Ever since Olivia Rodrigo ascended to the top of the pop world earlier this year thanks to “Drivers License,” she and Cardi B have done a bit of bonding. After Cardi made a joke about not having a driver’s license herself, Rodrigo offered to drive Cardi wherever she wants, which Cardi was all for. Now the two are forging their friendship further, as Cardi has responded to some high praise that Rodrigo recently heaped on her.
During a recent conversation with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Rodrigo spoke highly of Cardi, saying:
“I’m so in love with her, I want to marry her. […] I feel lucky to be a teenager at the time when Cardi is making music. As a songwriter, some of the stuff that she says is just so honest, almost like shockingly honest. When I listened to her song, I’m like, ‘Oh wow, she really just said that on a recorded album.’ […]
That’s definitely something that I grapple with in my songwriting. I’m making a lot of music right now to put it out, and I listen to it back and I’m terrified sometimes. I’m like, ‘Oh my God. I’m literally writing about stuff that I don’t tell some of my closest friends and I’m going to put out for the whole world to scrutinize and talk about.’ It’s a really horrible, terrifying thing. [Cardi] gives me courage to sort of say whatever I want to say and be honest in telling my story.”
Cardi caught wind of that quote today and seemed touched by Rodrigo’s praise. She responded with some advice for the up-and-comer, writing on Twitter, “This is so sweet .You doing sooo good for your age. Don’t let no toxic sh*t get to you and don’t let nobody restrict you from your voice.”
This is so sweet .You doing sooo good for your age. Don’t let no toxic shit get to you and don’t let nobody restrict you from your voice. https://t.co/YeGarHPtWq
Earth Day is right around the corner and as the climate change crisis persists, it’s more important than ever to raise awareness about environmentalism. That’s why iconic TV host Bill Nye The Science Guy has tapped several musicians including Justin Bieber and Jack Harlow to join him in an Earth Day-themed musical.
Earth Day! The Musical takes place on April 22 and follows Nye as he and a handful of celebrities and activists share information about how individuals can do their part to help curb the effects of climate change. Other celebrities slated to join Bieber, Harlow, and Nye include Maluma, Ben Platt, Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, Cody Simpson, Steve Aoki, Tori Kelly, Zac Efron, Desus Nice and The Kid Mero, and Nick Kroll.
The event will stream on Facebook and also showcase the important work of several entrepreneurs trying to make the world a better place. CEO Alexia Akbay will highlight their Hawaii-based company Symbrosia, which uses seaweed to reduce livestock methane, and 18-year-old Jerome Foster II will discuss how he became the youngest member of the Biden White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Earth Day! The Musical premieres 4/22 at 12 p.m. ET. Watch it here.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
A few weeks ago, The Weeknd indicated that there is still more to come from the After Hours era, tweeting, “p.s. this chapter isn’t quite done yet … still tying some loose ends.” At the time, he didn’t make clear what exactly that meant. Now, though, it looks like we know one thing that may be coming soon: a new remix of “Save Your Tears” featuring Ariana Grande, which both artists teased on social media yesterday.
Both Grande and The Weeknd shared the same audio clip on social media and tagged each other in their posts, all but confirming the collaboration. The video runs for eight seconds, and during that time, isolated, reverb-heavy vocals from the pair, singing what seems to be a melody from “Save Your Tears,” can be heard.
The pair have of course collaborated multiple times, once on Grande’s “Love Me Harder” from her 2014 album My Everything and again on “Off The Table,” from Grande’s 2020 album Positions. Of course, it’s also widely believed that the two were once linked romantically.
Meanwhile, Grande has also recently spent some time revisiting one of her recent albums, as she shared a behind-the-scenes clip of herself recording some vocals on “Positions.”
