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During the final date of her residency in Munich, Germany, over the weekend, Adele announced that she’s taking a break from music. There are 10 shows left this fall in Las Vegas, but “after that, I will not see you for an incredibly long time,” the “Easy On Me” singer told the crowd. She explained that she’s “spent the last seven years building a new life for myself,” including raising a kid and getting engaged to sports agent Rich Paul, “and I want to live it now. I want to live my new life that I’ve been building and I’ll miss you terribly.”

Whether that “incredibly long time” is five months or five years remains to be seen, but if anyone can take an indefinite hiatus from music and come back bigger than ever, it’s Adele.

Is it crazy to say that we take Adele for granted? You and I and everyone else on planet Earth has heard “Hello” and “Someone Like You” and “When We Were Young” 30,000 times each, usually in grocery stores or Target or while walking around the mall. It’s gotten to the point where something as titanic as “Make You Feel My Love” (the modern-day “All Along The Watchtower” where it’s surpassed the Bob Dylan original in popularity) is a comforting, familiar white noise. But after learning about Adele’s break, I — as the meme goes— sat my ass down and listened to 21 for the first time in years. When I heard the controlled cracks in her voice in “Rolling In The Deep” or the soaring chorus of “Set Fire To The Rain” like it’s 2011 all over again, I was reminded why Adele is arguably the most successful singer of the past 15 years.

Adele’s career achievements defy belief. In 2008, she released her debut album, 19, which has only gone eight times platinum. Yes, “only,” because her follow up, 21, has moved over 31 million copies worldwide. It was the top-selling album in both 2011 and 2012 — and the decade. 21 is one of only two albums released since 2000 on the list of the 30 highest-selling albums of all-time. The other? The Beatles’ 1. If your success is being favorably compared to The Beatles, you’re doing something right.

Adele returned in 2015 with 25, which sold a record 3.38 million copies during its first week of release in the United States. That, more than any other statistical achievement in her career, is the one I find the hardest to comprehend. That opening week is nearly one million more than the previous title-holder, *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached. It’s difficult for an artist these days to sell one million total copies of an album.

But Adele has always been an artist out of time. She’s an old school diva, in the most complimentary sense of the term, during an era that favors relatability over vocal prowess. But she’s also a uniquely glamorous goofball, someone who enjoys playing with a t-shirt cannon as much as she does performing with an orchestra. It’s this dichotomy that makes her fascinating as a person, a singer, and a celebrity, even if she would bristle at the use of the word.

Adele has long been outspoken about her uneasy relationship with being famous and the drawbacks that come with turning something you’re good at — in her case, singing the word “hello” like no one ever has before — into your career. “My hobby became my job,” she said in 2021. “Fame scares me.” In a separate interview from that year, she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “I think it’s hilarious that I’m an artist for my f*cking job. But celebrity comes with it, and I’m not out for that. I don’t like being a celebrity at all.”

Suddenly, her “incredibly long” break sounds long overdue, especially with the health issues she’s had with her voice. And it comes with a rare advantage: Adele has already accomplished so much in her career — the sales, the streaming numbers, three-fourths of an EGOT (all that’s missing is the Tony) — that she can release new music only if she wants to.

Besides, it’s not like Adele is disappearing from her day job for good. She’s taking time for herself and for her family (she’s also expressed interest in script reading). It was four years between 21 and 25, and six years between 25 and 30, and both of those breaks turned out well. “I just went back to real life, because I had to write an album about real life, because otherwise how can you be relatable?” she told The New York Times about one of her pauses in recording new music and touring. “If I wrote about being famous — that’s f*cking boring.” Adele is a lot of things, but boring isn’t one of them. She ought to take all the time she needs.

Halsey has been teasing a new album lately, but now we finally know exactly when it comes out.

On social media today (September 4), Halsey shared the cover art and release date for the album, declaring that The Great Impersonator is set for release on October 25. They also wrote, “I made this record in the space between life and death. And it feels like I’ve waited an eternity for you to have it. I’ll wait a bit longer. I’ve waited a decade, already.”

