Paramore is a legendary band that has given so much to music, but when anyone reaches that status, the desire for more music seems to grow. After a five-year hiatus, it looks like that thirst will soon be quenched as the band announced via Twitter that they have new music coming soon.
On Friday morning, the official Paramore Twitter account announced that their forthcoming single “This Is Why” will be shared with the world on September 28. The tweet was accompanied by a photo of the band members’ faces pressed against glass and a pre-save link.
Paramore hasn’t left the fans totally hanging, as their bandleader and vocalist has released two solo albums in 2020’s Petals For Armor and 2021’s Flowers For Vases / Descansos. As a whole, they have been missing from the music scene since 2017’s After Laughter.
Williams told Rolling Stone back in January that the band was working on new music, saying “The music we were first excited by wasn’t exactly the kind of music we went on to make. Our output has always been all over the place and with this project, it’s not that different. We’re still in the thick of it but some things have remained consistent from the start.”
With this official announcement, it will be a short wait before the world sees what Paramore has in store.
Check out Paramore’s promotional tweet above.
“This Is Why” is out 9/28 via Atlantic/WEA International. Pre-order it here.
HBO’s Los Espookys is one of those rare shows that’s impossible to predict, constantly bouncing back and forth between dreamlike surrealism and comic absurdism. At the start of a typical Los Espookys episode, you never know where you’ll end up by episode’s end (one character might end up arguing with a water shadow about watching the movie The King’s Speech while another takes a job as the second’s hand of a giant city clock), but one thing is for certain, it’s going to be a hilarious ride that pulls you in, puzzles you, and thanks to a brilliant costume designer (Muriel Parra) and some lo-fi synth wave both looks and sounds amazing.
“We don’t have a thesis statement when we start writing, ” show co-creator and co-writer Julio Torres told me over Zoom recently while discussing the new season (which premieres today on HBO), “we just sort of start writing for the fun of it and see where it takes us.” And again, the show can and does go anywhere.
As weird as this bi-lingual, magical realist, mystical, comedy, horror set in an un-named Latin American country is, however, it doesn’t ask much of its viewers aside from hoping you approach it with the same playful attitude it was conceived with by co-writers Torres and Ana Fabrega.
If you don’t try to make sense of anything that happens in Los Espookys, you’ll see that at its heart it’s a story about dreams, struggles, friendship, and found family.
Here, we talk with Torres the show, its playful spirit, and its influences.
For this season, when we catch up with the Los Espookys team, I noticed everyone is in a state of transition. Why was that aspect of struggle and that sense of everyone feeling lost such a heavy theme this season?
Well, I think that the first season really focused on this common goal of finding your dream, or finding what it is that you like to do. And in the case of our main characters, it’s to be a part of this group and have this weird business. But then it just sort of like, yeah, you can find the job that you like, but it doesn’t mean that you are whole or resolved.
We don’t have a thesis statement when we start writing where we’re like, “we need to tell a story that shows X, Y, Z.” We just sort of start writing for the fun of it and see where it takes us. But I think subconsciously, and even though we started writing before the pandemic or well before the pandemic, it’s felt like we were subconsciously interested in not so much exploring the idea of following your dream (which has been a theme in TV and film forever), but what happens when you get there?
This season you dive a little bit into the politics of this particular world they live in. I just want to know how you approach the political angle because obviously at the heart of the show is a lot of fun. It does kind of show the political environment to be a little bit corrupt, but at the same time it’s also really colorful and fun.
I think that with everything, we’re using fun tropes that we’ve observed in our lives. I know that speaking for myself, I grew up in El Salvador with inept, corrupt politician after inept, corrupt politician. And seeing the US Embassy breathing down their necks and doing what they can to advance their agenda. That’s sort of the satire that I feel my observations and experience bring to the table. Again, we didn’t set out to be like, this is what we think of politics, how do we show that? But more like, oh, she runs for president. Oh well, this X, Y, Z would happen.
One of my favorite aspects of the show is the [creative] freedom. Supernatural and weird things happen without explanation. They don’t need to be explained. I actually think it makes the world more real in a way. Where does that playful spirit come from with you and Ana? Is it just about having fun at the end of the day?
