — so I get to be that to little girls now.” She added about production, “That’s such a huge deal on top of being a producer on Beauty And The Beast, which is crazy. I got to do a lot of the new arrangements and work with Alan Menken, the original arranger and producer. It’s been an amazing experience just learning so much about myself, and it’s been a lot of fun, honestly.”

The live-music industry is broken. This was a common refrain throughout 2022 — over and over, we heard about how the concert business is falling apart and needs to be reimagined in order to be saved. Think back to the start of 2022, and the enthusiasm many of us felt about the first fully “normal” year for shows since the pre-pandemic times. That fresh-out-of-solitary-confinement optimism is all but gone now. What happened?

What happened is that there were two parallel problems that at first glance seemed contradictory, but upon closer examination were revealed to be intimately related. First, many artists could not tour this year due to a variety of factors, including inflation, high gas costs, supply-chain shortages, overbooked music venues, and poor mental health. Animal Collective — a veteran indie act with a loyal audience — canceled a European tour, which many observers took as a bellwether illustrating the shrinking-to-the-point-of-nonexistent middle class in the music business. Other cancelations and postponements, by artists ranging in prestige and popularity from Santigold to Justin Bieber to Anthrax to Arooj Aftab, only reiterated the impression that performing live is no longer financially viable for the majority of musicians already squeezed by minuscule streaming royalties.

Second, a much smaller number of artists this year — most notably Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift — found that touring for the industry’s top one-percent is almost too viable, in that the shadowy corporations who run the live-music business (take a bow, Ticketmaster and Live Nation) were able to gouge consumers for hundreds (if not thousands) of extra dollars above the original face value of tickets. So, live music is broken because many artists can’t tour. But live music is also broken because the industry can leverage high-demand tickets in a manner that is blatantly exploitative. We are starving ourselves to death, and also binging ourselves to death. Either way, death is the common denominator.

If I were a business reporter, I would attempt to offer a top-down explanation for all of this, putting the focus on CEOs and superstar performers and the need for systemic change. That’s an important conversation, but I’m not interested in having it here. (Besides, I published a book this year about the band who stood up against Ticketmaster 30 years ago. Check it out for a history lesson.)

I’m a music critic, which means I’m part of the audience. Therefore, I want to make a bottom-up argument. Luckily, bottom-up arguments were in curiously short supply on this topic in 2022. Amid all the apocalyptic prognostication about the final days of concerts, the audience has been mostly overlooked. Let’s change that. How are we feeling, fellow audience members? Here’s my educated guess: Not great!

Any analysis of the current state of live music must start with the audience. We are the most important component, even more than the artists, and not only because our money funds the whole operation. We are the receivers, the sounding board, the raison d’être, the magical element that transforms the art of playing music into a show and a business. As the French painter Marcel Duchamp famously observed, art is completed by the viewer. Or, to put it in more rock ‘n’ roll terms via The Hold Steady, they couldn’t have even done this if it wasn’t for you.

We aren’t just passive customers, we are collaborators involved in the creation of once-in-a-lifetime moments, the very thing people pay for when they purchase a concert ticket. We matter, even if this industry we pour our dollars into doesn’t always act like it.

Heading into 2022, being a member of an audience seemed like an anxiety-inducing proposition. Every festival last year was scrutinized as a potential super spreader event. And then the Astroworld tragedy highlighted the very real possibility of a concert leading to bodily (and possibly lethal) harm. But as the current year unfolded, the anxiousness around concerts felt less like a matter of life and death and more like an unresolvable negotiation regarding two precious (and limited) resources: time and money.

When you read coverage of the concert business, there’s an unspoken assumption that the audience for live music is inexhaustible. But if 2022 proved anything, it disproved this belief. I will speak anecdotally on this, though I think my experience was pretty common: There were too many damn concerts to see this year. On multiple occasions, I had to choose between two or more shows booked on the same night, and this happened far more than I can recall from the pre-pandemic era. During the busiest weeks of the summer and fall, there might be four or five consecutive nights packed with numerous attractive live-music choices, establishing a pace that was impossible to keep up with even for the most die-hard concert-goer.