In a teaser video shared in August, Halsey said:

“I really thought this album would be the last one I ever made. When you get sick like that, you start thinking about ways it could have all been different. What if this isn’t how it all went down? 18-year-old Ashley becomes Halsey in 2014. What if I debuted in the early 2000s? The ’90s? The ’80s? The ’70s? Am I still Halsey every time, in every timeline? Do I still get sick? Do I become a mom? Am I happy? Lonely? Have I done enough? Have I told the truth? I spent half my life being someone else. I never stopped to ask myself: If it all ended right now, is this the person you’d be proud to leave behind? Is it even you?”

The Great Impersonator Album Cover Artwork

The Great Impersonator is out 10/25 via Columbia Records. Find more information here.

Here we go again.

The release of Doechii’s debut mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal has cemented the ascent of a brand-new rap superstar. Unfortunately, it also resurrected a tired, misogynistic conversation among rap fans – one that seems to resurface every time a new woman in rap asserts herself with a lyrics-forward project or a virtuoso demonstration of wordplay.

Ironically, it’s often the most enthusiastic fans of the new kid on the block who resuscitate the decrepit discourse that pits women in rap against one another. In their rush to praise an exciting young talent, they often end up downplaying the past accomplishments of dozens of artists in the sisterhood of hip-hop and denigrating the efforts of their newfound faves’ contemporaries and peers.

But don’t get it twisted; women have always been rapping — and if you think otherwise, you haven’t been listening.

Alligator Bites Never Heal rightly has fans uplifting Doechii’s rap skills. All across social media over the weekend, rap fans have extolled the Florida rapper’s delivery and gift for wordplay. Songs like “Bullfrog,” “Boiled Peanuts,” and “Denial Is A River,” have fans proclaiming that Doechii’s project isn’t just a stellar debut worthy of Doechii’s label, but is also one of, if not the best rap projects of the year.

However, as they’ve become more profuse with their praise for Doechii, some have become dismissive of her contemporaries. In one example, a fan wrote, “It’s time we celebrate the females in hip-hop who actually can RAP RAP and not the others.” Another wrote, “Doechii is an example of what REAL female hip hop should sound like.”

What these posters and others are really saying is evident in what they’re NOT saying. What “female hip-hop” should be, to coin a popular phrase, is demure, buttoned up, chaste — the opposite of the “others” who “can’t” RAP RAP. By the way, what a horrid way to segregate women and suggest that such classification is also somehow inferior to “default” hip-hop, which, per this phrasing, means “men.”

It’s no secret that the success of sex-positive rappers — like GloRilla, Latto, Megan Thee Stallion, or Sexyy Red (all of whom have released projects this year) — bothers lots of men. These women don’t submit to social standards based on men’s preferences; they encourage women to get their own or turn the tables on men seeking transactional relationships. They turn the male gaze against itself. “If you want some of this,” they say, “You’re going to pay for it.”

Here’s the thing, though. It’s not just them. Rappers like Lola Brooke, Rapsody, and Tierra Whack have also released projects this year preaching self-determination. Please Don’t Cry, Rapsody’s fourth album, foregrounded the North Carolina rapper’s learnings from therapy; Tierra Whack’s World Wide Whack addressed the survivor’s guilt of fame. They all embraced wordplay and delivery and breath control and performance — as did projects from Baby Tate, Flo Milli, and more.

Criticizing rappers like Glo, Latto, and Meg for “sexy” content, only to ignore the “thoughtful” releases from Brooke, Rap, and Whack proves that it’s not about the “right” kind of hip-hop for those fans who do so — it’s about putting women down. It’s about proving them inferior to male rappers — all of whom rap about the same stuff, just from a male perspective — by moving the goalposts.

The sad part is that women have been dealing with this since hip-hop’s inception. MC Lyte — who has a new album coming out this month, by the way — was criticized for being too masculine, but contemporary group Salt N’ Pepa were equally criticized for sexual content. Lil Kim and Foxy Brown were derided for raunchy raps, but Missy Elliott was demeaned for not conforming to beauty standards. Eve, Da Brat, and Trina all fell somewhere along the spectrum, earning attention and album sales for their skills, only to be forgotten anytime the opportunity arose to frame women in rap as one of two dichotomous “types” that were both somehow unappealing.

Those who complain about the “style” of the Cardi Bs and Meg Thee Stallions against the “substance” of Rapsody and Doechii, ironically spend way too much time focusing on the style and overlooking the substance of all of them. These women don’t fit neatly into boxes; Rapsody and Doechii both rap extensively about sex and Doechii’s worn her fair share of risqué fits — including nothing at all in one music video.