Yeah, it really is just about having fun and just feeling. We’re just sort of instinctual. It’s a very instinctual writing process. We’re just really following what we are interested in. And I feel very privileged that Ana and I have had both very freeing writing careers. And I think that we didn’t study this, we didn’t take any courses, any comedy courses or anything like that. And at Saturday Night Live, I really was granted the freedom to write things in my own way, that didn’t adhere to any formula. So we never got sat down and explained how to write efficiently, or what the show’s supposed to look like. And I think that that has been a good thing.
HBO
What comes first, the personality or the character names? Because I feel like with characters like Pony or Oliver Twix, they feel so fully realized before we even really get to know them.
Well, the reason Pony specifically feels completely realized is because Pony’s a real person whose name is Pony. And the Pony that you see on screen was a wardrobe assistant the first season. We absolutely fell in love with him and we were like, you have to be in the show. And so it was like, yeah, it’s just Pony as Pony. Pony our wardrobe assistant. And so that’s why Pony feels realized because Pony is a person with agency who has a name and a look.
But as for all Oliver Twix, I think that, I don’t know, a lot of the characters are an amalgamation of people that we’ve seen or know. And then because Oliver Twix is clearly not a given name, but a chosen name, it’s like, well, what would this character name themselves? I think it’s definitely the personality that comes first and then the names.
I noticed that there seems to be heavy aquatic themes throughout the show. You have the Water Demon, the ghost haunting Renaldo. Even Andrés relationship with the Moon, which is also connected to water. Why is water such a strong presence in this little universe?
I don’t know. I don’t know! And to be honest, it’s a strong presence in my work outside of it, kind of. I don’t know. There’s just something mysterious and alluring about water. And you can see it, but you can’t quite understand it. And it’s just like you see a part of it, but you can never see the whole. I’m just naturally drawn to aquatic themes for some reason.
Obviously horror is an influence on the show. What’s your personal relationship with horror media?
Strained. I actually don’t consume horror. I scare very easily. I love the eerie and I love suspense and I love unsettling [things]. So I will not watch a zombie movie, but I will consume David Lynch movies or anything like eerie and odd and suspenseful.
I wanted to ask, what’s the deal with the app everyone uses in the show, Yippy? I know there is a Yippy app in real life, but it’s not the same Yippy.
No, it’s their WhatsApp. And it’s just…
Fun to say Yippy?
Yeah, I think it’s funny like these dumb names just become part of the lexicon. TikTok, what a dumb name. ‘Can you see this TikTok?’ ‘I’ll send you this TikTok.’ Like Twitter. ‘Oh no, do you see what’s happening on Twitter?’ It just becomes like what? Or WhatsApp. People are breaking up with people over WhatsApp. It’s so dumb. Yippy is like another dumb name.
I was reading in an older interview, and you mentioned how originally the show was written in English for studio executives so that they would be able to understand it and how that led to you guys writing in English jokes that were intended to work in Spanish. I just wanted to know, what are the kind of things that work comedically in Spanish that don’t translate to English?
I think a lot of phonetic things. I mean, I don’t know if they do or if they don’t, but a lot of specific character traits. I do wonder if you really get the kind of person that the mayor is without having the cultural context. Just the way that she pronounces the names of food. I wonder if someone who doesn’t know Spanish catches onto the comedy of that.
Season 2 of ‘Los Espookys’ premiers on HBO September 16th at 11PM ET
Rian Johnson is a pretty brave person to continue to make movies after directing The Last Jedi. Not because that movie was bad (though that’s a whole different conversation) but because of the intricate stories he was tasked with telling for such a wide range of fans. He knew it was impossible to make everyone happy, but he still made a memorable Star Wars installment, whether you like it or not.
But when it was time for Jonhson to pen the follow-up to the hit murder mystery Knives Out, Johnson said that the pressure was even greater than when he was directing in a galaxy far far away. “[Glass Onion] is a very different animal for a couple of reasons,” Johnson told The Los Angeles Times when asked about how making this movie compares to The Last Jedi.