I live in a secondary Midwestern market — I can’t imagine how oversaturated live-music schedules in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago were this year. Plus, I’m fortunate as a privileged media worker to have access to guest lists; if I had to pay for every concert I wanted to see, I would have to be far more selective. But that was the thing about the abundance of options on the live-music menu in 2022 — there were so many acts on the road that it somehow limited your choices. I frequently had to miss out on seeing bands that I like in order to see other bands that I like. The market created a Dawinian scenario where everybody on the road was pitted against each other, night after night, in every town, with us in the audience caught in the middle.

Again, this is anecdotal but it feels like a universal truth: Audience members were forced to prioritize like never before in 2022. Who do I really want to see? And who do I think I won’t be able to see again? For me, that meant carving out time for reunion tours by Pavement and the Gaslight Anthem while being choosier about mid-level acts who are always good live but I’ve already seen a couple of times. Many others felt naturally compelled to blow their entire annual ticket-buying budget on one show, whether it was by “biggest pop star in the world” Taylor Swift or 73-year-old Bruce Springsteen, who likely has entered his twilight years with the E Street Band.

When pressed by Rolling Stone about the backlash against dynamic pricing — a truly abhorrent practice in which prices instantly increase based on demand, meaning that Ticketmaster essentially scalps their own tickets at the point of sale — Springsteen was casually pragmatic. “We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?’”

He’s not wrong. Ticketmaster might be evil, but their evil is inadvertently completed by our eagerness to see our favorite artists on stage. One simply is not possible without the other. That’s why, when people say that the concert industry is broken, they’re really ignoring the inherent unfairness of capitalism. The unfairness is a sign that the system is working exactly as designed. The bug is the feature. In this case, we’re talking about supply and demand — when demand far outstrips supply, you either increase the supply (Bruce plays 25 shows at Madison Square Garden so that everybody who wants to see him can get in at a fair price) or you decrease demand (by pricing out all but the richest and/or most devoted fans). Even if he wanted to attempt the former, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea at his age. That leaves the less savory option.

A question that’s usually left unasked in “state of the live-music industry” conversations is: What is it exactly that we in the audience want out of this? The weird music-business paradox of the past few decades is that as the value of recorded music (which the listener can purchase for a relatively small fee and can then theoretically keep “forever” — or, at the very least, for many years) has fallen to practically nothing, the cost of a concert ticket (which only gets you access to a fleeting experience that lasts a few hours) has skyrocketed. So: Why is that? What value are we projecting onto that ticket?

At the start of 2022, the answer was simple: People want to be around people again. And we want to share what’s hopefully a transcendent, memorable event. But this year our live-music spaces revealed that people still don’t know how to be around people. And that created an unusual tension between artists and fans. In March, indie star Mitski offered a familiar complaint about audience members experiencing concerts via their personal screens, though she stopped short of Jack White, who drew the ire of extremely online people by confiscating their phones before allowing them to enter his arena tour. And White didn’t go as far as rising phenom Steve Lacy, who smashed a fan’s camera on stage this fall in New Orleans.

Lacy was reacting to some cretin throwing a camera at him, an incident captured and broadcast on TikTok and YouTube. “People throwing things at musicians” was a bountiful viral-video genre this year. Tossing shit at performers transcended all genres — pop pin-up Harry Styles was pelted with chicken nuggets and Skittles, country singer Luke Combs dodged a cup of ice, and rappers Tyler The Creator and Kid Cudi were forced to beg fans to not put them in the crosshairs.

What this behavior suggests about the state of us in the audience is that even when our bodies are out there, our minds are still in here, back in that early 2020s lockdown state of being. Large gatherings might provide a sense of community, but they can also be another place to hide, supplying the same feeling of anonymity to which we have become accustomed in the virtual world. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but it seems as though the people inclined to send mean tweets about pop stars online have now graduated to shotgunning tangible projectiles at their idols in real life.

More than ever this year, being in the right audience was the primary factor in determining whether a concert was fun or not. Seeing Bartees Strange in Utah this summer was a highlight for me in large part because I could feel the audience being electrified by the performance. Ditto for the club gig I witnessed by the indie-jam band Tonstartssbandht in front of a small but appreciative audience, or even the Jackson Browne gig I saw on a perfect summer night with a crowd of easygoing boomers. And then there were the countless gigs that were dampened by various bozos, drunks, and close talkers. A great audience feels like a single-minded organism. But going to shows in 2022 sometimes meant being part of an organism at war with itself.

