FEATURES
Christmas Stalkings: What to Buy for the Music Fan in Your Life
As the stockings get hung by the chiminea with care in hopes that Papa Noel soon will be there, you might be hard-pressed to find gifts that will bring true joy to the music-obsessive in your life. Especially if they seem to have every new album or box set that comes out. But fear not, dear consumer, as SPIN has spent these first days of the holiday season in search of the coolest gift ideas with the music fan in your life in mind. From action figures of your favorite rappers to choice box sets to quality cannabis to spirits made from spuds, the 2021 holiday season is a cornucopia overflowing with possibilities for the music fan who seems to have everything. For the Fabs fan on your list, it’s not a question of what to get them this year but how much are you willing to get them, as this se...
MacGruber’s Jorma Taccone and John Solomon on the Influence of Walker, Texas Ranger and Who Ruined Takes on Set
From Saturday Night Live sketch to Pepsi commercials to cult classic film to now an original series, one thing remains true about MacGruber — he just can’t be stopped. The fan-favorite character played by Will Forte, created from a grab-bag of ’80s action movies cliches, continues his journey of throat-ripping and dick-punching on Peacock in eight episodes that, according to director Jorma Taccone, held nothing back. In fact, in a Zoom interview with Consequence, Taccone said that there was nothing he, Forte, and co-creator John Solomon felt was too ridiculous to include in the series. “There was nothing that we were told no about, and there was nothing that the three of us looked at each other like, ‘We shouldn’t do this.’” As Taccone explained, the only time they were ever told “no...
Top 12 Live Shows of 2021
Our 2021 Annual Report continues with our Top Live Shows list. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2021. You can find it all in one place here. Not to be dramatic, but the absence of live music for the majority of 2020 was miserable. In the face of some serious global trauma, many of us were looking for a communal experience to lift us up. Yet, with each scary news headline came an even scarier thought: Would live music ever return? And when it did, would it be the same? Lucky for us concertgoers, the first major wave of COVID-19 vaccinations in early 2021 allowed for us to visualize a world in which concerts could return safely, and as summer rolled around, we emerged from the fray and experienced live music again. ...
Comedian of the Year Bo Burnham Captured Our Collective Anxiety in 2021
Our 2021 Annual Report continues with the announcement of Bo Burnham as our Comedian of the Year. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2021. You can find it all in one place here. There’s a moment of context in Bo Burnham’s Inside where things start to click in a different way, and the whole special gets cast in a new light. At the end of the first verse and chorus of “All Eyes on Me,” Burnham describes making the decision to return to stand up comedy after a four-year hiatus from the form. In a supremely ironic fashion, he made this decision in January 2020, finally deciding that he was ready to be vulnerable in front of an audience again — all before a global shutdown. Hindsight is (clears throat) 20/20, but regardl...
Daft Punk meets CryptoPunks as Novo faces up to NFTs
Just recently, NFT collector CryptoNovo was posing for hundreds of photos, taking meetings with top tech companies and attending scores of invitation-only parties across New York City. Today, the former-schoolteacher-turned-Metaverse-mascot is raking leaves in his suburban Illinois front yard. “Dude,” Novo remarks excitedly as he works, “That just happened.” That would be NFT.NYC, the early November conference/gathering/bacchanal that represented a coming-out party of sorts for the nonfungible token community. While NFT.NYC 2021 was the third event in what will almost certainly become a series of (at least) annual affairs, it represented an explosion in popularity over the 2020 offering. Ticket sales jumped. Additional days were added. NFT.NYC ballooned to a four-day extravaganza at which ...
The Succession Season 3 Finale Confirmed Why the HBO Series Is One of TV’s Most Fascinating Dramas
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of Succession, “All the Bells Say.”] One of the elements which stood out the most about Season 3 of Succession was location: specifically, a shift to the sun-dappled splendor that is rural Tuscany, site of both Lady Caroline Collingwood’s (Harriet Walter) wedding and her betrayal of her children. While the HBO series has always been aesthetically lush, with an emphasis on the elegant homes and offices in which the Roys seem born to dwell in, having some of the series’ most ugly behavior to date take place in such a beautiful place seems like the ultimate distillation of the show as a whole. The finale once again featured the Roy children coming after control of the company, this time in an effort to prevent tech mo...
