Matt Skiba is going to be a busy man at this weekend’s When We Were Young Festival. Skiba will be performing at the punk and emo nostalgia-palooza in Las Vegas with his band Alkaline Trio. But he’s also sure to be bombarded with attention following Blink-182…err, replacing him, with original member Tom DeLonge.
Following news last week that DeLonge reunited with Blink-182 after leaving the band in 2015, Skiba — who filled in for him ever since — has been a gracious dude, saying that, “I am truly happy uou guys are a band and a family again.” But the questions still remain about Skiba’s time with Blink-182 and his recent departure. And in a recent interview with Vulture, he pretty much set the record straight. On top of that, he had some juicy details to share about When We Were Young, namely that, “They announced all those bands playing before anybody said yes.” Vulture says they’ve reached out to the festival for comment on this claim, but Skiba shared some illuminating takes:
“You want to hear something? Whether I’m supposed to, or not supposed to say anything, I guess, is immaterial,” Skiba began. “It makes the conversation more fun. But that festival — initially, they announced all those bands playing before anybody said yes. It was a Fyre Festival kind of stunt that worked. And I only know that because my band was on that initial flyer, with every other band from our whole ilk. And they almost expertly started advertising it before they had a single band on the bill. And somehow, all the bands agreed to do it. I’m not making this up. Somebody may correct me, but I know that Alkaline Trio, we hadn’t confirmed anything. And when we read that, we called other bands that were playing, and nobody knew about it.”
This is especially interesting, considering that Blink-182 is confirmed to headline the already announced 2023 edition of When We Were Young Festival. But Skiba, who admits numerous times in the interview to being out of the loop on things by design, says he’s pumped to play at the festival regardless.
“If that’s an accident or a fluke, then it’s like two particles of sand meeting each other in space. It had to have been planned. And they weren’t wrong. Whoever did that, I’m not even mad. You took a sh*t in the fridge and ate the whole wheel of cheese? I’m not even mad. It’s like, holy sh*t, dude. Congratulations to whoever masterminded that, the Lex Luther of promoters. And I think everybody, including us, is really pumped about it. It’s going to be a great time.”
According to a new book titled Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind by New York Times Magazine correspondent Robert Draper, Republican leadership is basically being held hostage by some of its newer right-wing members — including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Draper interviewed Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments after reports that she once claimed tragedies like Sandy Hook and 9/11 were a hoax, to get her thoughts on how House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy should restructure the party should things go well in upcoming elections.
‘I think that to be the best speaker of the House and to please the base, he’s going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway,’ she predicted in a flat, unemotional voice. ‘And if he doesn’t, they’re going to be very unhappy about it. I think that’s the best way to read that. And that’s not in any way a threat at all. I just think that’s reality.’
Greene apparently wants a high-profile seat on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees — a pretty big ask for a second-term Congresswoman who’s faced plenty of bad press in the last year. When Draper told Greene as much, she replied, “‘I completely deserve it. I’ve been treated like [expletive]. I have been treated like garbage.’”
And it sounds like McCarthy agrees — or, at the very least, doesn’t want to go against Greene, who’s been amassing a base of QAnon sympathizers and ultra-conservative MAGA supporters. According to Draper’s book, McCarthy told both Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar — another embattled GOP member — that not only would the pair be returned to committee panels, but that they would have “better assignments.” And Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who would likely lead the House Oversight Committee if the GOP comes into power, has been enthusiastic about Greene’s new appointments saying he would “look forward” to members like “Rep. Greene with energy and a strong interest in partnering with us in our efforts to rein in the unaccountable Swamp and to hold the Biden Administration accountable for the many self-inflicted crises that it has unleashed on the American people.”
Charissa Thompson is taken aback at the mention of this being her eighth season as the host of Fox NFL Kickoff, where she spends an hour every Sunday morning breaking down the upcoming day of football with Michael Vick, Charles Woodson, Sean Payton, and Peter Schrager.
“I mean, it’s my longest relationship personally and professionally, so, yeah, I think that says a lot about how much I love Fox and I love the NFL — marriages fail, but my love for the show hasn’t,” Thompson said with a laugh, flashing the same self-deprecating humor she uses on set.
