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His new Justice album debuted at number 1 last week. But tomorrow, when week 2 is counted up, “Justice” will fall to the second spot.
The new number will be Rod Wave’s “Soulfly.” Who is Rod Wave? A nobody, but the Bieber album was a weak launch, the fans are fickle, Travis Bickle.
Bieber is also vanquished on the singles chart, where his “Peaches” — in which he’s a guest star and the least important part of a trio featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon — is going rotten at the hands of Lil Nas X. “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” is a phenom no one saw coming. Lil Nas X’s provocative, controversial salute to Twerking Satan, coupled with a hot video. will be at the top of the chart.
But “Peaches” has paid off for someone: the aforementioned Giveon, whose album has jumped to number 20 out of nowhere. It’s on Not So Fast Records, distributed by Sony’s Epic. Sylvia Rhone gets the win.
Numbers are thanks to hitsdailydouble and Buzz Angle.
Last night marked a new episode for “The Conners.” And a new low in ratings.
The show dropped to an all time low of 3.1 million viewers, down 9% from last week’s 3.4 million.
One year ago, when “The Conners” aired on Tuesdays at 8pm, they brought in 6.1 million viewers. So half their audience is gone from March 2020.
The move to Wednesdays and an hour later has been disastrous for this former powerhouse. How do they explain this at ABC?
“The Conners” has also dropped a whopping 49% in total viewers since the season began on October 21st with 4.9 million– itself a drop from the season finale of 15%.
Sara Gilbert, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, et al must be disappointed, not to mention the writers and producers. Their ship is sinking. They still have five episodes left in this season, and then the question remains: will be they renewed for Season 4? If they fall much more, the “Roseanne” spin off that began with so much brouhaha may be looking to write yet another series finale.
(If Sara Gilbert times it right, she might be able to go back to CBS and save “The Talk,” the show she created.)
In the last few days it was revealed by the NY Post’s Page Six that Mia Farrow erased her adopted daughter from a photo taken with Hillary Clinton. The daughter, Tam, died in 2000. Mia said it was an accidental overdose. but another adopted son, Moses, says Tam committed suicide.
Now is Mia is upset that people are discussing the deaths of 3 of her adopted children.
Mia writes on Twitter: “Few families are perfect, and any parent who has suffered the loss of a child knows that pain is merciless and ceaseless. However, some vicious rumors based on untruths have appeared online concerning the lives of three of my children. To honor their memory, their children and every family that has dealt with the death of a child, I am posting this message.”
Mia says: Tam died “from an accidental prescription overdose related to the agonizing migraines she suffered, and her heart ailment.” Moses says Tam killed herself after fighting with Mia.
Two other adopted children died, as well. Thaddeus committed suicide, he was found in his car dead from shooting himself. Adopted daughter Lark died of AIDS.
Mia blames Thaddeus’ death on a relationship gone wrong. Thaddeus, by the way, was given the middle name “Wilk” by Mia, who named him for late judge Elliot Wilk who presided over the Allen v. Farrow custody case. She was sucking up to the judge, who Woody Allen told us in his memoir last year had strange personal issues of his own.
Lark’s death was the only non suicide. That gets the most ink from Mia because it’s the least embarrassing.
Mia writes “My daughter Lark was an extraordinary woman, a wonderful daughter, sister, partner and mother to her own children. She died at 35 from complications of HIV/AIDS, which she contracted from a previous partner. Despite her illness she lived a fruitful and loving life with her children and longtime partner. She succumbed to her illness & died suddenly in the hospital on Christmas, in her partner’s arms.”
In her entire post, Mia never explains why she scrubbed Tam from a photo taken with Hillary Clinton.
In the recent “Allen v. Farrow” documentary, Mia was portrayed as mother of the year. There was no mention of the children’s deaths.
She’s been killing it on Twitter, and featured on “Saturday Night Live” with her own parody talk show.
Now Dionne is capitalizing on all this new publicity with two sets of live streamed shows. Her first will be this Sunday, Easter, at 2pm and 8pm. She’ll do it again on Mother’s Day, May 9th.
Dionne is essential viewing and listening for anyone interested in great music. I’m sure she’ll sing her many Bacharach-David hits, not to mention her Clive Davis era songs like “Heartbreaker” and “Deja Vu.” Plus, Dionne has a whole repertoire of Brasilian music. Her smoky voice has never been better and look at that photo! Dionne looks fantastic.
