Arts

Look, I can relate to President Trump’s feelings about “Saturday Night Live.” I too have wished that someone would “look into” the show’s content. The whole time Adam Sandler was playing Opera Man, for instance. How could this be allowed! American presidents, however, have generally recognized that being mocked is part of the job — a mark of status, even. That’s one more norm Mr. Trump has dispensed with. After Alec Baldwin opened this week’s show with a sendup of his rambling national-emergency declaration on Friday, the president responded bright and early Sunday morning on Twitter: Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019 It turns out “a man … [Read more...] about A Man You Can Bait with a Skit

Less than six months after a No. 1 album, the pop singer Ariana Grande is back with an even bigger smash: “Thank U, Next” (Republic) tops the Billboard chart this week with 307 million song streams and 116,000 in sales for a total of 360,000 album equivalent units, according to Nielsen Music. Grande’s fourth career No. 1 album comes during a prolific, artistically redefining period for the singer, whose last release, “Sweetener,” debuted atop the chart in late August with 231,000 units sold. Since then, Grande has used the fuel of her tabloid moments for music, earning her first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 (“Thank U, Next”) and then another with “7 Rings” last month. This week, the singer is attempting to top the Hot 100 for a third time with the song “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored.” Grande’s craftily dedicated fans even instituted a #Boycott7Rings campaign in the hopes of getting … [Read more...] about Ariana Grande Has Another, Even Bigger No. 1 Album With ‘Thank U, Next’

One morning earlier this month, Desus Nice and the Kid Mero were in the Jam Room of Milk Studios in Chelsea, recording a new episode of their “Bodega Boys” podcast and riffing on everything that crossed their minds. They recapped the State of the Union address; compared God’s creation of the platypus to their own efforts at making nachos while high; and wondered whether waterboarding still takes place at C.I.A. black sites during government shutdowns. Imagining alternate, low-cost forms of torture, Desus said, “Strap you to a chair and make you watch ‘Young Sheldon,’” while Mero pretended to scream. Then, affecting a tone of exaggerated seriousness, Desus added, “Actually, uh, ‘Young Sheldon’ comes on CBS and is a wonderful show. Be sure to check it out, it’s part of the, uh, Showtime family.” After several years of online infamy and grass-roots success, Desus (the stage name of Daniel Baker) and the Kid Mero … [Read more...] about Desus and Mero Are Cool With ‘Young Sheldon’

If you ask Kacey Musgraves — the country singer-songwriter who won four Grammy Awards last Sunday, including album of the year — how her week has been, you’ll get a pretty good idea of her default manner. “Mehhh,” she said playfully over the phone Friday evening, after a few days of letting it all sink in. “I’ve had better.” Her tongue-in-cheek deflection spoke to the shock that a progressive, psychedelic-drug-using Nashville misfit from Texas could have beaten Cardi B, Drake and Kendrick Lamar for what remains the highest annual honor in music. [See how Kacey Musgraves made the “Golden Hour” song “Slow Burn.”] “Golden Hour,” Musgraves’s third major label album, was critically beloved, but had barely been embraced by country radio — still the genre’s mainstream driver — and was far from a smash. Ahead of the Grammys, the album had totaled about 310,000 in sales, compared to many … [Read more...] about Kacey Musgraves on Celebrating Her Grammys With Mick Jagger and a Chicken Sandwich

For more than two decades, Ryan Adams has been a particular kind of indie-rock tastemaker. Emerging from the alt-country scene of the mid 1990s, he became a prolific and respected singer-songwriter in the 2000s. And he used his growing platform as a tool to be a vocal booster of female talent. Behind that public front, however, was a far darker truth, a recent investigation by The New York Times revealed. According to several women, Adams used the promise of professional help as a lure for sex and emotionally abusive romantic relationships. In one case, he leveraged the adoration of an underage fan and aspiring musician into sexually explicit communications. Adams denies the claims. The F.B.I. is now investigating Adams’s interactions with the underage fan, and since the publication of the article, the release plan for his next album, the first of three LPs planned for this year, has been put on hold. On this week’s Popcast, the two reporters on the Ryan Adams story: Joe … [Read more...] about Behind the Ryan Adams Investigation