6 Questions for Jane Thomason of Kasei Holdings
We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and we throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes! This week, our 6 Questions go to Jane Thomason, an entrepreneur and thought leader in technological innovation, fintech and blockchain for social impact. She is also the founder of Supernova Data, co-founder of the British Blockchain and Frontier Technologies Association, and chairperson of Kasei Holdings, an investment company specializing in the digital asset ecosystem. I have always believed we can change the world! For most of my life, I tried that in an analog way. In 2016, I discovered blockchain, and I realized it was a game-changing technology for social impact. I needed to be part of making that happen, so I left my da...
Rewind: On This Day In 2010, Avicii Debuted “Levels”
On this day, 11 years ago, dance music history was made with Avicii‘s “Levels” debut on one of the biggest public platforms in EDM: BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix. Avicii may not have known it at the time, but this mix would include the one of the earliest versions of arguably his most iconic work. Listening back on the near two-hour performance is like opening up a sonic time capsule. At the outset, Pete Tong delivers a goosebumps-inducing introduction of Avicii: “He’s the 21 year old Tim Bergling from Stockholm, who’s enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame,” Tong said. “He only released his first tune “ManMan” two years ago.” To add further context, Tong goes on to praise Avicii’s recent work in “My Feelings ...
Song of the Week: Bon Iver and Nicholas Britell’s Cinematic “Second Nature”
We’re taking a break from our Annual Report to highlight the Song of the Week. In this feature, we talk about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Bon Iver shares a standout track from the soundtrack of Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. Despite the relatively mixed reviews pouring in, film lovers are definitely discussing Netflix’s incredibly star-studded Don’t Look Up. If the promise of Jennifer Lawrence’s return to the screen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Ariana Grande, and Timothee Chalamet (among many, many others) wasn’t enough, the music for the movie is worth taking a look at as well. The score for the film w...
Sorry, But the Story Part of West Side Story Sucks
The Pitch: On a very literal level, Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story is a technically perfect film. Every detail on screen, from the period-accurate production design to the costumes to the choreography and sound design, is flawlessly rendered by some of today’s best artisans, and regular Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography is unmatched, using the full frame at all times, playing with depth of field and brilliant lighting choices in ways that only enhance the cast’s brilliant performances. There is so much to admire about this new take on West Side Story, especially how it makes up for the 1961 original by casting actual Latinos in key roles, and takes a bilingual approach to the dialogue that adds to the authenticity. The problem, unfortunately, is that all of this i...
Billboard NXT: Bronze Avery Announced Winner in Thrilling Finale
The winner of Billboard NXT – a first-of-its-kind singing competition from Billboard and Samsung Galaxy, designed to discover the next great unsigned artist – has been crowned! After numerous TikTok challenges, the help of celebrity mentors and riveting performances during the Grand Finale event on Tuesday (Dec. 7), Bronze Avery has been announced as Billboard NXT’s winner, earning the victory over multi-talented finalists Amir Brandon and Sophie Marks. All three finalists took the stage at Avalon Hollywood for Billboard NXT’s live finale event on Tuesday night, after weeks of showing off their skills in various TikTok challenges and standing out from the competition’s 12 total contestants. Each finalist performed in front of the Billboard NXT celebrity mentors – Todrick Hall, Anitta, and ...
Exit Interview: IDLES’ Joe Talbot on Crawler, Independent Venues, and Daddy Daycare in 2021
Joe Talbot has two more things he wants to accomplish before the end of 2021: Start working on IDLES‘ fifth album and win a bar fight. “Those two things. That’s it,” he says forcefully with a clap. Sitting on a cozy-looking couch, bearing a white, lightly plaid button-up shirt and thick-framed reading glasses in his Bristol home during our Zoom call, Talbot was taking some much-needed rest with his family in what’s left of the turbulent year of 2021. “Just living calmly … getting ready for the storm that is 2022.” The post-post-post-punkers—or something of that nature—wrote and released their stunning, thrashing, widely acclaimed fourth record Crawler, which was produced by Kenny Beats. In recent months, IDLES performed an exuberant string of shows throughout the U.S., bathed in ...
