Justin Bieber is doubling down on failure.
“Swag II” is coming tonight, a second volume of an album that didn’t sell well.
Indeed, Vol. 1 hasn’t hit 300,000 units. It’s at number 96 on iTunes. Like the 1st “Swag,” this one has no marketing or promotion.
Let the games begin!
The “Hamilton” 10th anniversary marketing campaign rolls on.
Last night, Lin Manuel Miranda and a lot of his original Broadway cast came to Shakespeare in the Park’s Delacorte Theater for a huge screen showing of the filmed version of the famed musical.
The audience, composed of family, friends, and ardent fans, sang along like they were at a Taylor Swift concert.
On Friday, Disney — which already shows this version on Disney Plus — is putting it into theaters. Is that necessary at this point?
The answer, after seeing it in this form, is a resounding Yes. And much as I thought, Oy, Hamilton again? You forget. Lin Manuel Miranda’s work is a tour de force. There’s nothing quite like it. Maybe it’s a cliche to say it’s a work of genius, but go back and take a second or third look. It’s amazing.
LMM took Ron Chernow’s huge biography of Alexander Hamilton and worked on an adaptation for six years before showing it or playing it for anyone. Then he called director Thomas Kail and all the other artisans he needed, telling them he’d written a musical about Alexander Hamilton.
All of them rolled their eyes simultaneously.
You can still see the celebrated result on Broadway, where the show is selling out into its 11th year. And you can find it on Disney Plus. But the effect of being in a real movie theater is sensational. I remember opening night at the Public Theater, when no one knew what we were going to see. The show blasted off like a rocket and never stopped.
The same is true seeing it on a big screen, with no interruptions from your phone or other digressions. LMM structured Hamilton’s rise to power under George Washington, his frenemy like relationship with Aaron Burr, and his romantic life with Schuyler Sisters like spinning tops. Kail responded by staging the show that way. It never lets up. Neither does the humor or the pathos.
LMM introduced the movie from the stage. In the audience was not only Chernow, and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler but also Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Renee Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson, and the effervescent Daveed Diggs. They are all Broadway megastars now. (Also in attendance was Kail’s wife, actress Michelle Williams, with bff Busy Phillips.)
The “Hamilton” experience — seeing it with 1800 people — can’t be duplicated. It’s sort of like listening to the Beatles. How did this happen? There are so many moving parts, subplots, and loads of historical information that LMM distilled into more than a dozen very catchy songs, it kind of boggles the mind.
Some highlights last night: Christopher Jackson, singing George Washington’s exit song, is more moving than I remembered. The audience was mesmerized by him, by the Soo and Goldsberry as the Schuyler Sisters. The latter has showier material that she really wows with while the former turns out to be the heart of the story. And of course everyone loves Jonathan Groff as King George (he couldn’t be there as “Just in Time” is a hit on Broadway).
“Hamilton” in movie theaters is a treat. It won’t last long. Highly recommended.
Remember all the times Kelly Clarkson said she might leave her show?
Well, after a whole year of threats and kvetching, Kelly is back on September 29th.
Did you really think she’d give it all up?
Maybe after a tough summer of performing concerts, Kelly realized that the talk show is money in the bank, a walk in the park.
Her Las Vegas shows were not selling out when she suddenly to abandon them. Her ex-husband, Brendan Blackstock, suddenly died of cancer at 48. He was a bad guy but he was the father of her children, so respect had to be paid.
Kelly also managed to release one single so far this year. “Where Have You Been?” was not a top 40 hit and sold just 42,000 copies via streaming. There’s not been an album. I don’t understand why Atlantic doesn’t just package up her “Kellyoke” songs from her TV show and release them. Should be a no brainer.
Anyway, let’s hope contract negotiations are over for now, and there will be no more public complaining. Enough already!
Woof!
Sabrina Carpenter is heading for a huge number 1 debut on Friday.
Her “Man’s Best Friend” is predicted to sell 350,000 copies including physical sales (205,000) and streaming.
The title track is already a hit and a few others, like “Tears,” are burning up the radio.
“Man’s Best Friend” was the last release to make Grammy eligibility last Friday.
If I were a Carpenter, I’d be waiting for many Grammy nominations this fall, certainly Album of the Year.
Sabrina is the biggest story of the week in pop.
Not so much is indie artist Sombr, who I expected to see his debut album take off like a rocket.
Sombr, aka Sean Boose, has had big indie singles all summer with “Undressed” and “Back to Being Friends.” But the album, “I Barely Know Her,” has been a bit of a fizzle with just 24,000 copies predicted, all of them via streaming. The album had no follow up single, and all Sombr’s fans already owned or had streamed the hits.
And don’t stop thinking about yesterday: Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” is selling 23,000 copies this week and coming in at number 20. It’s 90% from streaming, but still…I was in swaddling clothes when that album was released!
More news from “Saturday Night Live”:
Redhead Ben Marshall — who looks like he could be Conan O’Brien’s kid — from Please Don’t Destroy is joining the cast. No more videos from PDD. Martin Herlihy is going to be a writer on the show.
John Higgins — whose dad, Steve, is the head poobah at the Tonight Show and a big producer on “SNL” — is leaving to act and write elsewhere.
It’s too bad because we love the trio and they were a lot of fun.
See below the other newbies. Tommy Brennan had an audition of sorts on the Tonight Show back in June.
Nothing explains why Heidi Gardner is leaving, however. Or Michael Longfellow.
No more changes, at least for today.
Welcome to the cast!