Meanwhile, songs like Latto’s “S/O To Me” or Meg’s “Hiss” prove the versatility of women who lead with their looks. While it’s great that so many people are catching onto the talent displayed by Doechii, that talent isn’t as isolated or singular as some have made it out to be. There are plenty of women rapping with plenty to say, and a wide array of ways to say it. There always have been, and there’s more than enough credit to go around.

Charles Barkley has been talking about retiring from TV for almost as long as he’s been on TV. The Hall of Famer long insisted that he would call it quits from TNT when he turned 60, but instead inked a massive 10-year deal with the network just ahead of his 60th birthday.

That deal coincided with Shaq, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson all re-signing with Turner, locking the Inside the NBA crew into long-term deals. Apparently, that was done with the upcoming NBA media rights negotiations in mind, as Warner Bros. Discovery was hoping that having the beloved show committed to sticking around for most of the next deal would help their cause in keeping the NBA. As we now know, that wasn’t enough and negotiations between the league and network fell through with TNT apparently balking at the NBA’s initial asking price in the exclusive negotiating window, then getting outbid by NBC for the B-package. TNT attempted to save a piece of the pie by exercising matching rights on Amazon’s package, but the NBA quickly denied that was a full match as that goes well beyond the financial element.

As a result, the future of Inside is up in the air, although Barkley and TNT have announced he won’t be leaving the network and will continue doing the show, in some form, beyond the 2024-25 season. Barkley has no clue what that looks like — and says TNT doesn’t either — but wants to keep his friends employed as long as possible, which is why he says he’s not following through on his promise to retire after this season. As he tells it, it’s the second time he’s put off retiring at the request of TNT, insisting to Bill Simmons he was really planning to ride off into the sunset at 60, but they asked him to stay through the negotiations.

“So my original game plan was to retire at 60. They’re like, you gotta stay til the new deal is done. And I’m like ‘F***,” Barkley said.

“Cause they needed you for the negotiations,” Simmons followed up.

“Yes, but little did I know they were gonna f*** that up,” Barkley said with a laugh. “And I was like, you guys been great to me, I’ll stay for two more years. Next year was supposed to be my last year, and I was gonna walk off into the sunset. It’s gonna be interesting cause I have zero idea what we’re gonna do.”

Barkley went on to explain that TNT said they haven’t figured out exactly what the show will look like after next season, as they don’t have the NBA and would need to pay for highlights, but he wants his friends to have jobs so he’ll stick it out. That said, he doesn’t seem tremendously confident in the WBD leadership to get it right.

As for the retirement claims, Simmons told him point blank he didn’t believe he was going to retire, and I tend to agree. Barkley loves to talk, as evidenced by how often he does various radio spots and podcasts (like this one), and it’s not like he’s hurting for time on the golf course doing the show once a week during the season. However, I do believe that’s one of the reasons he stuck to his guns when it came to not going to another network, because ESPN and even Amazon and NBC would likely have wanted him on air more often than he is accustomed to at TNT, where he keeps busy during March Madness and the Playoffs, but is otherwise on just Thursdays.

The Boys won’t be back for its fifth and final season (with an upgraded Ashley and an off-the-grid A-Train) until 2026, but we won’t be without screwed-up Supes for too long. Gen V will return for a second season in 2025, and Amazon’s other debauched superhero world, Invincible, should close its current season gap in shorter order than last time. Voice work was finished in April for a third season, and a fourth season is already in the works, too.

Invincible still counts as yet another reason why Steven Yeun is enjoying the best post-The Walking Dead career of the bunch, and with this Prime Video/Amazon series, Yeun is still keeping the Robert Kirkman comic book fires burning hot in adaptation form. Let’s talk about what to expect from the next season, including insights from Kirkman himself.

Plot

As viewers are aware, the last time that we were waiting for more Invincible, this involved learning the outcome of a climactic fight between Mark Grayson/Invincible (Yeun) and his bad dad, Nolan/Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), who was off-site for most practical purposes in the second season. However, Robert Kirkman has revealed to Variety that “[h]e’s gonna be in Season 3 a little more,” but don’t expect the balance of screen time to change because “this is the Mark Grayson-Invincible show; it’s not the Omni-Man show.” Additionally, Kirkman previously revealed that Cecil Stedman’s backstory will surface in the third season.