It’s been a busy year for Taylor Swift. Last summer, the singer released her eighth album, Folklore, which became one of the best-selling releases of 2020 and eventually took home a 2021 Grammy for Album Of The Year. Her run continued with the December release of Evermore, which also topped the charts. And earlier this month, Swift dropped her third album in less than 12 months with the re-recorded version of Fearless, her 2008 sophomore album, which, like, the other two, has topped the Billboard charts.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 291,000 units sold in the chart dated April 24. This number is comprised of 179,000 pure album sales and 109,00 streaming equivalent album units. It makes her the first woman with three No. 1 albums in less than a year. Prior to this, the fastest a female recording artist was able to net three chart-topping projects was 14 months, when Donna Summer did it with Live And More (November 11, 1978), Bad Girls (June 16, 1979), and On The Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II (January 5, 1980).
Elsewhere, the new No. 1 ties Swift with Madonna for the second-most No. 1 albums over her career: nine, leaving her just two behind Barbra Streisand, who holds the most among women with 11. Swift also earned the biggest week of 2021 in terms of units sold, as well as the biggest week for a country album since Luke Bryan’s 2015 album Kill The Lights.
Further down the chart, DMX’s The Best Of DMX jumped from No. 73 to No. 2, following the rapper’s tragic death. Ariana Grande’s Positions also re-entered the top-10, thanks to the release of its vinyl LP and cassette, which helped boost the album from No. 17 to No. 6.
Justin Bieber has been a superstar in the music world since he was 16. That means he missed out on a normal childhood. But in a recent profile with GQ, Bieber revealed that, early in his career, he did something in attempt to seem like a regular boy.
“I was working so much as this young kid that I got really sad, and I missed my friends and I missed normalcy,” he said. “And so me and my friend hid my passport. The record label is freaking out, saying, ‘You have to do The Today Show next week and you can’t find your passport.’ It takes a certain amount of days to get a new passport. But I was just going to do anything to be able to just be normal at that time.”
He eventually confessed to hiding the passport and later performed on the show, but the move left people worried about his well-being. Fortunately enough, the singer apparently convinced everyone that he was okay and returned to the grind of stardom.
The anecdote arrives after his sixth album, Justice, returned to No. 1 on the albums chart two weeks after it debuted there. This marks the first time in a decade that one of Bieber’s albums have spent multiple weeks at No. 1.
For years now, Vinyl Me, Please has been one of the premiere ways to get a regular flow of exclusive and lovingly presented vinyl rereleases of terrific albums. Now they are celebrating their 100th Essential Record Of The Month with “VMP 100,” a series of reissues of sought-after albums.
The albums that will be re-released as part of the series are Gorillaz’s Demon Days; Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix; Outkast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik; Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf; Queen’s A Night At The Opera; Outkast’s Stankonia; Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space; Saba’s Care For Me; Al Green’s Call Me; and Miles Davis & John Coltrane’s The Final Tour: Paris, March 21, 1960.
Vinyl Me, Please CEO Cameron Schaefer says, “Exploring music together is at the heart of VMP and is the driving force behind the last eight years of monthly releases. VMP Essentials is our flagship subscription, the OG, and is the most clear representation of the evolution and growth of our company and community. While it feels like we’ve reached the top of a mountain in a sense with VMP 100, the reality is there’s so much more to explore. It’s truly just the beginning.”
Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, who have albums re-issued through VMP but are not included in the “VMP 100” rereleases, offered a statement, saying, “Being selected by VMP and having them present our music and packaging to their collected followers is like having one of the world’s great art museums show your stuff; or should I say, it’s like a great art museum that you’ve been to that you love and admire, and then one day you go to the museum and they have YOUR art hanging in it. It’s like being welcomed and accepted into a sacred church where records are God.”
Nearly four years removed from her latest studio album You Make It Feel Like Christmas, Gwen Stefani is ramping up for a comeback with Let Me Reintroduce Myself. After teasing one of its new songs, “Slow Clap,” on Instagram, she released the video today, complete with a guest appearance from pop-rap princess Saweetie.
