Who would you prefer: the weakest link on the ‘90s sitcom NewsRadio or the legend who wrote “Cinnamon Girl”? That’s the choice Neil Young is giving Spotify. The music streamer is home to dozens and dozens of Neil Young releases, from his self-titled 1969 debut to last year’s excellent Crazy Horse reunion Barn. It’s also home to the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, whose host regularly spouts misinformation about the two-years-old-and-counting pandemic.
Now Young is taking a stand. As per Rolling Stone, the rocker wrote a letter to his management and label, sking them to remove some of the greatest songs ever recorded from the streamer that also allows a guy who used to force people to eat bugs to help make a public health crisis even worse.
“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” Young wrote. “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.”
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he charged. “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Young is the latest figure to come out against Rogan, who has fed his 11 million subscribers nonsense that is sometimes debunked on his show by his guests. Earlier this month, 250 doctors signed an open letter, begging Spotify to “to take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform” by implementing a policy against misinformation. Meanwhile, the day before Young came out against Rogan, the U.S. saw almost 700,000 new COVID cases, as well as over 2,000 COVID-related deaths.
In the meantime, you better take one last spin of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, On the Beach, Tonight’s the Night, maybe even Everybody’s Rockin’ before it vamooses, all for a guy who’d rather take medication also used on horses than get a free and effective vaccine.
Encanto is Disney’s latest successful film. It recently won the Best Motion Picture – Animated award at this month’s Golden Globe Awards where it was also nominated for Best Original Score and Best Original Song. The soundtrack for the film has also been successful. A little over a month since its release back in November, the soundtrack for Encantochecked in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 72,000 album units sold on the chart dated January 15. In claiming the top spot, Encanto dethroned Adele’s30 after it spent six straight weeks at No. 1 Just a couple of weeks later, Encanto makes its way back to No. 1.
On the Billboard 200 chart dated January 29, the Encanto soundtrack returns to No. 1 thanks to 104,000 album units sold this past week. This number is comprised of 84,000 streaming equivalent album units thanks to 125.33 million on-demand official streams of the soundtrack’s songs. Pure album sales accounted for 17,000 of the soundtrack’s sales total this week. With its return to No. 1, Encanto becomes the first soundtrack since Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born to spend multiple weeks atop the charts. That project spent four non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 in 2018 and 2019.
Encanto is also the first soundtrack by Disney to spend multiple weeks at No. 1 since Frozen did so back in 2014. The Frozen soundtrack appeared atop the albums charts for 13 nonconsecutive weeks that year.
Kanye West and Julia Fox have been going steady since New Year’s Eve after the two met at a party in Miami. Since then, they’ve had dinner together on multiple occasions, gone to a Broadway show with each other, held quite the bizarre photoshoot together, and more. Through it all, Fox has shared how much she’s enjoyed her time with the rapper, but their relationship has caused some critics to claim she’s dating him for the attention. During a recent episode of her and Niki Takesh’s podcast Forbidden Fruits, Fox responded to those claims.
“People are like, ‘Oh, you’re only in it for the fame, you’re in for the clout, you’re in it for the money,’” she said. “And it’s like, ‘Honey, I dated billionaires my entire adult life. Let’s keep in real,’” she said. “And secondly, no, I really don’t [care]… I just care about making my art and putting things into the world.” She added, “That is more thrilling to me now than like eyes on me. I couldn’t care less.”
Fox also addressed a video that circulated a little over a week ago that featured her, Ye, Madonna, Antonio Brown, and Floyd Mayweather partying together in West Hollywood. “I was actually supposed to be at dinner for just Madonna and I,” she said. “All of these other celebs crashed [the party].”
You can listen to the full episode of the Forbidden Fruits podcast here.
It has been speculated that on The Weeknd’s new album Dawn FM, he sings about his reported relationship with Angelina Jolie on “Here We Go… Again.” While that’s all just hearsay at this point, what’s not a rumor is that he name-drops Scream actress Neve Campbell on the tune, as he sings, “My new girl, she a movie star / I loved her right, make her scream like Neve Campbell.” When Campbell first caught wind of the shout-out, though, she didn’t exactly know what was going on.