Getting to this point has been quite the journey for Thompson, who spent the early years of her career saying yes to any opportunity and figuring out the details on the fly. After starting in the business in HR at Fox Sports, she became a production assistant in Denver for Fox Sports Net Rocky Mountain, where she got her first crack on-camera doing fill-in work on Colorado Rockies all-access shows. From there, she did everything from sidelines for college football and NFL games, to web videos for Yahoo covering everything from the Olympics to the World Cup, to hosting NHL coverage for Versus. Stints with ESPN and Extra were also stops along the way.
It was trial by fire for Thompson, who did something of a sports broadcasting speed run, gaining experience in reporting, studio hosting, short-form video, and just about everything in between. During one football season, she was on the road so much she didn’t bother having a house and kept everything in a storage unit. Saturdays and Sundays were spent doing sidelines, Mondays and Tuesdays were in studio for NHL, and Wednesdays and Thursdays were shooting video for Yahoo, all in different places.
That experience has made her appreciative of her slightly less chaotic schedule today, as she goes from Amazon’s Thursday Night Football desk to Fox NFL Kickoff on Sunday mornings. For someone who has felt, at times, like a “jack of all trades, master of none,” it’s been a nice change of pace to get a chance to fully immerse herself in the NFL world during the season without being pulled in too many different directions, something that’s required some personal growth to learn to say no in order to not spread herself too thin.
That entrenchment and comfort in her role has also led to her taking on more responsibility for Fox NFL Kickoff, while also doing the same as she starts something new with Thursday Night Football, recognizing that she is the TV veteran on set.
“I always try to look through a lens of what’s best for the team and that collective, but I do feel an ownership that it is my show and I say that only because it’s my responsibility to lead,” Thompson says. “There has been a turnover of the cast, and this isn’t the same group that I started with eight years ago, and almost every year, there’s been a new member of the team or someone else has left and things like that. So, with that turnover comes a responsibility on my end to be the constant and also a responsibility in leading guys — I mean, there’s some guys that come on that have, yes, their resumes are so extensive in the NFL, whether in coaching or playing, that have never done television, so, even something as simple as how to hold the microphone or when we’re going to break and things like that.
“So yes, it’s been a reminder to me that it is my job as the quarterback to make them all feel comfortable, but it’s also my job in the editorial sense, I have a lot more say,” she continues. “I used to be a little bit more passive in the construction of the show because I just defer to producers, and now I’m like nope, we’re not doing that.”
It’s been a noticeable shift for those she works with on Kickoff, as producer Jeremy Mennell pointed out how she’s taken more of a vocal role in show prep and the curation of the rundown and topics.
“Charissa, she’s always obviously been a star since she took over the show years ago, and I think what she’s been doing recently is just in establishing even more so as to why,” Mennell says. “She’s very involved all week and not just with us — I know the Thursday night stuff she’s doing, too — she still finds the time to make sure she’s checking in with me, checking in with Mike and Charles and coach Payton. And she’s really good at finding that perfect blend of getting the point across of what she wants to talk about, what the guy’s strong suits are, and then also the fan wants to hear. She has a very good and different perspective than the guys who just played football, and she’s a perfect middle ground to kind of mesh those things together. And this year, especially, she is being more vocal about it and being even more passionate and really taking pride and stepping up and being that leader on camera and behind the scenes.”
Lily Hernandez FOX Sports
The most recent example of that came in Week 4 following the scary injury for Tua Tagovailoa on Thursday Night Football against the Bengals, when he was carted off with a concussion late in the second quarter. Thompson was on the halftime coverage for Amazon that faced criticism from some for not addressing Tagovailoa’s previous injury from that Sunday, when he was wobbly after a hit but returned to the game after being cleared through concussion protocol, citing a back injury as the reason he was unstable.
All of that was heard by Thompson, who explained why they handled it the way they did in the moment and noted it was something they would learn from moving forward, as well.
