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Have you ever heard of a movie concept so absurd that it actually makes a lot of sense? Greta Gerwig creating various incarnations of Barbie in her upcoming Barbie movie is one that seemed so bizarre and now has everyone on the edge of their seat waiting for more over-the-top set pictures. Sometimes, a movie being weird is part of the fun, like Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, and Snoop Dogg teaming up to fight vampires. It just works.

This is the case for Day Shift, the upcoming Netflix movie. Foxx stars as a normal dad who makes ends meet by killing vampires and selling their teeth for money. You know, standard stuff. The movie also stars Dave Franco as his spooked assistant and, of course, Snoop Dogg wearing a cowboy hat. And yes! There is a Twilight reference in the trailer. Here is the official synopsis:

Jamie Foxx stars as a hard working blue collar dad who just wants to provide a good life for his quick-witted daughter, but his mundane San Fernando Valley pool cleaning job is a front for his real source of income, hunting and killing vampires as part of an international Union of vampire hunters.

The movie comes from the producer of John Wick, so you know there will be some great action in between vampire puns and one-liners. Can we hope for a Keanu Reeves cameo? One can dream.

Day Shift hits Netflix on August 12th. Check out the trailer above.

It wasn’t that long ago that a lot of people considered “sourced” bourbon inferior. That was mostly due to huge distilleries having to sell off stock to bottlers to stay afloat. But those days are decades behind us. Sourced bourbon whiskey is everywhere on the shelves these days. It’s also among some of the most respected, sought-after, and awarded whiskey available anywhere.

But how does a great sourced bourbon stand up to an old-school unsourced bourbon? That’s what I’m here to answer today.

For this blind tasting, I’m pitting four very good sourced bourbons — in this case, a bourbon that’s made from finished barrels of whiskey by a non-distiller producer — against four very good standard bourbons put out by a distillery under one of their own brands. I purposefully kept this tasting very narrow. All eight bourbons are award-winning and highly respected. Moreover, all eight fall in the sweet spot price-wise between $50 and $70 (one bottle is $89). They aren’t cheap but these aren’t the crazy expensive bottles either. These are the bottles that sit at your eye-line as your walk through the liquor store, and will actually be next to each other on that shelf.

Our lineup today is:

• Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit
• Redemption High-Rye Bourbon (sourced)
• Pursuit United (sourced)
• Kentucky Peerless Small Batch Bourbon
• Nashville Barrel Company Single Barrel Bourbon (sourced)
• High West American Prairie Bourbon (sourced)
• Knob Creek 12
• Four Roses Single Barrel

Let’s dive in and see if the sourced stuff can stand up to the old-school distillery releases.

Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months

• We Blind Tasted A Whole Bunch Of $30-60 Bourbons To See If Any Could Beat Weller
• We Blind Tasted Classic Bourbons And Were Shocked By The Winner
• The Best Ten-Year-Old Bourbon Whiskeys, Tasted Blind And Ranked
• We Tasted Bourbon Whiskeys ‘Double-Blind’ And Tried To Guess Each Bottle
• All The Double Gold-Winning Straight Bourbons From This Year’s San Francisco World Spirits Competition

Part 1: The Tasting

Taste 1

Tasting Notes:

This is damn near perfect on the nose, with a mix of subtle vanilla next to Christmas spices, soft cedar, and dark leathery fruit with a hint of tartness. The palate leans into the darkness of the fruit while old oak staves mix with lush marzipan, a hint of orange oils, and old boot leather. The finish leans into a warm winter spice with a hint of mulled wine and candied almonds. A layer of vanilla and cinnamon-spiced chewing tobacco comes in very late with a twinge of cherry wood.

Well, this is going to be hard to beat…

Taste 2

Tasting Notes:

Tart berries and vanilla cookies lead to soft winter spices and a touch of orange zest on the nose. Dark chocolate and dark cherry open the palate toward a dusting of black pepper, clove nibs, and a bit more of that orange zest. But it’s brighter. The end is old and leathery with a lemon pepper vibe that eventually fades into that chocolate-cherry feel.

This was pretty nice overall. It didn’t jump out at me. Still, very solid all around.

Taste 3

Tasting Notes:

Sour red wine with woody spices mix with fresh honey and a good dose of minced meat pie with plenty of cinnamon and white sugar. The palate takes on a chocolate vibe with a layer of honey cake next to a layer of dry tobacco and cedar. There’s a hint of orange dark chocolate near the end that leads back to the holiday spiciness with a warming edge that ends up a little thin on the back end.

This was nice but felt a little one-note — that note being “it’s Christmas!” — compared to the last two.

Taste 4

Tasting Notes:

Blackberry pie dances with old glove leather, buttery toffee, expensive vanilla beans, and wet, almost sticky tobacco leaves on the nose. The palate leans into the butteriness and spicy tobacco has dry ropes of cedar bark leading to a bitter and oily espresso bean. The end goes deeper with a vanilla pipe tobacco which leads back to that blackberry pie filling with a hint of pie crust and white sugar frosting before the dry cedar kicks back in late.

