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Beyoncé makes history (again) with 11 nominations for 2025 Grammy Awards

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Beyoncé makes history (again) with 11 nominations for 2025 Grammy Awards

When Beyoncé took the prize for best dance/electronic album at the Grammy Awards last year with “Renaissance,” the pop superstar became the winningest artist in the nearly seven-decade history of music’s most prestigious awards show.

Now she’s history’s most-nominated act as well.

As announced Friday morning by the Recording Academy, Beyoncé leads nominations for the 67th Grammys with 11 nods, including in top categories such as album of the year (for her sprawling roots-music excursion “Cowboy Carter”) and record and song of the year (for her chart-topping “Texas Hold ’Em”). The 11 new nominations bring her career total to 99 and leave Beyoncé’s husband — rapper Jay-Z, with whom she’d been tied at 88 — as the person with the second-most nominations. (Beyoncé has won 32 Grammys.)

Among her other nods for work from “Cowboy Carter” are country solo performance (“16 Carriages”), Americana performance (“Ya Ya”) and melodic rap performance (“Spaghettii”) — one indication of the stylistic breadth of an artist whose nominations with “Renaissance” came largely in the dance and R&B genres.

Beyoncé is just one of several established Grammy favorites competing for top prizes at next year’s edition of the annual ceremony, which will take place Feb. 2 at Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles.

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Taylor Swift, whose album of the year win with “Midnights” at February’s show made her the first artist to take the Grammys’ flagship prize four times, is up for album again with “The Tortured Poets Department” and for record and song of the year with “Fortnight,” her moody electro-pop duet with Post Malone. Billie Eilish also scored a nod for the album award with “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” making her the first artist to be nominated for the Grammys’ equivalent of best picture with her first three LPs; she’s up for record and song of the year too with her single “Birds of a Feather.”

But in a year long on fresh talent, Grammy voters also showered nominations on several of the upstart pop acts who’ve dominated concert stages, streaming platforms and social-media feeds in 2024. Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter will vie for album, record and song of the year and best new artist in each woman’s first trip to the Grammys — Roan with her album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” and her single “Good Luck, Babe!” and Carpenter with her album “Short n’ Sweet” and her single “Espresso” for the record prize and “Please Please Please” for the song prize. (Record of the year goes to performers and producers, while song of the year recognizes songwriters.)

Charli XCX, the pop singer and songwriter from England with a long history of underground acclaim, has seven nominations — including album of the year and record of the year — with her “Brat” LP and “360” single, which elevated her to a new level of mainstream renown. Eilish also earned seven nods overall, as did Malone and Kendrick Lamar, the Compton-born rapper whose Drake diss track “Not Like Us” is up for record and song of the year; other acts with multiple nominations include Roan, Carpenter and Swift, each of whom got six.

In an interview, Recording Academy Chief Executive Harvey Mason Jr. said the nominations reflect the group’s effort to modernize and diversify its electorate after years in which the academy was criticized for overvaluing the work of older white men.

“It feels very representative of what’s going on in music,” said Mason, who pointed out that two-thirds of the academy’s more than 13,000 voting members had joined the organization since 2019.

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Yet as always with the Grammys, the major categories include some unexpected choices — albeit ones that tie into a long Grammys tradition. André 3000’s “New Blue Sun,” a trippy jazz LP by the Outkast rapper-turned-flautist, is nominated for album of the year, as is “Djesse Vol. 4” by Jacob Collier, the quirky English multi-instrumentalist recently seen playing piano behind Joni Mitchell during her latest comeback concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. Both call to mind left-field album of the year wins by Jon Batiste in 2022 and Herbie Hancock in 2008 with jazz-oriented LPs whose commercial success was dwarfed by that of their competitors.

“I think voters respect the excellence and the musicianship and the craftsmanship that go into those records,” Mason said of the nods for Collier and André 3000. (On Spotify, the most-played track on “New Blue Sun” has 10 million streams, whereas Carpenter’s “Espresso” has 1.5 billion.) “You’re not excluded from consideration because you’re popular. But you’re also not excluded if you’re an artist that’s working in a genre other than one of the most popular genres. I’m gratified that there’s room for all different forms of music-making and creativity.”