“I know that we received a lot of criticism, Amazon did collectively, in terms of coverage,” Thompson says. “I will stand by this: We did what we thought was right in that moment, which was it was just about the injured player. And all the other stuff as far as how we got there and stuff was going to be addressed, whether that was in halftime or whether that was in postgame, but the immediate thing was in remembering like, I’m on a desk with a guy that was teammates with Tua and friends with Tua in Ryan Fitzpatrick. And he was very emotional about what had just happened, as all these guys were. They all played the game and knowing and seeing someone in that state is that for us, it was just getting out the information, making sure that he was okay, and reacting as humans.
“Of course, you can say we could have done this better or we could have done that better, absolutely,” Thompson continues. “And, the same way that — I always make the sports analogies — if these guys in the film session on Monday go back and go, ‘Hey, we threw an interception here. We fumbled the ball here.’ We could have done a lot of things different or better, but that’s why for us, it comes back down to this as a new team, a new scheme, and we will be better next week. We never want to have to have that situation, but that’s not the reality of it. And ultimately, our responsibility was to deliver the news and make sure that he was okay, and that was done.”
The follow through on that came Sunday morning, as Thompson was able to lean on being on site on Thursday to use the A-block on Kickoff for a discussion about the issues with concussion protocols that allowed Tagovailoa to return against the Bills and then play on a short week against the Bengals, and how the NFL needs to proceed as they began looking into changes to the protocol.
The resulting conversation featured Payton discussing how coaches navigate concussion protocols, Woodson giving a passionate plea to both the league and players to be more careful in trying to rush back onto the field knowing what we know about how head injuries can impact players long-term, and Vick detailing how he had a similar situation when he was with the Eagles and how Andy Reid shut him down to protect him from himself trying to come back into a game. All three analysts provided their own experiences to explain how something like that can happen, how it can be fixed, and how the onus is on a number of parties to fix things going forward, which is where Kickoff is at its best and Thompson is always trying to get it to go.
Unlike Fox NFL Sunday, where the same group has been doing the show together for decades, the Kickoff and Thursday Night Football desks have much newer groups that are still be figuring out their on-set chemistry. This can also provide a fresh perspective given how much closer those on set are to their playing and coaching careers. For Thompson, her job is to set the analysts up to provide that unique insight of having played and coached against a number of players still starring in the league, because that’s where they can separate themselves from other shows.
“I couldn’t ask for a better person to know what does it feel like to be Lamar Jackson? Like, oh, I don’t know, it’s Michael Vick to my left,” Thompson says. “Or working with Charles Woodson, I mean, best to play the position in a passing league and ask how you cover these guys like Tyreek [Hill]. And so it is really cool to have access to the answers of my questions right next to me and, really, truly be able to take the audience inside that mindset or something that’s so close to the game.”
Sometimes it’s easy to find that connection. On Thursday nights, that means letting Richard Sherman rant after a Russell Wilson-led team throws instead of running in a short-yardage situation near the goal line, or Fitzpatrick break down an offense he ran just a few years ago. But it also is on Thompson to push deeper than basic questions to avoid getting cliches and coach speak from guys trained their whole lives not to give too much information away, and for her, it always comes back to one simple premise.
“I want it to always feel conversational, but I always say in the preparation for the show and whether it’s the rundown or construction of questions is, it’s not a good question if I can answer it,” Thompson says. “If I can answer the question, then I’m not asking the right one to the experts that I don’t know what their answer is going to be. So, I try to create and craft questions that elicits the best response that I’ll say, oh, wow, I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s interesting or that’s funny.”
That requires constant effort on her part to work with the analysts at the desk to find out want to talk about, how they like questions to be asked, and how to facilitate that conversation in the most efficient way possible, because a one-hour show to preview a full day of games really becomes half an hour or less after breaks, features, and interviews. This is where her past experience pays dividends, whether it’s knowing how to get the most out of a short segment from doing quick bite videos for Yahoo, or the directness required in sideline interviews to get to the heart of a question.
Lily Hernandez FOX Sports
There’s also a confidence in herself that has grown over the years, a sense of belonging and comfort in who she is and being a woman in the sports media, with all the good and bad that come with it. Thompson notes 10 years ago, she would’ve spent time doing hair and makeup for our Zoom interview, ever aware of her presentation, but over time, she’s grown more comfortable.