Campbell stopped by The Late Late Show earlier this week and James Corden asked her about the Dawn FM mention. After saying it’s “pretty crazy,” she continued, “At first, my publicist told me and she was like, ‘The Weeknd.’ I said, ‘Wait, which weekend, last weekend?’ I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I realized, ‘Oh, the guy who played at the Super Bowl, that guy!’”
Corden responded, “I can only think he’ll be really disappointed if he knows that you described him as the guy from the Super Bowl, given he’s arguably one of the biggest and best-selling artists of his generation.” Through laughter, Campbell said, “I know, I know! I’m just so bad with pop culture.”
Check out the interview clip above and listen to “Here We Go… Again” below.
Meat Loaf is obviously a legendary singer. His operatic vocals were a mainstay in my car as a teenager; you couldn’t go 10 minutes without hearing “Bat Out of Hell,” or “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night),” or “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” or “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” (all from the same album!) on the radio. Not that I minded: his high-brow sleaze was a much-needed break from Foreigner and the Eagles.
But Meat Loaf, who sadly passed away at 74 years old this week, was also a talented actor, appearing in movies as diverse as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Spice World, Fight Club, and Focus (which he called his best work), but my personal favorite is Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. It’s a short scene in the 2006 film where he plays young Jack Black’s god-fearing, rock-hating dad during “Kickapoo,” but it rules. He belts out lyrics like, “You’ll become a mindless puppet / Beelzebub will pull the strings,” and it’s not every day you get a song with Meat Loaf and Ronnie James Dio.
In 2006, Meat Loaf told MTV how his role in the Tenacious D movie came together. “For five years, Jack Black has been saying he wanted me to play his father. In every interview he did he always [said], ‘I’m gonna make the movie Tenacious D, and I want to make Meat Loaf play my father.’ Every interview,” he said. “And my daughters, Pearl and Amanda, they kept reading it and [would] call and say, ‘Jack said it again, Jack said it again.’ I said, ‘When he calls me, I’ll tell him I’ll do it.’ He did call. He called me himself.”
Black was the original choice to play the “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” singer in the VH1 made-for-TV movie Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back, but then there was a scheduling conflict and Black got mega-famous. Meat Loaf wasn’t upset, though:
I just saw him in movies that he had done, and I had heard some stuff from Tenacious D. I said, “This is the guy to play me. He’s got the energy, and he understands it.” He was going to [play me], then his career took off and [this] movie got postponed. He tried, and I said, “Well, the guy’s an idiot if he does it.” I said, “Let me see — a studio picture over the Meat Loaf story? Let me think about that for a minute. Gee, I don’t know, that’s a hard decision.”
Over its four-and-a-half decades, Saturday Night Live has had plenty of Mad Libs-y host-musical guest(s) pairings. Al Gore and Phish. Tony Danza and Laurie Anderson. Old school entertainer Milton Berle and free jazz legend Ornette Coleman. Business magazine founder Steve Forbes and anti-capitalist rockers Rage Against the Machine. Some even become memes. There’s even an entire Twitter account dedicated to hosts improbably introducing musicians. So here’s another.
As per Deadline, for the episode of Jan. 29, the live sketch show has recruited beloved character actor Willem Dafoe and — why not! — pop goddess Katy Perry. For Perry, who is in the midst of her first Las Vegas residency, it’s her fourth time on the show. For Dafoe, it’s his first. Dafoe isn’t exactly a comedic actor, preferring serious art cinema and cutting up the occasional blockbuster, but he can be very funny. Witness The Lighthouse, in which he out-there enough to inspire an SNL sketch, well before they finally invited him on.
Besides, who doesn’t look Willem Dafoe? He can currently be seen in two big movies: dusting off his old Green Goblin duds in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is making all the money, and Guillermo del Toro’s star-studded remake of Nightmare Alley, which is not. He had a busy 2021, appearing in yet another Wes Anderson movie (The French Dispatch), yet another Paul Schrader (The Card Counter), and yet another with perhaps his most frequent collaborator, eccentric weirdo Abel Ferrara (Siberia).