At the recent San Diego Comic-Con, Kirkman elaborated more by promising that although the third season will bring many aspects of the show to a climax, this won’t be a series finale although it might feel like one. We’ve gotta believe Kirkman because Amazon already let the world know that the fourth season is coming, but on the more immediate horizon, Season 3 could contain perhaps too many major developments. That’s certainly better than the alternative prospect, and Games Radar quotes Kirkman:

“The stakes of the season are really high and the content of the season is really dense. So we’ve set up a lot of stories in season 1 and season 2 that are kind of coming to a head in season three. And so in a lot of ways, every episode does kind of feel like a finale. There’s something big about every episode, there’s a massive conclusion in every episode, there’s some kind of huge evolution of a character or story turn that happens in every episode. I’m really excited to finally get to see season 3 because it’s gonna be crazy.”

Variety adds that Kirkman also teased, “But Season 4 dwarfs Season 3 in a lot of really crazy ways. It’s an escalating show where each season is going to be bigger, crazier, more intense, and that stuff really kicks off with Season 3.” In other words, hold onto your spandex pants. Speaking of which, Mark’s black-and-blue suit will make its entrance in the third season, which will “reflect” the “different headspace” of the protagonist after what he’s processed about his father attempting to help the Viltrum Empire take over Earth and (not to diminish this part) having another family elsewhere in the galaxy.

That provides a convenient segue for another Kirkman revelation: Oliver/Kid Omni-Man (the son of Nolan and Andressa) will grow up rapidly because of his Thraxan heritage, and there are of course more moving parts to this series than we can practically address here, but the most promising news, perhaps, is that Kirkman has admitted that the split-season approach of the second season was “not the best” method for viewers. That wasn’t a promise to avoid split seasons in the future, but that sentiment does sound positive.

Cast

The cast continues to be a who’s-who of worthy celebrity voice talent with Steven Yeun (Mark Grayson/Invincible), J.K. Simmons (Nolan Grayson/Omni-Man), and Sandra Oh (Debbie Grayson) leading the central broken-family dynamic. Additional cast members still include Seth Rogen (Allen, the Alien), Sterling K. Brown (Angstrom Levy), Zazie Beetz (Amber Bennett), Jason Mantzoukas (Rex Sloan/Rex Splode), Walton Goggins (Cecil Stedman), Zachary Quinto (Robot), Gillian Jacobs (Eve Wilkins/Atom Eve)…

[Pausing to catch breath]

… Ross Marquand (The Immortal, Aquarius, Omnipotus, Kursk, Proprietor), Scoot McNairy (King Lizard), Kevin Michael Richardson (the Mauler Twins), Daveed Diggs (Theo), Calista Flockhart (April), Lea Thompson (Carol), Tatiana Maslany (General Telia and Queen Aquaria), and Ben Schwartz (Shapesmith).

Release Date

The second season only arrived earlier this year, so it seems unbelievable that the show could return in less than two years, give its previous gap in release dates. However, Comic Book reported word from Ross Marquand, who believed that “it’s probably going to be early next year” because “[W]e’re almost wrapped.” The show did confirm that voice work was completed back in April, so perhaps early 2025 isn’t too optimistic of a window.

With that said, Amazon has not confirmed an actual release window, but if it’s any consolation regarding the show’s future, Kirkman told Variety that the series should continue far beyond the currently-in-process third and fourth seasons: “I feel like we’re just getting started. I’m very hopeful that this show can be around for awhile.”

Trailer

Since no trailer has been released yet, it’s not a bad time to enjoy this peek at Seth Rogen in the voice booth as Allen.

Over the years, Megan Thee Stallion has made no secret of her love for Japanese animation, or anime. Her music is littered with countless references to shows like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, My Hero Academia, and Attack On Titan, while she’s been known to cosplay (short for “costume play”) as her favorite characters in videos, performances, and on social media.

But while Megan often talks about her love of anime, she’s rarely gone in-depth about just why she relates to it so much. In a new interview with Billboard, however, she does just that, explaining how the medium inspires her and informs her own artistic expression.