Another surprising choice, perhaps, in record of the year: “Now and Then,” a let’s-call-it-new single by the Beatles constructed from archival material using machine-learning software developed by the filmmaker Peter Jackson for his 2021 docuseries “Get Back.” (The Beatles’ last Grammy moment came in 2014, when the band won the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.)

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“To me, this is a cool example of how AI can function in our current environment,” said Mason, who took pains to clarify that a new academy rule allowing AI-assisted music to be submitted for Grammys consideration stipulates that the use of AI must enhance rather than replace the work of humans. In this case, he said, AI was “really like an editing tool” that enabled the Beatles to isolate a John Lennon vocal recording from the late ’70s “that was previously maybe unusable.”

In the best new artist category, Carpenter and Roan will vie against Khruangbin, a Texas psych-rock trio that’s been releasing albums since 2015, along with Benson Boone, Doechii, Raye, Teddy Swims and the ascendant country singer Shaboozey, who’s also up for song of the year with “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which just logged its 16th week atop Billboard’s Hot 100. The remaining song of the year nominee is “Die With a Smile,” the Top 40 radio smash performed by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.

Recordings eligible for the 67th Grammys had to be released between Sept. 16, 2023, and Aug. 30, 2024; more than 20,000 recordings were submitted, the academy said. The full ballot runs to 94 categories, including audio book, narration and storytelling recording, in which Barbra Streisand will go against George Clinton for possibly the first time in Grammys history.

Morgan Wallen, the hugely popular country singer blanked at the Grammys for several years following TMZ’s posting of a video in which he drunkenly used the N-word, received his first nominations — for country song and country duo/group performance — with “I Had Some Help,” his chart-topping duet with Post Malone. For country album, Malone’s “F-1 Trillion” is nominated along with “Cowboy Carter,” Kacey Musgraves’ “Deeper Well,” Chris Stapleton’s “Higher” and Lainey Wilson’s “Whirlwind.”

Beyoncé — who received no nominations for this month’s Country Music Assn. Awards, raising questions about Nashville’s inclusivity — picked up Grammy nods in country duo/group performance with “II Most Wanted,” a duet with Miley Cyrus, and country song with “Texas Hold ’Em.” Yet her nomination for album of the year with “Cowboy Carter” marks her fifth time in a category she’s never won. At February’s ceremony, Jay-Z publicly admonished the academy for bestowing dozens of Grammys on his wife while withholding the highest-profile award.

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“Think about: The most Grammys — never won album of the year,” he said. “That doesn’t work.”

In the rap album category, the nominees are J. Cole’s “Might Delete Later,” the duo of Common and Pete Rock’s “The Auditorium, Vol. 1,” Doechii’s “Alligator Bites Never Heal,” Eminem’s “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce)” and “We Don’t Trust You” by the duo of Future and Metro Boomin. LPs nominated for rock album are the Black Crowes’ “Happiness Bastards,” Fontaines D.C.’s “Romance,” Green Day’s “Saviors,” Idles’ “Tangk,” Pearl Jam’s “Dark Matter,” the Rolling Stones’ “Hackney Diamonds” and Jack White’s “No Name.”

Looking ahead to next year’s show — the first of two remaining in the academy’s half-century-long deal with CBS before the Grammys move to Disney’s ABC network in 2027 — Mason laughed when asked if the Beatles’ nomination might induce Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to perform together on the telecast.

“That would be amazing,” he said.

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The son of jazz drummer Harvey Mason and a longtime musician himself, the CEO said he hadn’t yet turned his thoughts to how the Grammys ceremony might pay tribute to Quincy Jones, the 28-time Grammy-winning producer who died this week at age 91 — and whom Mason recalled watching in the studio as a kid when his dad brought him along to recording sessions.

“He was one of my biggest inspirations,” Mason said. “Anything I’m doing, I’m doing because I saw Quincy do it. So if it’s up to me, I’m gonna take like 45 minutes in the show, because he was that important.”

Movie Reviews

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

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In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

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As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

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