“First of all, Last Jedi was actually a proper sequel, continuing the events from a movie that I didn’t write. With [Glass Onion] it’s not even really a sequel, it’s kind of like another book, basically another mystery with the same detective,” Johnson explained. The second instalmment features Daniel Craig returning as Detective Benoit Blanc alongside a fresh new cast of suspects.
Johnson continued that this made it harder for him to pen the story, because he was granted a whole new slate. “If anything, going into it was a little scarier even than the Star Wars movie, because the first one, when we made it, it was in such a vacuum and we had no idea if people would be into this kind of thing. Genuinely, it was just something that I really loved, a genre I loved, and I’m like, ‘Let’s try this.’” When the movie became an unexpected hit, Johnson became worried that he couldn’t deliver a worthwhile sequel.
“The fact that people enjoyed [Knives Out] and the fact that it was popular — when you put something out there, this happens anyway, but especially, I think, in this case — it becomes something outside of you and you kind of forget how you made it. And so, it was scary. I’ve never experienced nerves quite like actually sitting down to write something. I also spent 10 years planning Knives Out, whereas this, I was kind of starting from scratch.”
Based on the glowing early reviews, it seems like starting from scratch was the way to go for this one. That definitely was not the case for The Last Jedi, but who can blame Johnson for that?! Daniel Craig can’t save every franchise out there, after all.
The rookies who attracted much of the attention heading into the 2021-22 campaign doubled as the top-three selections in that year’s Draft: Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, and Jalen Green. Each player had long been viewed at or near the top of the class and maintained that status ahead of last summer’s Draft all the way through the end of their rookie campaigns.
And yet by season’s end, Scottie Barnes was the one holding the Rookie of the Year crown. Evidenced by their All-Rookie First Team nods, the quartet enjoyed impressive and encouraging NBA debuts, but the 2021-22 Rookie of the Year trophy eternally resides in Barnes’ estate.
Across 74 games, the Toronto Raptors’ 6’7 forward and the No. 4 pick last year averaged 15.3 points, 7.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 1.1 steals on 55.2 percent true shooting (.492/.301/.735 split). He led all rookies in minutes (2,617), while ranking second in boards (557) and steals (80), third in points (1,134) and fourth in assists (256). He emerged as an integral member of the upstart 48-win Raptors and looked en route to a sensational playoff opener (15-10-8-1 in 32 Game 1 minutes) before an unfortunate ankle injury compromised him the rest of the first round.
As he stares down year two, both Barnes and the Raptors will hope to parlay the promise of 2021-22 into a developmental springboard toward the next step. His progress likely overlaps prominently with Toronto’s chances of ascending beyond the Eastern Conference’s middle class, and accomplishing that task necessitates expanding upon his strengths, refining his areas for improvement, and a continued solidifying of his standing among a talented starting unit.
Leaving Florida State, Barnes’ primary allure rested in his playmaking and defensive aptitude, while concerns revolved around his scoring capacity. He alleviated many of the latter worries — Barnes emerged as quite the prolific self-creator, particularly from midrange, where he punished in-over-their-heads defenders. According to Cleaning The Glass, 52 percent of his buckets were unassisted, which ranked in the 91st percentile among forwards. His ability to play through contact and convert from unorthodox angles, especially at his size, is atypical. He exhibited a knack for orienting his body toward the rim regardless of how defenders treated him and his touch inside the paint is special.
When outmatched opponents wrangle with him, his 7’3 wingspan enables him to extend around or over them and leverage that delicate touch. So often last season, the ball would just trickle in after a few bounces on the rim, and his touch means that he doesn’t require a consistent release angle to thrive. His scoring approach is remarkably distinct in that contact and discomfort are his ally. Wonky possessions behoove his game. Whether it’s a bump with his shoulder, chest, or torso, he slyly applies his strength to chisel subtle openings and gobbles up space behind bounding strides.
Not only could Barnes catalyze possessions individually, his understanding of how to capitalize on open space ensured he was similarly adept functioning off the ball. When somebody else flung the defense into a tizzy, he routinely ventured into vacancies in the lane and spotlighted his immaculate touch. There are layers to the manner in which he found midrange scoring opportunities. Given his creation is still being fine-tuned, the multifaceted nature of his style proved crucial in a winning environment.