Before this hot mess begins, feel free to visit the aforementioned SNL host/musical guest(s) Twitter account, where you see such inventive sights as this.
Last week, the hit Encanto song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” scored Lin-Manuel Miranda his first-ever top-ten song when the banger managed to hit number five on the Billboard charts. It was a notable accomplishment considering Disney hasn’t been able to crack the top five since “Let It Go” from Frozen in 2014. If you’ve had the song stuck in your head since Encanto started streaming on Disney+, then you probably won’t be surprised that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is showing no signs of slowing down.
According to the latest Billboard charts, the Encanto hit is now at number four, which is something Let It Go was never able to achieve despite becoming the first top-five Disney hit since 1995’s “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas. After breaking a 19-year streak, Let It Go was taken out in a little over seven years. Via The Wrap:
In the latest data from Billboard, the Lin-Manuel Miranda hit became the highest-charting song from a Disney animated movie since 1995. With the No. 4 spot, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” ties with “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King” — peaking at No. 4 in 1994 — and “Colors of the Wind” from “Pocahontas,” which peaked in the same spot in 1995.
In an interesting note, Encanto director Jared Bush recently revealed to The New York Times that the character of Bruno was originally named “Oscar” until Miranda stepped in and suggested “Bruno” after the production team realized there were way too many Oscar Madrigals in Columbia, which could’ve caused some thorny legal issues. Plus, “We Don’t Talk About Oscar,” doesn’t really have that same earworm hook that just burrows right into your skull and never leaves. Ever. Seriously, get this song out of our heads, for the love of God!
Daniel Radcliffe made enough money from the Harry Potter movies that he could decide to not work for the rest of his life. Instead, he chooses to star in offbeat passion projects, and for that (and other reasons), we love him. Frankenstein’s assistant Igor? Yup. A farting corpse? Been there. A criminal mastermind in Now You See Me 2, the sequel to magician heist movie Now You See Me that I’m still annoyed wasn’t called Now You Don’t? Of course. For his next “sure, why not, I’m in” role, he’ll pick up an accordion.
Deadline reports that Radcliffe will play musician (and Uproxx‘s Person of the Year recipient) “Weird Al” Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a “Roku Original biopic from Funny or Die and Tango that will be available for streaming exclusively on The Roku Channel.” It was written by Eric Appel and Yankovic, who said in a statement, “I am absolutely thrilled that Daniel Radcliffe will be portraying me in the film. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is the role future generations will remember him for.”
The Yankovic biopic promises to hold nothing back and explore every facet of his life, from his childhood through his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like “Eat It” and “Like a Surgeon,” while touching on his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle.
“Weird Al” released his first album in 1983, and while he could have been quickly dismissed as a novelty act, he’s arguably as popular now as he’s ever been (his last album, 2014’s Mandatory Fun, was his first to debut at number one on the Billboard 200). As someone who grew up playing Bad Hair Day and Running with Scissors and watching UHF and The Weird Al Show on repeat, I can’t wait for the tongue-in-cheek biopic — as long as there’s a full 11 minutes dedicated to his best song, “Albuquerque.”
Celebrity bourbon, like celebrity tequila or anything else “celebrity”, is an odd beast. White labeling is a very real thing — that’s where big-name celebrities slap their names on a label, spend some time promoting the bottles, and then collect checks with little to no real influence on the process. But that’s not always how celebrity-driven bourbons come to be. Some famous folk actually dig into the process of making whiskey, help pick barrels and make blends, and spend a large amount of time championing the whiskeys they helped make.
Today, we have a bit of a mix of both worlds. Some of these bottles are sourced whiskeys that were released in an effort for a celebrity to jump on the bourbon boom. Some of them are passion projects. But does that love for the game shine through in what’s actually in the bottle? Or can an indifferent star make a better bourbon with a great brand backing them?
We’ll see!
Today, I’m tasting five bottles blind and then ranking them on taste alone. I’ve kept this a little smaller purposefully. The main reason is that when I’m tasting ten or 12 (or more) drams at once, some simply get lost in the mix — a few rise to the top, a few sink to the bottom, and the middle can become sort of an extended tie. When there are fewer drams competing, the competition becomes fierce because there’s nowhere for a middling dram to hide.
Our lineup today is:
Drake’s Virginia Black Decadent American Whiskey
Bob Dylan’s Heaven’s Door Redbreast Edition
Matthew McConaughey’s Longbranch
Scottie Pippen’s DIGITS Bourbon
Terry Bradshaw’s Bradshaw Bourbon
I was lucky enough to score a few of these from a bar owner and whiskey collector down in Prague where I host whiskey tastings to help keep things new and varied (hence the small taster bottles in some of the images). Let’s get to it!
This is thin from the nose to the end. There’s a touch of vanilla extract with a plastic vibe on the nose that leads towards a hint of old lemon peel. The taste is pretty watery with a touch of caramel and a mild spice that leans towards cinnamon toast. The finish arrives pretty quick with a little note of oakiness.
This feels like “bourbon” but only just.
Taste 2
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
The nose draws you in with a worn leatheriness next to dark stone fruits, brittle toffees, and something that feels like apricot jam with a good dose of winter spices. The palate is nutty (ranging from nutshell to marzipan) with a sticky toffee pudding vibe that leads towards plum candies. That sweetness gets very creamy with a vanilla pudding base as a light sense of stringy cedar barks leads back to that sweet plum candy.
Taste 3
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
There are very light notes of citrus on the nose that feel like a distant lemon-lime with a wet wood vibe. The taste dried that wood out immediately, driving it towards almost pine wall paneling with hints of dry and dark spices, peach pits, and vanilla that all leads to this beautiful caramel candy end.
Taste 4
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
This opens with a sense of vanilla extract that leads towards slightly singed popcorn with a touch of butter and an echo of cherry soda. The palate is classic bourbon with notes of caramel sauce, dark spice, light oak, and vanilla dancing with slight hints of leather and cherry tobacco. The end holds onto the vanilla before going full cherry candy on the finish.
Taste 5
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
This is a wild nose that goes from Wether’s Originals to leather-bound books to drug store aftershave. The palate is all about soft spices with a woody vibe that’s a little bit wicker and a little bit oak. The finish holds onto the spice and warms up considerably before veering headfirst into apple candy sweetness.
This whiskey is a collaboration between tequila maker Brent Hocking of DeLeón Tequila and Drake. The juice is a blend of high-rye bourbons from MGP that aged for two, three, and four years. That blend is then proofed all the way down to 40 percent before it’s bottled in what best can be described as a fancy art-deco perfume bottle.
Bottom Line:
This was last and it wasn’t even close. The 40 percent ABV meant that water kind of took over the whole flavor profile and left a faint hint of what whiskey might have been in those barrels.
This bottle is a collaboration between Bulls superstar Scottie Pippen and Napa wine superstar Dave Phinney. The juice is a sourced five-year-old whiskey that’s distilled in Tennessee, likely in a place that rhymes with “Tacoma”, alongside some MGP whiskey from Indiana. The barrels are sent to Mare Island, off San Francisco, where they continue aging before vatting, proofing, and bottling.
Bottom Line:
This is miles ahead of the bottle above. There’s a real sense of a well-built whiskey here that weirdly starts off a little thin but builds towards a very solid finish. I could see using this in cocktails very easily but I don’t know if it’s quite a sipper, like its price point suggests.
A few years back, Wild Turkey brought on Matthew McConaughey to be the brand’s Creative Director and design his own whiskey. The product of that partnership was launched in 2018. The juice is a wholly unique whiskey for Wild Turkey, thanks to the Texas Mesquite charcoal filtration the hot juice goes through. The bourbon then goes into oak for eight long years before it’s proofed and bottled.
