Friday Roundup (of News & Thoughts & Such) - June 3rd Edition

It’s Friday (actually Tuesday morning at the time I’m starting this) and you know what that means! It’s time for the Friday Roundup (of News and Thoughts and such)! With me, your host and very best friend, Brandon L. Slone, Esq. 

So, I asked myself over the weekend, “Brandon, what if instead of panic-writing this column on Thursday night, you actually keep up with the stories throughout the week and update accordingly?” So, let’s give that a try.

1. Harry Styles pledges $1 million to gun violence nonprofit.

2. Snoop Dogg pulls out of international dates: 

Crypto-dickhead and enemy of the blog Snoop Dogg announced that he would be canceling all scheduled non-US dates of his forthcoming tour due to “unforeseen scheduling conflicts.” Presumably, any fans who have already purchased tickets will receive an 8-bit jpeg of Tupac as a make-good. As a reminder, NFT = Nah, Fuck That. I put on sunglasses as I typed that. I feel pretty cool. 

Editor's note: I am now the proud owner of Snoop's NFT collection! It cost me nothing! And you can own them too, just right click the above image and click "Save".

3. Bo Burnham’s Inside gets outtakes: 

Burnham released over one hour of new material and songs from the comedy special/album, which made two thirds of channel.WAV’s year-end lists last year (I think it was my number 1; “That Funny Feeling” probably would have been my number 1 song as well if we ranked those). A lot of what is on display here is alternate versions of songs from the final cut, as well as… I feel gross calling anything on this a “blooper” but I guess that’s the word for it? The main event, though, are several entirely new songs. The new material is, again, extremely strong and relatable to how a lot of us felt during what was undoubtedly one of the darkest time periods any of us will live through. You can watch here.

4. This weird TikTok/record labels/artists drama: 

At this point, this honestly deserves its own article but channel.WAV union guidelines say I don’t have to write more than one article a week. 

ANYWAY, in our “How do you do, fellow kids?” segment of the week, record labels are continuing to try and fail to adapt to the internet era. The gist of it is that the labels are essentially being accused of holding new songs hostage unless they go viral on TikTok. The underlying issues here, obviously, being twofold: 1). The comically lopsided power structure between artists and executives in the industry; and 2). The obsessive need to maximize monetization of art (see also, every celebrity’s infatuation with blatant grifts like NFTs.)

We are not talking about nobodies or up and comers here. In recent days, Halsey, Florence Welch, and Post Malone have all made similar claims of excessive pressure to up their social media presence in order for desperately out of touch marketing jackoffs try to come up with a wacky dance or trend to meme their art into oblivion, thus guaranteeing ubiquity and maximum stream dollars for the label (of which the artists will see fractions of fractions of cents). The thing about it, of course, is that it’s really hard to manufacture virality and focus grouping everything into oblivion discredits all parties involved. Think about every “trend” ever. Think about the moment that we all realize that trend is over and it’s time to move on to the next thing: when “brands” try to hop on the bandwagon. I regret to inform you, dear companies, that you are not cool. You are not “hip with the kids” and you never will be.

At the time of this writing, the most recent development is the furious backpedaling by the PR wizzes at Capitol Records who said, re: Halsey, “We love you and are here to support you (Brandon’s note: coming on a little strong, methinks). We are committing to a release of “So Good” on June 9th, 2022.” The label went on to say, “We are an artist first company that encourages open dialogue. We have nothing but a desire to help each one of our artist succeed, and hope that we can continue to have these critical conversations.”

We now get to the “and thoughts and such” of the Friday Roundup, because this type of shit just makes me so genuinely angry. What is the “dialogue” here? What is this “critical conversation” that Capitol Records thinks that it is furthering here? Just say “Hey, we were doing something pretty fucked up. Sorry, won’t happen again” and move on with your life. The obsessive need to spin every single thing and to try to save face when there is no face left to save is just so genuinely tiring. Congratulations to Halsey for actually scoring a victory in this scenario, and let us be aware that for every Halsey who can pull this off, there are 300 others getting royally fucked whose names we will never know.