My fear for the future of the live-music business is that it’s going the way of cinema, in which top-of-the-line spectacles feel like the only game in town because the lure of a superstar blockbuster is the only way to get people to leave their houses. That’s not what live music should be about. It needs to be more holistic, allowing for all kinds of experiences — large, intimate, bombastic, subtle, aggressive, gentle, sublime, raucous.

Are we in the audience ready for that yet? Judging by 2022, we seem like a work in progress. Personally speaking, I still want to see bands. It’s the rest of you I’m not sure about.

When Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion performed their 2020 hit “WAP” together at the 2021 Grammy Awards, their salacious set got people and pundits talking. The performance apparently drew a number of FCC complaints, while Fox News correspondents were so “offended” by it, they couldn’t stop playing on their shows. Some members of Congress even complained about it on the House of Representatives floor instead of, y’know, doing their jobs. And while Meg thinks they did all this because they “secretly like it,” three-time Grammy host Trevor Noah made no secret of his own enjoyment of the performance.

In a new interview with Billboard, The Daily Show’s outgoing host shared how the performance actually made him an ever bigger fan of both performers. “I already came in as a fan of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, but I became a bigger fan because I saw the work that they put into the performance,” he said, also giving praise to another of the show’s performers. “Brandi Carlile was my favorite live performance at last year’s Grammys. She was stellar. She had a command of not just the stage, but every single note that she was performing in a way that few artists can achieve consistently.”

Noah will host for the third consecutive ceremony in 2023, explaining why in the interview. “I’m enjoying the fact that we’re juggling flaming swords… You develop a deep appreciation for what these people are doing beyond just the music that they make.”

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

We’ve all been forced to endure Donald Trump long enough now to know that whenever the former president makes a big show of teasing something he plans to say, it’s best to just climb back into bed and hide under the blankets. So when the former president — who has been awfully quiet since officially launching his 2024 presidential campaign — made a major announcement on Wednesday that he’d be making a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” on Thursday, well, we couldn’t help but brace ourselves for something outrageous. But as Seth Meyers told viewers on Thursday night, “When Trump posted his ‘major announcement’ today, it turned out to be SO much more pathetic than anyone could have possibly imagined.”

First, there was the image of Trump as a bizarro Superman — an image that brings to mind the whole superhero-like exit he planned to make upon being released from Walter Reed National Military Center in 2020, after being treated for coronavirus. Then there was the part where Trump introduced himself as “Hopefully your favorite president of all time. Better than Lincoln, better than Washington.” But the real kicker was the announcement itself: That Trump’s latest grift will see him getting in on the NFT game — which he clearly does not understand in the slightest.

“I bet Lincoln’s super f***ing jealous he didn’t think of that!,” was Meyers’ initial reply. “Gotta love the timing of a former president launching his NFT line the same week a crypto scammer gets arrested. ‘They got SBF — looks like there’s an opening available then!’”

Meyers shared that he is “also certain that Trump didn’t look at the copy of his script until the cameras were rolling.” As evidence of this theory, he pointed out a part in the announcement/commercial in which Trump explained that “Each card comes with a chance to win amazing prizes, like dinner with me. I don’t know if that’s an amazing prize, but it’s what we have.”

Meyers, using his now-iconic Trump voice, gave some additional context to what the former president might have been thinking with his clear bit of ad libbing: “It’s what we have, you know. Is it the best prize? It’s not. But, you know, it’s Christmas. And on Christmas, isn’t what we have enough? Because one day you’re president and the next day you’re selling a product you don’t fully comprehend. But who needs an iPad when you can have a whatever the f**k this is?”

Meyers also issued a warning to anyone thinking of buying a Trump Digital Card for their spouse this holiday season: “You’re getting a divorce!”

You can watch the full clip above.

It’s been nearly 24 hours since Donald Trump made the “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” that he’s got a new grift — NFTs — and clearly has no idea what they are or what he’s even talking about. But the rest of the world can’t stop talking (or laughing) about them, which is just fine with us. Because of the many comical things about this whole endeavor, the funniest part might be that the former president claims the Trump Digital Trading cards “feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and my career,” before adding that “it’s been very exciting.”

