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Every Arctic Monkeys Album Ranked From Worst to Best
This article originally ran in 2018 and has been updated. Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract. It’s exact science by way of a few beers. This time, we sort through the best and worst of Sheffield’s finest. Arctic Monkeys have enjoyed a two-decade reign as tastemakers and frontrunners of modern rock and roll. Their energetic guitars, indefatigable drums, and moody bass lines are what first caught our attention, but it was frontman Alex Turner’s writing that made us fall in love with them. Turner’s balance of poetic and picturesque meets blunt and brusque lyrics was a highlight from the first time we heard them as rowdy, North England teenagers. Thanks to the then-burgeoning world...
How Will HBO’s The Last of Us Be Different From the Game? And Other Questions Answered
One of 2023’s first big premieres draws viewers into a dark alternate timeline of societal collapse and mold-infested zombies — a world that’s already quite familiar to video game enthusiasts, because they’ve played it. This is why The Last of Us executive producer Craig Mazin says that in adapting the award-winning video games for HBO, he and executive producer Neil Druckmann made sure that any changes they made during the adaptation process were “always purposeful.” “A lot of people, they go, ‘I want to adapt a thing.’ And someone says, ‘Great, you can.’ And then they’re like, ‘I’m changing all of it.’ And I’m like, ‘Well then why did you want to adapt it?’” Mazin tells Consequence during a roundtable interview. “Sometimes counterintuitively, I’m the one that’s saying, ‘You know wh...
Best New Tracks: Popcaan x Drake, Quavo and More
As the first week of 2023 in music comes to a close, HYPEBEAST has rounded up the best projects for the latest installment of Best New Tracks. This week’s lineup is led by Drake x Popcaan and Quavo, who released the collab “We Caa Done” and the heartfelt single “Without You.” Also joining this selection are offerings from DJ Drama and French Montana, Logic, Erica Banks, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Fantastic Negrito, Skrillex with Fred again.. and Flowdan and Ty Dolla $ign. Popcaan x Drake – “We Caa Done” [embedded content] OVO Sound signee and founder Popcaan and Drake reunite for the former’s new single, “We Caa Done.” This marks the pair’s third collaborative effort following “ALL I NEED” and “TWIST & TURN” with PARTYNEXTDOOR, and is expected to appear on the dancehall star’s upcomin...
Asia Express: China’s NFT market, Moutai metaverse popular but buggy…
In a joint effort between the state-owned Chinese Technology Exchange, the state-owned Art Exhibitions China and the corporation Huban Digital Copyrights Ltd, China’s first national NFT marketplace is scheduled to come online this week. It’s designed as a secondary market for trading digital collectibles, along with copyrights for digital assets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s built on China’s national Wenbao, or “cultural protection” blockchain, which helps verify the authenticity of artifacts and commercial goods. Currently, only the NFT platform’s landing page is accessible. 1400 blockchain firms in China On Dec. 29, the state-owned China Academy for Information and Communications Technology, or CAICT, disclosed in its national white paper that over 1,400 blockchain firms are operating in...
Everything We Know About Miley Cyrus’ New Album Endless Summer Vacation (So Far)
After ringing in the new year alongside her godmother Dolly Parton — and reminding anyone who might have forgotten just how incredible of a performer she is — Miley Cyrus has confirmed new music is on the way. Cyrus’s forthcoming record will be her ninth studio album, following 2020’s rock-tinged Plastic Hearts. With festival appearances over the past few years, she has continued to prove how versatile she is as a vocalist, solidifying herself as a modern cover queen and often going full rock star onstage. While we don’t yet have too much of a preview on the vibe of the upcoming album, listeners won’t have to wait too long; Cyrus recently teased a snippet of the album’s first single, “Flowers,” to her social media, offering a dreamy and sun-drenched preview of what we might hear. Advertise...
A Decade Into His Career, Rapper OhGeesy Is Just Getting Started
In April 2020, just two years after inking a major label deal with Atlantic Records, Shoreline Mafia announced to their avid fans that they would be breaking up, citing “creative differences” among group members. However short their tenure may have been, the West Coast hip-hop collective — composed of OhGeesy, Fenix Flexin, Rob Vicious and Master Kato — had accrued a cult following thanks to murky trap hits like “Nun Major,” “Musty” and the infamous “Bands.” Three months later, in July, Shoreline would drop their debut album Mafia Bidness, a record that, while well-received, had a quiet arrival devoid of major-label fanfare. From the ashes of Shoreline Mafia, OhGeesy, the architect behind the group and most versatile lyricist, returned last year with his first solo mixtape, GEEZYWORLD. The...