“I think it’s just my own maturation of self and getting older, it’s kind of like, okay, I don’t need to try to impress as much — I think that I’ve been so open with who I am it’s sometimes a blessing and a curse,” Thompson says. “I think I’ve always had this fear of being a fraud, that I always want to overcompensate for that and be like, I’m an open book. I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. Being authentic is very important for me. Because I know when I watch people on TV, I can tell if they’re being authentic or not, or when they self deprecate, it makes me feel like I’ve broken that third wall. Like, I would want to hang with them, and if I’m watching someone that I want to hang with, I want someone to feel the same way about me. I also think that there’s been the stuff that’s happened to me that’s been made public when I got my phone hacked and I had certain things happen that you can’t help but be like well, okay, there it is.
“And so it’s like, when your most vulnerable situation has happened publicly,” she continues. “You can do one of two things. You either go, ‘Alright, well, that happened and I’m a great girlfriend so let’s move on,’ or you retreat and go the other way and then you crawl into a hole and never want to come out of it. And so, I think that I’ve always just leaned into finding a positive in a negative situation as opposed to letting the negative situation define me, and then I just go away and I avoid all criticism. I mean, that hacking happened a long time ago and I still get people all the time making comments about it, but I don’t care anymore. Because I know being a victim of something is not something that’s laughable, but I have to be able to walk into a room and bring some levity, no matter what the situation is.”
That 2018 hacking in which photos of her leaked online was a low point and left Thompson worried about her career, unsure what the response would be from her employers. What she found instead was unwavering support.
“I remember because my friend Erin Andrews was covering the NFC Championship game and they flew me to Philadelphia to be with her and to just be surrounded by people that I love — the Strahans, and the Jay Glazers, and Howie [Long], and Terry [Bradshaw] and like, literally flew me there to just be with them,” Thompson recalls. “Which still makes me emotional, because it’s like, who does that? It was like, ‘oh, you should have been fired,’ they did the complete opposite. And I was working at Extra at the time and they did the same thing where it was like, you’re a victim of something, we’re here to support you. How can you do that? And you never forget how you’re treated in the worst moments of your life and who’s doing that. So I am forever indebted to the response of my both of my employers in a time that they could have done the complete opposite and I know some other employers probably would’ve.”
The support helped Thompson emerge from that situation confident in herself and her standing in an industry that isn’t kind, particularly to women. As Thompson tells it, doors may open faster for women because there are fewer of them in sports media, but they also close faster, too, as they aren’t afforded as long “to be a guest in the house.” For Thompson, she learned that finding people upon whom she can lean and be vulnerable for support, advice, and knowledge was of the utmost importance. She recalls being asked to do hockey and having to learn the basics on the fly, but found willing teachers in some very capable hands, citing Sidney Crosby and Doc Emrick among those who would take the time to answer questions.
Now, she is far from a guest and has made herself at home, while still seeking out chances to learn more. Every new experience affords a chance to grow even further, with taking on halftime and postgame coverage for Amazon giving her that opportunity each week. But the lessons learned on her journey to this point have provided her with the confidence that she can navigate those situations and belongs in that chair. And now, she wants to pay it forward for the next woman that eventually takes that seat.
“When young women in this business ask for advice, I say do everything,” Thompson says. “Do everything that you can and I will never fault someone if they … there’s gonna come a time where someone takes my job. I hope it’s not tomorrow, but you have to understand there’s an ushering in of new people, and Melissa Stark’s career for example, it can come back. You don’t know when or where, but I’m trying to keep getting better even as I’ve been lucky enough to do this for a long time.”
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.
Van Buren Records is loudly and proudly a product of Brockton, Massachusetts. The rap collective boasts a roster of thirteen creatives with impressive talents that include rapping, producing, and fashion designing. Luke Bars, Meech, Felix!, Jiles, Saint Lyor, Ricky Felix, Andrew Regis, Kiron, RLouie, Invada, and Shelby have all contributed — through both individual and collective work — to what makes Van Buren Records such an enthralling unit.