This is a great pour. I can’t imagine this won’t be in the top three.

Taste 5

Tasting Notes:

Salted kettle corn, cotton candy with a hint of cherry, salted caramel, worn leather, orange oils … this nose runs deep. The palate leans sharp winter spices with plenty of cinnamon, clove, ginger, and allspice with a hint of sassafras and anise before a creamy nutmeg and eggnog arrive to smooth things out. The end has a hint of Almond Joy next to dry sweetgrass with more of that buttery salted caramel before dry cedar and leather lead to a dark berry tobacco vibe.

This is another contender!

Taste 6

Tasting Notes:

Caramel apples, fresh leather, vanilla pudding, and a touch of buttered popcorn open this one up. The taste is very nougat, counterpointed by creamed corn with a buttermilk biscuit in the background with a little honey. The finish smooths out with some vanilla next to dry cedar and some more of that caramel apple vibe.

This was pretty nice with a short but solid flavor profile.

Taste 7

Tasting Notes:

Rum-soaked cherries and dark chocolate lead the way with winter spices and sourdough doughnuts supporting on the nose. There’s a touch of mint that leads to an old dark cherry profile that’s part sweet and juicy and part tart and dry before a fatty streusel takes over with plenty of spice and brown sugar. The mid-palate narrows that spice toward cinnamon and a dried chili feel while the dark chocolate circles back around. The cherry sweetens with a woody vibe at the very end as this one slowly fades out.

This is a hell of a cherry bomb. A delicious, delicious cherry bomb.

Taste 8

Tasting Notes:

Woody maple syrup and cinnamon sticks lead to a hint of pear candy with a vanilla underbelly on the nose. The palate lets the pear shine as the spices lean into woody barks and berries next to dates and plums with a butteriness. A spicy tobacco chewiness leads the mid-palate toward a soft fruitiness and a hint of plum pudding at the end with a slight nuttiness and green herb.

This was another solid whiskey.

Part 2: The Ranking

8. Pursuit United (Sourced) — Taste 3

ABV: 54%

Average Price: $65

The Whiskey:

This whiskey is a vatted from 40 total barrels from three different states. While the team at Pursuit United doesn’t release the Tennessee distillery name, we know the juices from Kentucky and New York are from Bardstown Bourbon Company and Finger Lakes Distilling, respectively. Once those barrels are vatted, they’re slightly touched with water before bottling.

Bottom Line:

I usually dig this! That said, on this lineup, it just didn’t quite hit the same. That’s easy to square as this is a blended bourbon. It’s not quite as succinct as the rest of the whiskeys on this list (single barrels, etc.), and that’s not this whiskey’s fault at all.

7. Redemption High-Rye Bourbon (Sourced) — Taste 2

ABV: 52.5%

Average Price: $50

The Whiskey:

These bottles are the masterwork of chef-turned-master-blender David Carpenter. The juice is hand-selected MGP single barrels that provide a classic bourbon base that then leans a little softer on the palate.

Bottom Line:

This was complex and very tasty. Again, this just didn’t quite stand up today to the other heavy-hitting bourbons on the list. That all said, this is a pretty easy pour that feels like it would be great in a cocktail.

6. High West American Prairie Bourbon (Sourced) — Taste 6

ABV: 46%

Average Price: $60

The Whiskey:

American Prairie is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after sourced whiskeys. The whiskey in the bottle is a blend of two to 13-year-old barrels rendered from high-rye, low-rye, and undisclosed source mash bills, from undisclosed sources. The release supports the American Prairie Reserve by highlighting the project and supporting it financially.

Bottom Line:

This was where things get interesting. I liked this but it feels a little short today for not having the same insane depth as the next few whiskeys on this list. Otherwise, this is a pretty easy sipper, especially on a rock or two.

5. Four Roses Single Barrel (Unsourced) — Taste 8

ABV: 50%

Average Price: $50

The Whiskey:

Four Rose’s standard single barrel expression is an interesting one. This is their “number one” recipe, meaning it’s a high-rye (35%) mash bill that’s fermented with a yeast that highlights “delicate fruit.” The juice is then bottled at 100 proof, meaning you’re getting a good sense of that single barrel in every bottle.

Bottom Line:

This has a really nice pear note to it with a hint of savory green herbs. I like that. Today, it helped this bottle stand out but not above. This felt like the perfect middle-of-the-road whiskey for this tasting. Everything that comes next is a certified killer. Everything that came before really depends on what mood you’re in or the profile you’re looking for.

4. Knob Creek 12 (Unsourced) — Taste 7

ABV: 50%

Average Price: $67

The Whiskey:

This is the classic Beam whiskey. The juice is left alone in the Beam warehouses in Clermont, Kentucky, for 12 long years. The barrels are chosen according to a specific taste and mingled to create this aged expression with a drop or two of that soft Kentucky limestone water.

