Actress, singer and producer Hailee Steinfeld is set to release a new single entitled “Afterlife” on Sept. 19, a track she created for her upcoming Apple TV Plus series,”Dickinson.” “This is a song I’m incredibly proud of, and I feel like after embodying this character, I have a more fearless approach to my writing,” Steinfeld […]
Youngest Media, the content studio led by former Endemol Shine U.K. executives Lucas Church and David Flynn, has launched a subsidiary in Germany. The German arm, headed by Mark Stehli, has received its first order: a German version of reality series “Battle of the Bands” for channel RTL II.
Stehli, who has the title managing director at the German company, was previously director of production and corporate development at All3 Media in Germany.
Church and Flynn said: “Establishing an embedded presence in one of Europe’s most important territories represents a significant step for Youngest Media. We’ve been extremely encouraged by the appetite of Germany’s major platforms to innovate and launch new formats and RTL II’s commission of ‘Battle of the Bands’ underscores this.”
“Battle of the Bands,” which is a working title, will launch on RTL II in 2020, with Christoph Oldenburg and David Flynn as executive producers for Youngest Media.
Youngest Media’s formats include “Small Fortune,” which launched in a primetime Saturday night slot on British broadcaster ITV with an audience of more than 3 million, and recently sold to NBC in the U.S. Other international successes have included “Game of Clones,” which has sold to multiple territories including the U.S., U.K., Germany and France, and soon to be launched docu-reality show “HouseShare” for BBC Three.
Before co-founding Youngest Media in 2016, Church was CEO of Endemol U.K. and latterly chairman of Endemol Shine U.K., one of the U.K.’s largest production companies and behind some of television’s biggest hits. He also chaired Endemol Shine Group’s commercial board, which globally coordinated and initiated business across more than 30 territories in areas including digital video, gaming, apps and brand relations.
Flynn was formerly chief creative officer of Endemol Shine U.K., responsible for overseeing creativity across the group. He created and executive produced “The Million Pound Drop,” which travelled to 54 territories and won a BAFTA for digital creativity, and co-created and executive produced breakout hits including BBC One’s “Pointless.”
ABC has announced a new behind-the-scenes look into Beyoncé’s The Lion King: The Gift LP. Beyoncé Presents: Making the Gift airs tomorrow night (September 16) on ABC at 10 p.m. EST. According to ABC’s teaser for the program, Making the Gift will allow viewers to “experience the process” behind every track on Bey’s recent companion album for The Lion King remake. The album, which Beyoncé executive produced, features new original music by Bey, as well as Donald Glover, Pharrell, and others. Watch the clip for Making the Gift below.
Beyoncé voiced Nala in the new live action iteration of the classic Disney film. She starred alongside Donald Glover, John Oliver, Seth Rogen, Eric André, Billy Eichner, and more. Earlier this year Beyoncé released Homecoming, a film chronicling her headlining 2018 Coachella set, on Netflix. She also released Homecoming: The Live Album.
Ric Ocasek, best known as the founder and frontman of the iconic new wave and power pop band the Cars, has died. The New York Police Department confirmed to Pitchfork they responded to a call today that reported an unconscious man in a townhouse. The man, identified as Ocasek, was found in bed and pronounced dead at the scene. He was 75.
Ocasek was born in Baltimore. He and friend Benjamin Orr played in a number of bands before eventually officially forming the Cars in 1976. They released their self-titled debut album in 1978, which featured the hit singles “Good Times Roll,” “My Best Friend’s Girl,” and “Just What I Needed.” Following five more albums and hits like “Drive” and “Shake It Up,” the group broke up in the late 1980s.
Starting with 1982’s Beatitude and ending with 2005’s Nexterday, Ocasek released a series of solo albums. His 1997 album Troublizing was co-produced with Billy Corgan and featured Hole’s Melissa Auf der Maur. He was also a producer of albums by artists including Weezer, Bad Brains, Suicide, Guided By Voices, No Doubt, the Cribs, Bad Religion, and others.
The musician and producer was also a pop culture fixture beyond music. He made a memorable appearance in John Waters’ Hairspray as a painter. He was an artist in real life, too, and his work was shown in galleries. He also wrote books, including the 1992 poetry collection Negative Theater. He was a regular guest on “The Colbert Report,” once calling out Todd Rundgren on the show (at a time when Rundgren was fronting the Cars under the name “the New Cars”). He appeared on the John Malkovich album. Ocasek made headlines in 2016 when he pulled his approval of a sample on Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial, forcing Matador Records to destroy physical copies of the album.