The individual members of Van Buren Records have been releasing music for the better part of the past half-decade. However, it wasn’t until last year that they finally united for their official debut album Bad For Press. The 13-track project was, and still remains, a fine display of collaboration, balance, camaraderie, an artistic vision, and [TK]. While some thought that it would be some time before the group offered another body of work, Van Buren Records made a quick return with their second album DSM last month.
An acronym for Dover Street Market, Van Buren Records’ sophomore release reinforces their increasing greatness while also sneering at doubters who questioned if the group had what it took to construct another impressive process. In short, the answer is yes, and in a conversation with Uproxx, Van Buren Records tells us how it all came together.
How would y’all categorize Bad For Press and DSM separately based on their differences?
Luke Bars: [DSM] is the evil twin.
Meech: That’s a good way to put it. They’re both in the same realm; they’re two different energies, two different words, but still us.
Luke: Bad For Press, we were just coming into the industry. DSM is like we’ve seen what’s been going on. We’ve been around. We’re building our own experiences from it and we just put that into the music. You can just clearly see the difference. I don’t want to say it’s dark, you can see that the innocence has been lost a little and that’s not a bad thing.
It took a few years from when y’all first started for the world to get your first formal project with Bad For Press, so I was genuinely surprised to see y’all, who all have individual solo careers you work on, return so quick album No. 2. What made y’all say let’s do this again without much of a break?
Meech: It happened just through momentum swing after the wintertime. People are working on their own things and I think the route of going to do a project again kind of just happened from a conversation in the springtime, like, “Yo, let’s just cook up again, we haven’t done we each other. Get 2-3 records out the way.” Then, honestly, our competitive spirit took over after we made two or three records. Then it’s like, “Yo, let’s just see where we go from here. Just keep knocking sh*t out.” It just happened naturally — it wasn’t like we planned it out. A couple of us dropped singles this year, but aside from that, it just happened because the competitive spirit was like, “Let’s just slap them one more with some sh*t.”
Ricky Felix: People thought we lost it after the first album. People thought that after the first one, we were gonna be one-offs or that they gave us something ill, and then it’s over. So for the past year, we were looking at it like we got to smack these guys in the face with something new, no holding back. We had our convos about it because — I ain’t gonna lie, we were all kinda shook — we were seeing the monthly listeners on Spotify and we were like it’s not the same as when Bad For Press came out. We were all kind of like, do people think we fell off? Do people think that we’re not ill no more? So DSM is really all that anger and that frustration into one project, more aggression over there.
What inspired the title DSM, which is short for Dover Street Market? I think there’s a double entendre there, but why this title?
Ricky: The name of the album came from where we were at that time. We just dropped Bad For Press, we were in LA, and we were traveling a lot. I think it was a mixture of seeing the world, seeing how people dressed and we were trying to get fly. We just culminated our own styles, and on top of that, we wanted to become more individuals with this project. We wanted to really highlight individual artists. We all know as a unit we’re a force to be reckoned with, but now we have to show as individuals that we’re forced to be reckoned with. All that came with the album and it was more of an idea of time in LA, finding that feeling of trying to take that next step into the game, mixed with the music that we created, mixed with the studio space. Dover Street Market really hit both sides of the name: Dover Street Market the store and Dover Street, the street where we had the studio at. It just made sense at that time and it still does.
For me, Bad For Press has the attitude of “yeah, you’re just gonna have to deal with us” while DSM is way more brash and even angry. What things brought us to this approach?
Sheed: When we started out making DSM, we were going into it looking at it like a little EP. As we were building, we were like, “It’s all filling but let’s just see where we end up with it.” Everyone was in such a hungry mode at the time of creating music, it just shows on all the records that were made.
Jiles: With this project, we brought a lot of our own personal records to this project whereas in the last couple of projects we were basically in the studio together. That’s why you kind of see everybody showcase their individual talent more because it’ll be records that Luke brings to the table, Meech brings to the table, or I bring to the table, and then everybody would feed off that artistic energy.
What are some of your favorite verses from the project that are not your own?
Luke: My favorite is Invada’s “Get Money” verse.
Meech: I like Jiles’ “The Source” verse.
Jiles: I like Felix’s “BFM” verse.
Sheed: Felix’s “Back Door”
Meech: His “Back Door” verse is there too. I mean Felix’s verses – “BFM,” “Aye God,” “The Army, The Navy.”