Except, as many people have already pointed out on social media, no one remembers when Trump went all High Noon like Gary Cooper… or when he was an astronaut:

​​https://twitter.com/HuskyCaucasian/status/1603437178469728298?s=20&t=dReGbFxfgpSrJaTd2ctr4A

Same goes for Top Gun: Trump, Trump the pro football player, or Donald Trump, race car driver:

But here’s the worst part: According to Gizmodo, Team Trump didn’t even bother to hire an actual artist to create images of the former president achieving all sorts of things he never achieved. As Kyle Barr writes:

The images were so lazy that based on reverse image searches they were edited photos scraped off the internet. It’s unclear if they were edited by hand or perhaps crafted using AI image generation, though the one image of Trump in hunter garb bears a very distinct resemblance to waders crafted by Banded, a hunting apparel company.

Trump’s cowboy outfit appears to match a leather duster made by Scully Sportswear, a California-based costume and western garb shop.

As for the astronaut photo? Amazingly, even that image was not real:

On the bright side, if you’re reading this, chances are you’re not going to jail for trying to help stage a coup for a guy hawking crappy, photoshopped NFTs, so there’s that.

(Via Gizmodo)

At long last, months after photos of Margot Robbie as Barbie from the upcoming movie went viral, we have our first Barbie teaser trailer. The colorful early look dropped this morning (December 16), as did a new social media presence for the movie, which adds fire to some casting rumors.

Back in May, it was rumored that Dua Lipa had landed a role in the movie, although that has yet to be confirmed. However, an official Instagram account for the movie, @barbiethemovie, surfaced yesterday, and what’s particularly interesting there is the accounts that it follows. There are only 16 of them, including cast members like Helen Mirren, Issa Rae, Rhea Pearlman, America Ferrera, and Simu Liu, along with, yes, Lipa.

It should be noted that it’s also possible Lipa is involved with the movie by contributing music to the soundtrack and doesn’t have an on-screen role.

Meanwhile, Lipa recently spoke about why she wants to take “baby steps” when it comes to her acting career. In an episode of her Acts Of Service podcast with guest Dan Levy, Lipa explained, “I think my biggest thing would be taking on a really big role and be like, f*ck, now I have to be an actor and feel these emotions and feelings on camera when I haven’t brought myself up to that point yet.”

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Billie Eilish was on the road for basically all of this year for the Happier Than Ever, The World Tour. She wanted to close out the year in her hometown, so she planned two nights at the Kia Forum — one was last night, December 15, and the finale is tonight. However, it’s hard to imagine how she can top last night’s concert, considering she brought out both Phoebe Bridgers and Dave Grohl for performances.

With Bridgers, the pair sang “Motion Sickness” together — an undoubtedly beautiful moment of female solidarity in an industry that’s always posing challenges for women. Happier Than Ever dealt with a lot of similar themes as that song does: the manipulation of men in music, the unfair position women are constantly put in no matter how successful they are.

Grohl and Eilish sang “My Hero,” together, a sprawling homage to Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins who passed earlier this year. Eilish honored his life during her Grammys performance in April, donning a shirt with his face on it. The month before, Grohl also praised Eilish: “There’s a lot of great young bands that are f*cking killing it and have devoted fan bases. They might not be as popular as Nicki Minaj, but honestly, when I see f*cking Billie Eilish, that’s rock and roll to me. She started a revolution and took over the world.”

Watch clips of the performances below.

Let’s get this out of the way now: there is no post-credits scene for Avatar: The Way of Water — and that’s one of the reasons why it’s so good.

There’s an expectation that every blockbuster must have a “bonus” scene either during or after the credits, which can be fun when it’s Bruce Campbell doing Bruce Campbell things. But often times, it feels like a commercial for a movie that hasn’t been made yet. As Brady Langmann wrote for Esquire, “We’re at the point where superhero movies are telling us that the next sequel or spinoff is more important than the film you’re watching the trailer for.” Avatar: The Way of Water does set up the next installment in the franchise (and the ones after that, hopefully), but it also feels like a complete film.

The lack of a post-credit scene is not going unnoticed (or unappreciated), either:

Cameron hasn’t specifically criticized the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe for their reliance on post-credits scenes, but he has dinged the superhero factories for other things. “When I look at these big, spectacular films — I’m looking at you, Marvel and DC — it doesn’t matter how old the characters are, they all act like they’re in college,” he said. “The things that really ground us and give us power, love, and a purpose? Those characters don’t experience it, and I think that’s not the way to make movies.” In another interview, Cameron said Avatar: The Way of Water goes farther with female empowerment than Wonder Woman by having a pregnant warrior.

