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Miley Cyrus Brings Out Disco Ball For ‘Midnight Sky’ VMAs Performance
Miley Cyrus is one of the few artists who can allude to herself in performances. During her Sunday debut performance of “Midnight Sky” at the VMAs, Cyrus splashed the stage with colored lights and brought out a wrecking ball — well… disco ball — and rode it as a flashback to her infamous past life and 2013 single “Wrecking Ball.” But this performance was about today and her latest track, although Cyrus managed to take things back to the ’80s with her flashy visuals. Her dazzling cross necklace, and never-ending staircase that she sang on top of — seemingly straight out of Super Mario 64 — allowed her powerhouse rasp to still take center stage, although everything else was just as stunning. Cyrus is only nominated for Song of the Summer tonight, but with the way this single is climbing the ...
MTV VMAs 2020: Watch The Weeknd Perform ‘Blinding Lights’
The Weeknd just took MTV back to the days when it would play music videos more frequently. The Toronto singer’s Sunday night, New York City rooftop performance of his chart-topping single “Blinding Lights” kicked off a night of socially distant awards. The ’80s-inspired cut off his retro After Hours record has seen some mega-performances before, notably his January gig on Jimmy Kimmel Live. But Sunday’s take on the track was bigger, bolder and synth-ier. While it mirrored his previous performances of the cut at first, it soon saw the superstar dance around on a rooftop in red akin to Spider-Man, with fireworks backing him to really drive it home. Among the weekend’s six VMA noms are nods for Artist of the Year and Video of the Year. We’ll just have to see how many Moonpeople he goes home w...
Angel Olsen’s Whole New Mess Redefines Familiar Specters: Review
The Lowdown: In October 2018, Angel Olsen and engineer Michael Harris stayed in the small town of Anacortes, Washington, for 10 days and recorded music in a legendarily haunted Catholic church converted into a studio. These were the sessions that ultimately unfurled into All Mirrors, Olsen’s darkly expansive masterpiece from just last year. Olsen returns now with Whole New Mess — a reimagining and reconfiguring of much of that same work, but through a far more restrained and personal lens. The Good: The tracks on this album are brilliantly haunting. The stripped-back production lets Olsen’s vocals shine through with breathtaking clarity on tracks like “Summer Song”, which feels like a siren song rising through the depths of a sea cave. The same effect surfaces on “Impasse (Workin’ for the ...
Public Enemy Return to Def Jam for New Album
Public Enemy are returning to Def Jam Records for the release of a new studio album. Entitled What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down and due out on the September 25th, the forthcoming album will mark Public Enemy’s first release with Def Jam in over two decades. Def Jam released Public Enemy’s first five studio albums, including 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet, two of the most consequential records in the history of hip-hop. “For true fans of hip-hop all over the world, this is a historic moment,” said Def Jam GM & EVP Rich Isaacson in a statement. “Bringing Public Enemy home to Def Jam – in a time when their message is more necessary than ever – is a profound statement and a much-needed reunion. We are beyond excited to on...
The Dark and the Wicked Is 2020: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Two siblings venture out to their remote family farm, where their father is slowly dying and their mother is unraveling from grief. Something else is happening, though. There’s a darkness behind the sorrow, an evil slowly poisoning the soil… Something Wicked This Way Comes: Grief is on the mind. Thanks to our ensuing pandemic — and really, the collateral damage of our current administration — we’re a populace poisoned with misery. So much so that it’s become an appendage of our day-to-day, something we’ve had to deal with to check in and check out without losing our minds. In a timely twist of fate, grief has also informed some of this year’s most affecting films, be it Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods or Natalie Erika Jame...
Anarchist Punk Outfit Crass Reissuing Entire Catalog with Bonus Material
Christmas has come early for fans of anarchist punk group Crass. On October 2nd, One Little Independent Records will reissue all of the English band’s albums as part of a campaign called The Crassical Collection. These reissues will come packaged with previously unreleased bonus tracks, as well as new artwork from longtime associate Gee Vaucher. Each of the band’s first six albums — that’s Stations of the Crass (1979), Feeding of the Five Thousand (The Second Sitting) (1981), Penis Envy (1981), Christ – The Album (1982), Yes Sir, I Will (1983), and Ten Notes on a Summer’s Day (1986) — will be reissued across two CDs. The first disc will contain the original album remastered by Alex Gordon and Crass founder Penny Rimbaud at Abbey Road Studios, while the second will feature “a mixture of rar...