Bottom Line:

While this was a cherry bomb!, it still had some serious depth and was not a “one-note” whiskey by any stretch. It’s also one of the easier whiskeys to drink in general thanks to that lush cherry profile. Still, it falls a little lower today because it might be hard to get past that big cherry note for some.

3. Nashville Barrel Company Single Barrel Bourbon (Sourced) — Taste 5

ABV: Varies

Average Price: $90

The Whiskey:

Nashville Barrel Co. is sourcing incredible barrels (a lot from MGP) and bottling them as-is without any cutting, filtering, or fussing — they let the whiskey speak for itself and it’s kind of magical. This expression tends to be five to eight-year-old barrels that will vary slightly in the flavor profile while always leaning into bold and distinct flavors.

Bottom Line:

I’ve had a lot of these single barrels from NBC, and not one has been bad. They’re almost always above average. Had this had a single rock in it, it might have hit number one today since it was a little hot compared to the rest of the list. That aside, this juice is fire.

2. Kentucky Peerless Small Batch Bourbon (Unsourced) — Taste 4

ABV: 54.65%

Average Price: $70

The Whiskey:

Kentucky Peerless Distilling takes its time for a true grain-to-glass experience. Their Small Batch Bourbon is crafted with a fairly low-rye mash bill and fermented with a sweet mash as opposed to a sour mash (that means they use 100% new grains, water, and yeast with each new batch instead of holding some of the mash over to start the next one like a sourdough starter). The barrels are then hand-selected for their taste and bottled completely un-messed with.

Bottom Line:

This was the boldest whiskey on the list. That said, the heat of the proof never overpowered the depth of the flavor profile. This was nuanced, enjoyable, and memorable. It was balanced but didn’t have quite the same subtleness as the next entry.

1. Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit (Unsourced) — Taste 1

ABV: 50.5%

Average Price: $60

The Whiskey:

Jimmy and Eddie Russell (Wild Turkey’s father-son team) hand-selects eight to nine-year-old barrels from their warehouses for each barrel’s individual taste and quality. Those barrels are then cut down ever-so-slightly to 101 proof and bottled as-is with no other fussing.

Bottom Line:

This was just perfection today. It’s balanced and deep while still being 100% approachable, bright, and almost refreshing. This was a great pour neat. A little water and those would have exploded into something spectacular.

Part 3: Final Thoughts

So, the sourced juice didn’t quite hit the heights of the distillery-made-and-released product today. That said, they weren’t really that far off. Not a single one of these bourbons was bad. They were all some level of good to great.

Nashville Barrel Company easily walked into the top three without a single question. As for the other three “sourced” whiskeys, they all have their place. Still, if there’s a Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit on the shelf right next to any of these (sourced or not), I’m buying that without hesitation.

While not a sport that’s caught on in North America, cricket is one of the world’s biggest sports and draws tremendous action on international betting markets, with so much interest that people can apparently be easily conned into betting on fake games.

This week a fake “Indian Premier Cricket League,” pretending to mimic the real IPL, got broken up after weeks of conning Russian bettors into wagering on fake matches played on a farm and broadcast online with laborers dressing up as fake players. The game broadcasts featured just one camera angle tight on the pitch, never showing a wide angle of the “stadium” they were playing in, using fake crowd noise, so when the ball got hit off screen, a fake referee would make up calls based on what bettors had bet on to make them the most money.

The video of the broadcast is particularly hilarious.

Per the BBC, they managed to pull this off for weeks, taking bets online on a site they set up, despite the actual IPL having long since finished its actual season before police stepped in.

The conmen managed to reach the quarter-finals stage of their so-called “Indian Premier Cricket League” before police stopped play.

Russian gamblers placed bets on a Telegram channel set up by the gang, who then alerted the fake umpire using walkie-talkies, police inspector Bhavesh Rathod told reporters.

The fake umpire would then “signal the bowler and batsman to hit a six, four or get out”, Mr Rathod said.

Four people were arrested and the fake league was shut down, with the take being approximately $4,000 (which is 300,000 rupees) for the scam before they got caught.

Alief, Texas rapper Tobe Nwigwe‘s videos are always elaborate, self-directed affairs but he really pulls out all the stops in his new video for “Been Broke,” which also features Atlanta trap captain 2 Chainz, Houston hard hitter Chamillionaire, and, as always, Tobe’s wife, Fat. As he does in many of his videos, Tobe highlights his Nigerian heritage, his family’s close bond, and unique aesthetic sensibilities. This time, though, he goes all-in on flexing his wealth too, contrasting his current circumstances with the song’s all-too-relatable chorus.

The video opens with a reference to the tradition of a newly wedded couple being showered with cash as he and Fat embrace on the lawn of a massive mansion, surrounded by aunties in their big hats, the usual Tobe dance team, and a squadron of muscle cars doing laps around the circular driveway. Of course, there’s the requisite shot of Tobe, Fat, and their babies, then 2 Chainz and Chamillionaire both tell their own rags-to-riches stories from various spots on the grounds. Chainz’s verse makes nifty use of an international wordplay motif, while Chamillionaire brags about escaping one-hit-wonder status. And, as usual, the whole cast is decked out in mint green styles designed by Tobe himself.