The new song flows in the same vein as Stefani’s previous tracks with Eve: It’s got a dancehall/reggae vibe, upbeat lyrics, and a call-and-response chorus that encourages listeners to sing along. Even the video, which finds the two stars taking over a high school gym for some pep rally-style shenanigans, may remind fans of the video for “Hollaback Girl.”
Although Gwen hasn’t released much new music over the past few years, she’s been a hot commodity as a collaborator, working with her fiance Blake Shelton on “Nobody But You” and with dance-pop star Dua Lipa on the remix version of her album Club Future Nostalgia.
Meanwhile, Saweetie has been an in-demand guest star as well, popping up on Lil Tjay’s recently released albumDestined 2 Win, and preparing to feature on Demi Lovato’s next album. Her fans also believe a collab with Nicki Minaj is in the works.
Watch Gwen Stefani’s “Slow Clap” video featuring Saweetie above.
Saweetie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
In June 2020, Blackpink debuted the video for “How You Like That,” which was then their first new song in a year, on YouTube. About 1.6 million people tuned in to watch the clip’s live premiere, which was a record for platform. Just a couple months later, that record was broken by BTS’ YouTube premiere of their “Dynamite” video, which is estimated to have had somewhere between 3 and 4 million people watching live. That is where the record stands today.
There’s one key factor those two videos have in common, both with each other and with every other video that has ever premiered on YouTube since the feature was introduced in June 2018: the countdown.
Every YouTube premiere is preceded by a colorful countdown that features vibrant, abstract animations and a clock ticking its way down to zero. Every countdown also includes the same song playing front and center, a two-minute instrumental track that stirs up anticipation with its nostalgic electronic synths, drum machine percussion, and orchestral string plucks. It comes across like a brighter cousin of Washed Out’s “Feel It All Around” (which is famous for the snippet of it that was used as the Portlandia theme song).
Commenters on YouTube re-uploads of the song agree, as they’ve shared a variety of feelings about the track. One person noted, “People in 2030/2040 will be like: This is soooo nostalgic!! Only real ones remember this.” Somebody else wrote, “This is honestly such a fitting song for YouTube Premiere countdowns, it just perfectly goes with your imagination running wild about what you’re about to see.” Another user painted a picture of the end of YouTube with “Space Walk” as the soundtrack: “I feel like this is something that would play in the final minutes of youtube before the site shuts down. Just this music and a few minutes to remember everything that has happened on this site over the decades before it all goes away.”
The song is beloved and has been heard millions (perhaps billions) of times at this point. Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You,” the most popular all-time song on Spotify, has nearly 3 billion spins, and it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the YouTube premiere song — across every YouTube premiere ever, music video or otherwise — has been heard more times than that.
The odd thing, though, is that the story behind the YouTube premiere song and the identity of the person (or people, or something else) who made it is mostly a mystery.
Some answers about the track can be easily found: A quick Google search for “YouTube premiere song” reveals that the tune is called “Space Walk” and it’s credited to an artist named Silent Partner. Beyond that, it’s not immediately obvious where the song comes from. One thing we can tell is that the song wasn’t specifically made to be used for YouTube countdowns: The oldest uploads of the song on YouTube date back to early 2015, which pre-dates the premiere feature by over three years.
YouTube themselves offers a free download of the song as part of the audio library in their YouTube Studio, a set of back-end tools for video creators to freely use. The song’s listing there notes it was added to the platform in November 2014 and describes its genre as “ambient” and its mood as “bright.” Downloading the MP3 file of the song from YouTube and viewing its ID3 tags — metadata used by programs like iTunes (rest in peace) to indicate the file’s title, artist, and so on — doesn’t reveal much more info, aside from the fact that the album is listed as “YouTube Audio Library.”
As far as publicly available information about “Space Walk,” this seems to be the end of the road. However, we can learn a bit more more about Silent Partner, but not much more.