Machine Gun Kelly Wins Best Alternative Video at MTV Video Music Awards
When this year’s VMAs were first announced, one of the biggest surprises was the inclusion of the Best Alternative category for the first time in 22 years. However, the biggest surprise was that the winner was…yep, you read correctly above — Machine Gun Kelly. The Cleveland-bred rapper’s video for “Bloody Valentine,” which starred his girlfriend Megan Fox, beat out Lana Del Rey (“Doin’ Time”), The 1975 (“If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”), FINNEAS (“Let’s Fall in Love for the Night”), twenty one pilots (“Level of Concern”), and All Time Low (“Some Kind of Disaster”) to win the Moonman. The last winner of the Best Alternative category was Green Day in 1998 for “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” Things have certainly changed a lot since then...
MTV VMAs: Here are All of the Winners
Updated at 10:08 pm EST This year’s MTV Video Music Awards was unlike any other due to COVID-19. The night was full of performances from across New York City and it is one of the first socially-distanced awards shows. Heading into the night, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande were tied for the most nominations. Lady Gaga is the first winner of the Tricon Award. See which artists who took home a trophy at this year’s VMAs, with the winners notated in bold: Video of the Year Billie Eilish – “everything i wanted”Eminem ft. Juice WRLD – “Godzilla”Future ft. Drake – “Life Is Good”Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande – “Rain On Me”Taylor Swift – “The Man”The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights” Artist of the Year DaBabyJustin BieberLady GagaMegan Thee StallionPost MaloneThe Weeknd Song of the Year Billie Eilish – “every...
NBA’s Donovan Mitchell Donates $45K To Jacob Blake’s Children, adidas Matches
Source: Kevin C. Cox / Getty NBA star Donovan Mitchell is looking out for the kids of Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot in the back by Kenosha, WI police. The Utah Jazz all-star has donated $45,000 to a scholarship fund for Blake’s 6 children, and adidas has matched. Mitchell is sponsored by adidas and has a new signature shoe, the D.O.N. Issue #2, which pays homage to Spider-Man and his “Spidey-Sense.” The shoe dropped on August 28 and for the first 45-hours, Mitchell pledged to donate $45,000 of the proceeds to support the education of Blake’s children, which means $90,000 in total with adidas’ matching donation to “secure the future education.” of the kids “Education reform is something I really believe and I believe will able to push our future past the point we are at,” said Mit...
MTV VMA Stan Cam Will Feature Appearances From City Girls, JoJo, Jaden Smith, And Many More
The 2020 VMAs are nearly here, and the show — much like the entire year itself — will be a new kind of undertaking, with performances happening all around New York City instead of contained to a single arena stage. Despite the new format, the spirit of watching visionary musical renditions (and all the candid, shocking, unexpected, heartfelt moments that come from awards speeches) is still front and center. That’s where the MTV VMA Stan Cam comes in. During the show on Sunday night, August 30, the VMA Stan Cam — an interactive co-viewing experience — will let you take in the show alongside your faves by watching them watch all the action and react to all the best live moments. Fans remain in control of Stan Cam, answering polls in real time and navigating the behind-the-scenes world ...
3 DOORS DOWN Singer Seems To Believe Coronavirus Death Count Is Inflated
3 DOORS DOWN singer Brad Arnold is promoting a narrative pushed by conservative media and disputed by health experts that suggests the official death count from the coronavirus is inflated. On Saturday (August 29), Arnold took to his Instagram to share a screenshot of a small section of the Centers For Disease Control And Prevention web site showing how many people who died from COVID-19 had underlying medical conditions that attributed to their death. The graphic Arnold shared includes the headline: “This week the CDC quietly updated the Covid number to admit that only 6% of all the 161,392 deaths recorded actually died solely from Covid.” In the latest update, the CDC pointed out that only 6% of deaths related to COVID-19 listed COVID-19 as the only cause of death. The vast m...
KIRK HAMMETT Has ‘Over 600 Ideas’ For METALLICA’s Next Studio Album
METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett has confirmed that he and his bandmates have discussed working on the follow-up to 2016’s “Hardwired… To Self-Destruct” album while in quarantine. “We have weekly check-ins, and the dialogue has been steered towards what we’re going to be doing in the immediate future,” he tells Uproxx in a new interview. “And I’ve been using this time to go through all my musical ideas that I’ve come up with. In the last three or four years, it’s over 600 ideas. It’s taken me a couple of months to go through it all. But they’ve been sent into the big musical idea bank, and we’re starting to talk about going through all that stuff, and exchanging ideas, and just starting to get the ball rolling to...