“I really like the storytelling in anime,” she explains. “The thing that resonates with me while watching a lot of the anime I like is watching the character development — seeing the character go from nothing to everything. When I feel like I’m getting beat up in life, I remember some of my favorite characters. I see that they had to go from literally zero and getting their ass whooped in their training. Even when they start popping and getting their muscles — because you know they be skinny as hell, then they start getting a little ripped — even when you start seeing the character getting a little swole, you like, ‘All right, he’s going to defeat all you motherf–kers. It’s over with’.”

“I resonate with that,” she continues. “No matter how many times I get knocked down, I never feel like, ‘F–k it, Imma quit.’ I just need to get better. I need to get back, try again, train harder and go harder, so I can keep evolving into my best self.”

She’s not alone in that respect among rappers; several have talked about how their love for anime — specifically, heroic anime like Dragon Ball — helped them push to become their best selves.

Megan Thee Stallion’s 2024 got off to a fractious start, with her January single “Hiss” not only touching off a short-lived battle with Nicki Minaj, but also setting a quarrelsome tone for seemingly all of hip-hop for the first quarter. However, she’s not letting that belligerent energy define her entire year. During her tour with GloRilla earlier this year, the two Southern stars celebrated the sisterhood of hip-hop, inviting Latto, Cardi B, and more to join them in a series of shows of mutual appreciation.

That positive energy could carry over to a new project from Meg with Glo, as they carry over the good vibes from their “Wanna Be” collaboration to a full project. In her new cover story for Billboard, Meg and Glo both expressed enthusiasm for the idea of a joint album. Megan said, “I think that would be very fire. I ain’t gon’ say too much, but it feels like it’s going to get done.” Meanwhile, Glo explained why such a project has them both excited. “Megan is a real rapper, and I’m also a real rapper,” she said. “We actually be talking and coming with bars on some down South gangsta sh*t. [It would be] some down South, real turnt, real rap [sh*t].”

I. “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome”

On Friday, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from Asheville, North Carolina named MJ Lenderman will release a new record. It’s called Manning Fireworks, and it’s my favorite album of the year. Manning Fireworks would be my favorite album of most years, but in 2024 it feels like an especially precious commodity. It’s the kind of record that makes me want to write like Jon Landau after seeing Bruce Springsteen in 1974. But I’m going to try hard not to do that. My job is to maintain critical perspective. In this instance, maintaining critical perspective will be a Herculean task.

I might have already failed. But let’s proceed anyway.

I heard Manning Fireworks for the first time in April. Like the protagonist of “She’s Leaving You” — the album’s first single and one of Lenderman’s finest songs — I was a middle-aged man wiling my life away in a Las Vegas hotel room. The room was not free, but I was feeling lucky. The night before, I bumped into a music industry friend at the concert I was in town to cover. We struck up a conversation about Lenderman, and he asked if I had heard the new record. I said I hadn’t, so he promised to text me a streaming link. And now here I was, playing the songs on repeat as 90-degree heat pounded against the windows like aggrieved hornets.

By then I was already two years into serious MJ Lenderman fandom. It started midway into my first listen of his third LP, 2022’s Boat Songs, when I suddenly realized that he was my new favorite artist. I can’t say that Boat Songs is a perfect record, but I can confirm that it is perfect for me. On every track, he delivered exactly what I wanted. Each song was about three minutes and 30 seconds and included an average of one smoking guitar solo and at least one standout lyrical turn-of-phrase. He was funny but not in a smug or jokey way. He wore his heart on his sleeve, but without coming across as wimpy or cloying. His influences — Neil Young, Jason Molina, Wilco, Drive By Truckers — were obvious but not in an overbearing or obnoxious way. As a young, curly-haired brunet dude, he made exactly the kind of music you would expect from a young, curly-haired brunet dude. But he did it so much better than his peers. I did not know how much better this kind of music could still be — after all this time, after so many iterations — until I heard him.

Have I mentioned that he rocks? MJ Lenderman rocks, man.

I texted my music industry friend and gushed about all the things I just mentioned in the previous two paragraphs. But mostly I quoted lines from the record that were already lodged in my brain. I pecked out a gloriously unpredictable jumble of words — “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome” — from the fourth track, “Wristwatch,” a character study about a materialistic bozo whose self-aggrandizing blather becomes increasingly unhinged right before MJ plays a smoking guitar solo. (Along with everything else he has going for him he plays nearly every instrument on his records.)