Silent Partner seems to be a Kevin MacLeod-type of artist. For those not familiar, MacLeod has made thousands of songs available under Creative Commons licenses so creators can use them for various purposes, and indeed they have. His work has become popular because of that fact and because he works in a variety of genres. In his vast library, there is bound to be at least one song that is suitable for any sort of project. If you’ve spent time on the internet, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ve heard his work.
Similarly, Silent Partner has “about 1,383” songs available in the YouTube audio library (which seems like too specific a figure to preface with “about”) and they’re listed under genres spanning from electronic to hip-hop to classical. All of the songs were added to the platform between September 2013 and November 2014.
Outside of the YouTube audio library, Silent Partner has a mostly silent web presence. There’s a SoundCloud account that has a bit over 2,100 followers and a YouTube channel with around 500 subscribers, both of which have uploads of some songs from the YouTube audio library. It seems that is the entirety of Silent Partner’s online footprint.
The most recent upload on the YouTube channel, a song called “Get Back,” was posted on July 3, 2016. The latest post on SoundCloud is from May 15, 2018, although the two most recent uploads before that are from 2017 and 2015.
The closest thing we have to any biographical info about Silent Partner comes from the About section of their YouTube page, which reads simply and appropriately, “…silently here…” It’s not clear if Silent Partner is an individual person, a band, a collective of artists releasing music under one overarching label, or something else entirely.
The only other “statements” we seem to have from Silent Partner are their handful of SoundCloud comments, which are mostly brief responses to positive feedback about their music and telling inquiring creators they are allowed use Silent Partner songs in their projects.
What we can gather from SoundCloud, though, is that it seems Silent Partner has an interest in Buddhism and/or meditation: The four accounts they follow on SoundCloud are Khyentse Foundation (which provides “support for institutions and individuals engaged in all traditions of Buddhist practice and study“), Samye Institute (a “place where students from all corners of the globe explore how to work with their minds in order to realize the liberating wisdom and compassion of the Buddha”), Tergar Meditation Community (which “supports individuals, practice groups, and meditation communities around the world in learning to live with awareness, compassion, and wisdom”), and Study Buddhism (which uploads podcasts about Buddhism). Most of Silent Partner’s liked tracks on SoundCloud are also about similar topics.
All of these biographical discoveries come with the assumption that these accounts are actually affiliated with whoever is behind Silent Partner. All of the uploads on both SoundCloud and YouTube were posted after the songs were made available on the YouTube audio library, so it’s completely possible that somebody who has nothing to do with Silent Partner downloaded a bunch of their MP3s and re-shared them to pose as Silent Partner. It’s not like a potential imposter would have had an established Silent Partner web presence with which to compete.
Beyond YouTube and SoundCloud, the only other online resource that seems to have info about Silent Partner is IMDb. On the site, Silent Partner has a few dozen credits spread across TV shows, movies, and other projects from between 2007 and 2021. Meanwhile, fans of various other creative endeavors have taken to the comments of Silent Partner uploads to share where they came across their music, like one person who heard a Silent Partner song in a video from mega-popular YouTube personality Miranda Sings (aka Colleen Ballinger), or others who discovered Silent Partner through Thunderf00t, who has nearly a million YouTube subscribers.
Despite a greatly appreciated effort, a YouTube representative was unable to provide Uproxx with more information about Silent Partner or how “Space Walk” was chosen as the YouTube premiere song. SoundCloud direct messages sent to Silent Partner by Uproxx have also gone unanswered. Last year, an attempt by a BuzzFeed journalist to get in touch with Silent Partner via the comments section of a SoundCloud upload was also not fruitful. It’s not just us who wants to know more about Silent Partner but can’t get a hold of them.
Somebody out there made this music, but for some reason, they’ve opted to not come forward and claim their deserved praise. Maybe anonymously enjoying the success of “Space Walk” is enough for them. Maybe they’re somehow unaware of the impact their compositions have had. Maybe Silent Partner is no longer with us.
