Welcome back to Personality Hire! It’s been a banner week over here because, I wrote another cover story!!!

I profiled Luke Evans for Attitude, where the two of us looked back on his starring performance in Broadway’s Rocky Horror Show, his upcoming thriller The Party, and how he views his career after over a decade of genre-spanning performances. It was eerie having this piece come out the same day that Tim Curry sadly passed away, yet also a fitting tribute to the legacy he created. Buy the issue and give it a read! 💖

Onto the newsletter: I had a very different post originally planned for this week. Unfortunately, the tragic news of what went down in the last few days ended up taking precedence, so I scrapped my original plan and started over1 So, let’s talk about the legend we lost this week:

Rest in Peace, Dolly Parton 💔

Like many of you reading, I have lived through a number of particularly jarring celebrity deaths. Whitney Houston, Robin Williams, Prince, David Bowie, the list goes on. Michael Jackson’s death is the only one that feels as singularly all-encompassing as the passing of Dolly Parton earlier this week.

Even though it has only been a few days since she passed, the tributes and honors have come pouring in, and rightfully so. Dolly was inarguably one of the most excellent performers on the planet, captivating audiences for decades and maintaining that standard throughout her career. She was one of the most prolific and talented songwriters in the industry, credited with writing over 3,000 songs in her lifetime.

While most of this tribute will focus on other aspects of Dolly as a public persona, I want to make sure we aptly celebrate her musical contributions to our modern culture. Along with creating mega-hits for herself' like “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” “Islands in the Stream” and others, she also wrote enduring hits for others — not just Whitney’s version of “I Will Always Love You,” but also Emmylou Harris’ “To Daddy,” Kenny Rogers’ “The Stranger,” Tina Turner’s “There’ll Always Be Music” and dozens of others. Dolly had a way of rendering raw, complex emotion into perfectly crafted lyrics. I always point to the simple, poignant lyricism of “Light of a Clear Blue Morning”:

It's been a long long time
Since I've known the taste of freedom
And those clinging vines
That had me bound, well I don't need 'em
Oh, I've been like a captured eagle, you know an eagle's born to fly
Now that I have won my freedom, like an eagle I am eager for the sky

She was also one of the only remaining stars who was universally beloved; I cannot think of a single person I’ve ever met who didn’t at least appreciate Dolly for being Dolly. Even if you weren’t a country music fan — it’s a notable blind spot for me as a listener — you couldn’t help but love Dolly.

That likability is a facet of Dolly’s career that she carefully maintained until the end. Famously non-partisan, Dolly made an effort to steer clear of getting caught up in political in-fighting. She never endorsed a political candidate or political party, preferring instead to talk about the issues she cared about than the faces most associated with them. Some saw this as a failing on her part — others, myself included, felt that Dolly’s insistence on neutrality was not just a shrewd business decision, but an imperative based on her moral framework. She wasn’t interested in fights; she was interested in finding humanitarian solutions to social issues, no matter the cost.

When other country artists wouldn’t acknowledge the death and destruction of the onset of the HIV & AIDS crisis in the 1980’s, Dolly put her money where her mouth was; her production company funded the Oscar-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt to help spread even further awareness, and she regularly participated in public campaigns to break the stigma around the disease. When Whitney’s version of “I Will Always Love You” became a globe-spanning hit, Dolly took the royalties she earned and quietly invested them in a Black neighborhood in Nashville. When the issue of marriage equality reached it’s zenith in 2014 and 2015, she became a vocal advocate. When asked what she thought about the George Floyd protests in 2020, she reaffirmed her support for those protesting and stated unequivocally that “of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” Even in 2023, as the trans community was facing legal attacks in Tennessee, Dolly made it clear that they had her support.

That’s just a few of the dozens of examples of Dolly speaking up for communities that she didn’t belong to, but that she felt affinity towards anyway. None of those examples include her second career as a philanthropist, raising and distributing millions of dollars for childhood literacy through her Imagination Library, public health, disaster relief and so much more.

As tends to happen more and more often nowadays, her death also came with its fair share of grifters taking advantage of the moment. Child-actor-turned-out-of-work-loser Ricky Schroder decided to “pay tribute” to Dolly by saying that he “loved her anyway” in spite of support for trans rights and the COVID vaccine. He was rightly demolished online for using the death of an icon to promote his ridiculous worldview.2 The band Garbage put it best: “Fuck off Ricky Schroder.”

Yet Schroder’s post only served to highlight the fact that, along with being a once-in-a-lifetime superstar, Dolly Parton was also a person inextricably bound to the causes she believed in by her own good deeds. It wasn’t just her songs, but her unwavering empathy for the human condition that made her stand out from her peers. In a time when artists are encouraged to “shut up and sing,” Dolly is a shining example that not only is it right and just to stand up for communities that need help, but that it doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your career to do so.

It should go without saying that we will never see an artist like Dolly Parton again, and yet it bears repeating: Dolly Parton was singular, and artists will forever strive to live up to the impossible standard she set.

Welcome back to Personality Hire! We’re slowly getting back into the swing of things over here, and there is lots to talk about when it comes to what the hell has been going on in culture over the last few weeks. So, let’s jump right into it:

Maybe the Song of the Summer Was the Friends We Made Along the Way

In our lives, there are a few constants: death, taxes and endless debates about what the “song of the summer” for any given year will be.

And people are right to have this debate — for decades, there have always been a few songs that dominate the summertime in their respective years. Whether it was the inescapable chokehold that Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” had on us in the summer of 2012, or Rihanna’s rise to dominance with “Umbrella” in the summer of 2007, the title of “Song of the Summer” has meant so much to artists and music fans alike in the modern era.

But 2026 has really illustrated that, especially over the past few years, the concept of a Song of the Summer has fallen a bit to the wayside. And while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it is something that we should come to terms with.

Take a look at the main contenders for the “song of the summer” in 2026:

• Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” — an undeniable smash hit on the charts, but one that came out in 2025 and that has already been a hit for the majority of the year, not necessarily just the summer. This is the closest thing I feel we have to a potential SotS, and yet it still doesn’t feel like it’s taken over the entire world (or even the entire U.S.); there are still billions of people who have never even heard of “Choosin’ Texas” or Ella Langley.

• Drake’s “Janice STFU” — another undeniable hit, albeit one that has been largely panned by critics1 off an album that has widely vanished in the cultural conversation.

• Ariana Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me” — yet another huge hit, but a downtempo, moody ballad often doesn’t make for a lasting SotS candidate

• Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead” — a hit, but one that is well and truly past the peak of its popularity and whose “moment” feels like it has passed

• Slayyyter’s “DANCE” — not a huge globe-dominating hit, and yet it plays on repeat in the heads of certain homosexuals with newsletters.2

Sure, what your song of the summer is has always been defined by personal taste. But the conversation around what the Song of the Summer is seems to always be driven not only by chart performance and popularity, but a sense of omnipresence — one that, if we’re being honest, just doesn’t exist anymore.

Every time I have this conversation in real life with someone, the conversation inevitably turns to “well radio is dead, so that’s why this is happening.” But looking objectively at the statistics, that’s simply not true — radio is still one of the most popular ways that people around the U.S. discover new music. The difference is what radio has become. Where terrestrial radio used to be the central space for new music discovery,3 now people are using algorithmic streaming and radio services as their primary platform for figuring out what to listen to.

Those algorithms are the thing that’s keeping us from having a monocultural Song of the Summer in 2026. In a media ecosystem where the dominant music discovery platforms (Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, etc.) are designed to serve each user hyper-curated experiences, people end up listening to the same things (or at least the same kinds of things) over and over again. That’s why songs like Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” and Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” stayed on the charts for so long.

If you want to discover new music, you have to actively go out of your way and put in the work to discover what the latest songs and albums are — otherwise, your algorithms will serve you the same handful of artists, genres and sounds that they know you like. And if things keep trending in the nightmarish direction they’re currently headed in, about half of the music served to you will be AI-generated slop that amalgamated a bunch of the sounds you like into a catchy, meaningless tune that could potentially go viral.4

So, will we ever have a singular Song of the Summer again? Maybe, but probably not. And losing the Song of the Summer itself isn’t even necessarily a bad thing — there are plenty of summers from the past where picking one song was impossible! But the methods through which we actually find and discover our favorite new songs, regardless of season, will continue to give me pause until something fundamental changes.

