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The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

In March of 2020, Sorry had just released their critically acclaimed debut album 925 and were playing a heavily buzzed-about show in New York. And then the COVID lockdown began and all of a sudden Sorry were stopped right in their tracks.

“Two years ago it was literally like I came home and then it was lockdown for like six months or whatever,” notes singer, songwriter, and guitarist Asha Lorenz.

Lorenz formed the band with her childhood friend Louis O’Bryen, bonding over their love of the Brooklyn rap crew Pro Era, and later discovering Elliott Smith, The Beatles, and Alex G together. And while they released early singles via SoundCloud, over time Sorry has turned into a full-fledged, five-person unit, with the spiky, sometimes chilly post-punk of their debut evolving into a warmer, more cohesive sound on their acclaimed follow-up Anywhere But Here. Produced alongside Portishead’s Adrian Utley, the album is filled with songs that balance tales of longing and heartbreak with an undercurrent of hopeful resistance. Standouts “Let The Lights On” and “Key To The City” feature melodies and guitar tones that nod to several eras of British rock music while never sounding bogged down in the past.

Taking a break from tour rehearsals, we jumped on Zoom with Lorenz, who talked about moving past your early twenties and why Sorry sound more optimistic this time around.

I love the new video for “Key To The City.” It reminds me a lot of classic British music videos from Massive Attack or Catherine Wheel where the band’s playing and there’s all these little dramatic scenes coming in and out. What were you drawing inspiration from?

There’s actually a scene in The Great Gatsby, the newer version, and there’s kind of a scene when you can see all the windows like that. And I just quite liked that, that image and it just fitted with the song. It was quite a fun day. We had like 26 scenes and we only had like 11 hours. So it was just awesome, my friends just making those scenes and trying to make it all work.

So we can back up a little bit. Your first album, 925, comes out in March of 2020, right when the global pandemic hit. I know you’ve been able to do some shows in the US before that, but still, you’re getting great reviews, a lot of buzz and then boom, you have to stop. I imagine that to be really frustrating.

It was frustrating, but I feel like it was just such a mad time in the world. I didn’t really process it that much because it was just kind of so horrible for everyone. So, it was just kind of everyone is in the same boat. I was happy that we could still put it out because I know some people pushed [their albums] back even more. I was happy that people could listen to the music. But yeah, it was frustrating. Also seven months when, you know, you can’t play and you start to go a bit crazy.

I imagine that on one hand, it’s like, “this is supposed to be our time. We were all set to go.” But on the other hand, “you know, it’s just an album. People have much worse going on. I don’t want to complain.”

I just felt like the world was in such a way, so I wasn’t really thinking about the album so much.

For a while the band was basically you and Louis, but this album feels a lot more band-oriented than the last one. Was that how you were approaching it?

Well, we’ve been touring together for like six years and we had a new member, Marco, who kind of came in like two years ago, and he really helped tie together all the production bits and the demo bits into the live show. From the last record, we felt like it was more like we kind of built the songs up from the demos, like we hadn’t really played the finished songs live. And then once we were playing, we were like, “Oh sh*t, sounds actually quite fat, like mixing it together.” We’re like, “Oh, we want to do this album backwards.” So we kind of wrote even the trinkets and like production bits, the electronic bits before, so that we could record them live in the song and so that things didn’t jump out as much. It was kind of conscious, and I think we wanted it to not feel as stagnant, and some of the songs have a different energy. So that’s good for playing live.

When your first single “Starstruck” really started to hit, what was going on in your life at the time?

That is the thing. Like, we haven’t really played mad big shows or anything since the album came out. So it’s kind of hard to tell. I think it happened kind of invisibly because it hasn’t been such a huge jump or an overnight thing or anything. You know, it feels like quite a slow progression of mild success now.

How are you feeling about things now? Where do you think the band is at the moment? And how are you feeling about getting back out there and really giving it a push?

