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Lorde’s highly anticipated third studio album, Solar Power, is already almost here. We’ve already heard the title track and “Stoned At The Nail Salon,” and now Lorde has started rolling out a series of stripped-back performances shot on the rooftop of legendary New York City studio Electric Lady.

The studio versions of both songs were already relatively raw, but these Rooftop Performances remove all of the processing and layered production to isolate Lorde’s beautiful vocals with Jack Antonoff’s muted electric guitar, giving us a glimpse at the strength of the songs in their most basic form.

“We had plans to do a handful of songs but the fine warm day became a large storm, and we got through one take of ‘Solar Power’ and had to tap out for fear of electrocution,” the singer wrote in a recent email to fans. “Picked it back up the next day. I love both.” Check out “Stone At The Nail Salon” above, and both renditions of “Solar Power” below.

Solar Power is out August 20. Pre-order it here. Lorde will also embark on a lengthy tour in (relatively) intimate venues around the world, kicking off early next year. Check out all the dates and pick up tickets here.

After years of various studios attempting to create a show or film based on Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s critically-acclaimed DC Comics’ series Y: The Last Man, we are now just over a month out from its big premiere on FX and have our first full-length trailer — which is much further than many of us fans ever thought we’d get, to be honest. The trailer reveals a pretty true-to-series look at the comics, filled with memorable scenes featuring all of the story’s major players, and sets the tone for the post-apocalyptic drama in which all cisgender men but one have perished — and no one knows why.

The cast features Diane Lane as congresswoman-turned-president Jennifer Brown, Ben Schnetzer as her son and sole-male-survivor Yorick Brown, Olivia Thirlby as Yorick’s sister, Hero Brown, and Ashley Romans as Yorick’s mysterious and powerful companion, Agent 355, or “three-fifty.” In addition, Juliana Canfield will take on the role of Yorick’s girlfriend Beth Deville, Amber Tamblyn will play Kimberly Cunningham, Marin Ireland will play Nora Brady, Diana Bang will take on the role of geneticist Dr. Allison Mann, and last but not least, Elliot Fletcher will play Sam Jordan.

In addition to a nearly all-female cast (and understandably so), every episode of the first season is directed by women and the production crew has a “significant number of female department heads,” including both DPs, the production designer, costume designer, casting director, editors, stunt coordinator and more, according to the series’ press release. Eliza Clark serves as Y: The Last Man‘s showrunner and executive producer along with the series original author, Brian K. Vaughan, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force, Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda, Louise Friedberg, and Melina Matsoukas.

Y: The Last Man premieres exclusively on Hulu on September 13, giving you plenty of time to hit up your local comic book shop and give the books a whirl before we watch Yorick’s story unfold.

Following his public admission that he tested positive for COVID but is thankfully only experiencing mild symptoms thanks to the vaccine, Lindsey Graham has reportedly urged former president Donald Trump to be more “aggressive” about telling his supporters to get the shot.

While calling the COVID vaccine “the antidote to the virus that’s wreaking havoc on our hospitals,” Graham told the Associated Press on Thursday that he just got off the phone with Trump. According to the South Carolina senator, he applauded Trump for getting the vaccine “developed,” but now the important part is getting his supporters to stop being hesitant about the shot because “we should do all we can as a nation to get our economy back up and running and to protect our way of life.”

Graham also used the interview to voice his own support for the vaccine. Via the AP:

Recognizing that taking the vaccine might be a “sacrifice” for some, Graham said the task paled in comparison with others that have been required of Americans in the past.

“No one’s being asked to go off to fight radical Islam or fight a foreign enemy. We’re being asked to make responsible medical decisions,” Graham said. “Take the vaccine.”

After testing positive over the weekend, Graham revealed his COVID status on Monday and made it a point to tout the benefits of being vaccinated. “I feel like I have a sinus infection and at present time I have mild symptoms,” Graham tweeted. “I am very glad I was vaccinated because without vaccination I am certain I would not feel as well as I do now. My symptoms would be far worse.”

(Via Associated Press)

Just a few hours before gates opened in New York City for the Hella Mega tour featuring Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and Weezer, it was announced that Fall Out Boy would not be performing due to a positive Covid test in the band’s crew. But after being announced in late 2019 and postponed nearly two years, the hiccup served as nothing more than a speed bump. Weezer and Green Day, as well as the tour’s opening act The Interrupters, still played as scheduled, to the delight of thousands of New Yorkers yearning for a return to their carefree glory days.