The relevance of Barnes’ off-ball savvy ballooned throughout the year as he and Pascal Siakam’s synergy blossomed. Between a heightened understanding of how to succeed together and a more pressing emphasis to involve them schematically, the two’s connection looked radically different come spring time.
Before the All-Star Break, Barnes shot 66 percent at the rim on 180 attempts. After the All-Star Break, he shot 77 percent on 119 attempts. Before the All-Star Break, he received 17 passes per game from Siakam, attempted two shots from his deliveries and shot 37 percent on those field goals; after the All-Star Break, the numbers vaulted respectively to 29, four and 50.5 (data shared by Raptors Republic’s Samson Folk, go follow him). These upticks, in part, illuminate how Barnes averaged 14.4 points on 53.6 percent true shooting pre-All-Star Break and 17.1 points on 58.1 percent true shooting post-All-Star Break.
The rangy forward tandem teamed up for more high-low actions and feeds out of drives or dives to the rim. I’d expect them to further sharpen their chemistry next season, which should boost Barnes’ scoring efficiency once again. Eventually, Barnes will succeed Siakam as Toronto’s foremost initiator. For now, though, it remains the All-NBA 28-year-old’s gig, much to the immediate benefit of Barnes and the Raptors’ offense.
Barnes’ most frequent means to create was backing defenders down, shielding the ball from them, and wrenching his way toward favorable spots. Pressure at the point-of-attack tended to disrupt him and attacking defenses with his chest facing them, as most perimeter scorers do, could be arduous. I’m curious as to how Barnes addresses his stiff, somewhat cumbersome handle as he aims to assume a grander scoring load.
Maybe I’m incorrect, but constant mismatch-hunting with the back to the defense seems like a challenging method to really tout high-level usage and aptly spearhead an offense. There’s a degree of homeostasis with it that doesn’t pressure or tilt the defense into motion upon which to act promptly. Even a post-centric big like Joel Embiid reached his current offensive peak by adding face-ups and drives to his repertoire in conjunction with the back-to-the-basket dominance.
I don’t want to be skeptical of Barnes’ outlook, it’s more that this is a facet of his arsenal that I’m keeping tabs on moving forward. His midrange touch and balance are elite. The next steps are establishing other on-ball avenues to consistently deploy those standout traits.
His adaptability as a scorer was admirable last season, which bodes well for his evolution. When defenses mitigated his mismatch-hunting, he dialed up the end-to-end transition forays, launched more triples, and crashed the glass for offensive rebounds. Those aren’t necessarily each on the ball, but they underscore that Barnes recognized how to maintain a footprint on games when his first option wasn’t readily available.
Where I do anticipate him to be much more impactful offensively in the coming seasons is as a facilitator. At lower levels, he enjoyed lengthy periods piloting offenses from the point guard spot because of his intrepid, creative passing gene. Teams and coaches afforded him the autonomy to cook and endured all that such freedom invited. This past season, the long-standing leeway didn’t always work in he and the Raptors’ favor.
While his vision and talent was on display in the open floor — no-look reads, dimes on the move, well-timed assists to in-stride teammates — his half-court passing was erratic. It seemed as though he never quite adjusted to the increased discipline and awareness of NBA-caliber defenders.
Flashes of ingenuity and feel percolated, only to be accompanied by poor placement and decision-making another time. (Major caveat: That’s usually the norm with rookies.) Barnes entered the league already a good player and one folks banked on to translate his passing prowess potentially from the jump. I’d bank on him reaffirming that pre-draft sentiment in 2022-23, both as a catalyst and connective playmaker.
Ideally, we’ll see more ball-screens involving some combination of Barnes, Siakam, and Fred VanVleet; I’d also entertain more dribble handoffs between Barnes and VanVleet. Barnes displayed craft as a DHO conductor last season, though was limited by the Raptors’ lack of perimeter shooting. VanVleet is probably the best option for this usage with Barnes.
According to Synergy, Toronto ranked in the bottom five in pick-and-roll ball-handler and roll man frequency a season ago. Head coach Nick Nurse has typically shied away from a heavy pick-and-roll-based offense, but an uptick there may invigorate an offense that relied considerably on transition, offensive rebounding, and live-ball turnovers, three components that are prone to drying up in the playoffs. Embracing that gambit may further diversify Barnes’ scoring portfolio, harmonize the Raptors’ bedrocks, and elevate their collective ceiling.