Watch Tobe Nwigwe’s Facebook-exclusive “Been Broke” video featuring 2 Chainz and Chamillionaire below.

Meghan McCain is not a fan of Elon Musk‘s method for addressing the “underpopulation crisis.” In her latest column, McCain dragged Musk for confirming that he secretly impregnated one of his top execs with twins last year by boasting about the importance of having large families.

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” Musk tweeted. “I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!”

Musk’s devotion to constantly pumping out kids (the twins are now his eighth and ninth children) earned him praise from Nick Cannon, who’s also been a non-stop baby factory. Seeing Cannon’s praise for Musk was enough for McCain to devote a Daily Mail column to the situation.

“This is flat out weird,” McCain wrote while noting that Musk “apparently had simultaneous pregnancies going on” if you look at the timeline for the secret twins and his children with Grimes:

This ‘impregnate the planet’ mentality is creepy and comes off like the actions of a cult leader more than an altruistic person who wants to expand their family and save the planet.

Elon is the wealthiest man on the planet, he certainly can largely do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, but don’t for a minute think that ordinary Americans relate to this at all.

While McCain appreciates Musk for the way he “eviscerates cancel culture and wokeism,” the former The View co-host can’t get past his possible philandering. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she wrote. “Musk is no role model.”

(Via Daily Mail)

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Murda Beatz recruit nearly half the music industry for a new song and Burna Boy come through with a big-time collaboration of his own. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters. Also find our Uproxx HQ Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly with the best new music, at the end of this post.

Murda Beatz — “No Más” Feat. Quavo, J Balvin, Anitta, and Pharrell

Everybody’s trying to drop a “song of the summer” contender right now and Murda Beatz got all the help he possibly could on one last week. “No Más” is definitely a warm and breezy tune fit for the hotter months and the list of features is a party on its own, as the tune includes contributions from Quavo, J Balvin, Anitta, and Pharrell.

Burna Boy — “For My Hand” Feat. Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran’s a pretty good dude to have in your corner and indeed, that’s what Burna Boy has on “For My Hand.” On the tender tune, the two make an exceptionally good vocal pairing, with Burna’s deeper voice playing extremely well with Sheeran’s higher register.

King Princess — “Change The Locks”

King Princess gave herself a tough act to follow with her 2019 debut album Cheap Queen, but she’s going to try with Hold On Baby, which is out at the end of July. She offered a taste of it last week with “Change The Locks,” a mostly low-key with a boisterous and explosive chorus that conveys the emotional intensity of the tune.

The 1975 — “Part Of The Band”

The 1975 are coming back, beginning their trek last week with “Part Of The Band,” a tune more organic-sounding than their recent output. The headline, though, is the very Matty Healy lyrics, with lines like, “I like my men like I like my coffee / Full of soy milk and so sweet, it won’t offend anybody,” and, “Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? / Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke / Calling his ego imagination?”

Brent Faiyaz — “All Mine”

On his new album Wasteland, Faiyaz goes through a deep journey of self-discovery, or at least one of self-expression. Uproxx’s Wongo Okon notes in his review of the album, “What he soon learns through this album’s well-crafted, dark, and vivid records is that the fast life is oftentimes a death race rather than a carefree cruise through the city.”

Aespa — “Girls”

K-pop has proven to be an especially impactful part of the American music landscape in recent years and now Aespa is the latest group to help push the genre forward, like they do on the new single “Girls.” Uproxx’s Armon Sadler notes of the song and its accompanying video, “‘Girls’ is fierce both vocally and visually, as the K-pop group displays sharp choreography, firm lyricism, and collectively jarring melodies as they traverse an elevator and dance in a dojo.”

Kid Cudi — “Love”

Cudi has had himself a better music career than most so far, which he observed last week with The Boy Who Flew To The Moon, Vol. 1, a new compilation album. The best-of also serves as a resurfacing of “Love,” which Cudi previously shared on SoundCloud back in 2015, so learned Cudi fans are surely pleased to have this one on streaming services.

Fivio Foreign and The Kid Laroi — “Paris To Tokyo”

This week was especially rich with top-tier collaborations, thanks to the aforementioned as well as Fivio Foreign and The Kid Laroi’s new link-up, “Paris To Tokyo.” It’s a brief tune, clocking in at just a couple minutes, but the two get after it over an excitable, in-your-face instrumental and similarly spirited lyrical performances.

Doechii — “B*tch I’m Nice”

In a time when a lot of songs mainly get heard in 10-second, TikTok-friendly chunks, 90 seconds can seem like an eternity. That’s also how long Doechii needed to make an impact on last week’s “B*tch I’m Nice,” a quick, rapid-fire tune that packs some witty and memorable bars, like, “Know this p*ssy good, and it purr, but it still got bite.”