I’m in, I’ll buy my tickets. You get yours!
PS Dionne loves to sing, but if there were Performance Royalty for singers, she’d have been paid the millions of time her records were spun on radio. But there’s no such thing. She hasn’t made a penny from radio play in her sixty years of working. She turned 80 last December.
The cashing out of legacy rock stars continues apace.
Paul Simon has sold his amazing, may I say incredible, song catalog to Sony Music Publishing. For more than Bob Dylan’s $300 million? I sure hope so.
You can’t stop listing Simon’s hits, secondary hits, and so on. From “The Sound of SIlence” and “Red Rubber Ball” at the beginning of his career, through five albums of Simon & Garfunkel classics like “Bridge over Troubled Water” — a gem in the crown — to “American Tune,” “Mother and Child Reunion.” “Graceland,” and four albums of great songs from recent releases that are yet to be mined or marketed properly.
For example, there’s a song called “Father and Daughter” that should be the “Forever Young” of his later catalog. And there are many more like it.
Not to mention “Mrs. Robinson,” “Still Crazy After All These Years,” “Slip Sliding Away,” and on and on.
Simon, who will be 80 this year, has set up his family for life. They better give him a big birthday party.
The first film was a crazy hit from LionsGate, getting Oscar nominations and lots of kudos. Everyone loved that murder mystery. Ana de Armas became such a star she moved in with Ben Affleck for a while. Chris Evans made cable knit sweaters sell out. Don Johnson had his best role since “Miami Vice.”
Now Deadline.com is confirming our scoop. The sequels will come from bottomless money pit Netflix, not Lions Gate. Johnson has written them or is finishing them. Craig, who may wind up his James Bond run if “No Time to Die” is ever released, headlines another franchise. He’s terrific as Benoit Blanc.
The next installment films this summer in Greece. Johnson will have actors clamoring for roles, but he’s smart not to have superstars. just eclectic casts like chapter 1. Will any of the original cast return? Something tells me Ana de Armas, now free of Ben Affleck, will turn up to help Benoit solve the crime. Maybe the victim will be killed wearing a cable knit sweater !
Swayne “The Rock” Johnson is a big movie star, a huge draw in action films and light comedies when there is a box office.
He hasn’t had a failure in some time, but NBC may be handing him his first defeat shortly. “Young Rock,” the prime time series about The Rock growing up, is a bust in the ratings.
Last night, “Young Rock” in its six outing fell by 12.9 percent in total audience and almost 20% in the key demo, 18- 49, the audience it needs to attract.
Indeed, “Young Rock” has dropped 50% since its premiere six weeks ago.
Nothing about The Rock’s movie popularity is translating to the TV show.
And it’s a bigger problem than just The Rock. NBC put “Young Rock” in at 8pm to draw an audience at 8:30 for “SNL” star Kenan Thompson’s “Kenan” sitcom. This show is so awful, and also has no audience. Last night “Young Rock” drew 2.5 million viewers. Then “Kenan” got squashed at 1.9 million.
“Kenan” is the wrong setting for Thompson, despite a strong cast. The writing and premise are terrible. Kenan needs to host a variety show. He is so talented, and deserves to be a star. But this sitcom thing is not for him. He’s bound and constrained. Let him just be Kenan. And whoever thought Don Johnson should be in this needs to reconsider their career. Yikes.
As for The Rock, a cancellation for “Young Rock” will just be brushed off. But if the show drops below 2.5 I don’t see how or why NBC would keep it on. There are five episodes left in the original order of 11.
Sharon Osbourne has regrouped and sent out her first social media message since March 12th. See below it’s TikTok video turned into a Tweet set to the song “Right Back Where We Started From.” Sharon will not just slink away, even if CBS paid her off. She’ll write a book, there will be an inevitable movie of that book, you’ll see.
Listen, Tina Turner hates Ike Turner. Still. After all these years. For good reason.
You thought we knew all about the torture she endured from him. There was the Kurt Loder book, the award winning movie with Angela Bassett, a thousand interviews, and then the Broadway musical in November 2019.
I interviewed Tina in 1993 for the cover of the NY Daily News Sunday magazine and she was so gracious and endearing I wanted to keep her safe. Even then, more than a decade after her escape from Ike, she still seemed vulnerable.