Barnes is such a fascinating player to assess. His offensive ethos is dissimilar from his peers and the creation leap he authored between Florida State and the NBA is staggering. Once a vaunted passer whose scoring gave folks pause, the inverse dynamic surfaced during his rookie campaign, which may actually be good for him. The fact he’s previously and recently been a high-value facilitator should provide optimism he arrives there again soon.
Various 2021 draftees are candidates to become inaugural All-Stars in 2022-23. Barnes is among that group, and offensive strides would surely factor into said rise. Where those strides manifest stands as a captivating storyline for him and the Raptors, both in the interim and long-term. Fortunately, his developmental history is the sort of thing that leads to optimism.
It was inevitable that a TV movie would be called Hot Take eventually. The twist is that it’s not on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel, or even really on TV. Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial is coming to the Tubi streaming service, and yes, it’s about the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial that brought out the worst takes from your relatives on Facebook. Who knew your uncle was such a huge The Lone Ranger fan?
The Tubi original “follows the tumultuous relationship — in and out of court — of Depp and Heard, dramatizing the two-month defamation trial that concluded June 1, with the jury finding that Heard had defamed Depp by alluding to domestic violence allegations against him in a December 2018 op-ed piece,” according to Variety. Depp and Heard will be portrayed by actor Mark Hapka and actress Megan Davis, respectively.
The movie was fast-tracked into production by Tubi and MarVista “to capture a timely take on a story that became part of the cultural zeitgeist, painting a unique picture of what millions watched play out in the headlines over the summer,” Adam Lewinson, Tubi’s chief content officer, said in a statement.
Tubi is owned by Fox, so you know it will be tasteful.
But not even the Tubi version of the trial would be able to think of anything as weird as “Depp grumbling about bar mitzvahs and wakes while appearing at the MTV Video Music Awards inside the helmet of a floating spaceman.” That’s the post-credits scene.
Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial will stream on Tubi beginning September 30.
“I’m so excited about this film,” Bailey told E! News. “You know being here today is so surreal.”
As the interview went on, Bailey described why she felt a bit nervous about tackling the role. “I definitely think that because I love this movie so much, and I’ve treasured it since I was a little girl, I did put a bit of pressure on myself,” she continued. “Just because I want to deliver all of the feels that I saw when I was a little girl… Knowing that gave it my all and gave 110 percent into everything of this film, I am really proud of myself.”
The trailer, which premiered at the Expo earlier this month, inspired lots of viral reactions as parents filmed their young children watching it for the first time. Bailey herself saw a few of these videos, as she replied to them on social media.
“people have been sending these reactions to me all weekend and i’m in truly in awe,” she posted on Twitter. “this means the world to me.”
people have been sending these reactions to me all weekend and i’m in truly in awe this means the world to me https://t.co/cuKjKN8nxH
Starting in the 1970s, Gregory McDonald wrote nine novels starring I.M. “Fletch” Fletcher, a sort of insouciant, bon vivant LA Times reporter who gets into mischief, like a sort of class clown’s James Bond. Most famously, Fletch was portrayed on film by Chevy Chase in Fletch (1985) and Fletch Lives (1989) near the prime of his post-SNL career. After being mired in development hell for years, Paramount is finally releasing its Fletch sequel, Confess, Fletch, directed by Superbad‘s Greg Mottola and starring Jon Hamm, to be released simultaneously in theaters and on demand September 16th.
Jon Hamm doing his best Chevy Chase impression in a Fletch movie is a curious proposition. Here we have Chase, an undeniable comedic talent who was kind of an asshole by most accounts (readLive From New York, or pretty much any account of Chase from anyone he has worked with), being imitated by Jon Hamm, an actor known for and probably best at, playing mostly gruff sociopaths. Hamm has nevertheless spent most of the past decade on a crusade to become accepted as a comedic actor, which continues with Hamm playing Fletch, a character firmly grounded in the era when being breezy to the point of possible insanity was considered the height of comedy (as perfected by many of the early SNL guys, like Chase and Bill Murray — who famously got into a fist fight during which Murray called Chase a “medium talent.“).