Alvvays — “Pharmacist”

The Canadian group found themselves on the rise with their 2017 sophomore album Antisocialites, but it’s been nearly five years since that album and they’ve yet to release a new one. They’re working on that, though: They announced Blue Rev last week and shared “Pharmacist,” yet another example this week of a notably short song (just over a couple minutes here), but their signature dreamy/hazy indie rock aesthetic it out in full force here, complete with a frenetic and exciting guitar solo to cap off what can only be described as a fantastic set-up for this long-awaited album cycle.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Warning: Some goat-related spoilers from Thor: Love And Thunder ahead.

One of the most ridiculous moments of the already ridiculous Thor: Love And Thunder is a bunch of giant goats coming in to save the day while letting out the most annoying scream to ever come out of a living being. Of course, it was…a choice to have that be a recurring joke in the movie, one director and star Taika Waititi attributes to the one and only Taylor Swift.

In an interview with Insider, Waititi revealed that the goats were originally cute and quiet, though after seeing the infamous viral video of Swift’s “Trouble” video overlayed with some screaming goats, the choice became clear.

“They were never meant to be screaming. The goats were always going to be in there because they are in the comics, but we didn’t know how they would sound,” Waititi explained. “Then someone in post-production found this meme of a Taylor Swift song that has screaming goats in it. I didn’t even know that existed. So I hear the screaming goats and I just felt it was awesome. A lot of people think it’s me screaming. It’s not.”

Waititi continued that they found the concept funny enough to keep it in the final cut. “I think one of the vendors that was making the CG goats, they just added the Taylor Swift song ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,’ but the fan-made one with the goat sounds, and we just thought it was so funny. So it was just a shot of how the CG creatures were coming along, it wasn’t meant for the film or anything, it was just an update. And the screams were freakin’ awesome.” Well it was literal trouble when they walked in, so it worked out well!

(Via Insider)

The Bear (which you can stream on Hulu) is all the rage right now, and it’s a not-so-quiet showcase for Shameless star Jeremy Allen White, who seems to be harboring quite the legion of fans. Like, I’m the only one still talking about co-star Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Girls scene that I would argue prepared him for anything, and that includes how he also gets mouthy with a megaphone in what’s been compared to the Uncut Gems of the restaurant world. But everyone else is talking about raging intensity inside the kitchen from both Moss-Bachrach and White (and the show’s music). To each his own, Chefs.

White has heard all about calls for a Season 2 for this show, and during an interview with GQ, he addresses many things including his hopes for more:

White is hoping season two of The Bear comes along. “To me, the whole first season feels almost like a prelude to what the show actually is,” he says. But for now, he’ll finish his beer and bike home for dinner with his family. He’s cooking.

That last line is a nod to how White actually didn’t know much about cooking when he accepted this role. As White details, he and Ayo Edibiri (who plays the show’s sous chef with a much better sense of business than White’s Carmy) “took a crash course” at a leading culinary institute, but one other amusing part of this interview involves White addressing the Internet’s lust for Carmy and his brooding bedroom eyes, which actually didn’t lead into any bedroom scenes. And White’s good with this:

“Carmy’s, like, the least sexual person. In playing him, I was aware that he had no room for love,” White says, bringing up one particular article that points out there might be some projection going on. “So I appreciated that she was aware that Carmy does not f*ck.”

Still, there’s little denying how Carmy reminds people of a lot of real-life, sort-of counterparts really *do* f*ck. As Sarah York described on Twitter, the show’s a showcase for an “exclusive strain of Sexually Competent Dirtbag that only exists in a restaurant kitchen,” so maybe, yeah, Carmy might spare a few moments for love in (a hopeful) Season 2. Or perhaps a sense of mystery is better? He might be too distracted to focus on anything but his messed-up meat deliveries.

The Bear is streaming on Hulu.

(Via GQ)

Music fans looking for lofi beats to relax/study to will find it that much harder to do so, as the number one stream on YouTube, the popular LoFi Girl, has reportedly been disabled over a copyright claim. Over the past few years, the LoFi Girl channel — which was previously known as Chilled Cow, for some reason — has grown in ubiquity, eventually renaming itself for its most popular stream, which featured an endless loop of an anime-style animated girl ostensibly listening to the downtempo, often-sampled hip-hop beats on her headphones while writing in a notebook.

According to Futurism, the channel’s proprietors have called the copyright claim that took down the stream “false” in a post on Twitter, writing, “The lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes. Hopefully, @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly…”

Fans checking out the LoFi Girl profile can still see the “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/studio to” thumbnail, but rather than its usual bright red “Live” marker, it now shows the truly incredible runtime of 20,843:42:51 (that’s 868 days or about 2 years, four months, and two weeks of music). Clicking on it only retrieves an error message: “This live stream recording is not available.” The comments are filled with messages in at least six languages describing the stream’s personal significance to the commenters, many of whom, of course, wish for its return. The stream was last interrupted in February 2020, when it was taken down by an error at YouTube.

