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While most of our options for New Year’s Eve have been limited this year, Jack Harlow, Post Malone, and Steve Aoki are all set in that department thanks to Bud Light and the brand’s NYE live stream, “Bud Light Seltzer Sessions Presents New Year’s Eve 2021.” While that name may be a bit of a mouthful — get it? Bud Light? Mouthful? Thanks, I’ll be here all week — Malone had a relatively simple message for fans: “Ready to bring in 2021 with my friends at Bud Light and kick some ass while doing it,” he said in a statement.

The stream is scheduled for 10:30 PM ET on December 31, taking place on budlight.com/NYE and on the brand’s social channels. Hosted by late-night newcomer Lilly Singh from Park MGM in Las Vegas, the stream will include a live performance of Harlow’s new album That’s What They All Say, a DJ set from Aoki, and performances by additional artists to be announced ahead of the show.

By now, fans and artists alike are no strangers to streaming sets. Malone himself appeared in a virtual festival celebrating Tom Petty’s 70th birthday and in his own jam session where he covered Nirvana and Motley Crüe, as well as on Governor’s Ball’s 2020 live stream. Harlow, meanwhile, performed for BET’s 2020 Hip-Hop Awards Cypher, and gave a performance of “What’s Poppin” to an empty arena at the 2020 VMAs. Aoki recently teamed up with pro gamers for a Black Lives Matter-supporting live stream session as well.

Artists like Cardi B, Dua Lipa, and The Weeknd have had tremendous years. It could be argued, though, that the musicians who had the biggest 2020 of all is Dolly Parton, although not for her music. She donated a lot of money that helped fund a promising coronavirus vaccine, she moved Stephen Colbert to tears on the air, and it turns out that she saved a young dancer from a potentially dangerous situation.

Inside Edition recently did a profile on three siblings who were all cast in Parton’s new holiday movie Christmas On The Square, and in one part of the piece, 9-year-old Talia Hill revealed that on set, Parton yanked her out of the path of a moving vehicle:

“We were on set and I was at the hot chocolate station. They said, ‘Go back to your beginning positions.’ So there is a vehicle moving, and I was walking, and then somebody grabbed me and pulled me back. I looked up and it was Dolly Parton. I was surprised, I was like [gasp]. And she’s like, ‘Well, I am an angel, you know,’ ’cause she plays an angel in the movie, and I was in shock. She hugged me and shook me and said, ‘I saved your life!’ And my mom was crying, like, ‘Yes you did, Dolly Parton, yes you did.’”

Watch the interview video here.

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

Houston rapper Tobe Nwigwe‘s “Get Twisted Sundays” campaign has capitalized masterfully on the viral buzz from his single “Try Jesus” this summer. With each release, he continues to showcase his creativity as an art director, producer, and rapper, while sharing the spotlight with some of the dopest rappers — legends and newcomers alike — ever to grace a microphone. With this week’s release, he links up with one of his hometown heroes, Lil Keke, to pay homage to the late, great Prince on “Purple Rain Thing.”

Again appearing in one of his monochromatic smocks — this time a rich, theme-appropriate violet — Tobe accents his sparse, minimalistic beat with samples from Prince’s iconic hit as he continues to rhyme tight spirals of wordplay detailing his commitment to his family and his integrity as an artist. Keke joins in the fun on the second verse, sounding as fresh as he did during his rise to becoming Lone Star State royalty in the mid-90s.

In previous editions of “Twisted Sundays,” Tobe has rapped alongside Mississippi’s Big KRIT on “Bozos,” literary rap legend Black Thought and Grammy-nominated Royce Da 5’9 on “Father Figure,” and Inglewood’s own Grammy-nominated breakout star D Smoke on “Headshots.”

Watch the “Purple Rain Thing” video above.

This essay is running as part of the 2020 Uproxx Music Critics Poll.

Think about all those great times you experienced music with people. Perhaps it was at a concert, or on a rooftop, or in a backyard. Speakers blasting “Waterloo” or something at the community pool, and for a brief second, hundreds of people singing ABBA on a hot summer day. Those moments didn’t exist this year, the absence of a collective joy we all derive from being around each other and celebrating a song come to life on a stage or being thrust into whatever setting we’re in, augmenting it instantly.

No, this year’s forced isolation was an unplanned retreat from those common joys that music has built up an entire industry around over the last twenty years. No more clubs or festivals or spontaneous gatherings to see some high school kids play outside a coffee shop because that’s what high school kids do to get their music heard, honing a craft in front of strangers wherever makes sense.