5. There’s a Sex Pistols docuseries on FX: 

Danny Boyle directed. I’ll probably watch and review. Should be somewhat interesting. God, I got kind of sanctimonious on that last entry, didn’t I? I hope people are still reading (if they ever started). Anyway, The Sex Pistols would have been enormous in the TikTok era. Those kids were all about manufactured fake controversy. Honestly. 

Do y’all remember when John Lydon was on The Masked Singer? Wasn’t that wild? And have any of you seen Sid and Nancy? I tried to watch it once but I thought it was a bit slow and boring. But I was also like 15. Maybe I would like it now? Should I try it again? Keep in mind that age 15 was probably the height of my punk rock enjoyment, so if I didn’t like it then maybe I never will. There was a Simpsons parody one time too. Where Lisa and Nelson got addicted to chocolate. Chocolate being a substitute for heroin in this scenario. Also Nelson didn’t (allegedly) stab her to death. Anyway, take a listen to the Ramones classic “Love Kills” about the couple. Oh, and this documentary is available on Hulu too, I guess.

6. Some clickbait about One Direction: 

So Liam Payne says on Logan Paul’s podcast that he and Louis Tomlinson “hated” each other while they were in One Direction! But they love each other now. Also, he said he doesn’t like Zayn! But he will “always, always be on his side!” The internet is pissed!

And I’m pissed too! Not because of any inter-One-Directional conflict and smack talk, but because way too much focus is being put on the comments about Zayn and Louis, as opposed to the fact that Liam Payne is apparently at like a Donald Trump level of delusional.

Like, did you know that Liam apparently fancies himself a bit of a badass, stating that “... it was well known within the band that I don’t like taking shit.” He also suggested that he would follow in the footsteps of the Paul brothers to enter the celebrity boxing arena. AND he told a story of a physical confrontation with an unnamed bandmate (We’ll just say it was Niall because he’s the only one I haven’t mentioned in this column yet today), wherein Liam was thrown “up a wall,” only to tell his assailant, “If you don’t remove those hands there’s a high likelihood you’ll never use them again.” He then presumably put on his sunglasses and rode off on his motorcycle to the wild screech of the greatest electric guitar solo ever recorded (not to be confused with The Best Song Ever).

Finally, he claimed that his debut single, “Strip That Down,” hit a billion streams and “outsold everybody within the band.” At press time, the song is sitting just south of 900 million streams on Spotify which, admittedly, is more streams than anything on my album. It is also currently ranked as the seventh most streamed song by a former One Direction member. Which is kind of like being the most streamed, except there’s six other songs with more streams. Rigged election and all that jazz.

Update: Since I wrote this this morning, Liam has issued a statement walking back his comments on Zayn to an extent, tweeting, “Guys - I wouldn’t normally comment on this stuff but when its [sic] your family it’s hard to let it slide. They mentioned a specific incident involving Zayn which I responded to - but listening back maybe I didn’t articulate myself as well as I could have… I was saying that there will always be things we disagree on but that I will always, always be on his side. Zayn is my brother and I will stand by him forever.” He has not, as of yet, acknowledged any of the other totally bonkers shit that came out of his face.

I have to say, I have more fun writing this when I put more time into it.

What’s channel.WAV listening to this week?

Ritter: The titular track off of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You was sampled for Kendrick’s “The Heart pt. 5” and I just hope everyone knows how fucking great this whole album is.

Slone: According to Spotify, my most streamed song in 2021 was Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown.” I don’t really think that was the song I listened to most last year at all, but I can certainly see how I would get sucked into that trap. 

Botts: I’m turning in this blurb so Brandon doesn’t slap me. Coincidentally, this song slaps. So play it once to metaphorically slap Brandon? 

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Dane recently announced his plan to bulldoze the local community center to build overpriced condos! Leave suggestions in the comments as to what kind of wacky competition will decide the fate of our fair community center. If enough plucky upstarts leave comments, maybe I’ll push him into a swimming pool or something like the 1980s movie villain he’s always been. 

As an aside, do any of you have a swimming pool? If so, just know that I’ve always really liked you a whole lot and I think we should be better friends :)

- Slone