I think I’m kind of happy. It’s “come, come now,” when we have the opportunity to go on tour, because we feel way more grateful to be able to go. And I think as friends, we all kind of feel a bit more mature and kind of just got through the second coming of age of our early twenties. Now we kind of can be a bit more mature and put the music first of it and like just be excited to play, and make the show like, really good.

So, I swear I’m not going to ask you about the Queen. But how is the general vibe in England/London over there? Because, you know, it seems like it’s been a mess ever since Brexit, and then Boris Johnson beat Jeremy Corbyn. And people really don’t like Prime Minister Liz Truss.

I think it’s a very weird vibe a little bit over here, I think London feels quite scared and divided more than it’s felt like from the time that I’ve been, like, conscious politically. I’ve grown up my whole life and had a sense of community and the sense of sort of just knowing your neighbor, not even like literal neighbor, but just knowing the people who walk down the street. I think people feel scared of each other and don’t really know who they are, and I think the media kind of represents people in a weird way, in ways that aren’t true. But because we’ve all become a bit shut off from actually going to meet people, you kind of just make people like into… you create characters from them just from what’s been fed to you. I think it’s a bit darker, but I don’t know, I can only speak from my perspective, but I’m sure there’s lots of pockets of greatness and new hope as well.

Here in America we have Fox News, like always pushing the right-wing fear machine. But I know Rupert Murdoch, like, owns like all the tabloids in the UK and it’s just like nonstop racism and propaganda.

I think that is such a scary thing. Like you don’t really know who to trust or what the f*ck’s going on.

Do you find that kind of paranoia seeped its way into your lyric process and or even just the way the music feels?

I don’t really know. I think it’s more about relationships. It’s not really too political. Well, in some ways, but not within the lyrics. It’s not necessarily saying things are bad, but you can’t help but react to your circumstances.

I really love the song “So Many People Want To Be Loved” and it’s really unabashedly romantic and very sweet. I think it’s the most open-hearted song we’ve heard from Sorry. Where did that song come from?

The title kind of came to me and I knew that I wanted to write the song around it and I had the verses and then I played it with Louis and I kind of demoed it, and then all the lyrics just kind of spilled out like that. I kind of heard it like a Lou Reed or Daniel Johnston song. I just kind of thought that I could see myself in all those people in the choruses.

And it kind of seems like it all ties back to what you were saying about like young heartbreak and learning, like, you’re going to be okay.

I think it’s more just like trying to put a bit of humor with the sadness. My mom always told me, if I felt sad, to just imagine that I was like, in a story or something or like, take myself out of it. So I think if you can kind of see things like taking yourself out of them, then you can kind of see it for something else and for what it really is.

It’s kind of hard to Google your band name and to find it in the first results page or to find it on Wikipedia. Do you ever feel like it’s limited you in a way, or do you like the fact it’s something of that nature?

I do, yeah. I think it’s funny. It’s just music at the end of the day.

Are you personally an apologetic person?

I think it’s just a British thing. I mean, I do say so. I think I’m always the first to say sorry, because I just can’t be bothered.

Women are generally socialized to apologize more and British people apologize in order to avoid awkwardness or faux pas.

I think it’s funny. And then, like, if the band ever got famous or something, then people will say, “Oh, sorry, Sorry.”

The album title and a lot of themes are about people that don’t necessarily love their surroundings, for whatever reason, but they also don’t want to give up on ever finding something better. Was that intentional?

I think a lot of these songs were kind of like written about feeling quite helpless, that “I don’t want to be here” kind of vibe, but then you put the song into something else.

Whenever you feel helpless, do you sometimes have to force yourself to not feel that way? Does writing songs help?

If I can’t make sense of what’s really going on or people’s thoughts and stuff, then I flip it into a song and I can kind of put it away because I can see it for something else.

Anywhere But Here is out now via Domino. Get it here.