Some of the most profound music released this year reflected this new reality. It was born out of and into loneliness in either sound or with lyrics; sometimes both. The first real piece of music that struck me in this sense came in June, about 12 weeks in. In passing, I wound up on Chicago-based musician Tenci’s Bandcamp and was mesmerized by everything about her debut My Heart Is An Open Field. The music immediately felt raw and as if she was next to me, or I was watching her in a room recording in real-time. Guitar chord changes felt pronounced, and her voice seemed broken. Very broken, but not lacking confidence — a feeling that I think resonates with a lot of people this year.

This forced-upon-us intimacy came in bigger, more commercial releases as well. Fiona Apple’s fifth album, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, felt like a gift to music fans when it was released in April, as the unknown ravaged most of our collective consciousness.

Kick me under the table all you want. I won’t shut up. I won’t shut up.

This line. This… line. It’s perhaps the most intimate of pop music lyrics to come out this year, and was a stark reminder of things we shouldn’t be doing (going to dinner parties) and feelings we should be feeling (rage). How many times did you want to scream? How many times did you want to give up but you kept going? But you held back. Or you kept it inside. You kept it under the table, a private, and intimate moment with yourself, one that Fiona makes so relatable, all the time — but perhaps heightened this time around. Bolt Cuttersnwas cathartic in the sense that if not for nothing, we could finally relate to Fiona after all these years. Not fully. But maybe just a bit more than ever. Intimacy is kinda fucked up.

Taylor Swift’s Folklore did this, too. Working with Aaron Dessner of The National — in separate spaces, not together — Swift gave us some of the most intimate portraits of her humanity throughout this record, from the sparse (for her) arrangements to the imagery passed on.

But I knew you, dancin’ in your Levis, drunk under a street light
Just like a folk song, our love will be passed on.
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets.

Phoebe Bridgers’ celebrated Punisher is full of these intimate moments that helped remind me of what things were and could be, namely the freedom to go. The luxury of leaving became something to be put on pause. Bridgers’ sang about these moments not as things to celebrate, but necessary ways of escape. The complex emotions around maybe leaving someone on “Savior Complex.” Going to Memphis on “Graceland Too.” In Bridgers’ Punisher world, there’s a familiar wrestling with relationships that lines a lot of lovelorn pop music; her’s was mostly sparse and devoid of grandiose presentations. It was personal and up close, but that undercurrent of “going” is what stuck. I didn’t “go.” None of us did. But with this, we had a songs that allowed us to remember how important it really is.

Talk to enough musicians and they’ll tell you isolation is not a new concept for them. Records are written and made in private, in small numbers, often with painstaking methods of repetition. And when they’re finally released to us, in any other time, experiencing them is never mirroring the process itself. But I bet if you also talk to enough musicians they would say this experience now, of their music, would never be something they’d want. Seeing the collective joy around a song is also a reason to make a song. It’s something that comes to life, fully, with people.

I bet Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker realized this as she hunkered down in the pandemic’s early days to start recording what would become a new pair of solo albums, Songs and Instrumentals. Those titles are rather apt for the times. Just some songs. Oh, and a few instrumentals. Devoid of description, because maybe it would cloud the music in some unnecessary way. Or maybe its bluntness is just to mirror an experience of isolation, where she was just existing, like we all were.

When this is over, I’m sure we will flock to see Dua Lipa perform Future Nostalgia and Run The Jewels and Megan Thee Stallion and everything else we feel like we missed out on. But I don’t know if I missed out on anything. The albums that helped me through this — and we will all have them — connected in ways that it feels hard to do these days. You have a record and if you were lucky, a music video to go with it. For decades, that’s all music had. Fans connecting to it in bedrooms and basements, and perhaps some chatter about your private discoveries the next day IRL.

But hey, the year wasn’t completely free of that collective music experience. One moment really did feel like those old days of experiencing a song with everyone else at once, like we used to do, like we want to do. Thank you @420doggface208 for skateboarding to Fleetwood Mac and drinking Ocean Spray.

Although Verzuz fans were disappointed when Saturday’s battle between Ashanti and Keyshia Cole was postponed due to Ashanti’s COVID-19 diagnosis, the show’s final matchup of the year should be exciting enough to make up for it — especially among those Oakland residents who were ready to turn out in force to support Cole. The final Verzuz battle of the year has been set for December 19 and will see two icons of Bay Area rap go song for song.

E-40 and Too Short — who are pioneers of rap in the truest sense of the word — are scheduled to trade musical hits to close out the first year of the popular streaming show, which is a match made in heaven for West Coast aficionados and a potential musical masterclass for residents of other regions who missed out on many of their local hits. Both are 30-year veterans of the rap game and spent much of that time releasing music independently. However, in the mid-2000s, the emergence of the hyphy sound on the national stage offered more widespread recognition thanks to hits like “Tell Me When To Go” and “Blow The Whistle.”