Can Avatar: The Way of Water top Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to become 2022’s second highest-grossing movie (Top Gun: Maverick has a near-insurmountable lead)? Cameron sure hopes so.

Henry Cavill is as hot of a ticket as you’d expect. In fact, he may have broken the record for announcing a new franchise after enduring the Superman dustup, which happened after he departed The Witcher. Let’s back up and recap.

Following the Black Adam release, we learned that Cavill had surprisingly decided to hang up his leather pants as Geralt of Rivia in favor of returning as Clark Kent donning a cape. In a somewhat unexpected move, Netflix quickly announced that Liam Hemsworth would now lead The Witcher, and it seemed like Cavill would happily be “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” for James Gunn as he reshapes the DCU/DCEU, but uh, that didn’t turn out to be happening.

We soon found out that Gunn had decided to roll with a younger version of Superman, at which point the public found out that Cavill was effectively done as the Man of Steel. Cavill swiftly acknowleged — it must be noted, with light text on a dark background that could be read as setting a somber mood — that “My turn to wear the cape has passed.” And this was kind-of heartbreaking, as though someone had pulled the rug out from underneath Cavill.

Well, do not feel sorry for Henry Cavill. He’s already recovered his groove, and he will (characteristically) nerd hard for a different franchise that has already been announced. No, this isn’t a James Bond casting thing, but it should please a voraciously devoted fanbase. Via Deadline, Henry will lead and heavily produce Amazon’s take on adapting the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop RPG universe:

Amazon Studios has made it official, confirming that it has secured global rights to the Warhammer 40,000 game from Games Workshop for Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) to star in and executive produce the Warhammer 40,000 franchise across all Amazon Studios productions. The agreement encompasses rights to the universe across TV series, film, and likely games and animation.

Warhammer 40,000 is set in the far future, where humanity stands at the edge of what might be its brightest future, or its darkest age. The threats to humankind’s empire are many — traitors driven by the fires of ambition, alien empires sworn to reclaim the stars, and the corruption of reality by malevolent gods.

Henry Cavill is diving face first into four decades worth of tabletop games, novels, and video games? This tracks.

And who knows, this may have been in the works for awhile and simply looks like an impeccably timed reveal. In February, Cavill Instagrammed his visit to Warhammer World, where he rubbed nerdy elbows with employees and gushed about feeling “giddy with excitement.” He further expressed how “wandering the halls of the exhibition centre was a dream come true.” He wasn’t done yet and raved about how “[t]he brilliance of the artistry is rather wonderfully matched,” and “I don’t often feel at home, but I did that day.”

It looks like Henry Cavill is finally home. Hopefully, The Rock is doing alright, too.

(Via Deadline)

One of the biggest pops from the audience during my opening night screening of Avatar: The Way of Water had nothing to do with Pandora. Instead, it happened before the movie even began: when the words “directed by Greta Gerwig,” all written in pink, appeared on screen. Folks, our first look at Barbie, the most important movie of 2023, is here, and it looks… unexpected.

There’s little footage from the film itself, outside of a few quick shots of Margot Robbie’s Barbie (working her magic) and Ryan Gosling’s beach blonde Ken, as well as Issa Rae and Simu Liu. Instead, the teaser is a parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a little girl destroying her dolls in favor of Barbie, played by a giant Margot Robbie (this better not awaken anything in me). There’s also a dash of Jacques Demy, the director of French musicals The Young Girls of Rochefort and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, in there.

“It was something that was exciting because it was terrifying,” Gerwig said about working on Barbie. “It felt like vertigo, starting to write it, like: ‘Where do you even begin, and what would be the story?’ And I think it was that feeling I had was knowing that it would be really interesting terror.” She was worried it would be a “career-ender,” but that’s why she wanted to do it. “Then you’re like,” the Oscar-nominated writer of Lady Bird and Little Women added, “I should probably do it.” And thank god (is there a god in the Barbie universe? Or is Barbie god? I hope this is answered in the movie) she did.

Barbie, which also stars Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, and Michael Cera, opens on July 21, 2023, the same day as Oppenheimer.