The Ariana Grande Conversation Is Getting Worse, Somehow

Remember when we had a whole conversation about the way folks have been talking about Ariana Grande’s body? Little did I know that it was only going to get much worse. With the release of her latest album Petal and the much-discussed video for its title track,5 her fans brought their concerns over her extremely thin appearance to a fever pitch — to the point where a rep for Grande eventually revealed that after the Eternal Sunshine tour, she’s taking a break and stepping out of the spotlight for a while. This led to onlookers calling her team “enablers” of her perceived eating disorder, with others expressing their frustration at the tone of her team’s remarks, who said that the reason she’s taking a break is in part due to “endless, ongoing public scrutiny.”

I’ve already written an entire post on this two months ago, so I’ll put things a little bit more bluntly this time. While I understand that many of the people commenting on Ariana’s weight are doing so out of a genuine place of concern for her health, the constant accusations and judgement being levied against her only serve to exacerbate the very ED that so many armchair experts are diagnosing her with. Meanwhile, Ariana herself has made it abundantly clear through her public statements and her latest body of work that this exact kind of discourse is causing her actual harm. Yelling at a celebrity that they look too thin and unhealthy isn’t productive, and it will likely only serve to create a feedback of shame — if Ariana is actually struggling with an ED6, this level of speculation only serves to make matters worse. I hope Ariana chooses to log off and actually focus on her health, I hope she has a group of people around her who are willing to offer whatever support she needs, and I really hope everyone else can stop focusing so much on this poor woman’s physical appearance.

Not-So-Good Charlotte

There was a little bit of chatter when Good Charlotte appeared onstage with Hilary Duff at her MSG show to perform “The Anthem”7, but I was much more focused on the behind-the-scenes mess the Madden brothers helped cause for a number of much-needed music publications. BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver, and Goldmine all underwent a series of massive layoffs this week at the behest of their parent company Veeps — a live-streaming founded by, you guessed it, the Madden brothers. As someone still dealing with the impact of being laid off8, this is horrible news. All of these brands have been doing an incredible job serving their audiences for years, and the decision to completely gut them in the name of profit is deeply disheartening. I would’ve hoped that the creators of a band that directly benefitted from coverage in magazines like these would understand their importance to our cultural conversations, but I guess that was a bit too much to ask for. Godspeed to all those talented writers affected — maybe we can start a fun lil support group!

Our Latest Baffling Pop Star Beef: Phoebe Bridgers & Gracie Abrams???

Okay, this may not be nearly as confounding as my personal favorite beef between Lana Del Rey & Ethel Cain from last year, but it’s still utterly fascinating to me. On the song “The Governor’s Waltz” off her upcoming album Lost Weekend, Phoebe Bridgers sings the line, “She can pretend to be me/ Since she took my place in my bed, on that stage.” Fans have immediately linked the line as a jab at noted Phoebe Bridgers fan Gracie Abrams, who is currently dating Phoebe’s ex Paul Mescal. Those fave have since taken this single lyric and run with it, conjuring an entire beef between the two involving bedsheets, timelines and lots more. While I agree that the lyric is probably about Gracie & Paul, I’m still abstaining from classifying this as true, certified, USDA-approved beef — I’ll need to see a response from Gracie or a more scathing diss track from Phoebe before I can actually weigh in meaningfully here.

2

live footage of me telling myself to listen to any other song this summer

Welcome, staff, to our first all-hands meeting here at Personality Hire! I’m so happy you could join us for this town hall as we look back on where we thrived during Q1 and Q2 of 2026.

Corporate jargon notwithstanding, 2026 is (more than) halfway over, and we have had a lot of great moments in pop culture — so many that it’s hard to actually pick which ones we all liked best. But that’s not going to stop us, because if I’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that we can’t possibly know what we actually like unless we rank things in a series of arbitrary lists!