Don’t Worry Darling once stood as a hotly anticipated project, given Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut with the well-received Booksmart. Once the publicity tour began, however, a boatload of drama commenced. The thriller itself didn’t impress much, even though it did manage to reduce a right-wing figurehead to tears. And the film’s legacy shall be one of drama, a vibe that Wilde only seems to be perpetuating while continuing to discuss the chaos. Most recently, Wilde lashed out over how people paid so much attention to the sex scenes when Olivia actually spent a lot of time discussing those same scenes while promoting.

This followed Olivia calling “horsesh*t” on reports that her Harry Styles romance broke up her relationship with Jason Sudeikis. Rumor up on rumor piled up, and it didn’t help that Olivia received custody papers while onstage at CinemaCon. That’s a whole other mess, and it’s overlapped, and mostly, Olivia seems to be blaming “misogyny” for Don’t Worry Darling failing to set the cinematic world on fire. At Elle‘s Women in Hollywood ceremony, Wilde pointed towards Twitter for making her job more difficult, although she stresses that she loves the gig.

Via Hollywood Reporter, mentions of “hellfire” also rose to the forefront:

“Sometimes it’s tempting to excuse ourselves from the burning hellfire of the misogyny that defines this business and say ‘Goodnight, good luck, I’d rather eat glass for a living,’” she said but added that women in the entertainment industry don’t let each other give up, and she’d recently gotten encouragement from other Hollywood ladies in “the form of a tight grip of your shoulders and a tense stare into your eyes and a defiant, ‘Do not let them fuck with you.’ And it’s always really tempting to reply, ‘Well if I didn’t know things were bad before, I do now.’”

That wasn’t all. Wilde added, “Let’s face it, you’re not a woman in Hollywood until you’ve begged to be placed into a medically induced coma until your press tour is finished.” She appears to be alluding towards the “Twilight Sleep” method of childbirth brought into the pop-cultural consciousness by a key Mad Men episode, but yep, Olivia is kind-of feeding the continued drama here. She’s also dealing with nanny-induced drama as well, so let’s hope that all parties can move on, to other relationships and other projects, and find some peace in life.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Trevor Noah went to town on a new whistleblower report that alleged Donald Trump fired an executive after he refused to give a portion of his personal Truth Social shares to Melania Trump. According to The Washington Post, Trump demanded the shares in October 2021 when Truth Social was actually worth something and not plummeting towards financial failure. When the executive refused to give up his own shares and be stuck with a tax bill for the transfer, Trump allegedly fired him five months later in retaliation. Noah had a field day with the “romantic” gesture.

“Yeah ladies, find you a man who will commit securities fraud for you! Are you kidding?” The Daily Show host joked before going to town on Trump’s “weird” gift. Via The Wrap:

“The funny thing is, Truth Social is such a failure of a company, that she probably didn’t even want the shares, you know?” Noah said. “It’s almost like when your kids give you that gift, but it’s just like a piece of macaroni art for your birthday. You know, she was probably just like ‘Oh, so cute, you think this is worth something. Thank you Donald.’”

Noah then roasted the Truth Social executive for getting into bed with Trump in the first place.

“If you go into business with Donald Trump, and you are surprised that you got scammed, that’s on you,” Noah said. “What were you thinking? “I know the last guy Trump worked with almost got hanged by an angry mob, but I think I’m gonna turn out fine!’”

(Via The Wrap)

BTS announced in June that they were going on hiatus as a K-pop supergroup to focus on their individual solo careers. Their hiatus took on a different tone yesterday (October 17), as Big Hit Music confirmed BTS’s hiatus will last until “around 2025” because “the members of BTS are currently moving forward with plans to fulfill their military service.” The reaction from BTS Army was predictably immense and mostly supportive, but why does BTS have to serve in the South Korean military?

According to BBC News, “In South Korea, all able-bodied men aged 18-28 must serve about two years. The seven BTS members had been allowed to put off starting their military service until they turned 30.” The term for any country that requires military service is conscription.