I love the mention of rap greats and just rap moments overall, what about them made it necessary as moments to have on DSM.
Saint Lyor: I don’t know, like with “Movin’ Like Pac,” I was just going through a phase. Tupac is a very controversial figure. Seeing a black man exist in the way he was existing during that time, there’s just a lot to learn from — his good and his bad. I guess I was just in a moment where I was just studying his rising and it kind of just bled into the song and the creation of it for me.
Jiles: When Tedd [Boyd] gave me that beat, obviously it’s a boom-bap beat, so obviously I started to think about ’90s stuff. I’ve always been interested in the Source Awards, obviously with it being close to home with Benzino and them. If you’re from Massachusetts, you kind of know a little bit of the origin of it. There are negative aspects of it, like the famous Source Awards and the beef behind those award shows. So I just tried to approach it by talking about a historic time in hip-hop that relates to our state. That’s how I approach that record.
Just like with Bad For Press, DSM ends on a calmer note with “Go,” “God Talking,” and “If My Sins Were Good.” Is the decision to pull the reins at the end an intentional one?
Luke: I just think it happens that way. I don’t think we went into it intentionally. I put it in the group chat like, “Yo, this has to be the outro.” When everyone heard it, it just had that feeling. It just made sense and when everyone else put in their verse on it, it was just a testament to that. Felix gave us a two-minute verse, and none of us were mad. When it’s something like that, you can’t fight against it.
Meech: It’s just in our DNA. There’s some sense of consciousness even on the turnt records, you’ll catch a bar here and there. I think that’s just our DNA, that’s just what makes VB “VB” to me. So that’s why Bad For Press had that feeling and it came naturally back into this one. We talk about real sh*t every day, it’s just the conversations you’ll get within a sitting with VB.
Jiles: We love post-production and structuring our albums. Even after we’re done making albums, I think that’s one of my biggest arguments, album placement and what song goes where. We all love making albums, so we want them to be as cohesive as possible. I think that’s why you usually find those softer, deeper records toward the end of the project.
What’s something that’s absolutely important for a new fan or someone still understanding y’all to know about this project and things going forward?
Ricky: That muhf*ckas is ill with each other and by themselves. It don’t matter what room you put them in, they always gonna eat. We came in as a collective, but before that, we were all individual artists that merged into one group. Out the gate, everyone had their own unique style, unique sound, and their own vibe. For a new fan, I would tell them that you can love the VB album, but make sure you tap in with the individual projects that are about to come out because it’s going to be just as good, if not a whole lot better than what we can do with each other. Now it’s self-expression, now you get to take full control of your art. So when you see that, it’s like, okay, what Luke got? What Jiles got? What Felix got? Meech? What y’all got by yourselves, what y’all thinking about? It’s gonna be very important once these individual projects come out and that expression gets to creep through the window.
DSM is out now via Van Buren Records/Good Partners. You can stream it here.
In the original Game of Thrones series, characters were often warned that “The night is dark and full of terrors.” Well, the same holds true for the internet as the creative team behind House of the Dragon is finding out. Despite knowing full well that they cast beloved actor Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen, what they didn’t expect is for that love (and lust) to completely overlook every awful thing the ruthless prince does on the show.
Executive producer Sara Hess and director Clare Kilner recently opened up about watching House of the Dragon fans go nuts for Daemon in ways that Hess didn’t expect. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
He’s become Internet Boyfriend in a way that baffles me. Not that Matt isn’t incredibly charismatic and wonderful, and he’s incredible in the role. But Daemon himself is … I don’t want him to be my boyfriend! I’m a little baffled how they’re all, ‘Oh, daddy!’ And I’m just like: ‘Really?’ How — in what way — was he a good partner, father or brother — to anybody? You got me. He ain’t Paul Rudd.
Kilner, on the other hand, understands the appeal despite how awful Daemon can sometimes be on screen. Turns out his mischievous smile can go a long way in setting fire to one’s loins even after all of the murder.
“Matt is such a risk-taker in his performances and he’s got that little smile and, you know … you can’t help it!” she said. “He is charismatic. People love a baddie.”