M3GAN Will Dance and Slash Her Way Into Your Horror-Loving Heart: Review
The Pitch: Gemma (Allison Williams) works as a roboticist at a toy company, Funki, that churns out monstrous-looking hybrid versions of every kid’s ultimate companion –– a Furby, Tamagotchi, and Neopet all rolled into one. But while Gemma’s job revolves around the needs of children, she’s unfortunately ill-equipped to take in her recently orphaned nine-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), whose parents died in a tragic car accident. Feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility of having to care for a young, grieving child while feverishly trying to meet work deadlines for her demanding boss (Ronny Chieng), who expects a new toy prototype imminently, Gemma decides to kill two birds with one stone. What if she perfects her latest AI-powered invention, M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android)...
Christian Bale on How The Pale Blue Eye Crafts an Origin Story for Edgar Allan Poe
In recent times, films and TV shows have found rich territory in exploring how iconic figures arrived at their iconic status, from countless superheroes to Whitney Houston to Saul Goodman. Add Edgar Allan Poe to those ranks, thanks to The Pale Blue Eye, as the new Netflix thriller reveals what the famed author might have been like before becoming “that whiskey bent and hell bound godfather of the macabre,” as star Christian Bale (with an assist from Hank Williams) tells Consequence. Written and directed by Scott Cooper, this adaptation of Louis Bayard’s novel stars Bale as Augustus Landor, a detective summoned to the military academy at West Point, New York to investigate a mysterious death that spirals into additional instances of murder. Landor’s primary ally in the investigation is a yo...
Fan Chant: NewJeans on Starting 2023 Strong with OMG
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! This past fall in Seoul, the song “Hype Boy” by NewJeans was nothing short of ubiquitous. The song was playing in the market in Insadong, shopping malls in Myeondeong, restaurants and convenience stores along the Han River, and even pulsing from the brightly colored bars in Hongdae at night, hoping to attract customers like me. It seemed like people across demographics were listening to NewJeans, the freshly debuted group out of ADOR, subsidiary of HYBE, but the hype didn’t stay contained to So...
R.E.M.’s 20 Best Songs
This article was originally published in 2017, but we’re dusting it off for Michael Stipe’s birthday on January 4th. If you’re at all like me, you probably associate certain bands with specific moods. In other words, you turn to these bands when they fit your state of mind, match how your day went, or just seem to sound how you feel. R.E.M. has never been one of those bands for me, though. No matter my mood, mindset, or emotion, there’s an R.E.M. album or sound that suits me. “I have lived a full life,” Michael Stipe once sang, and I think that’s how we felt about the band when they parted ways in 2011. To look back at their catalog then or now is to see a band that have lived a full life — and life to the fullest — leaving few stones of the band experience unflipped or unskipped. Advertis...
Every R.E.M. Album Ranked From Worst to Best
This definitive ranking of R.E.M.’s discography first appeared in 2017, several years after the band called it quits. It will remain not only to commemorate all the great music R.E.M. has given us over the years but also to burn like a candle — and keep vigil — just in case we one day get to add to it. Either way, we’ll keep going back to Rockville until it truly is the end of the world. It’s been over 40 years since R.E.M. played their first show, a friend’s birthday party in an abandoned church in Athens, Georgia, on April 5th, 1980. It’s hard to believe that a band with a catalog we kept holstered, cocked, and ready throughout our adolescences have turned such an advanced age. (We also must acknowledge that we’ve been drifting through a slightly emptier world for some time now without A...
How Iranians Influence EDM: Meet Rezz and Other Transformative Artists of Iranian Descent
Stereotypes often box Iranians into the fields of doctor, engineer or realtor, but they sure know how to have a good time. It isn’t unusual for family gatherings—ones that often welcome dozens of guests—to transform from dinner to dance party in the blink of an eye. Guests wield various instruments seemingly pulled from the ether, a circle forms in the center of the room and a party ensues. So it should come as no surprise that vivacious spirit has found its way to electronic dance music. Iranian ingenuity courses through every level of the genre. There are artists approaching the EDM apex, rising DJs blossoming on the festival circuit and enduring veterans, all of whom share Iranian heritage. For months, Iranians have protested the alleged killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the h...