They might just get their wish; a reply from @TeamYouTube confirms that “the takedown requests were abusive” and that the stream should be restored in “24-48 hours.”

Like many people this summer, I recently powered through the first season of The Bear, a gritty and intense FX dramedy currently streaming on Hulu about a family restaurant in Chicago that’s taken over by troubled hotshot chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen Wade) after his older brother Michael (Jon Bernthal) takes his own life.

A surprise breakout hit, The Bear has been rightfully lauded for its many attributes — the excellent ensemble cast, the insightful and emotionally deft writing, the authentic depiction of working-class Chicago, and the way the filmmaking creates unbearable (no pun intended) tension inside the fraught kitchen workplace. But what initially drew me to the show was the soundtrack, which struck me as refreshing and even subversive for being resolutely … unhip.

If you watch enough prestige TV — and you’re the sort of person who pays attention to the music playing in the background — you no doubt understand what these shows are supposed to sound like. They almost always cater to the sensibilities of the elite upper-class viewers who are drawn to these programs. The song mix is usually the same: Some record-crate soul from the ’60s, an obscure country or soft rock tune from the ’70s, maybe a dash of Krautrock or ’80s indie, perhaps an “ironic” nod to an overplayed radio hit, and then a round-up of “New Music” favorites beamed in from a Spotify algorithm.

This is all great music! But these soundtracks often treat songs like signifiers of “quality.” They are so aggressively tasteful and curator-approved that they can feel a little anonymous and even oppressive, like you’re watching the televisual equivalent of a blandly fashionable downtown boutique.

But The Bear moves to a radically different rhythm. The bulk of the soundtrack is made up of songs from the ’80s and ’90s that patrons of the show’s fictional eatery The Original Beef Of Chicagoland might like: Pearl Jam, John Cougar Mellencamp, Counting Crows, Genesis, Radiohead. If that’s not dad rock enough for you, there are also three Wilco songs. While some snobs might wince at such a normie playlist, the music enhances the everyman vibe of The Bear, while also feeling true to the characters and the milieu. So many TV shows and movies bungle their soundtracks by turning the protagonists into inauthentic music experts whose listening habits don’t line up with real life. Whereas in The Bear, when Carmy’s lunkhead cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) retreats to his car during a tough day at the restaurant, it makes perfect sense that he would have a live acoustic version of Counting Crows’ “Have You Seen Me Lately?” playing on the stereo. (It’s also, to be clear, an awesome song.)

The men responsible for the soundtrack are two of the main creative minds behind The Bear: Christopher Storer, the show’s creator/co-showrunner/executive producer/writer/director, and executive producer Josh Senior. “We became the music supervisors out of just desperation,” Storer explains. “We were like, ‘Let’s save some money and just do it ourselves.’”

But it’s obvious that this decision goes well beyond just navigating around a tight budget. Storer and Senior have real passion for the musical aspect of The Bear. When I reached out with questions about a dozen or so tracks that appeared in the eight-episode season, they were giddy at the prospect of talking about the many personal favorites that ended up in the show. At one point, I asked if they deliberately went against the grain in terms of not picking a conventionally “cool” soundtrack for this kind of buzzy prestige show.

“A hundred percent,” Senior concurred. “More often than not that stuff takes me out. There was a period of time where it was super cool to hear orchestral covers of pop songs. What a novelty. And it worked really well. And I think there are music supervisors who are really good at that. But for us, music is part of the world of the show, and it almost would feel disingenuous to be dropping songs that we couldn’t relate to or that didn’t feel like they lived in this world, and only because they were popular for a different reason.”

Here is a playlist of songs from the first season of The Bear, with Storer and Senior’s commentary about why they were selected.

Wilco, “Via Chicago” (Episode 1)

Christopher Storer (Creator/Co-Showrunner/Executive Producer/Writer/Director): Wilco is one of my favorite bands on the planet. And, as Josh will attest, I put them in every rough cut that we ever make of anything. Josh and I put this song in as a temp, and then they were like, “That actually works.” The vibe is great. And leading off what is an eight-episode freight train, we were like, “Man, it’s kind of cool to put Wilco in that first emotional moment of the show.”

Josh Senior (Executive Producer): We used music as a shorthand to explain the vibe of show. Chris started it off with a playlist of songs that felt like what the show should feel like. And that was how we introduced the show to all of our collaborators. There might have been 50 or 60 songs that Chris sent out to everybody and was like, “This is what the show sounds like.”

When it comes to Wilco specifically, we weren’t trying to say anything other than that we liked that band and that song. A lot of the music that we get excited about putting in things is, I think, stuff that people wouldn’t consider cutting edge or cool. I’m not saying that the show isn’t cutting edge or cool, or that Wilco isn’t. But for us, it wasn’t serving that purpose.

A common assumption I’ve seen in reviews of The Bear is that you put three Wilco songs on the soundtrack because the show is set in Chicago, and Wilco is a defining Chicago band. Is that true?

CS: No. If it was filmed in L.A., it would still have Wilco songs. Honestly, they have always been such a special band to me. I think Susie Tweedy is a legend, and so is Jeff.

The Flowerpot Men, “Beat City” (Episode 6)

This song does seem like a Chicago Easter egg, given that’s an obscure track associated with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, right?

CS: Oh yeah. Richie is a character really dealing with what life is like without not only his boss, but his best friend. And you multiply that by the fact that there is a smaller version of his best friend, Carmy, fighting with him all day long. You see that Richie’s this guy that’s facing what the world is like 10 years too late, after he is been cooped up in this restaurant. We wanted some of the music in these moments with Richie to feel like they were a little bit stuck in time. And we kept thinking, “Richie probably thinks about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off a lot.” He would totally have this song on a playlist.

By the way, when you hear the song independent from Ferris Bueller, it’s incredible. The Ferris Bueller soundtrack is fucking unbelievable.

Refused, “New Noise” (Episodes 1 and 8)

CS: The Shape Of Punk To Come is one of my favorite albums of all time. I remember hearing it for the first time in high school and being like, “This is the coolest thing I have ever fucking heard.” Nothing feels like that intro to “New Noise,” just that moment of, “Oh man, something’s coming. It’s building to something.” In the show we used it as a cue for “things are about to hit the fan.” There was also something about holding off the drop of that song. I know people were like, “Oh man, you didn’t get to the drop of ‘New Noise!’” But that intro is so specific to how it feels when your heart rate starts going in any job when the pressure gets turned up. And I think holding off from going to the scream feels like being in a restaurant, where the pressure is just this slow escalation.

Pearl Jam, “Animal” (Episode 1)

CS: Pearl Jam is another of my favorite bands, but it’s also a song I heard in a lot of kitchens. It really has that feeling of anarchy looming. And it just felt alive, for lack of a better word.

We were making a statement that this is a loud show, and you are either in or out. I think it’s very much not your thing, or it is very much your thing. I don’t think there is too much of a middle ground. Ending the first episode with “Animal” added this punctuation mark.

JS: Our original pilot was literally wall-to-wall music.

CS: I give FX a lot of credit. They were like, “We dig what you are doing with the music.” But there were a couple episodes where they were like, “Guys, three less songs.” They were literally like, “Relax, dude. This show is going to give someone an actual heart attack.”

JS: By putting more music in earlier in the editing process, it was almost like the music was the bumpers for the editing itself. There is this fight right after the health inspector comes [in Episode 2], where they are deciding who’s going to take the “C” that they have been awarded. And that was always scored in every cut, almost up until the last one. By pulling the music out, you actually got to hear so much more nonverbal communication between all the other characters, and it added this great layer. But it’s cut to the beat of a song that we originally used.

CS: That was the scene where a lot of people, when we were showing our friends rough cuts, they were like, “I’m going to throw myself out a window.”

Counting Crows, “Have You Seen Me Lately?” (Episode 2)

Not only did you use the studio version of this song from 1996’s Recovering The Satellites, but you also used the live version released on the 1998’s Across A Wire: Live In New York City. What was the thinking there?

CS: When we were writing the script and developing it, we knew because of how we had to shoot the show and how many episodes there were, we weren’t going to be outside of the restaurant too much. So, when we go in Richie’s car, we were like, “What’s Richie’s life like at this moment?” He’s in a weird phase. And we were like, he would actually be listening to the live On A Wire version of “Have You Seen Me Lately?” That CD has been in his car for 20 years and it’s his favorite. And then at the end of the episode, when you see that it’s actually Carmy’s fuck up that put this whole thing into motion, we were like, “Well, now we just have to use the louder version of the song.”

JS: It felt like an opportunity to show Richie being vulnerable, and at the same time have the same song mean something totally different for Carmy. Because, remember, we were like, “Maybe we’ll just use one version.” And then Chris, right at the 11th hour, made the right call, which was, “No, there needs to be two versions of this that speaks to both characters.”

CS: A lot of people haven’t necessarily noticed, but the people that have, it’s very funny to be like, “You guys had two versions of ‘Have You Seen Me Lately?’ in one episode?!”

Van Morrison, “Saint Dominic’s Preview” [It’s Too Late To Stop Now version] (Episode 2)

JS: I remember you and I were talking about how Van Morrison makes people happy. It’s happy music. He’s this “cool dad music” guy, that everyone’s dad has played.

CS: We were like, “Dude, it’s that weird time, 4:45, before the dinner rush really kicks in and things are kind of chill. And it’s the first time the kitchen’s semi-quiet.” And we were like, “Someone’s probably playing a Van Morrison live album.”

JS: We did the music for the show on Saturdays. We would shoot during the week and edit. And then on Saturdays, Chris and I would text each other songs that we would then play over cuts that didn’t have music, or had different music in it. And we got on this Van Morrison kick. At first, it was “Brown-Eyed Girl” and more well-known cuts. And then Chris found a few live songs, and what was so cool about them was the applause at the end and also hearing the crowd inside of the restaurant. It felt like the live performance of that song was the right bridge to get you through the three big emotional beats that happened in that episode.

John Cougar Mellencamp, “Check It Out” (Episode 4)

JS: That was something that Chris knew beforehand. It was like a declaration — “It’s ‘Check It Out,’ I don’t need to hear anything else.”

CS: This is hyper-specific, but growing up in Chicago in the mornings before school, I remember you would hear the local Fox station with the traffic report, and for whatever reason the bridge of “Check It Out” was always played over the traffic report. And I was like, “Why is this John Cougar Mellencamp song on this?”

There was really something about this team coming together as a family for the first time, and all feeling exhausted for different reasons, but also feeling like they got to know each other a little bit better in this very strange turn of events. And something about it just felt right when we put it on — they’re eating ice cream and cake and listening to John Mellencamp.

Genesis, “In Too Deep” (Episode 3)

Clearly, there is a deep strain of somewhat unfashionable 1980s mainstream rock on this show. Why did that feel appropriate?

CS: We say very clearly that it’s set in 2022, but there is also something timeless about this place. It’s based on my friend’s restaurant in Chicago, which is located in this beautiful part of River North but it’s this relic of a different time. There’s a sign in there that says, “Even though it’s 2022 out there, it’s 1998 in here.”

When we started playing “In Too Deep” we were like, “This is exactly what this vibe feels like right now: It’s two o’clock at work, you’re tired, ‘In Too Deep’ is playing.” And I love Genesis, by the way. But that was one song that I always associate with “I’m tired.”

John Mayer, “Last Train Home” (Episode 6)

This song is from Mayer’s 2021 album Sob Rock, but it sounds like it came out the same year as “In Too Deep.”

CS: I thought that album was, honestly, fucking incredible. I feel like it flew under the radar.

Richie is going through this personal realization of realizing that he’s 10 years behind everyone and wants to quit this thing, and doesn’t even know how much the city has changed without him. And there was really something about the team gelling together, and just hearing that kind of ’80s-inspired rock, but a new version of it, that felt right.

R.E.M., “Oh My Heart” (Episode 3)

CS: I worship R.E.M., dude. They’re another band that always finds a way into everything we’re working on.

What’s interesting is that you went with a song from R.E.M.’s final album, 2011’s Collapse Into Now, which is not the obvious choice. You went deep.

CS: In the back of my mind, I was kind of saying goodbye to my favorite band. This sounds so trivial. But I remember that song was always such a specific thing of R.E.M. to me. That last album sort of just slipped away even though there are some masterworks there. It’s almost a mirror of Radiohead’s “Let Down” for me, which is this song that’s impossibly sad, but there’s something really hopeful about it. It reminded me a lot of their work on Green.

I thought Michael probably listened to R.E.M. Life’s Rich Pageant is probably one of those CDs rolling and falling around in the restaurant somewhere.

Was there also a part of you that thought, “Not enough people appreciate Collapse Into Now, I’m going to expose them to this R.E.M. song and change that”?

CS: Oh dude, of course.

Wilco “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” [Kicking Television version] (Episode 7)

Here’s another example of how you used a live track instead of a studio version. How do you think that enhances the vibe of the show? In this particular instance, “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” feels like a bomb that’s about to go off in the middle of the tensest episode of the season.

CS: You don’t know what direction that song is going in, man. And you feel Nels Cline’s guitar, you feel all that crazy shit. And you are like, “This is an adventure.”

JS: There’s something about that version that feels like somebody might go off into a solo at any moment. It feels kind of dangerous. And there was something about the way that was sort of foreshadowing, but not giving away what was going to happen. And the fact that it’s also such a long song, I think it fit what we were trying to do with the episode.

CS: Did we use all 11 minutes of it?

JS: We play the entire song.

CS: It’s punishing, dude. It’s like this demon fucking live track. It feels wild, dude. We were like, “Let’s be really on the nose and put this song that everyone loves over this thing, because in five minutes it’s going to suck.”

Radiohead, “Let Down” (Episode 8)

JS: It’s a song that on its face is really about disappointment. And then it has this bridge that feels immensely hopeful. There are so many lyrics about bugs in it, and just very interesting sort of abstract visions of families falling apart or coming back together.

We always wanted to end it with a family meal. We always wanted to end it with these people together. But we also wanted to give that final beat. When you see Jeremy looking at Johnny, you’re like, “This is a great place to stop this train.” And playing the bridge of “Let Down” over the credits felt like it gave people a chance to just relax for a second. It felt hopeful after a period of disappointment.

There’s also the fact that the bridge of “Let Down” is an instant tearjerker.

CS: It’s a release, dude. I lost a friend who was close to me, not too long before we started developing this thing. And it’s weird how grief sort of attacks us and how we choose to attack it. And I think my answer was to sort of bury my head in work and never think about it. But eventually I did, and I had this sort of release in the same way. And I was like, how do we mimic that emotional real estate?