And while anyone East of the Mississippi will easily recognize those songs, Californians will likely be waiting with bated breath for jams like “Sprinkle Me,” “Quarterbackin’,” “Freaky Tales,” and “Just Another Day.”

Tune in to see how the two legends whittle down their massive catalogs on Saturday, 12/19 at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET on Instagram and Apple TV.

From the very start of his career, things have gone well for Shawn Mendes. His debut album, Handwritten, debuted on top of the charts in 2015. His next two albums, Illuminate and Shawn Mendes, did the same thing in their respective release years. Now, Mendes’ fourth and latest, Wonder, continues that streak of excellence, as it too has topped the charts: On the Billboard 200 dated December 19, Wonder debuts at No. 1.

It made its No. 1 debut thanks to 89,000 equivalent album units earned in the US in the week ending December 10. On the Hot 100, the album is led by Mendes’ Justin Bieber collaboration “Monster,” which has so far achieved a peak at No. 8. The album’s debut single, the title track, has so far topped out at No. 18.

Elsewhere on the Billboard 200, the top 10 is dominated by holiday albums: Five of them appear in that stretch, which hasn’t happened since 2013. Michael Bublé’s Christmas is at No. 4, Carrie Underwood’s My Gift has achieved a new peak at No. 5, Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song sits at No. 7, Pentatonix’s The Best Of Pentatonix Christmas at at No. 8, and Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas rounds out the list at No. 10.

See where Wonder ranks our our list of 2020’s best pop albums here.

Judy Sheindlin, a.k.a. Judge Judy, makes $865,000 a day, and she spends a portion of that money on trips to the hair salon. During a recent visit, she encountered a man who wasn’t wearing a mask and went full “I eat morons like you for breakfast” on him.

“I walked up to him and he looked at me and smiled,” she told the New York Post. “I was wearing my mask with my smock on and my hair was dripping wet. I said to him, ‘Do you like ‘Judge Judy’? He said, ‘Oh yes,’ and I said, ‘Not after today,’ and I proceeded to lace into him about respecting other people and how other people are minding you by wearing a mask. I said to him, ‘You must be some kind of narcissist or there’s something that I don’t see that makes you unique and special.’ I did my own ‘Judge Judy’ on him.”

Within minutes, the guy approached Judge Judy “with his mask on and apologized.”

“When you blur the rules, when you say, ‘OK, curfew is at 10,’ and they come in at 11 and nothing happens to them, then the next day it’s midnight… then they know nobody is watching the store and there are no consequences. And if there are no consequences, very few people have that innate clock that says, I know this is wrong.”

Judge Judy should start a hotline, so that any time you see some dope not wearing a mask in public, you can FaceTime her. She’ll eviscerate the anti-masker on the spot, free of charge, with Lucille Bluth-level insults. The pandemic would be over by Christmas.

(Via the New York Post)

Donald Trump Jr. recently appeared on Fox News in such an amped-up state that people speculated that he needed an intervention. He also denied being blitzed out of his mind during a suspicious energetic RNC speech, and yeah, it sure looks like Don Jr. is doing nothing to discourage the same kind of talk by posting a late-Sunday-night video, in which he ranted about Hunter Biden while sitting in an undisclosed indication. He appears to be in a motel room, and quite possibly even a Motel 6 room.

There’s no telling why Don Jr. posted this clip to social media, but it’s gone now, so he must have had second thoughts, given that he’s slurring his words and doesn’t appear to be all-there while filming. Of course, the video has been preserved for posterity by the Internet with both a #Motel6 hashtag and a reference toward the David Hasseloff burger-eating debacle of 2007.

“Every major media outlet spent weeks and months trying to pretend that the Biden’s weren’t tied to China, that… there was nothing shady at all about Hunter getting a billion dollar investment from the Chinese government,” Don Jr. ranted in the video. “I mean, this isn’t like he’s dealing with a Chinese businessman that happens to be an American, or an expat or something like that, but from the actual Chinese government. It was as though it was a conspiracy theory, it was as though it was a hoax and now we see that I guess the U.S. marshals and people in Delaware are investigating Hunter Biden for tax fraud, and I imagine it’s amongst other things.”

In case you needed a visual reminder of the David Hasselhoff incident, here you go.

The Motel 6 jokes rolled in with even more inferences on what’s up.

And this Twitter trend wouldn’t be complete without references to Rudy Giuliani’s star turn in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. It’s definitely Monday in 2020 America.

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 Taylor Swift coming out of nowhere to dominate 2020 all over again and Kid Cudi dropping a hyped release of his own. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

Taylor Swift — Evermore

Most of the year-end top album lists have already been released, and Taylor Swift’s Folklore was at or near the top of a significant amount of them. That would be excuse enough to ride out the last few weeks of the year and take it easy, but that’s not Swift did. Instead, she came out of nowhere and released another new album, Evermore, which was birthed from the same sessions as Folklore, during which she and her collaborators “just couldn’t stop writing songs.”

Kid Cudi — Man On The Moon III: The Chosen

Poor Cudi thought he had a relatively quiet release week to himself before Swift swooped in with Evermore. Even if (when) that album blocks Cudi’s latest from a No. 1 debut, that doesn’t take away from the body of work he released. It’s mostly all him on the album as well, save for a few notable features from people like Pop Smoke and Phoebe Bridgers.

Jack Harlow — That’s What They All Say

In a year that had plenty of breakout stars, Jack Harlow was one of the biggest thanks to his hit single “Whats Poppin.” Part of that song’s story is the collaborators he got on it, and such is true of his new album, as it features guest spots from Lil Baby, Big Sean, Adam Levine, Bryson Tiller, and of course, “Whats Poppin” partners DaBaby, Tory Lanez, and Lil Wayne.

Sturgill Simpson — Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 2: The Cowboy Arms Sessions

Simpson has had a bit of a Swift-ian year: He recently dropped a surprise album, and now, he has followed it up a couple months later with another unexpected effort. Where he diverged, though, is that instead of new songs, his albums are bluegrass reimaginings of his previous material. The second volume of Cuttin’ Grass tackles a new set of songs from throughout his discography and shows off his chameleonic abilities, as it arrives not long after his straight-up rock album from 2019, Sound & Fury.

Chance The Rapper — “The Return”

Years after it was initially released, Chance The Rapper and Jeremih have finally brought their Christmas album, Christmas Lil’ Mama, to streaming platforms (as Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama: The Gift That Keeps On Giving). The revamped album offers material beyond the original release, including “The Return,” which brings a classic holiday song aesthetic to 2020.

Russ — “Hard For Me”

It’s been less than a month since Russ dropped his new Chomp EP, but he’s not letting that stop him from releasing even more new music. Woe is Russ on the new hip-hop-ified blues single, and with output as regular and quality as this, it’s no wonder he’s managing to make big bucks with streaming.

Westside Boogie — “Outside” Feat. Joey Badass

After a farcical kidnapping, Westside Boogie (formerly known as just Boogie) has recorded new music, whether he wanted to or not. The first taste of this new material is “Outside,” an introspective and rhythmic track on which he is joined by Joey Badass.

Troye Sivan — “Easy (Remix)” Feat. Kacey Musgraves and Mark Ronson

Sivan already had himself a nice, slick pop tune with his original version of “Easy,” but he took the track to a new level with the help of some esteemed guests: Kacey Musgraves adds a delightful new verse and Mark Ronson re-worked the production a bit to convert the song into more of a thumping nighttime pop banger.

Chika — “FWB”

Chika broke out this year thanks to her major-label debut album, Industry Games. That project’s title track is a rapid-fire number that shows off her vocal dexterity, and “FWB” boasts another part of her skill set. The new song is more patient and R&B-indebted, on which Chika declares that she’s looking for a pal who can offer a bit more than platonic company.

Channel Tres — “Fuego” Feat. Tyler The Creator

Conflicted Donald Glover appreciator Tyler The Creator has had a mostly quiet 2020 after dropping and promoting Igor in 2019. He popped up once more before 2021, though, by guesting on a new one from Channel Tres, “Fuego.” Tyler adds a gravely verse to the uptempo tune, which slows down a bit and gets jazzier towards the end.

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

Cyndi Lauper usually hosts an annual benefit concert called Home For The Holidays that benefits True Colors United, an organization that “implements innovative solutions to youth homelessness that focus on the unique experiences of LGBTQ young people.” Unsurprisingly, though, the event was substantially different this year in that it was a virtual show instead of an IRL concert spectacular. That doesn’t seem to have had an impact on the quality of the performance roster, though, as Lauper still roped a bunch of quality performers into making appearances.

Phoebe Bridgers was one of the highlights, who, along with collaborator Marshall Vore, performed a cover of McCarthy Trenching’s “Christmas Song.” A cover of the track was Bridgers’ annual holiday single in 2018, and she said of it at the time, “The first time I heard this song it hit me like a ton of bricks. A lot of McCarthy Trenching songs do that.”

Elsewhere during the livestream, Dolly Parton performed “Christmas Is,” Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell sang their duet “The Problem,” Brittany Howard performed a full-band rendition of “Georgia,” and Brandi Carlile busted out a cover of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” Some other folks made brief, non-performing appearances as well, like Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, LL Cool J, and Sharon Osbourne.

Watch the full livestream above, with Bridgers at 24:56 into the video, Parton at 45:41, Carlile at 48:07, Shires and Isbell at 1:11:22, and Howard at 1:15:45.