In 2011, Ocasek and the reunited Cars released a new album called Move Like This. The Cars were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.
This article was originally published on September 15 at 8:32 p.m. Eastern. It was last updated on September 15 at 10:25 p.m. Eastern.
Ric Ocasek, who was found dead today, was best known as the frontman of the Cars. He also had a fruitful career as a producer, and perhaps most notably, he produced Weezer’s breakout debut 1994 album Weezer—better known as the Blue Album. Ocasek also produced the Green Album and Everything Will Be Alright in the End. Tonight, Weezer shared a statement paying homage to their late collaborator. “We will miss him forever, & will forever cherish the precious times we got to work and hang out with him.” Find their full statement below.
Tributes from across the music world have poured in for Ocasek. Nile Rodgers shared his favorite of the tracks he worked on with Ocasek from 1991’s Fireball Zone. The Killers’ Brandon Flowers, who gave the speech inducting the Cars into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, outlined Ocasek’s influence on him. “I will never stop imitating the first Cars album,” wrote the New Pornographers’ Carl Newman. The Hold Steady shared a clip of their walk-out music—the Cars’ “Since You’re Gone.” Find those tributes and more below.
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RuPaul is hoping to take “Drag Race” to every corner of the world.
With multiple international versions of the reality competition series on the air, RuPaul was asked at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Saturday how many more versions he would like to see.
“How many countries are there?” he said. “There are drag queens all over the place.” He went on to suggest that “Drag Race: Rwanda” would not be out of the question, while a U.K version is launching in October.
“Drag is dangerous,” he continues. “Drag is not politically correct. Drag will never be mainstream…We are all God in drag. That is a radical thought for most people.”
RuPaul took home the award for best host of a reality or competition series, his fourth straight win in the category. His fellow nominees this year were Ellen DeGeneres for “Ellen’s Game of Games,” Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman for “Making It,” Marie Kondo for “Tidying Up,” and James Corden for “The World’s Best.”
RuPaul dedicated his win to “Drag Race” co-executive producer Jacqueline Wilson, whose passing he announced on Twitter on Thursday.
VH1 announced last month that both “Drag Race” and “Drag Race All Stars” had been renewed for a twelfth and fifth season respectively.
The 11th season of “Drag Race” wrapped up in May, with Yvie Oddly winning the crown, title and cash prize. The fourth season of “All Stars” wrapped up in February seeing a tie between Monét X Change and Trinity the Tuck for the win.
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” star Rachel Bloom made a special announcement after winning her Emmy for best original music and lyrics — she is pregnant.
Bloom announced the news backstage on Saturday at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. She joked she had planned to reveal the news on Instagram but that doing it at the Emmys was even better.
Bloom won the Emmy along with Adam Schlesinger and Jack Dolgen for the song “Antidepressants Are So Not A Big Deal.” They beat out other nominees from shows such as “Documentary Now” and “Saturday Night Live.”
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” ended its run on The CW back in April after four seasons. According to Bloom, she and her team wrote over 150 original songs throughout the show’s run.
Bloom has been nominated for six Emmys throughout her career, all but one of which was for her work on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.”
She discussed the series finale in an interview with Variety back in March, saying, “Basically the idea is that part of the music in her mind is her looking inside with all of these perceived narratives so I don’t know how her music sounds. Really there’s another show in, what is her sound? I don’t know what Rebecca’s sound is. She’s not Rachel Bloom — she’s not doing comedy. It’s a beautiful mystery.”
Actress, singer and producer Hailee Steinfeld is set to release a new single entitled “Afterlife” on Sept. 19, a track she created for her upcoming Apple TV Plus series,”Dickinson.”
“This is a song I’m incredibly proud of, and I feel like after embodying this character, I have a more fearless approach to my writing,” Steinfeld shared at the Tribeca TV Festival in New York City on Saturday Night.
“Dickinson,” a period piece about Emily Dickinson with a modern, comedic twist, is Steinfeld’s first-ever full time television series, and with it she experienced another big first by unveiling the show at the event: “Dickinson” is the first Apple TV Plus series to debut to the public, and it did so well-ahead of the Nov. 1 launch of the new streaming service.
Series creator and showrunner Alena Smith described “Dickinson” as a “crazy psychedelic version of the 1850s.