So, who or what is Silent Partner? That question has two answers. One is that Silent Partner is the artist behind “Space Walk,” one of the most-heard pieces of music of the past few years. The other is that we don’t know who they are and perhaps never will, making the answer to this question one of the premier unsolved musical mysteries of our time.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
There appears to be hope on the horizon in terms of the ongoing pandemic, as more and more people are getting COVID-19 vaccines by the day. While the world is gradually opening back up, events that would draw large crowds are still mostly not happening quite yet. It may seem surprising, then, that Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas is going on with its 2021 event. Furthermore, it’s happening surprisingly soon, as the festival is set for May 21 to 23.
Pasquale Rotella — the founder and CEO of Insomniac Events, the company behind EDC — shared the news last night, noting that organizers “are moving forward as planned & will be working closely with local & state officials to make the show as safe as possible” and that “more details on safety protocols & the lineup will be shared soon.” He offered no indication that the event — which usually draws about 125,000 attendees per day, as Billboard notes — will be hosted in a reduced capacity, writing, “You can expect the full EDC experience with no details spared, from the festival grounds to the music, stages, art, performers, artists & fireworks!”
This news arrived shortly after Dr. Anthony Fauci said the number of new COVID-19 cases in the US is currently at a “disturbingly high level” and noted that the country could experience a surge in new cases. He concluded, “Hang in there a bit longer. Now is not the time, as I’ve said so many times, to declare victory prematurely.”
Check out Rotella’s post below.
“Electric Daisy Carnival is finally on the horizon. There were times during the pandemic when many of us lost hope. We were challenged to learn & listen to our hearts & trust that the storm would eventually pass, making way for a bright & sunny future for those in our community & around the world.
With the world being shutdown for over a year, I’m happy to announce we’re on our way to being able to celebrate in person. Book your flights, hotels & shuttles — EDC Las Vegas is on for May 21+22+23!
We are moving forward as planned & will be working closely with local & state officials to make the show as safe as possible. You can expect the full EDC experience with no details spared, from the festival grounds to the music, stages, art, performers, artists & fireworks! I look forward to seeing all your beautiful faces & feeling your incredible energy, and I couldn’t be more excited.
More details on safety protocols & the lineup will be shared soon. If you’re unable to attend in May 2021, no worries, but you’ll be missed. You can go to the link in my bio to transfer your ticket to 2022.
We’re ready to spread our wings & embrace our community who we miss so much. We know there may be challenges in front of us, which we will accept & do our best to overcome. We’ve been apart for a long time & I can’t wait to join you, united, Under the Electric Sky.”
Doja Cat’s popularity and stardom has increased over the past year and some change thanks to the massive success that was rooted in her sophomore album, Hot Pink. The project delivered successful records that included “Say So” and “Streets” and helped the full-length effort endure as run that lasted almost two years. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and it seems like Doja ready to move on to the next chapter in her career, with her upcoming third album, Planet Her, which she previously confirmed was complete. The campaign for the upcoming project now begins with “Kiss Me More” collaboration with SZA.
The new song is definitely one that will fit onto the soundtrack for the impending summer. Packed by bubbly production and high-spirited verses from Doja and SZA, the song finds the ladies flaunting their physical attributes to the men that surround them. It also arrived with a music video that features an astronaut who lands on foreign all to discover Doja Cat and SZA as the majestic beauties that seem to call that area home.
The song should spark what would be an impressive run towards the release of Planet Her, which was confirmed for a summer 2021 arrival in a press release. During a sit down with Fat Joe last September, Doja shared an update on album. “It’s all ready. I hate that I’m holding onto it right now,” she said. “I see everybody’s like, ‘Put it out’ … You have to plan things accordingly and there’s a lot going on.” She also shared a list of potential guest features from included The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, French Montana, Megan Thee Stallion, ASAP Ferg, Saweetie, and Young Thug.
Hit play on the fun new single in the video above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