“Probably the saddest song written about an Apple Watch,” my friend texted back. He was right. And he also nailed the MJ Lenderman aesthetic. He locates the soul inside the inanimate banality of everyday life. The houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome is never just a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.

I then confessed what I had been thinking privately since hearing Boat Songs: “I’ve been waiting for an artist like this for a long time.” It felt almost like a romantic proclamation. I was slightly embarrassed after typing it out, but it was the truth. Boat Songs was an instant classic, and then he put out a concert record with his live backing band The Wind that I liked even more. And now Manning Fireworks arrived as an undeniable “level up” album, even from those previous triumphs. The lyrics were sharper. The music was punchier and more fully realized. The arc from the beginning (the title track, a brutally pretty country dirge with a narrative about a church-bound lothario) to the end (“Bark At The Moon,” which is probably the saddest song written about Guitar Hero) was satisfying but understated, like the album was consciously designed for your 75th listen to be the most mind-blowing.

I already looked forward to my next 74 spins through Manning Fireworks.

II. “How many roads must a man walk down til he learns”

MJ Lenderman — his friends call him Jake, we will stick with the stage name — started playing music at age 8. Guitar Hero was the gateway drug. He jammed on guitar with a friend and cycled through lessons and local School Of Rock-style camps. In his freshman year of high school, he attempted songwriting for the first time. He described his early method to me as “trying to rip off My Morning Jacket.” By the end of high school, he realized it was easier to sing a song with words he felt good about.

Not long after graduation, he put out his first album, MJ Lenderman, in 2019. Most people didn’t hear it until Boat Songs made MJ Lenderman a medium-famous rising indie star. What’s interesting about MJ Lenderman in retrospect is how it doesn’t conform to the house style with which he is associated — the sports talk, the Gen Z pop culture ephemera, the classic rock worship, the endearingly trashy southern imagery. On MJ Lenderman, he’s a post-adolescent almost-man making post-adolescent almost-man music. The songs are long (often around eight minutes) and paced like shipping barges lurched toward the shore. Humor is nonexistent. Earnest romanticism reigns. He is, in practically every way, a painfully typical singer-songwriter.

There are exceptions. “Basketball # 1” is a troglodyte version of the sorts of songs that MJ Lenderman will go on to write. “We used to play basketball, now he sells drugs, or maybe he’s locked up / For having something like bad intentions,” he sings. It’s clunky, but unlike most of the lyrics on the debut, it’s memorable. It sounds like a line that Patterson Hood or Mike Cooley might have considered for Southern Rock Opera before committing to another round of revisions.

The following year, Covid happens. A one-time ice cream shop worker, Lenderman goes on unemployment. Stuck at home, he commits to writing exercises inspired by David Berman, in which he writes 20 unrelated lyrics per day. Most are eventually scrapped, but a few are keepers. He also jams with his roommates and improvises words over the communal din. Over time his next record, Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo, takes shape.

In every important aspect, Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo is the opposite of the self-titled record. The songs are short, sometimes barely a minute, with sparse but vivid lyrics. Many of them are funny. A critical track is “Gentleman’s Jack” — later revived at the end of the record as “Live Jack” — in which Lenderman sings about “Jack Nicholson’s courtside seat / Purple foam imprinted with celebrity ass cheek.” And then there’s “Someone Get The Grill Out Of The Rain,” an early example of Lenderman’s seizing upon a mundane object and turning it into a melancholic metaphor. The rusted-out grill sitting in the yard is more than just a rusted-out grill sitting in the yard.

Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo was the beginning of Lenderman writing from a regional perspective. On his Bandcamp page, he cites the authors Harry Crews and Larry Brown as inspirations, “southern, self-taught writers who balanced empathy, humor, and darkness.” On that count, another southern writer in much closer proximity to Lenderman must also be counted as an important influence: his former partner Karly Hartzman. They started dating in the late 2010s, and Hartzman eventually invited Lenderman to play guitar in her band, Wednesday.

Hartzman’s own artistic evolution paces slightly ahead of Lenderman’s — Wednesday’s 2021 LP Twin Plagues is her Boat Songs, and last year’s excellent Rat Saw God is her Manning Fireworks. On those albums, Hartzman writes about what I call the Gummo South, a nod to Harmony Korine’s grotesque 1997 horror-comedy shot in Nashville about a white trash town in the wake of a lethal tornado. Her songs are populated by rundown nail salons and seedy roadside sex shops and neighborhood trap houses with cocaine and guns stashed inside the walls.