During Weezer’s set, Rivers Cuomo — who is currently sporting what can only be described as “Nigel Tufnel” — took a moment to give fans a little bit of what they might have paid for with a solo electric cover of Fall Out Boy’s 2005 smash-hit “Sugar, We’re Going Down.” It wasn’t long before Citi Field’s nearly 42,000 attendees were singing along, with Cuomo urging everyone to sing “louder, so they can hear you.” Check out a clip of the touching moment below.

The Hella Mega tour continues tonight in Boston, and runs through September in the US before hitting Europe next summer. Barring any further complications, Fall Out Boy plan to rejoin the tour August 8 in Washington, D.C.

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

Kanye West may be notorious for failing to drop albums when he promises, but this time around may be different. Fans are waiting to hear the rapper’s latest album Donda, named after his late mother, which he is hosting a listening party for tonight on Apple Music. Though fans will still have to wait a few more hours the LP, a new Beats commercial offers a snippet of new music to hold his listeners over.

Beats debuted a lively ad for their earbuds starring track and field sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson. The commercial features a one-minute preview of Kanye’s new track “Glory,” which was produced by Dr. Dre and features Snoop Dogg. Press material state the song will not appear on Kanye’s Donda album, but it does give fans an idea of the style of music the rapper has been working on lately. As of now, “Glory” has yet to receive an official release date but does drum up anticipation for his Donda LP.

This isn’t the first time Kanye has shared a new song for a Beats commercial. Back in July, Richardson starred in another ad for Beats’ earbuds that featured Kanye’s unreleased song “No Child Left Behind.”

Hear a snippet of Kanye, Dre, and Snoop Dogg’s “Glory” in the Beat commercial above.

I think my favorite thing about Coach Beard is that we don’t know his name. We don’t know his first name, of course, because no character on Ted Lasso has addressed him by anything other than “Beard” or “Coach Beard,” but we also do not truly know if Beard is his real last name. It could be a nickname based on the fact that he has a beard. If he shaves off all the hair below his upper lip, people might start calling him Coach Mustache. That’s something none of us can rule out at this point. I like to think Ted doesn’t even know his real first name. I like to think he insists on being paid in cash so even the payroll department doesn’t know his name. I bet his girlfriend calls him Coach Beard. The man is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and covered in finely groomed facial hair.

Which is cool. There’s something to be said for mystery, and it’s kind of perfect that Ted Lasso — an earnest and sweet show that frequently dives into its characters backstories to reveal their current motivations — has one character who is an unsolvable puzzle. I mean, what do we know about Coach Beard, for certain? Let’s tick off a few things:

• Loves chess and can play it in his head without a board
• Sings Lady Gaga at karaoke
• Is an extremely solid dude

This last thing is as important as it is true. Consider for a second how Coach Beard ended up where he is. He was an assistant football coach in America. His buddy and boss went through a bad breakup and kind of fled across the Atlantic Ocean to coach a sport neither of them understand in what could certainly be considered a manic episode, and he was just like, “Yup, I’m in.” Think about that for a while at some point. Think about if you have anyone in your life who would do that for you, or if you have anyone in your life you would do that for. It’s a big deal.

The show told us what a solid dude he was right away, too, before we even knew it was happening. The first time we see Coach Beard, in the series premiere, before he utters a single line of dialogue, he is sitting behind Ted on the plane to England with a book about soccer in his hands.

To recap: The man is on a transatlantic flight vacuuming up information about a sport he does not understand because his number one dude is going through it and kind of got in over his head. Brendan Hunt, the actor who plays Coach Beard, elaborated on all of this in a way that both explains the reasoning and makes me love Coach Beard even more.

His role is to fill in Ted’s gaps without anyone knowing that that’s what he’s doing, which is why it starts with getting on a plane with a book about the rules of soccer and learning soccer as quickly as possible because he knows Ted’s never going to fill that gap.

Perfect. Lovely. A sweet and solid dude. And I would like the character even if that’s all he was. But again, there’s more there. He’s an iceberg. We’re only seeing the tip of Coach Beard. I get a little excited every time we learn another tiny fact about him. He’s a man who sometimes sleeps at work because his lover threw his keys into a river and also a man who is comfortable crying during animated movies. Both of those are true. They both happened on the show. The crying thing was great, for reasons Ashley Nicole Black — a writer on the show — explained in a recent interview.