On the one hand, you can understand why Hamm and/or the people behind Confess, Fletch might think this was a good fit. Hamm and Chase are both tall, athletic-looking men, who have made a living largely playing off their classically WASP-handsome looks (Hamm playing über WASP impostor Don Draper in Mad Men; Chase literally taking his stage name from a WASP enclave in Maryland despite being named “Cornelius Crane Chase.”). Fletch is, above all, a guy who lives a charmed life. At face value, both Chase and Hamm fit that bill.
Yet despite those similarities, almost from the first frames of Confess, Fletch, Hamm doesn’t feel quite right for this. Where Chase is wild-eyed and rubber-faced, Hamm looks like a block of granite, intense-eyed and piercing. Whereas Chase treated his “master of the universe” status as some kind of cosmic joke that he was chill enough to go along with, Hamm seems more suspicious of it. Chase’s louche WASP act felt like he was trolling the establishment. Hamm’s feels chiding, like he’s disappointed in them. He has a bit of a resting disappointed face. At a basic level, Chase is a clown, where Hamm is stolid. Everything Chevy Chase said sounded like a joke. Nothing Jon Hamm says sounds like a joke. Chase is a ham. Hamm, ironically, is not.
Hearing what he was like to work with, it’s hard not to wonder whether Chase’s personal prickliness was part of what made him the perfect comedic leading man of the 80s, cocky enough to ham it up at a moment’s notice and confident that it would work or blasé enough not to care if it didn’t. WASPs in general maybe aren’t as secure in their status as they once were, and Hamm, who landed his breakout role when he was 36, exudes nothing in his comedic work (some of it very good, like his character arc in 30 Rock) if not a sense of “happy to be here.” Maybe Chase’s outsider attempt to understand interpersonal charm is what makes him so good at faking it, and Hamm’s outsider attempt to understand ruthlessness is what makes him so good at that. They make excellent foils.
This is largely subtext in Confess, Fletch, which at the very least is a breezy watch, for a while. Mottola still shows a clear flair for the humanistic, good-natured comedy of Superbad and Adventureland, and most of the joke writing in Confess, Fletch is sharp, to the point of being exceptionally so. It’s just that Chase had a way of milking a five-out-of-10-level joke that made it into something memorable, whereas Hamm will toss off an eight-out-of-10 joke in such a breezy, backhanded way that you almost want to rewind so that you have a chance to laugh at it. It’s hard to know if Hamm isn’t clowning hard enough or if he just doesn’t have the face for it. When Roy Wood Jr. shows up as a police detective, and even Hamm’s old Mad Men chum John Slattery, you think ah, there. Now that’s what it looks like when Confess, Fletch‘s jokes really land.
The plot concerns Fletch’s new Italian girlfriend, Angie (Lorenza Izzo, who looks like Ana De Armas’ long-lost sister), and a kidnapping plot that has ensnared her father, a countess played by Marcia Gay Harden, and a local gallery owner played by Kyle MacLachlan. There’s also the matter of a murdered woman, found dead in Fletch’s borrowed Boston apartment, with all the evidence pointing to him as the murderer. He’s forced to play a cat-and-mouse game with the two detectives on his tail (played by the aforementioned Roy Wood Jr. with Ayden Mayeri as his partner, both great) in order to hopefully catch the real culprit before their plan to frame Fletch lands him in prison.
But honestly, who really cares all that much for plot in a Fletch movie? This is probably where Hamm’s sort-of understated acting, as opposed to Chase’s over-the-top clowning, wrongfoots the movie he’s leading. Playing the jokes relatively straight gives you the sense that they’re a bridge to something else; but in Fletch the “something else” is a mirage, a transparent conceit. The jokes are supposed to be the thing. It’s the plot that’s just a means for them, not the other way around.