Like Lenderman, Hartzman is a natural wit, though his songs tend to be less centered on small-town sleaze. He accumulates the accoutrement of southern miscellanea to decorate the exterior worlds of characters otherwise consumed by their interior lives. On Manning Fireworks, he’s learned to do this in an ambient sense; it’s so subtle that the environments are felt as much as they are described. In “Joker Lips,” a person works at a disreputable hotel, “draining cum from hotel showers.” Later, Lenderman rhymes “Kahula shooter” with “DUI scooter,” forming a kind of redneck haiku. “Hoping for the hours / To pass a little faster,” the guy in the song prays. Because Lenderman has done the work, you feel the tedium. You can practically sense it on your skin, like August humidity.

III. “Please don’t laugh only half of what I said / is a joke”

The press cycle for Manning Fireworks began in June with an interview in The Guardian. The most remarked-upon portion of the article concerned the phenomenon of “dudes rock,” and how the online meme is frequently attached to Lenderman’s work. Lenderman apparently brought this up, unprompted, to distance himself from it. “I don’t think all my songs are necessarily about dudes – I don’t really resonate with whatever ‘dudes rock’ is,” he said. “I don’t want the music to come across like it’s not inclusive to everybody – like somebody who’s not a dude.”

On one hand, he’s absolutely correct — Lenderman’s songs really are inclusive. One of his primary concerns (an apparent remnant of a Catholic upbringing) is shame, the most universal of all emotions. (“I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you,” from “Rudolph,” is perhaps the definitive MJ Lenderman lyric.) But he’s equally interested in the lack of shame, particularly on Manning Fireworks. It’s the characteristic that applies to almost all of his characters: the philanderer in “She’s Leaving You,” the status-obsessed stooge in “Wristwatch,” the burnt-out partier in “Rip Torn,” the self-destructive loner in “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In,” and so on. These are people who do not, and cannot, see themselves for what they really are. On that note, I have a hard time believing that Lenderman isn’t writing mostly about men. In fact, I think he’s one of our most perceptive writers addressing the deeply confused state of modern masculinity.

A word that recurs throughout Manning Fireworks is “jerk.” The album in some ways is a taxonomy of jerkdom, whether it’s the “perfect little baby / who’s now a jerk” in the title song or the jerk fighting creeping self-awareness in the cowbell-powered “Rudolph.” In that Guardian interview, Lenderman speaks derisively about internet influencers peddling a comic-book caricature of manliness, defined by silly displays of brute strength and piggish misogyny, though in his own songs he approaches these types with surprising evenhandedness. Lenderman expertly avoids self-pity (the classic trap for male singer-songwriters since early ’70s OGs like James Taylor and Jackson Browne) and self-righteousness (the go-to tactic for deferential male “allies” in the contemporary world). Instead, he portrays these guys as “drowning in plain sight” losers who put up facades — often without knowing it — that barely conceal how broken they are.

Warren Zevon used to be the master of this kind of songwriting, where you neither redeem nor judge your toxic characters. Rather, you put the listener in that headspace for a few minutes, the way a short story writer does, as a form of psychological tourism. On Boat Songs, Lenderman achieved this partly via the proliferation of lyrical references to famous athletes, a clever acknowledgment of the “Remember Some Guys!” method of male communication. But on Manning Fireworks, he sets the Michael Jordan and Dan Marino shoutouts aside in favor of more direct invocations of delusion and despair. He can do this with humor — like in “On My Knees,” which opens with a sly one liner about being “burdened by those wet dreams, of people having fun” — but then he’ll remind you that these guys are not totally kidding.

I don’t know that I have ever heard “dudes rock” uttered or texted or tweeted without some element of self-mockery. Most guys I know feel at least a little self-conscious about enjoying stereotypical “guy” stuff, like betting on football or eating at Buffalo Wild Wings, and there’s an instinctual desire to defuse that feeling by exaggerating their “dudeness” to the point of knowing silliness. It’s a defense mechanism at a time when the expectations for “acting like a man” have never been less clear. Nevertheless, at the root of “dudes rock” is a genuine yearning for community in a culture where men are more isolated (and suicidal) than ever. For me the most heartbreaking moment on Manning Fireworks occurs in “Joker Lips,” when Lenderman sings, “Please don’t laugh all half of what I said / is a joke.” Pouring your heart out and having it treated as a punchline — I don’t know that there is a better definition of loneliness than that.

