HOT: Tweet Heat of the Week
After meeting Barack Obama by chance while at the same Florida airport, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry probably thought nothing of having a photo of the meeting posted on the band’s Twitter account. But Aerosmith’s drummer, Joey Kramer, was pissed, tweeting that the POTUS post (which wasn’t at all political) was “not representative of Aerosmith.” What is representative of Aersosmith? Scarves, bad music, stuff like that. (The photo has since been removed, but the members posted it on their personal accounts.)
Meanwhile, Smash Mouth got pwned by whoever was running the account for the Oakland A’s recently at 2 a.m. After Smash Mouth tweeted something critical of the A’s to a baseball writer, the team’s late-night Twitter manager cut the band down hard, at one point tweeting, “Up late desperately tweeting for relevancy? Hey now, that's not very All-Star of you.” Sadly, the A's apologized and deleted the hilarious tweets.
WARM: More “Funk” Trouble
Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ hit “Uptown Funk” might be fun, but it’s far from original — if you used it at karaoke night and sang certain Prince, The Time or The Gap Band songs over top of it, no one would even notice. Like a few other artists, Minneapolis Electro Funk band Collage is calling out the rip-off, but unlike most others, the group is taking its claim to court, saying “Funk” is an “obvious” copy of its 1983 single “Young Girls.” Ronson's and Mars’ own words may have encouraged the suit — the complaint points out that the pair made public comments about how “Uptown Funk” was influenced by early ’80s Electro Funk, specifically from Minneapolis.
COLD: Does Basketball Matter?
The Philadelphia 76ers organization made a last-minute decision to not allow R&B singer Sevyn Streeter to sing the National Anthem before a basketball game because the words “We Matter” were on her shirt. (Context: Streeter is black; many 76ers fans are white; some white people get rage boners when they hear the phrase “Black Lives Matter.) When backlash ensued (including from some of the team’s players), the Sixers apologized and invited Streeter to perform the anthem before another game. She should do it and take a knee while singing.