“It’s this giant weird crazy collage, and the music is this direct root straight into her brain,” Smith explained. “With Hailee as our lead, who has a double life, as also a pop star and musician…my hope is that the music will make you feel everything that Emily has trapped inside and wants to burst out.”
For Steinfeld, who doubles as an executive producer on the half-hour series, the music was a main factor in drawing her to the project. The music of Billie Eilish, for example, is a backdrop to the show, and “Dickinson” even brought on rapper Wiz Khalifa to play Death in a guest role. (Other guest stars include comedian John Mulaney and “Girls” alum Zosia Mamet, who’ll do a parody of Louisa May Alcott.) The modern-day additions serve as tools to help convey thoughts within Dickinson’s mind, which are depicted here as wild, whimsical and far more imaginative than what is usually assumed to be the static life in which she was living in 19th century Amherst, Mass.
“She sits in the corner of her room [writing] and looks out the window and there’s a world out there — but even a bigger one in her mind,” Steinfeld said, adding that the show has “incredible comedic moments and this dark humor and dramatic moments and everything in between, and it really reflects everything in her poetry, which is every possible emotion.”
“She broke all the rules of her time, sort of in secret,” Smith added. “Spoiler: her life was boring. Not a lot happened…the action was in her head.”
Although the series is set in the 1800s, the team behind the show feels its themes are relevant to today’s social climate highlighting women’s voices, as Dickinson is portrayed as a self-assured young woman who knows she has more to offer to the world than the housewife-in-training life she is living.
“The basic idea here is if Emily wasn’t understood in her time, maybe we can better understand her now,” Smith said. “I once read this thing that said period shows make the best feminist TV because when things were more exaggerated, we can perhaps look at how things aren’t so different today.”
Jane Krakowski, who plays Emily Dickinson’s mother in the series, said she’s still figuring out how strongly comedic the show should be, but noted, “I think the parallels between young women today and Emily Dickinson will resonate with a modern generation.”
She also pointed out that she believes the show can inspire young women to pursue their passion and dream beyond the life they’ve been born into. “A lot of this generation this this show is aiming to, or certainly the fans that Hailee is going to bring in, don’t really know Emily Dickinson or don’t know her poems,” Krakowski said, “and I think it will be wonderful to introduce a whole generation of young, feisty girls who want to make a mark on the world to Emily Dickinson.”
Steinfeld agreed: “What’s really cool about this show is when you’re watching it, you kind of forget that it’s a period piece,” she said. “Speaking personally as a young female, there definitely are parallels. The pressure that Emily Dickinson is under to feel or act or do certain things, I think women still feel that way. … We hope that people see this and feel seen and feel heard, because that’s exactly what Emily was searching for, to be understood. … It’s crazy and it’s wild that we’re searching for that [in 2019] — obviously way less — but it’s still an issue.”
On a personal level, Steinfeld added that she has truly “felt this newfound fearlessness after learning about this character.
“I just feel in my work, in my life, in my relationships, in where I stand with certain people, a sense of fearlessness. And I hope everyone will find a little bit of that in the show.”
Bruce Springsteen’s newest Netflix special, Springsteen on Broadway, took home a Creative Arts Emmy today. The film, which won for Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special, beat out Beyoncé’s Homecoming, “Carpool Karaoke,” and more. Springsteen on Broadway was also nominated for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded).
Springsteen on Broadway chronicles the Boss’ intimate one-man show of the same name. The special was directed Thom Zimny who previously filmed documentaries for Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The River. Springsteen also released a companion album for his Broadway show last year.
Read “Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway Show Is the Loneliest Thing He’s Ever Done” over on the Pitch.
Stephen Malkmus covered Silver Jews’ “Trains Across the Sea” and “The Wild Kindness” at a Saturday night concert in Glasgow, Scotland, in honor of the band’s late frontman, David Berman. You can watch video captured by a fan, Alistair McErlain, below.
Berman died on August 8 at the age of 52, spawning a wave of remembrances and covers of his songs. On Twitter, Malkmus noted that Berman was a “one of a kinder”—the two were bandmates in Silver Jews and longtime friends. Bill Callahan also covered “Trains Across the Sea” at a New York show in August, along with “I Remember Me.”
Read “How David Berman Changed the Way So Many of Us See the World” and “15 Songs That Defined David Berman’s Heavy Magic” on the Pitch.