I took a look back at the albums, TV shows and movies I’ve ingested this year and picked out a few of my absolute favorites to highlight here. If your favorites didn’t make this list, it’s either because I haven’t actually gotten around to watching/listening to them, or because your taste is worse different than mine!

So, without further delay, let’s take a look back at the cultural projects that defined 2026 thus far for me personally:

RAYE, This Music May Contain Hope

I know it’s July and there’s still a lot of year left in terms of new music, but I’m saying it now: RAYE needs to win Album of the Year for this absolute masterpiece of an LP. This Music May Contain Hope is a perfect antithesis of what’s become so commonplace in music today — and not in the lame “pEoPLe dONt mAKe rEAl mUsiC aNyMorE” way that others love to throw around. This album is maximalist perfection in production, themes, scope, writing, performance and every other metric it could possibly be held to. This album is RAYE delivering a fully-realized artistic statement about utter liberation in the hardest of times. I’d name my favorite tracks, but they are constantly shifting1 — which, to me, is the mark of an excellent album.

Slayyyter, Worst Girl in America

It’s weird to be simultaneously early and late to the Slayyyter train. I was rocking with Slayyyter starting in her Troubled Paradise era and continued rocking with her through Starfucker. But when it came to Worst Girl in America, I was really late to the party — I’d given the album a cursory listen when it came out and didn’t return to it2. But when I eventually did earlier this year, I was immediately obsessed. Sleazy (and not in the tired “indie sleaze” way), raunchy and fucking wild, this album is a goddamn blast from start to finish. The production defies category and veers gleefully off course at every given opportunity, and Slayyyter herself stops playing to her audience when she spits some of the grossest, funniest bars of her career. From top to bottom, this album is a glorious ode to hedonism in its grimiest form — and it’s better for it.

MUNA, Dancing on the Wall

Sure, I’m biased as a day one MUNA stan. I’ve been screaming from the rooftops for years that everyone — not just lesbians and those who are lesbian-adjacent like myself — should be obsessed with the greatest band in the world. And Dancing on the Wall is, to me, one of the strongest examples of why people should be paying attention. This album felt like a perfect bridge between the project that made them exponentially bigger (their self-titled third LP) and the project that made myself and so many others such big fans (About U baybeeeeeee). It toes the line perfectly between a darker, more politically motivated tone on songs like “Big Stick” and “Why Do I Get a Good Feeling,” and the more actively absurd and tongue-in-cheek offerings with tracks like “Eastside Girls” or “Girl's Girl.” Plus, it certainly helps that all three members are operating at their absolute peak on this album.

Olivia Rodrigo, You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So In Love

I continue to be incredibly, unbelievably impressed by Olivia Rodrigo. I enjoyed SOUR plenty, and I loved GUTS as a follow-up. But I actively adore You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So In Love precisely because it is such a departure from her past work. Her effortless sound switch-up all throughout this record is masterful, and her pen is at its best here as it’s dissecting the trials and tribulations of a fervent relationship. While she’s embracing a sunnier, more ‘80s-inspired indie rock sound, she never loses the edge that made her so fascinating in the first place — it’s on full display with songs like “maggots for brains” and “purple,” just written in a different font.

Disclaimer: I am currently in the middle of watching the third season of The Comeback, and the fact that I haven’t finished it is truly the only reason it didn’t make this list — Lisa Kudrow is everything and I would die for Valerie Cherish, so consider it an invisible honorable mention for the moment. Widow’s Bay is also on the queue after those massive Emmy noms; there’s just too much TV out there, guys.

Hacks

Full disclosure: I’ve been a Hacks stan for a few years now. I think Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder might have the greatest on-screen chemistry of any two actresses in recent memory, I think the writing on this show has always been air-tight, and I really, really could not wait to see how they wrapped things up. Sure enough, the team did not disappoint. This season perfectly balanced the ridiculous, laugh-out-loud bits of the show’s past (as much as I think Hannah Einbinder deserves another Emmy for her performance, I am praying that Megan Stalter gets her first win for Kayla’s insane presence in this season) with some truly heart-warming drama in the back half of the show. Even when the finale played what I thought was a safe ending, it still threaded the needle and felt like a fitting, meaningful end to a show that continued to be excellent all throughout its run.

