Between Rudy Giuliani’s cartoonish press conferences and vast swaths of the Republican apparatus urging Donald Trump to concede the election to Joe Biden, our president’s #StopTheSteal campaign has been, as many of us expected, a farcical failure. Yesterday, Trump so much as admitted defeat by authorizing his team to begin the formal transition to Biden’s administration, but as many of us also expected, Trump will never rhetorically concede defeat, and that delusional stubbornness has forced him to reach deep into the bench of supporters who endorse his detached worldview. Enter Randy Quaid. The 70-year-old actor is best known for his character Cousin Eddie in the National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise, but he himself has become the target of some national lampooning in ...
Sammy Hagar would have gladly participated in Eddie Van Halen’s planned “kitchen sink” farewell tour featuring all three Van Halen singers. However, he admits it would’ve been tough to share the stage with David Lee Roth. In a new interview with SiriuxXM’s Eddie Trunk, Hagar said that the proposed tour would have been a “dream come true”, but expressed some misgivings about sharing the spotlight with founding Van Halen frontman Roth, whom Hagar replaced in 1985. The band’s third singer was Gary Cherone, who replaced Hagar and sang on 1998’s Van Halen III. The Hagar versus Roth eras of the band have always created contention among fans, but Hagar himself finds Roth “not user friendly.” Despite some choice words, Hagar was otherwise positive about the idea of featuring all three singers. “It...
Brittany Howard received five Grammy Award nominations across four genre categories (Rock, Alternative Music, R&B, and American Roots) on Tuesday. Hours later, she appeared on Colbert, but instead of performing any of her recognized work, she chose to dig into yet another genre and perform someone else’s song. Howard delivered an impassioned blues rock rendition of Nina Simone’s “Revolution”. Matching her band’s red attire, Howard strutted about the stage like she was playing for a real live audience. It’s got to be hard to muster that sort of energy these days, but the Alabama Shakes singer barely looked like she had to dig very deep at all as she busted out the powerful performance. Of course, she’s been covering the song (itself a response to The Beatles’ “Revolution”) live for awhi...
As promised, Taylor Swift has released her new folklore-focused film, the long pond studio sessions. The pop singer has also revealed a corresponding live album version of those sessions. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the original folklore LP was recorded remotely while in quarantine. Today’s two projects see Swift finally meeting up with her collaborators (IRL!) to perform the album live from start to finish for the first time. She, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner convened at The National’s Long Pond Studio in Hudson, New York. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, who duets with Swift on “exile”, beamed in remotely. “It’s an album that allows you to feel your feelings, and it’s a product of isolation,” Swift said in the film’s trailer. At another point, she remarked to Dessner, “This could’...
Sources close to The Weeknd believe his shocking Grammys snubbing was not an oversight by the Recording Academy, but rather an act of retaliation. The Canadian crooner’s fourth album, After Hours, is one of the year’s biggest releases — both commercially and critically. Going into yesterday, a nomination for Album of the Year felt like a lock. The smash After Hours single “Blinding Lights” was also expected to receive consideration for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. But ultimately, The Weeknd was completely shut out of the general music categories. He also failed to receive a single nomination in the genre-specific categories. How was this possible? Sources close to The Weeknd believe the Recording Academy sought revenge after the singer agreed to headline the 2020 Super Bowl hal...
When life imitates Veep, Veep imitates life. To announce another political fundraising event from the cast of the hit HBO comedy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus pulled off her best Rudy Giuliani impression — melting face and all. With makeup cascading down her head like so much running hair dye, Louis-Dreyfus took to Instagram to announce a Veep virtual table read. Mocking Giuliani’s wide-eyed lying about thousands of cases of alleged voter fraud and his rambling asides, the actress pointed out that “many brave and patriotic Americans have come forward having witnessed similarities between our ongoing election and the TV show Veep.” As such, the original Veep cast has decided to come together once again to highlight those too-real-to-be-funny parallels with a table read of the Emmy-winning episode “M...
Everyone could use an extra bit of hope this strange holiday season, and that includes Tori Amos. The chamber pop artist is gearing up to release a new EP, Christmastide, that’s meant to be a joyful “safe space” from these turbulent times. As a first preview, Amos is sharing closing track “Better Angels” today. According to the eight-time Grammy-nominated songwriter, this offering envisions a brighter future while simultaneously recognizing the harshness of our present circumstances. “With ‘Better Angels’ I wanted to acknowledge the year we have all been through and know that there is hope,” remarked Amos. “We can find that hope within ourselves if we continue to focus our collective minds and souls. We are slowly starting to find a clearer path to transform together for the better of all,...
Dust off your Obey streetwear and load up Temple Run on your iPod Touch because we’re going back to the early 2010s, folks: Lil Wayne is about to drop a mixtape on DatPiff. Weezy just announced that the long-awaited third installment of his No Ceilings mixtape series will be hitting the once-essential online rap distributor this Friday, November 27th. The project will be “hosted” by DJ Khaled, who posted two preview clips on his Instagram earlier today: one features a verse from Drake, and the other sees Wayne freestyling over the beat of Lil Baby and 42 Dugg’s “We Paid”. “The mixtape game seemed to be a dying art and since I’m one of the pioneers of the craft, and it played such a big part in my career, I felt it was only right to resurrect it,” Lil Wayne told Complex. “Als...
Rina Sawayama has announced a deluxe edition of SAWAYAMA, one of our favorite albums of 2020. Due out next month, the expanded release comes with an entire second disc of bonus material, including a new single called “LUCID”. The deluxe collection consists of the 13 original SAWAYAMA songs and 11 additional tracks. Three of these have never before seen the light of day: “LUCID”, “We Out Here”, and “Bees & Honey”. There is also a cover of The 1975 song “Love It If We Made It”, in addition to acoustic renditions of “Bad Friend”, “STFU!”, and “Chosen Family” and fresh remixes from Dream Wife and Pabllo Vittar. Sawayama herself executive produced the project with help from Clarence Clarity (who also contributed production). Meanwhile, Nicole Morier (Britney Spears) and Kyle Shearer (Carly ...
Next month brings the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s recut of The Godfather: Part III, now titled Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. The famed director has already finished the edit, and even screened it for a number of the film’s stars. As far as first reviews go, Diane Keaton’s couldn’t be more glowing, as she called watching the new version easily “one of the best moments of my life.” December 20th marks the 30th anniversary of the third installment of The Godfather series, a movie that was less than favorably received by critics and moviegoers upon release. To honor the pearl jubilee, Coppola decided to tinker with the film to highlight previously overlooked parts and give “a more appropriate conclusion” to the beloved trilogy. He reordered scenes, swap...