IV. “Every day is a miracle / not to mention a threat”

I love MJ Lenderman’s music. I love it so much that I actually worry about him. I’ve interviewed him twice, and he struck me as unusually grounded and guileless. Are the usual villains of the music business — the hangers-on, the enablers, the vapid and malignant soul stealers — threatening to invade his inner circle? Are bad substances and worse love interests looming? Is someone going to ruin this guy?

Is it possible that … I’m the problem? Is raving about the greatness of MJ Lenderman’s songs the biggest threat to the potential greatness of MJ Lenderman’s songs in the future? Could it be that compliments are potentially more perilous than a line of coke or hooking up with a Kardashian? “For me personally — the more I see written about me and see other people’s perception of me — it makes me start to think about me a little differently,” he told me in 2022. “I feel like that’s probably not a great thing for an artist, so I try to avoid that as much as possible.”

Again: This is an unusually grounded and guileless person. Please do not show MJ Lenderman this column.

In July, when laying out the candidates for the 2024 “Song Of The Summer,” I attested, “Ultimately, of all the songs on this list, [Sabrina Carpenter’s] ‘Espresso‘ may have the least working against it for ‘Song Of The Summer’ consideration.”

At least in terms of Billboard data, that turned out to be correct.

Today (September 4), Billboard named their top 10 songs of the summer, based on performance on the weekly Global 200 charts from June 8 to September 7. Here’s the full list:

10. “Gata Only” by FloyyMenor X Cris Mj
9. “Too Sweet” by Hozier
8. “Million Dollar Baby” by Tommy Richman
7. “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone
6. “I Had Some Help” by Post Malone Feat. Morgan Wallen
5. “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar
4. “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter
3. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey
2. “Birds Of A Feather” by Billie Eilish
1. “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter

“Espresso” ended up at No. 1, and Carpenter is the only artist with multiple songs in the top 10, as “Please Please Please” is No. 4. As for “Espresso,” Billboard notes that it was the only song to spend all 14 weeks of the summer tracking period in the top three. “Please Please Please” and Eilish’s “Birds Of A Feather,” the latter of which came in second on the list, spent six weeks in the top three this summer.

Megan Thee Stallion can’t explain how to reconcile her beef with Nicki Minaj, because she doesn’t know how it started in the first place. In a new interview with Billboard, Meg admitted she doesn’t know why Minaj turned on her, and that she only spent the early part of the year exchanging diss songs with her former collaborator because she “knew what I had to do and what I had to say.”

“I still to this day don’t know what the problem is,” she confessed when asked about a potential reconciliation between the two rappers. “I don’t even know what could be reconciled because I, to this day, don’t know what the problem is.”

For what it’s worth, Meg and Nicki certainly started their relationship on a good note, teaming up to rap together on Meg’s 2019 single “Hot Girl Summer.” The song peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the US Rhythmic chart — Meg’s first and Nicki’s eighth. However, in 2022, Nicki recalled taking umbrage at a joke Megan made during a party, which ultimately led to their falling out (although, I gotta say… that’s the sort of thing you have a conversation about, not hold onto for five years and make a slew of diss tracks about).

Meanwhile, some fans believe Nicki actually turned on Meg when her 2020 collaboration with Nicki’s rival Cardi B, “WAP,” turned out to be much more successful, spending four non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, and becoming one of the most buzzed-about songs of that year. Minaj took some apparent shots at Meg on her 2023 single, “Red Ruby Da Sleeze.”

Nicki and Meg opened 2024 with back-and-forth diss songs, beginning with Meg’s lead Megan single, “Hiss,” which addressed a number of her other detractors at the same time. Nicki responded with “Big Foot,” but the lukewarm response to the song — and Nicki’s accompanying days-long Twitter rant — caused the “beef” to fizzle out quickly. Still, it set the tone for the year, which has seen skirmishes between Ice Spice and Latto, and Drake and Kendrick Lamar.