Big Hit Music’s statement included that 29-year-old Jin, the oldest BTS member, “will initiate the process as soon as his schedule for his solo release is concluded at the end of October. He will then follow the enlistment procedure of the Korean government. Other members of the group plan to carry out their military service based on their own individual plans.” Jin will turn 30 this December.

Read Big Hit’s full statement below.

BIGHIT MUSIC CONFIRMS BTS TO FULFILL MANDATORY MILITARY SERVICE

BIGHIT MUSIC is proud to announce today that the members of BTS are currently moving forward with plans to fulfill their military service. After the phenomenal concert to support Busan’s bid for the World Expo 2030, and as each individual embarks on solo endeavors, it’s the perfect time and the members of BTS are honored to serve.

Since the creation of BTS over ten years ago, the band has risen to international success, broken records, and catapulted K-Pop into the global stratosphere. BIGHIT MUSIC has focused to the milestone moment when it would be possible to respect the needs of the country and for these healthy young men to serve with their countrymen, and that’s now. Group member Jin will initiate the process as soon as his schedule for his solo release is concluded at the end of October. He will then follow the enlistment procedure of the Korean government. Other members of the group plan to carry out their military service based on their own individual plans. Both the company and the members of BTS are looking forward to reconvening as a group again around 2025 following their service commitment.
With the release of their first anthology album earlier this year it opened the path to allow the members to take some time to explore individual projects. As part of the HYBE family, we support and encourage our artists and are beyond proud that they will each now have time to explore their unique interests and do their duty by being of service to the country they call home.

‘Yet To Come (The Most Beautiful Moment)’ is more than a track from their latest album, it is a promise, there’s much more yet to come in the years ahead from BTS.”

Gunna has beeen denied bond three times, but apparently, he’s not letting that stop him from making another bid for freedom, however temporary. Court documents reviewed by Complex and Rolling Stone show that Gunna’s defense has filed a fourth motion for a bond hearing, once again arguing that the prosecution has misled the court regarding his potential for tampering with witnesses in his upcoming racketeering trial.

“On three prior occasions, Defendant Kitchens has moved the Court for a reasonable bond,” the documents read. “On each occasion, the State has made proffers at hearings that turned out to be false and/or misleading.” Gunna’s defense is miffed over the prosecution citing a text message in which one of the participants allegedly stated their willingness to kill for the rapper. The prosecution offered to turn over the text after the last bond hearing, but apparently, has yet to do so.

Complex also notes that the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office has now requested to postpone the trial from January 9, 2023 to March 27. The case, which has become controversial for its use of lyrics as evidence against Gunna and Young Thug, has drawn national attention from lawmakers and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian. Kardashian wrote a statement criticizing Gunna’s last bond denial, calling him “my friend Sergio” and arguing that his being denied bond is unjust.

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

Taylor Swift has had a patient album rollout with Midnights, which is set to drop in just a few days on October 21. A couple weeks ago, she confirmed the album’s tracklist, which features 13 songs. Now we know a bit more about what’s going on there: The album’s Apple Music listing shows how long each song is, indicating that they have a total length of 44 minutes and 2 seconds.

That would make Midnights Swift’s second-shortest album of her career, behind just her self-titled debut LP. The lengths of Swift’s previous albums (the standard editions, so excluding any bonus tracks) are as follows:

• Taylor Swift — 40:28
• Fearless — 53:41
• Speak Now — 67:29
• Red — 65:09
• 1989 — 48:41
• Reputation — 55:38
• Lover — 61:48
• Folklore — 63:29
• Evermore — 60:38
• Fearless (Taylor’s Version) — 106:20
• Red (Taylor’s Version) — 130:26

Meanwhile, Swift recently unveiled a bunch of things she has going on in the next week-plus. After the release of Midnights, there is set to be a “special very chaotic surprise” at 3 a.m. ET on October 21. Later that day, a video for “Anti-Hero” will premiere. Beyond that, a couple of big TV appearances on both sides of the pond are in Swift’s future: She’s jumping on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on the 24th, then on October 28, she will be on the UK’s The Graham Norton Show.

Before she married Prince Harry and became the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle was a “briefcase girl” on the Howie Mandel-hosted game show Deal or No Deal. It’s a tale as old as time, really. Markle opened up about her experience holding the #24 briefcase in the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast with guest Paris Hilton.

“I had also studied international relations in college, and there were times I was on set at Deal or No Deal and thinking back to my time working as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina in Buenos Aires and being in the motorcade with the security of treasury at the time and being valued specifically for my brain. Here, I was being valued for something quite the opposite,” she said. Markle told Hilton that Deal or No Deal had a “very cookie-cutter idea of precisely what we should look like. It was solely about beauty — and not necessarily about brains.” The Duchess continued:

“When I look back at that time, I’ll never forget this one detail — because moments before we’d get on stage, there was a woman who ran the show and she’d be there backstage, and I can still hear her. She couldn’t properly pronounce my last name at the time and I knew who she was talking to because she’d go, ‘Mar-kell, suck it in! Mar-kell, suck it in!’”

Markle eventually quit Deal or No Deal, and while she was “thankful” for the job, she didn’t appreciate how it made her feel, “which was not smart.” The Suits actress continued, “I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn’t the focus of why we were there. I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach knowing that I was more than what was being objectified on the stage.”

You can listen to the podcast below.

(Via People)

It appears there has been yet another failed attempt to pit two women against each other. Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez attended the 2nd Annual Academy Of Motion Pictures Gala in Los Angeles over the weekend, and they posed together for a series of photos. It should be the punctuation mark on years-long speculation that there was a rift between them because of Justin Bieber.

“Plot twist,” photographer Tyrell Hampton captioned one of his photos of Bieber and Gomez on Instagram.

Bieber publicly addressed the faux feud on the September 27 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper, who asked Bieber if she was “ever with Justin romantically at the same time as” Gomez.

“No. Not one time,” the 25-year-old model and Rhode founder said. “When him and I ever started hooking up or anything of that sort, he was not ever in a relationship. Ever. At any point. It’s not my character to mess with someone’s relationship. I would just never do that. I was raised better than that. I’m not interested in doing that, and I never was. I think that there are situations where you can still kind of have back and forth with someone, but even that was not the situation. I can say, period, point blank, I was never with him when he was in a relationship with anybody. That’s the end of it. And I had been involved with him since I was 18.”

Bieber added, “The timeline also that I think sometimes is in question of us getting back together and getting engaged and him having been spending time with his ex before that … I understand, again, how it looks from the outside, and there’s a lot of perception there, but that was a situation where I know for a fact that it was the right thing for them to close that door. They were not in a relationship at that time. But of course, there’s a very long history there. It’s not my relationship. It has nothing to do with me, so I respect that a lot, but I know that it closed a chapter. I think it was the best thing that could have happened for him to move on and be engaged and get married and move on with his life in that way.”

Bieber noted that it was difficult to publicly dive into this subject because she didn’t want to speak on behalf of her husband or Gomez, “but I just know what was going on when we got back together, and I know what had to happen for that to come back together in a healthy way.”

The Biebers famously first met as teenagers when Hailey’s father, Stephen Baldwin, introduced them backstage at The Today Show 13 years ago. Justin was in an on-and-off again relationship with Gomez from 2010 to 2014. He and Hailey had maintained a close friendship until publicly confirming their romance in late 2015, which was short-lived.

In early 2018, Bieber and Gomez were linked again, but Bieber reconnected with Hailey that June, and they were engaged by July. They have been married since September 2018.

After Bieber’s appearance on Call Her Daddy, Gomez seemingly urged her fans to stop going after her online.

“Some of the things that I don’t even need to be aware of are just vile and disgusting,” the singer and Only Murders In The Building actress said on TikTok Live. “And it’s not fair because no one should ever be spoken to in the manner that I’ve seen, and all I have to say is it’s incredibly ironic that I would release something that is all about kind words [referring to her new makeup line Rare Beauty’s Kind Words Matte lipstick and lip liners] ’cause that’s exactly what I want. That’s it. If you support Rare, I cannot thank you enough but know that you are also representing what it means, and that is words matter. Truly matter.”

James Corden and restaurant owner Keith McNally have already settled their beef. The restauranteur has already reversed his decision less than 24 hours after he announced that Corden is banned from Balthazar, an iconic New York City staple. According to a new Instagram post from McNally, the outgoing late night host personally called him and apologized for how he treated the restaurant staff.

“Having f*cked up myself more than most people, I strongly believe in second chances,” McNally wrote. “So if James Corden lets me host his Late Late Show for 9 months, I’ll immediately rescind his ban from Balthazar. No, of course not. But…. anyone magnanimous enough to apologize to a deadbeat layabout like me (and my staff) doesn’t deserve to be banned from anywhere.”

McNally’s quick turnaround is surprising considering his initial post strongly hinted that Corden is a repeat offender, and therefore, has already been given several chances to not berate the staff. The Balthazar owner originally justified the ban by listing just two examples of Corden’s behavior, with the implication that it was a common occurrence.

“James Corden is a Hugely gifted comedian, but a tiny Cretin of a man,” McNally wrote on Monday. “And the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago. I don’t often 86 a customer, to today I 86’d Corden. It did not make me laugh.”

However, with Corden on notice that his treatment of restaurant workers (and others in the service industry) is now being carefully monitored, maybe he’ll clean up his act. Or he’ll threaten to go back in the kitchen again and cook his own egg yolk omelette, whatever the heck that is.

(Via Keith McNally on Instagram)

The British Royals have never been particularly thrilled with The Crown. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Prince Harry actually seemed good with the show and referred to Matt Smith (who initially portrayed the Duke of Edinburgh) as his “granddad.” Those who are still firmly entrenched in The Firm, however, don’t seem to like the show pulling back the curtain, especially when it comes to the Diana years. Last season finally sh*t all over the fairy tale when it came to Prince Charles allegedly growing salty at the public adoration of Diana, and as history tells us, divorce comes this season (which arrives in November), and Diana’s tragic death won’t be too far behind (in Season 6).

Fast forward to recent months, and the Queen Elizabeth II’s death prompted The Crown to pause Season 6 production (for obvious reasons), and then Prince William reportedly raised a fuss over a Season 5 episode that portrays the BBC interview of Diana that led to the airing of Charles and Camilla’s ongoing affair. And now, Deadline reports that Netflix is “rattled” after former Prime Minister John Major lashed out over the season’s premiere episode, which alleges that Charles was openly gripe-filled about his mother still hanging around on the throne in the 1990s. Reportedly, Charles “summoned Major to moan” about his plight, and Major is pushing back. Via Deadline:

Charles then has a clandestine meeting with Major where the royal relates the story of how Edward VII was “kept waiting in the wings” for decades due to the longevity of Queen Victoria’s rule.

Major has insisted that no such conversation about a plot to overthrow the late Queen took place and described it as “malicious nonsense.” Other establishment figures spent the weekend savaging a show that they’ve yet to see, often relying on inaccurate reports of what the Season 5 episodes are said to contain.

Tensions are said to be particularly high on the Netflix end, given that The Crown will shoot Diana’s death in the coming weeks. All things considered, now Deadline reports that Netflix decided that it would be better to push Harry and Meghan Markle’s followup documentary (which was almost guaranteed to ruffle royal feathers and was reportedly due to arrive with followup timing in December) until 2023. Interestingly enough, Deadline adds word from a Netflix spokesperson that “there’s never been any documentary from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex confirmed.”

So, will this documentary even see the light of day? No one’s talking, but Netflix’s The Crown returns with Season 5 on November 9.

(Via Deadline)