HOT: R.E.M.’s Trump Takedown
After Donald Trump retweeted a video that a right-leaning Twitter user made featuring a montage of Democratic members of Congress looking sullen and dejected during the State of the Union soundtracked by R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts,” reps for the notoriously liberal AltRock band filed a copyright complaint to have it removed. Though it likely qualified as “fair use,” something R.E.M.’s Mike Mills seemed to accept and come to terms with soon after the flare-up, the clip was quickly removed by Twitter. The original creator soon replaced it with a version featuring the nauseating Lee Greenwood song “God Bless the U.S.A.,” which made it spectacularly unfunny. That, of course, didn’t stop POTUS from resending the reworked clip back out to his 58 million followers almost immediately.
WARM: Experimental Press Release?
Press releases for new music aren’t designed to be flashy, so it’s rare for one to go viral. But that’s just what happened to a release for a new Meghan Trainor EP. With a casual, slang-ridden tone resembling a tween’s Tumblr post, social media users were endlessly amused by lines like “Unless your phone’s been broken for a hot minute, you know that Meghan just got married to the ginger from Spy Kids” and musings about how Valentine’s Day is the time for “smashing bae’s junk to smithereens.” Apparently, the comedic factor was intentional — after it went viral, a writer for CBS’s The Late Late Show, Caroline Goldfarb, took credit for crafting what she called her “experimental press release.”
COLD: Bryan > Ryan
There’s now an even easier way to tell the difference between Bryan Adams and Ryan Adams. Ryan is the one recently outed in a New York Times story for alleged manipulative and psychologically abusive behavior by several women, including singer/songwriter Phoebe Bridgers and his ex-wife Mandy Moore. Ryan (also known for once throwing a tantrum after someone yelled out a request for “Summer of ’69,” a Bryan Adams song, at his concert, though he came around from his hardline stance) is reportedly being investigated by the FBI over an allegation in the story from a woman who said she had an online relationship with the singer that began when she was just 14 and included sexually-charged communications. Ryan’s music has also been dropped by several radio stations, he’s lost sponsorships and at least one of the three albums he planned to release this year has reportedly been put on hold by his label.
This article appears in Feb 13-20, 2019.