There’s a scene where the team is at an away game and they’re watching, I think, Iron Giant, and Ted has to leave. He tells Beard to stay here because in about 32 minutes, you’re going to have a room full of sobbing men. And Beard goes, “I’m going to be one of them.” When you cut back to them, you see all the players crying over Iron Giant. That’s what I love about the show and also this character — it’s showing different ways of being masculine and that watching a movie and crying with your buddies over a cartoon is one of the ways you could be a strong man. I love it. And that Beard has no shame in telling Ted, “Oh, I’m absolutely going to cry to this movie too.”

It’s the best. We’re at the point now, barely into the second season of the show, where you could tell me anything about his past and I would probably believe you. He’s in witness protection after testifying against a violent crew of Florida drug runners? Yup. He managed a sandwich shop before stumbling into a career as a football coach? Sure. He was a child math prodigy who had a breakdown and resurfaced a dozen years later with a whistle and sunglasses and a passion for exotic blitz packages? Of course, especially knowing what we know about the chess thing.

But, that said, and I want to be as clear as I can about this next part, I absolutely do not want to know any of these things for certain. Ted Lasso is littered with characters who I want to know more about. I would love an episode about Keeley’s rise to fame. I would happily learn more about how and why my sweet prince Dani Rojas became a ray of sunshine personified. I would watch an entire spinoff series about Roy Kent in high school. (I am very serious about this.) But not Coach Beard. I want to know nothing of substance about him ever. I want him to continue being an empty vessel I can fill with whatever lunatic theories feel correct in the moment. A fun one I’m tinkering with lately is that he coached a rural high school to three state championships but was fired and run out of town when the school board discovered he was also serving as the mascot for a hated crosstown rival. Close your eyes and tell me you can’t see it.

Ted Lasso is a good show for a bunch of reasons. It’s funny and heartfelt and nice. It’s got characters who legitimately care about each other. It’s a breath of fresh air after two decades of shows about doomed antiheroes sabotaging their lives and the lives of everyone who loves them. But it’s also a good show because, while doing all of that, it will sometimes just have its most mysterious character belt out Lady Gaga at karaoke for a few seconds and let the viewers try to wrap their heads around what exactly that means. I know I mentioned this already but I didn’t post the video that time. The video is good. Let’s watch the video.

Characters like Coach Beard are a blast in moderation because they create limitless possibilities. It’s a “Kramer on Seinfeld” or “Gunther on Friends” situation, but with the added element of supreme competence. The same way I’d believe anything you can hypothesize about his past, I’d also believe anything about his future. There’s a non-zero chance he ends up becoming the Prime Minister of England. That reads like a joke, I know, but close your eyes for a second and tell me you can’t see it happening, too. Prime Minister Coach Beard. Rolls right off the tongue. Let’s go ahead and pencil it in.

Looking for a way to pass some time before Marvel’s What If..? hits Disney+? Well, while it might not be a part of the universe’s ongoing phase four, Marvel has found a way to deliver a whole lot of never-before-seen content to our eager eyes. Earlier today, the studio announced they’ve added three new episodes to their ongoing Marvel Studios: Legends series, each one delving a bit deeper into how certain MCU events came to pass. The three episodes added include “Peggy Carter,” “The Avengers Initiative,” and “The Ravagers,” and each one sounds like it’s going to add a whole lot of context to some of Marvel’s biggest moments and most beloved characters.

According to the official Marvel summary, “Peggy Carter” recounts the story of how Peggy became a founding member of S.H.I.E.L.D. through her work with Steve Rodgers and on the Captain America project. In “The Avengers Initiative,” Marvel shares more intimate details on how the Avengers were actually formed and some of their earliest battles. In “The Ravagers,” the team details the life and exploits of the Ravagers and “traces the unique journey of their leader, Yondu.”

These episodes are only the latest in the ongoing Marvel Studios: Legends series, which shines a light on the many characters and moments that make Marvel great. With the addition of these three, the total number of specials is now up to 12, with seemingly even more coming as the universe continues to expands. According to the show’s description:

Marvel Studios: Legends celebrates and codifies what has come before. Revisit the epic heroes, villains and moments from across the MCU in preparation for the highly anticipated stories still to come. Each dynamic segment feeds directly into the upcoming series premiering on Disney+ — setting the stage for future events. Marvel Studios: Legends weaves together the many threads that constitute the unparalleled Marvel Cinematic Universe.

If you haven’t started it up yet and are looking for more Marvel content to give a watch, the series currently has episodes about The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Loki, Black Widow, and WandaVision ready for your viewing pleasure. If behind-the-scenes breakdowns aren’t quite your thing, What If..? hits Disney+ August 11.