The Bear

Speaking of final seasons of prestige shows that made me believe in hope and goodness again, let’s talk about The Bear season five. Like many others who enjoy putting on deeply stressful television, I adored the first season of this show, loved the second season, and struggled with seasons three and four. At some point about halfway through the making of this show, it felt like we were stretching the story out to its absolute breaking point with a group of characters who would have moments of huge personal growth followed by immediate backslides into their pre-assigned tropes. When they announced season five would be the final season of The Bear, I was relieved; sometimes, a show just needs to end. And what an ending this was! Critics seems to be somewhat split in their feelings over this conclusion, but I’m not — this is the best I’ve felt about The Bear since season two. Season five leaned into what the show has always been remarkably good at; dialogue that feels incredibly natural, and the stress of trying to make something that you’re personally passionate about successful. Ayo Edebiri in particular gets to absolutely shine in this season with some of the best acting in her career, leading to Chef Sydney finally getting the flowers she deserves.3 Yes, chefs! Yes!!!

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

For some godforsaken reason, I decided to go back and rewatch Game of Thrones earlier this year because I wanted to know if those final seasons were actually as bad as I remembered them being; they were surprisingly worse than I remembered, actually! I was bummed out, I didn’t know if I could fully commit to another big long epic like House of the Dragon, and then I saw that HBO had just finished releasing this six-episode mini-series set in Westeros. So, I clicked play. What a delightful surprise this show turned out to be! Peter Claffey is so excellent as Duncan, really bringing a more light-hearted take on the classic “fantasy knight” trope. I love that the story really revels in lowering the stakes — this isn’t about feudalist wars over kingdoms and land and ice zombies, it’s about a down-on-his-luck guy trying to make something happen for himself in a world that’s designed to punish him. The acting is great, the pacing was perfect, the music is wonderful, and I was really blown away by what a return-to-form this felt like.

Project Hail Mary

There is a reason that Project Hail Mary became such a meme factory4 after its release earlier this year. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Martian, something about this earnest, funny, captivating film kept me invested throughout. Ryan Gosling gives a fantastic performance from beginning to end in a movie that largely revolves around us caring deeply about Ryland Grace. James Ortiz, though, became the star of the show with his perfect vocal and puppet performance as Rocky, not only taking over the internet, but the entire rest of the movie.

Obsession

As someone who tends to be incredibly particular when it comes to horror movies, I was really blown away by the storytelling of Obsession. And a big part of my appreciation for this film comes from its refusal to pull punches, whether that’s regarding the characters themselves or the horrific things we witness them do. Bear is a miserable piece of shit and a true villain, and the fact that we are viewing the movie through his incredibly distorted lens only makes the message that much more powerful. And while everyone in this movie delivers, no one goes there quite like Inde Navarrette as Nikki. She is simultaneously monstrous and vulnerable in a way that I think very few actresses could have handled. I am hoping we get to see much more of her in the near future.

The Sheep Detectives

This film had absolutely no business being as good as it was. Upon seeing the trailers and promotions for this film, I was quick to think, “Eh, not for me.” So imagine my surprise when I ended up finally watching this movie on streaming and fully bawling multiple times. For a kids’ movie, it is a shockingly effective meditation on grief and death that makes the case to actually have real discussions with young people about what death is and what it means. Yeah, there’s plenty of “kids movie” bits in here that were silly and juvenile, but the threads connecting this movie together is an impeccable script5 that was far more complex than the typical fare we provide younger generations.

Welcome back to Personality Hire!! If you’re a regular reader, you might notice that I’ve been hopping on here a little less frequently lately — that’s because I’ve been out and about throughout Pride season, covering a few events and enjoying not having to be endlessly working during the season for the first time in my adult life.

But now that we’re out of the gayest time of the year, I’ve got plenty to catch up on, so we’re skipping right to the Quick Hits today and doing a rapid-fire roundup of all the stuff I didn’t get to talk about over the last couple weeks!