White dude protagonists facing consequences is having a bit of a moment right now (not always for better, sometimes we lose the vicarious thrill of “getting away with it” in the process), and Hamm’s conception of Fletch sometimes makes it feel like Confess, Fletch is leading us that way. But then when it doesn’t, the ending feels not only unearned, but sort of unfair to its minor characters (like the dead girl, for instance), who could’ve been more easily glossed over and breezed by in a more overtly clowny performance and movie. Confess, Fletch ends up feeling a little like Don Draper trying to do Ace Ventura, offering as much pathos as it does laughs, almost in spite of itself.
‘Confess, Fletch’ hits select theaters and on demand September 16th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.
Jean Dawson is set to release his album Chaos Now next month, and the singles have been serving as exciting previews, whether it’s the invigorating earworm “Three Heads” or the eccentric banger “Porn Acting.” Today, he’s back with “Pirate Radio.”
The song starts off as strikingly gentle and vulnerable — a noticeable departure from his previous bombast. But of course it builds into something bigger, while still retaining its seriousness. It proves his range; his humor is endearing, but he also has no trouble letting intense, heavy feelings take the driver’s seat as well.
In an interview with Uproxx, Travis Barker cited Dawson as one of his key musical discoveries of 2020, saying, “That record is amazing, and he’s still kind of slept on. Not that many people know about him, and hopefully you and I talking about him helps get his name out there even more. He made an incredible album. […] He’s someone that’s really taking genres and throwing them all together and doing something different, in a time where so many people determine what their sound is gonna be like by whatever’s popular on the radio. And then you have a fresh breath of air like Jean Dawson. Like, thank God, you know?”
Today is a relatively busy New Music Friday, with Mura Masa’s new album Demon Time among the more exciting releases. One of the fresh songs available now that the album’s out sees Masa reuniting with a regular collaborator, as he’s joined by Slowthai on “Up All Week.”
On the two-minute track, Slowthai deals with themes of complacency, media consumption, and consumerism, all over a thumping electronic instrumental. He says on the hook, “Just can’t get no sleep / Faithless stage, just don’t believe / We stay up all week.”
Fans know the this new song is just the latest example of the two hopping on a track together. In 2019, the pair had a song called “Doorman” on Slowthai’s debut album, Nothing Great About Britain. Months later, in early 2020, the two teamed up for the song “Deal Wiv It,” from Mura Masa’s second album, RYC.
Masa also played a part in Slowthai’s biggest moment in American mainstream pop culture: The two performed “Deal Wiv It” on The Tonight Show in 2020 and Slowthai put on an energetic display, making use of the whole studio and even standing on Jimmy Fallon’s desk to look him right in the eyes.
Following the surprise cancellation of Batgirl, a film that by all accounts was mostly finished, the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery has been plagued with headlines about chaos behind the scenes as the new leadership struggles to cut costs while simultaneously rejuvenating brands like DC Comics. The studio has reportedly been searching for a Kevin Feige-type figure to do for DC what Feige does for Marvel, but the top candidate for the position, Dan Lin, has already bowed out.
At issue is the daunting task of righting a franchise that’s been slowly rebuilding after the failure of 2017’s Justice League. However, that process involved creating separate film universes for both Batman and Joker, and the whole thing is basically a huge mess. Especially when CEO David Zaslav wants a more connected DC Comics brand.
Adding even more uncertainty to the mix is talk of Warner Bros. Discovery being sold as quickly as possible. While the studio reportedly can’t do anything until 2024, insiders believe that Comcast is waiting on the sidelines to swallow up the beleaguered entity. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
Given the company’s daunting challenges, it has become accepted wisdom at the highest levels of the industry that another deal waits in the wings for Warner Bros. Discovery. For reasons related to the complicated structure of that merger, no negotiations can happen until April 2024. But at that point, many industry observers believe that Comcast’s Brian Roberts will make a long-awaited move, looking to combine NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery.
That deal would face some interesting antitrust issues but would give his company scale and a viable streaming service. “Obviously Peacock sucks,” says one exec with knowledge of both companies. “There are some good synergies. I’m sure [Roberts] is licking his chops because the [WBD] stock is so low. And I think that’s Zaslav’s endgame. Get the place sold.”
When asked to comment on a potential sale, a WBD spokesperson simply told THR, “We are building Warner Bros. Discovery for the long term.” That’s not exactly a denial, so make of that what you will.
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
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