Bottom Line:
I think this could have won that day had the first half (the nose and the opening of the palate) had been bolder. This dram ends amazingly but you have to sort of force yourself to get there. Still, it’s pretty solid once you’re past the first act.
Bradshaw Bourbon is made by Green River Distilling Company in Owensboro, Kentucky. The bourbon (and now a rye) is a collab between former Super Bowl champ Terry Bradshaw and Silver Screen Bottling Company, which acts as a sort of bottling fixer between a celebrity and a distiller or barrel house. The juice is a two-year-old bourbon made with 70 percent corn, 21 percent rye, and nine percent malted barley. It’s proofed to a hefty 103.8.
Bottom Line:
This really stood out. That aftershave moment of the nose threw me a bit (it’s not too out of leftfield) but made total sense with the whole experience. Then the palate truly popped as a very classic Kentucky bourbon. There weren’t any big bells or whistles but there didn’t need to be. This felt like a really solid “table bourbon” that you could sip on the rocks or throw in a cocktail and all will be well.
This whiskey is a collaboration between Heaven’s Door Master Blender Ryan Perry and Redbreast’s legendary Master Blender Billy Leighton. The duo worked long and hard to create multiple whiskey expressions, which Bob Dylan taste-tested and granted final approval on. The juice in the bottle is Heaven Door’s low-rye 10-year-old Tennessee bourbon. They take that whiskey and fill it into Redbreast whiskey casks that had previously aged Irish whiskey for 12 years. After 15 months of final maturation, those barrels are vatted and slightly proofed down with soft Tennessee spring water.
Bottom Line:
Nothing came close to this. It’s complex, accessible, pronounced, nuanced. There’s a real depth that makes sense and welcomes you in. This is the winner by a country mile. I wanted to immediately go back. Given that Dylan actually helps select barrels and works with the blending, I have to think that he’s got one hell of a whiskey palate.
Part 3: Final Thoughts
Zach Johnston
I think I would have been shocked if Heaven’s Door didn’t win. The majority of their lineup is pretty damn fine whiskey across the board. Still, when I saw that Bradshaw Bourbon was my second-place pick, I was shocked. I had written that bottle off as “Terry probably just slapped his name on a bottle.” That’s not exactly true, he is part of the process, in theory. He’s out there pounding the pavement for the brand and has a long history of barrel picks going back a long way. It shows in this whiskey as it feels like it was made by someone who adores bourbon.
For me, the Longbranch was the splitting point. That whiskey finished so beautifully that it felt like a real shift from “shitty” to “okay” to “very nice” in this lineup. Still, I wanted a bit more up top and up just wasn’t there.
When it comes to Scottie Pippen’s bourbon, my best summation is this “yup, that’s bourbon alright.” It just left me a bit cold while tasting it and now while thinking about it. I can’t really see myself ever going back to it.
Finally, there’s Drake. Sorry, but cool perfume bottle aside, this was “meh” at best and “try again, folks” at worst. The 80 proof just let too much water take everything over and there was very little left.
I guess that means Bob Dylan remains the GOAT, in more ways than one.
OK, maybe things haven’t changed that much, but it does feel like season two happened a lifetime ago. Do you remember what happened in the season two finale? I didn’t until looking it up (it involves a gun, a backpack, and Paper Boi telling Earn, “You my family”), and then I remembered why Atlanta was Uproxx‘s best show of 2018.
Thankfully, after a nearly four-year break, Atlanta is coming back in March. Ahead of the premiere, FX released a new teaser for season three that has Earn (Donald Glover), Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), and Van (Zazie Beetz) stuck in a nightmare of capitalism. Over what sounds like a corny cover of “So Fresh, So Clean” by ATL legends Outkast, Paper Boi says, “These products scare me.” Thumbs up.
Here’s more:
Taking place almost entirely in Europe, season three finds “Earn” (Donald Glover), “Alfred / Paper Boi” (Brian Tyree Henry), “Darius” (LaKeith Stanfield), and “Van” (Zazie Beetz) in the midst of a successful European tour, as the group navigates their new surroundings as outsiders, and struggle to adjust to the newfound success they had aspired to.