Tommy Brennan
Jeremy Culhane
Ben Marshall
Kam Patterson
Veronika Slowikowska pic.twitter.com/hXtrUgwEgx— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) September 2, 2025
UPDATED 9/4 All confirmed today. Thank you.
As you may have heard, “Deliver Me from Nowhere” had quite a launch at the Telluride Film Festival.
James Mangold’s film about how Bruce Springsteen created his acclaimed “Nebraska” album is going to be a big hit. Jeremy Allen White plays Bruce, and Jeremy Strong is his manager, Jon Landau. Reviews are off the charts.
The movie will play the New York Film Festival at the end of this month, and open at the end of October.
So what else is coming? I’m hearing an avalanche of Springsteen music will be available. There are already reports that at the end of the movie there’s a full band version of “Atlantic City,” which is a surprise and an omen.
Allegedly a box set of “Nebraska” will drop in late October containing a full “electric” album — you see, the original “Nebraska” was solo. The box set should also include a remastered version of the original album, and a CD of a live performance that apparently took place on April 22nd of this year at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey.
What remains would be a soundtrack of some kind to the movie with Jeremy Allen White singing the songs. That’s exactly what Columbia Records did last year for the Bob Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown.” We got to hear Timothee Chalamet singing all those Dylan songs, so well.
All that’s left is a live concert of Chalamet and White performing together. Then the multiverse will collapse!
Howard Stern has made a change of plans.
He was supposed to address his fans and the world at large today on Sirius XM.
The subject, much teased, is his Sirius XM contract and what his plans are for the future.
The announcement was supposed to come today after a summer long build up of speculation.
But earlier this morning he announced a change to September 8th.
Why the delay? Maybe just to play out the drama for a few more days. Or maybe the contract hasn’t been ironed out completely. Stern’s audience on Sirius has dropped significantly, but he’s still the mascot of the satellite radio company. There have been rumors all summer that Sirius wants to cut his enormous $100 million a year contract.
So another 6 days…
Howard Stern will now speak Monday, September 8. pic.twitter.com/HfS6BZC9ah
— Stern Show (@sternshow) September 2, 2025
Where the heck is “Spinal Tap 2”?
The Rob Reiner directed sequel to his beloved 1984 mockumentary opens on September 12th (really the night before).
There’s a premiere set for September 9th in Los Angeles, and an IMAX premiere the next day, but otherwise there’s no buzz around this movie at all. The ticket advance sale is minimum at best to date.
“Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues” reunites Reiner with Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and even Fran Drescher. Paul McCartney and Elton John appear in it as real rock stars.
But so far there are no scheduled press screenings. Most movie press is now consumed by film festivals in Venice, Telluride, and Toronto. No one I’ve spoken to has heard a word about “Spinal Tap 2,” which is coming from the tragically beleaguered Bleecker Street Films.
In April, Bleecker Street lost its much loved founder, Andrew Karpen, only 59, to rare brain cancer. You can’t blame them for not being organized. But business goes on, and no one knows what’s happening.
Like a lot of fans of the original “This is Spinal Tap,” I was really hoping for something outrageously funny after 41 years. But all we have to go on is the trailer, released in July, and no other press since then. We know more about a dozen movies at least that open well after September 12th. Very strange, indeed.
Here are the trailer, and before that, a clip they released with Elton John that seems to have gone nowhere.
The New Hampshire State Police are offering two different versions of what happened with disbarred attorney and former mayor Rudy Giuliani’s accident on Saturday night.
A press release from them, oddly, contains both accounts.
In the first one, sent out August 31st, Rudy and his driver were hit by another car. But the woman who supposedly waved them down prior to that — she was across the highway, and local police were already answering her 911 call.
In the second version, issued today, Rudy and his driver were flagged down by the woman, helped her, called 911, then left. It was only afterwards that they were rear ended by another car.
In the refreshed account, Giuliani and his aide. Theodore Goodman, come off as heroes. In the original version, their accident was a separate event. They were not part of the 911 call.
A spokesman emailed me: “They are the same scenario. The crash occurred while Troopers were still at the scene of the initial incident, which Giuliani and his driver had just departed from minutes earlier.”
You decide: I’ll update accordingly
August 31:
This was predicted.
I wrote about on June 29th.
The new editor of Vogue is Chloe Malle, daughter of beloved, award winning actress Candice Bergen and the late, great French filmmaker Louis Malle.
(At least we know now that Melania Trump will never be on the cover.)
Malle’s grandfather, whom she never knew, was ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Her “uncle” was famed puppet Charlie McCarthy.
But Chloe is no dummy. She’s 39 and has worked hard to rise among the ranks at Vogue. In June she oversaw coverage of the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in Venice, a spectacle that Malle wrestled to the ground.
Puck News broke the story this afternoon. They were so excited about it, Puck — a paywall newsletter — let the Drudge Report link to their story for free.
Malle should be the opposite of the deadly cold, soulless Anna Wintour. (We hope.) She comes from warm, loving parents. If she turns out to be a junior Miranda Priestly, the Wintour character from “The Devil Wears Prada,” we’ll be surprised.
Will Wintour really let her make decisions and run the magazine? The rumor is that Wintour — who put a factotum in charge of Vanity Fair — will have final editorial say about everything. But Malle won’t stand for that for very long. It’s not possible.
To reduce this: the real life daughter of ground breaking fake journalist “Murphy Brown” is now going to run the most famous fashion magazine. It’s spot fucking on.
PS Also to be noted: Bergen played Carrie Bradshaw’s editor at Vogue in “Sex and the City.” Her first cover should be Sarah Jessica Parker.
Chloe’s antecedents: