This week’s #6/#5 arrangement is 🤌. Great work from you all heading into Moo Deng Autumn.

Have a great Purge everyone.

New Linkin Park singer got milkshake ducked real fast. Hope you have a better weekend than them.

There was a lot of teasing of reunion announcements this week. After clues at Reading and Leeds festivals, on Tuesday morning Oasis confirmed news of their first shows in 16 years, and they might even include Bonehead. The big reunion led to a lot of memes and Noel Gallagher’s unplanned first interview about it when a fan’s kids interrogated him in a Stone Island store.

The 2024 DNC had Jason Isbell and Lil Jon, but not Beyoncé. Rare miss, TMZ.

There was no new music this week. Here are politicians talking about Bob Seger.

Chappell Roan drew Lollapalooza’s largest daytime crowd ever and in the days following got covered by Blink-182 and Jonas Brothers and co-signed by SZA, Noah Kahan, Hayley Williams, Selena Gomez, and IKEA.

Happy birthday Charli!

The Olympics Opening Ceremony went down in Paris today. IDGAF but my job as Stereogum team captain requires me to tell you that Gojira rocked out with Marie Antoinette and Céline Dion returned to the stage, but didn’t duet with Harley Quinn. Snoop Dogg, Pharrell Williams, and BTS’ Jin were among those carrying the torch earlier in the day. Birthday boy Mick Jagger was spotted cheering on Team GB. And Ariana Grande was there too, doing some Wicked promo. Somewhere Snoop is practicing his 200m while Flavor Flav is practicing his t-shot. Soon: breakdancing! Good luck, America.

I don’t know what Ozzy‘s talking about. Britney’s Instagram is perfect.

This week Faye Webster, Jessica Pratt, and Sublime made their late night TV debuts and Wand played a Chicago morning show. Do you watch TV? Lmk if I should start season three of The Bear or just stop now.

She went Houdini:

Yesterday Dave Davies found his lost Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame trophy and today is Ray Davies’ 80th birthday. The Killers just covered “Come Dancing” in Dublin. It would be sick if the Kinks finally reunited/worked it out on the remix. Until then, check out your best comments of the week.

This week we talked to Colin Meloy, Water From Your Eyes, Yhapojj, Doubt, and a bunch of folks in the live music industry, and we forgot to ask all of them if they’ve seen Challengers. I bet Anthony Mason would’ve remembered.

Your most julia comments of the week are below.

Were you expecting a list of this week’s best comments? That’s on you because we are of course still having a tech problem that prevents me from pulling the data. But it really is close to being fixed. A developer named Tim told me so today! As soon as that happens we will have proper Shut Up, Dude again, along with some upgrades to the site. (Any comments made during this downtime will still be counted for our year-end comments list, by the way, in case anyone with an incredible comment was worried.) Please bear with us since next week we will publish a countdown of the 50 best albums of 2024 so far. 👀 What should be #1?

Happy for Kendrick, but back to back “Fortnight” and “Not Like Us” weeks might mean “Espresso” missed its shot at #1. In any case, Sabrina Carpenter will be on SNL tomorrow…

Hello hi. OpenWeb fucked up again and we don’t have the data for this week’s best comments. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow. So here’s an editor’s choice and tell us your favorite shoegaze song in the comments. 👇

“Am I battlin’ ghost or AI?” Kendrick Lamar asked Drake on “Euphoria,” and he wasn’t the only one disappointed by our new non-reality this week. FKA twigs testified in a Senate committee hearing about how the AI industry needs regulation while Youth Lagoon slammed Washed Out for using Sora to make a music video. On the other hand, today Randy Travis used voice-cloning tech to release his first song since a stroke took away most of his speech, so I don’t think the AI discourse is ending anytime soon. As far as I know all the comments on this site are written by humans and you can read the best ones below.

We released a code update so you should no longer have to click to log in to read Shut Up, Dude if you’re already logged in. Lemme know if it worked!

This week Grimes apologized to Coachella and Evan Dando apologized to Jawbreaker but where is Taylor Swift’s apology to music bloggers for releasing a surprise album at 2AM? Happy for Charles Otto Puth Jr. though.

I’m seeing the Boss tonight, but sad to be missing all these exciting Coachella billboards:

Tonight I’m seeing Ratboys and Ducks Ltd., tomorrow I’m seeing Olivia Rodrigo and the Breeders, and Sunday I’m seeing Summer Walker and Bronchitis. 😷

Stone Temple Pilots and Live announced a Purple/Throwing Copper 30th anniversary tour, Moby announced a Play 25th anniversary tour, and Drive-By Truckers announced a Southern Rock Opera 23rd (?) anniversary tour. Sure, would go to all. But I’m really looking forward to the Tigers Blood one month anniversary tour. What are you listening to today?

Stereogum is at Austin’s Cheer Up Charlies right now presenting performances by Narrow Head, the Armed, Horse Jumper Of Love, and many more great bands — plus we just added sets by Scowl and Glare! The free, all-ages party started at 12:04 PM, right after we spun “Archie, Marry Me,” and will end after 2AM. See you there!

This week French Montana’s Mac & Cheese 5 debuted far below projections despite having 126 tracks, 26 more than expected:

If you’re salivating over the second wave emo fest lineup but concerned about spending a lot of money, I have good news. Many of you are about to get refunds for your Flavortown Fest ’24 tickets. See you in Vegas.

This week we interviewed Sarah McLachlan, KNEECAP, Vijay Iyer, and Mary Timony, and it was the second time this year we asked someone about filming a Priceline commercial with William Shatner. Your best comments about Macklemore are below.

Last night’s Militarie Gun/Pool Kids/Spiritual Cramp/Spaced show was sick. Go see this tour if you can. I missed most of Spaced, but hopefully you checked out “Rat Race in this week’s hardcore roundup. And these Sound And Fury and Tied Down lineups? Hardcore rules.

Big week for Billy Joel. I better hear this at the Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show:

We already told you who’s gonna win at the Grammys on Sunday, but tune in anyway so we can share memes in the Discord. For the first time, Joni Mitchell will perform at the awards, Billy Joel will play his new single live, and Tracy Chapman (who closed the 1989 telecast with “Fast Car”) will duet with Luke Combs. Good luck Kylie and Jelly!

Happy The Smile album release day.

Corporate consolidation sucks. I’ve been there. In the years between I sold Stereogum in 2006 (seemed like a good idea at the time) and bought it back in 2020, the site was repeatedly acquired by and merged with companies that always seemed to be on the verge of collapse. We are lucky to have survived the transition from Buzznet to Buzzmedia to SpinMedia to Spin Media Group to Prometheus Global Media to Billboard-The Hollywood Reporter Group to MRC Media to Valence Media. It was a similar ordeal for me at Viacom before that. Dizzying shit like this occurs often. What happened to our friends at Pitchfork this week — getting gutted and moved under a sister brand — absolutely would have happened to Stereogum, or we would’ve been shut down completely, under our most recent parent company before coming independent.
Much love to the talented staff who did so much important and influential music criticism at Pitchfork. I don’t want to sound the death knell as there are excellent writers and editors who remain at the publication and now must solider on without half their team.
Those who are attributing Pitchfork’s restructuring on their music coverage becoming more inclusive (a positive evolution) are wrong. Its website audience may have waned in recent years, but so has every site’s! The growth of social media and music streaming, the shifting priorities of advertisers and platforms, corporate greed, and union busting can be blamed instead. Competing with low quality AI content wasn’t a factor, but it could’ve been in the near future. I don’t know if Pitchfork’s festivals were profitable, but the tentpole Chicago one was one of the best.
Up until 2022, all of Stereogum’s revenue came from display advertising. Meaning banner ads. We have experimented with merch and email and affiliate revenue, but none of it moved the needle. Thanks to you, we are less reliant on all of it. Stereogum is only about 10% toward our subscriber goal of not needing ads, though, so I understand why there is now a metered paywall at Pitchfork. If you read a website every day, you should pay for it. At some point Stereogum will almost certainly have to implement some sort of limit on free articles as well. Lucky for our non-Members, our tech stack is a mess so it won’t happen so soon.

This week we got album announcements and new singles from Waxahatchee, Ride. Bruce Hornsby & yMusic, Pissed Jeans, Julia Holter, Shabazz Palaces, Faye Webster, Erika de Casier, Ben Frost, Rosali, BIG|BRAVE, Gouge Away, Gustaf, Buffalo Tom, Runnner, Jennifer Lopez, Barely Civil, Late Bloomer, Nasti, Prize Horse, Dancer, the Black Keys, and the Black Crowes. Yes, and you can stream some of our favorites among them on Stereogum’s Spotify playlist. Or you can just listen to “Call Me Maybe.”

Films I watched at home and on airplanes over the holidays, in order of how much I liked them: Killers Of The Flower Moon, Dream Scenario, Saltburn, The Holdovers, Eileen, Maestro, Cat Person, Leave The World Behind. Share your movie recommendations for me in the comments!

It’s time for the only year-end list that includes Ace Frehley, Drake, and Crazy Town. Our weekly Shut Up, Dude posts are paywalled to Stereogum members, but I’m making this annual countdown free for all so everyone can admire each other’s puns.

It’s the final regular Shut Up, Dude of the year, but don’t forget to check back on Sunday for the big 50 Best Comments Of 2023 countdown.