Like the rest of the world, America is dealing with the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus in fits and starts. Indoor mask mandates are returning to some locations, messaging from the CDC continues to change about the risks that even vaccinated people will face as they continue to live amid the pandemic, and uncertainty looms as late summer starts moving toward another winter of cold and flu season.

Which is perhaps why noted medical expert Bill Burr’s prediction of coronavirus infections from an outdoor gathering of basketball fans actually coming true is so depressing. During the NBA Finals, the comedian and actor ranted about anti-vax people on a podcast, noting the risks of unvaccinated people gathering in large groups. Burr predicted in his rant that unvaccinated fans there “probably created a new variant of the f*cking coronavirus” and blasted those skeptical of the vaccine. And while the new variant prediction doesn’t appear to have come true just yet, he was right that cases would come from the gatherings.

According to CNN, hundreds of cases related to the Bucks’ Deer District playoff gatherings have been reported in the days since the conclusion of the NBA Finals.

At least 491 cases have arisen from people who “self-declared” they attended a Deer District gathering at some point during the month of July, according to Milwaukee Health Department spokesperson Emily Tau.

But health officials cautioned that while the 491 confirmed cases were from people who either attended an NBA Finals game inside the arena or gathered in the Deer District while the games were being played, they cannot be sure the virus was acquired in these settings.

There are a lot of caveats to the report, starting with the fact that these numbers include thousands of people who were inside Fiserv Arena and may have contracted coronavirus there. Then there’s the additional uncertainty about where those cases were actually contracted. Considering just how many Deer District gatherings took place over the months-long NBA postseason and a lack of pinpointing where the cases were spread, there’s no true superspreader event to point to. But it’s yet another example of how a return to a more normal life with mass gatherings is complicated and maybe premature, especially if those gatherings include unvaccinated people.

Ben Simmons is still on the Philadelphia 76ers. While we’re a few months into the offseason and the NBA Draft has come and gone, but despite Simmons’ name being thrown around in trade rumblings ever since the Sixers were bounced in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the team hasn’t found a deal to send him elsewhere that they like.

Apparently, things have gotten quite messy, according to Jason Dumas. In an appearance on 95.7 The Game in the Bay Area, things are “getting worse by the day,” to the point that things are “beyond repair.”

“He doesn’t wanna go to a bad situation,” Dumas said. “He sees Toronto, he sees Portland, and Ben, being — just to be frank — the young socialite that he is, he’s not really trying to go to any of those situations. He’s open to the California teams, is what I’ve been told.”

In fact, Dumas reports that Joel Embiid has made a few attempts to contact Simmons, but those various calls have not been returned, something that has been the case with “many other of the players.”

“He’s essentially taken a step back and said, ‘Hey, all my communication is gonna be through my agent,’” Dumas reports. “And we know what that essentially means — don’t talk to me anymore, I’ll just figure out where I’m playing next. He doesn’t wanna return to the Sixers, damage has been done.”

There have seemingly been weekly updates on the situation with Simmons, and this is probably the most damning of the bunch. Now, we sit and wait and see if this is, indeed, the end of the road, or if he’s going to make it to the start of the regular season in Philly.

Another fast-food mogul named John has come out in support of a conservative blowhard. This time, it’s Jimmy John’s founder Jimmy John Liautaud, who, along with his wife, donated $137,000 to Andrew Giuliani’s campaign for governor of New York.

Forbes is reporting that Liautaud’s financial contribution makes up a third of Giuliani’s collective campaign funds, which totals out to $400,000. Despite his investment, Giuliani’s political run is shaping up to be almost as embarrassing as his father’s Four Seasons Landscaping press conference. In June, the son of Trump’s embattled lawyer failed to receive a single vote at a closed-door straw poll amongst GOP leaders of the state, who seem to be backing favored Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin. Giuliani’s attempts to win over both critics and those within his own party haven’t been going well, mostly because he continues to appear as unhinged and unreliable as his father now is, posting roadside rants on social media and turning himself into a parody with weirdly intense commercial spots.

None of that seems to bother Liautaud though, who also donated to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020. The businessman, who’s currently worth around 1.7 billion, is registered to vote in Florida and Illinois where he owns property, but he’s been putting money into political campaigns in New York as well. His backing of Giuliani seems like a bad investment considering the long odds the Republican rookie is facing, but we suppose, when you have that much money, you can afford to throw some away on a lost cause?

(Via Forbes)