So this new film, which aired on HBO inexplicably on the first night of Passover (they couldn’t wait?), directed by Dan Lindsay, T.J. Martin seemed to me a little unnecessary. And everything I read about it pointed in that direction. Everyone who saw it in advance felt like they knew the story, what was left to say?
Well, a lot as it turns out. “Tina” really doesn’t expand too much on Turner’s life past her comeback and rise to massive success. A lot of the comments I read complained about that. Tina’s been in retirement for a while, what’s she up to? How is her health after all? That is not addressed.
Tina sits in a nice looking chair and answers some questions, but mostly the documentary relies on old interviews. One was from 1981 with People magazine’s Carl Arrington, who kept his audio tapes. Then there are tapes from Kurt Loder, interviews with him, with her old manager and so on.
Why did she do this? By the time you’ve read the book, seen the movie, and Adrienne Warren’s fiery performance in the musical, isn’t that enough? Well, when Tina came to the opening night of the musical, she was very fragile. During intermission, Oprah whisked her away to a private room. When the show was over, Tina did appear on stage and we thought we’d see her at the after-party. But she went home, and was not seen again.
Maybe the show was too much for her to revisit the story of how she left Ike after 16 years of violence. This documentary drills down into the details of that torture in unexpected ways. Tina, as always, is disarming. But footage of Ike, a brilliant musician, reveal his monstrousness and cluelessness. Well after Tina left him, someone asks Ike why she left, what went wrong? He is opaque. He has no idea. He says, “She must have been unhappy.” Uh, yeah.
So it’s not that we learn anything new, but perhaps we get a richer understanding of how Tina lived, what her genius was, and how, thank god, she reclaimed it. I was thinking that the difference between Tina and Aretha Franklin, who was just portrayed in the “Genius” miniseries, is so stark. Aretha hid her dark secrets and didn’t want to share them. She walled herself in.
Tina, on the other hand, does not want anyone to forget what she went through. I think it’s not just for herself, although that seems important. Her treatment at Ike’s hands is a cautionary tale. There’s so much violence against women in the news now– murders, missing persons, all boyfriends and ex husbands and husbands responsible — that the Ike story is worth retelling for anyone who may be in trouble.
My nitpick: the music is all good, but the directors missed the real turning point of Tina’s comeback. Manager Roger Davies took her to England and put her with producer Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 and Human League. It was 1983 when their single and video of Al Green’s reworked “Let’s Stay Together” was released. It was stunning. That release predated the Big Comeback, it’s what got everyone stoked. It was a bigger hit than Al Green’s version. “Private Dancer” and all that followed a few months later. They also recorded a slow version of the Beatles’ “Help,” that still kills.
The directors also don’t explain that it was Tina who decided back in 1971 to re-work John Fogerty’s “Proud Mary,” create that slow sensual opening followed by the rip roaring chaotic dance number. I wish they’d asked her more about how she created her sound, one very different than the Ike and Tina Revue. That’s a missed opportunity. But kudos to all. Just next time, wait til the Seder is over.
The coolest guy in Hollywood, for decades, celebrates his 84th birthday today. God bless Warren Beatty. He’s one of the best, a maverick actor, director, writer, activist, and let’s face it, ex-playboy. We love him for all of it.
First of all, “Reds” is one of my very favorite movies. Beatty won the Oscar for directing it in 1981. A massive, epic, gorgeous throwback to great classics like “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Reds” still resonates on every level. It won 3 Oscars with 12 nominations (Maureen Stapleton is glorious as Emma Goldman in her Best Supporting Actress win.)
Beatty has a raft of nominations for “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Shampoo,” “Heaven Can Wait,” “Bugsy,” and “Bulworth.” He was acclaimed from the beginning of his career from “Splendor in the Grass.” He has a couple of ‘cult’ movies in which his acting is par excellence: Robert Altman’s “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” and Alan Pakula’s “Parallax View.” And there’s nothing better than seeing this young colt in the first season of Max Shulman’s classic TV series, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.”
The playboy thing? Much has been written about it. But when Annette Bening calmed him down they embarked on a long, happy marriage producing four kids. Warren as family man turns out to be his biggest success.
Beatty often flirted with politics, and was active when it was necessary. He was there for George McGovern when Richard Nixon was threatening to destroy us (and almost did). He’s been there for liberal and just causes ever since.
So Happy Birthday, Warren, as you start your 85th trip around the galaxy. And no, I didn’t end this piece with his least favorite punch line. (You figure it out. He prob’ly thinks this tribute is about him.)