The Austin City Limits Music Festival is, like the majority of music festivals, made up of several stages. Unlike most festivals, however, there’s a literal divide between the biggest stages and a smaller stage in the form of a road. But don’t let the size of the Barton Springs Stage, named after the best spot to take a dip and go sunbathing in the Texas capitol, fool you: it hosted two of the best performances during ACL Fest 2022.
Muna and Carly Rae Jepsen were booked only for weekend one of the two-weekend festival, but both acts brought enough energy to last several weeks. Muna is a force for good in this world, with members Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson preaching joyfulness and tolerance, especially for the LGBTQ+ community. They also make powerfully infectious indie-pop. On the energetic “What I Want,” Gavin regrets that she’s spent “too many years” not knowing what she wants, but she’s “gonna make up for it all at once.” That’s the kind of energy Muna brought to the mid-afternoon set; it was a safe space for dancing on your own.
That was true for Carly Rae Jepsen, too. The beloved-yet-still-underappreciated pop icon is touring behind her sixth album, The Loneliest Time, which comes out this Friday. (Yes, the same day as Taylor Swift’s new album, as she joked during the show.) She played six songs from the record, including the jubilant single (and hopefully a setlist mainstay) “Talking To Yourself” and the live debut of the title track, her yearning duet with Rufus Wainwright. But the biggest pops from the packed, eager crowd were for “Run Away With Me,” the best song on her best album (and for my money, the best pop album of the 2010s); the bluntly horny “Want You In My Room”; and “Cut To The Feeling,” the euphoric set closer. “Sing along with me! Because it is, in fact, the law,” Jepsen joked before launching into “Call Me Maybe,” her breakout single that’s better than 98 percent of all pop music but is only her, like, 12th best song. Speaking of queer icons who have defied the “one-hit wonder” label they were nearly imprisoned by…
Lil Nas X’s hour-long set was structured in three acts, REBIRTH, TRANSFORMATION, and BECOMING, complete with costume changes, backup dancers, and a prop golden horse. The rapper and social media expert is much more than his record-setting biggest hit, with four other singles that have cracked the Billboard Hot 100 top-10, but it was still a risky move to not save “Old Town Road” for the end of the set. Instead, it appeared during Act 1, potentially risking a mass exodus once the casual festival audience heard the one song they were for (this, sadly, happened for Carly Rae post-”Call Me Maybe”).
But, at least around me, no one moved. Everyone was there for Lil Nas X’s full set, not one song. The patience paid off: he delighted the crowd with a spirited and strained-voice rendition of “That’s What I Want,” interpolations of “Get Ur Freak On” by Missy Elliott and “Pony” by Ginuwine (with pelvic thrusts, naturally), and stage designs seemingly inspired by Lisa Frank folders and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Near the end of the show, the background screen read, “Long live Montero.” Long live Lil Nas X.
At one point, Lil Nas X acknowledged that he hadn’t played in Austin since 2019. “If I don’t see y’all for another three years,” he added, “I hope y’all have the motherf*cking best years of all time.” At the very least, Lil Nas X, along with Muna and Carly Rae Jepsen, gave three of the motherf*cking best sets at ACL 2022.
The ACL Music Festival will return to Austin on October 6-8 and 13-15 in 2023.
Family Guy is one of the longest-running shows in TV history: It’s been airing on-and-off since 1999 and has nearly 400 episodes in its run. In fact, the 400th episode will be in the show’s 21st season (which premiered in September) and it’s inspired by artists like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez.
According to Variety, the episode will feature Stewie developing an obsession for a famous pop star. Seth MacFarlane himself, who isn’t as hands-on with writing the show these days as he used to be, pitched the idea to the show’s producers.
Co-showrunner Rich Appel said of the episode, “That’s not a story that would have even occurred to us to tell five years ago, that phenomenon of fans of artists like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez — you name them — who are just really so devoted, that they adopt their viewpoints.”
Fellow showrunner Alec Sulkin also noted, “It’s always very fun to to come together and make each other laugh, which is really the main part of our job. Family Guy, in particular, is a show that’s known for its humor, its edgy humor and sometimes its dark humor. So, it was just a great group of people to be laughing with at a time when so much was uncertain.”
