Travis Scott still has the number one album in the country:
Travis Scott’s Astroworld notches a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, as the set earned 205,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Aug. 16 (down 62 percent), according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, a little over 78,000 were from traditional album sales (down 71 percent).
Jackie MacMullan is doing a five part series on mental health in the NBA for ESPN:
Yet there remain many obstacles to confront, chief among them the stigma attached to mental health that prompts many players to suffer in silence. There’s another critical sticking point: The union insists that mental health treatment be confidential, but some NBA owners, who in some cases are paying their players hundreds of millions of dollars, want access to the files of their “investments.”
Rebecca Sun, writing at The Hollywood Reporter:
To director Jon M. Chu, the only tune that could fit the bill was Coldplay’s 2000 breakthrough single “Yellow.” Warner Bros. was concerned that the song’s title was problematic (the word has been used as an ethnic slur against Asians), but that’s exactly why Chu wanted it. “We’re going to own that term,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in an outtake from THR’s cover story. “If we’re going to be called yellow, we’re going to make it beautiful.”
Today, EuroTrip – directed by Jeff Schaffer (currently a director and producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm), Alec Berg (executive producer on Silicon Valley), and David Mandel (showrunner of Veep); only Schaffer was allowed a full directing credit – is considered a cult classic, while Road Trip has largely been forgotten. And a huge reason for this is that EuroTrip had a secret weapon that even the filmmaker didn’t quite know they had at the time – a catchy song of betrayal that is played throughout the film called “Scotty Doesn’t Know.”
HBO has officially picked up Watchmen:
Watchmen on HBO will not adapt the comic books of the same name. The network said that, “‘Watchmen’ embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel while attempting to break new ground of its own.”
“Some of the characters will be unknown,” Lindelof explained. “New faces. New masks to cover them. We also intend to revisit the past century of Costumed Adventuring through a surprising yet familiar set of eyes…and it is here we will be taking our greatest risks.”
Shawn Harris and Tim de Vil have started a podcast/record club where they make a song on the podcast and then send flexi-discs/lyric books of the songs out to subscribers. You can find out more information on their website.
Shawn Harris and Tim de Vil take turns producing one-another’s songs on the PRC podcast, in front of your very eyes, or ears actually, and then they press the song onto these thin, collectable plastic records called Flexi-Discs, and deliver them to your doorstep.
John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:
My strong preference for Tweetbot, on both iOS and Mac, is simple: I prefer its user interface.
Tweetbot presents tweets and replies/mentions in a way that fits my mental model of what Twitter is. Tweetbot makes sense to me — in large part simply because it presents tweets in chronological order. Twitter’s iOS app does none of these things for me. I truly find it confusing. And Twitter no longer even fucking has a first-party native app for the Mac. I don’t want to use a website for Twitter. I want an app.
I think Twitter should reverse course on this whole thing.
I agree with Gruber on this entire thing. Now that Tweetbot can no longer stream tweets, but instead will show them after a one or two minute delay, the app is almost worthless while watching sports. Beside just getting pissed off at the news each day, that’s one of the main reasons I loved Twitter. I’ve never seen a service constantly shoot itself in the foot and alienate its most loyal users as much as Twitter has in the past year.
In partnership with Berklee College of Music and Electric Lady Studios, Spotify’s EQL Studio Residency will help open the door for emerging female producers and engineers while shining a light on the great work already being done by women in the music industry.
Starting in October, the program will offer three residencies in three different cities: New York, Nashville, and London. During these paid six-month residencies, one participant in each city will work hands-on in our studios and gain access to invaluable networking and mentoring opportunities to further her career.
Aretha Franklin has passed away. She was 76.
Aretha Franklin, universally acclaimed as the “Queen of Soul” and one of America’s greatest singers in any style, died on Thursday at her home in Detroit. She was 76.
The cause was advanced pancreatic cancer, her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn, said.
Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio and Blink-182 talked with Kerrang:
I’ve been around really, really famous people – legitimately where you walk down the street and people start screaming and stuff – and that doesn’t look like any fun to me. A lot more people know who I am, but I feel like fame isn’t a real thing. It’s an idea of something. I think you can chase fame and you can inflate it or you can shy away from it. I think it’s a lot easier for men, because they make women sex symbols when somebody becomes really famous. But people are always pretty nice to me and I’m friends with the same people I was before. It’s all about how you treat it. I think the one thing that blink does that Alkaline Trio didn’t is… my parents have always been very supportive, but now that I play in blink, all of my parents’ friends are so jazzed that it makes my folks excited. From the outside looking in, it is a huge new step – it’s definitely a point in my life that will always stand out. It’s been fucking wild. But I haven’t really let fame into my little weird world.
I’ve moved our Apple News feed away from RSS and over to the official Apple News format. This means it should show up more frequently if you subscribe to our channel and allows me a few more formatting options. So, if you use Apple News, feel free to follow us.
Andy Cush, writing at Spin:
Martina believes that artists can help survivors by publicly supporting their claims, especially those in tight-knit communities such as the emo and goth scenes, and those who have collaborated with figures like Control in the past. “Silence is very, very powerful. When someone they’ve worked with and are promoting to their followers turns out to be an abuser, they have a responsibility to warn the young women who follow them and not stay silent,” she said.
Panic! at the Disco will be performing at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The MTV Video Music Awards are hitting New York City a week from today (Aug. 20), and they’re not done announcing talent for the Radio City Music Hall show. Panic! at the Disco are the latest confirmed performers, as Brendon Urie and company will be on hand for a rendition of their current single, “High Hopes.”
Travis Scott has dethroned Drake as the number one album in the country this week:
The set — which was released Aug. 3 via Cactus Jack/Grand Hustle/Epic Records — earned 537,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Aug. 9, according to Nielsen Music. Of that total, 270,000 were driven by traditional album sales — the second-biggest sales week of 2018.
James Shotwell sat down to talk with Anthony Green over at Substream Magazine:
He continues, “It was through trying to realize that similarity that I learned I was bipolar. And it was during the creation of that song when I was like, this song is about being okay with the fact that you’re paranoid. You know what I mean? Yeah, you’re paranoid, it’s okay, you have to fucking trust that it’s okay that you’re feeling this way because it all goes away. Even the good stuff. And so, it was intended to be a love song about a person and a romantic feeling, and it just ended up being almost a love song about being bipolar and that it’s okay. I wanted to call the record Bipolar Love Songs, but I’m thrilled I didn’t because it came out on the same day as that Kanye record where he makes a big deal out of it.”