Swift herself (but voiced by actress Ursula Taherian, not Swift) appeared in the 2016 Family Guy episode titled “Chris Has Got a Date, Date, Date, Date, Date.” In it, Chris asks Swift to go to the school homecoming dance with him and she surprisingly accepts the invitation. It is later revealed, though, that Swift was using Chris to help inspire her songs trashing him. Swift also appeared in a brief gag in the 2014 episode “3 Acts Of God.”
The family of George Floyd has apparently followed through on a rumored plan to file suit against Kanye West for his comments about the late Floyd, who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis who knelt on his neck for nearly 10 minutes. Floyd’s death galvanized protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020, his dying words — “I can’t breathe” — becoming a rallying cry for the protestors.
However, on a recent episode of the Drink Champs podcast, West stated incorrectly that Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose, parroting white supremacist propaganda designed to undermine the fight for justice in Floyd’s name. The trope, which was based on findings from an autopsy report that mentioned possible recent use of the drug, plays on existing racist stereotypes of Black people as drug addicts in order to deflect the blame for Floyd’s death away from the officers’ use of excessive force — essentially blaming the victim, and undermining protests for justice (which is the whole point).
However, multiple autopsies confirmed that Floyd died from a heart attack caused by asphyxia — the inability to breathe.
Now, according to a press release from the Witherspoon Law Group and Dixon & Dixon Attorneys at Law, Roxie Washington, acting on behalf of her minor child, the sole beneficiary of Floyd’s estate, has filed suit against Kanye West, seeking $250 million in damages. The suit argues that Kanye’s comments on Drink Champs consituted “harassment, misappropriation, defamation, and infliction of emotional distress,” and also names West’s “business partners and associates,” according to the press release.
In the wake of the backlash against the podcast airing, NORE apologized, saying, ““I felt like I could control the interview. And I learned early on that I [couldn’t]. As a Black man, I feel like I failed. As a human, I feel like I failed.”
Variety reports The Watcher, the mystery-thriller that’s based on a real-life case, “racked up a chart-topping 125 million hours watched in its first four days of availability.” Meanwhile, in its third week of availability, Dahmer was watched by subscribers for 122.8 million hours. It’s now at “824.2 million viewing hours since its September 21 premiere, and stands as the second most-watched English-language series Netflix has ever had, second only to season four of Stranger Things.” Maybe it’s happened before, but I can’t think of another instance where Netflix’s two biggest shows are from the same creator… who’s also a producer for the streaming service’s fourth biggest movie at the moment.
Murphy has one other title on this week’s Netflix Top 10: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, which was No. 4 on the English-language movies chart with 20.1 million hours watched in its first full week of availability, down from second place with 35.4 million hours during the Oct. 3-9 viewing window, which it was available for five days.
Elon Musk can’t seem to stand by his memes lately. In the past 24 hours, the theoretical future owner of Twitter has deleted two tweets involving him partnering up with Kanye West, the theoretical future owner of Parler. The latest example arrived Tuesday when Musk fired off meme figuring Trump, West, and himself as the Three Musketeers. In the photo, the three of them are crossing swords with the words Truth Social, Parler, and X, Musk’s proposed social media platform that will envelop Twitter. In the caption, Musk wrote, “In retrospect, it was inevitable.”
However, according to Mediaite, Musk only left the tweet up for an hour before deleting his cute little meme. You can see a screencap below:
Elon Musk on Twitter
As noted earlier, this isn’t the first time that Musk has run from one of his memes. A day earlier, he reacted to the news of Kanye purchasing Parler by posting a Dragon Ball Z meme of the two of them together. In a follow-up tweet, Musk teased “Fun times ahead!!” before deleting both. But again, the internet is forever:
As for why Musk would tie himself to West following his recent antisemitic remarks that even Musk himself said was “concerning,” the answer is pretty simple: attention. Lots and lots of attention. Musk is a well-known troll on social media, and in recent days, he’s been dangerously dabbling in serious topics including the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In short, if making memes where he teams up with Trump and Kanye will get people talking about Elon Musk, Elon Musk is going to do it.
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