I’ve Decided Not to Care About the Tayvis MSG Wedding

Let’s clear a couple things up. Despite my utter devotion to the concept of Swiftie Math (see my latest equation below1), I’ve never really considered myself a fan of Taylor Swift. Her music is mostly good! She’s a once-in-a-generation songwriter despite the lyrics on her last album! The other pieces of her public persona I mostly don’t pay all that much attention to! Yet even with all of that being said, when the rumors first popped up a few weeks ago that she and her fiancé Travis Kelce would be getting married at Madison Square Garden on the Fourth of July weekend, I had the following reactions in this order:

1. Ain’t no way they’re getting married at MSG, that’s ridiculous.

2. If it’s true, that’s … certainly a choice.

As more and more details have come out appearing to confirm that some sort of Swift-related wedding event is happening at MSG this Friday2, everyone has shared their take on it. Many fellow New Yorkers have decried the choice as “ridiculous,” considering the fact that streets near the venue will have to be closed off. Others have said that the choice of having the most famous arena in the world for 1,000 wedding guests is “tacky” and dumb. And I’ve settled on perhaps the hottest take yet: I don’t care!

This is all very silly and dumb and not actually anyone’s business! To the many folks pointing out how many security people they would have to hire for an event like this, I’d point out that Taylor would probably have to hire a massive security team for wherever else she’d have her wedding because total strangers will try and insert themselves wherever possible! To the defenders saying that it’s “totally normal” for a celebrity of Taylor’s stature to rent out a venue like MSG for a personal event, I would say that it’s maybe normal for Taylor, but not for anyone else regardless of how famous they are. Is it weird? Sure. Is it where I would have my wedding if I was Taylor Swift? Probably not. Do I think it matters? No!

Lizzo Would Like to Have a Word About Flopping

I’ll be completely honest and say that I didn’t even know Lizzo put out her long-awaited album Bitch at the top of the month. And it turns out there’s a decent reason for that — the album didn’t make it on to the chart, only sold a few thousand copies in its first few weeks, and has not been able to provide Lizzo with the comeback she’s been craving. So, during a recent appearance on the Swiftologist’s podcast3, Lizzo broke down exactly how she feels about the album underperforming, and the wider implications of failing in the modern music industry. Here’s a particular sample that stood out to me about the Khia Asylum:

“I was so shocked when people kept saying ‘key-uh’ because it’s about Khia, the rapper, ‘My Neck, My Back’ … I think that is even backhanded in itself to name it after this extremely talented, incredible pillar in the Black community and in Black rap music. Then it’s this weapon that targets only women, and a lot of Black women.”

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to say this, so color me absolutely shocked: Lizzo is right!! While I may not agree that Bitch contains “some of [her] best work” as she called it4, but she is absolutely right that the metaphorical facility so many pop fans have built for faded stars who aren’t putting out hits anymore is inherently misogynistic and racist! Furthermore, she goes on to discuss how failure is part of the process when making art, and in my humble opinion, she’s right about that, too! We need to be okay with letting pop stars put out albums that don’t do particularly well in the moment and giving them space to take another swing instead of declaring them “over.” How many great albums would we have never gotten if every singer just abandoned making music after having one flop?

Carly Rae Jepsen & Phoebe Bridgers Having New Albums Out Means Life Is Worth Living

What a month to be obsessed with two extremely different kinds of performers who are both staging comebacks. Both Carly Rae Jepsen AND Phoebe Bridgers announced they’ve got new albums coming — Bridgers’ long-awaited Punisher followup Lost Weekend is officially arriving on August 14, while Jepsen’s eighth (!!!!) studio album Day and Night will arrive on September 18. This is the correct order of things; we need to let Phoebe come in and emotionally devastate us before having Carly Rae jump back in and lift those spirits right back up. The only thing that could make this news any better is if Sky Ferreira actually released Masochism this year.5

Who Needs a Nice Bit of Schadenfreude?

I spoke at length a few weeks ago about what an absolute clusterfuck the Trump administration’s “Great American State Fair” was turning out to be from a musical standpoint. But I just have to take a moment to highlight that the event was — as predicted — a wash! Photos and videos have since crowded the internet showing a sparse National Mall with a small coterie of guests milling around the fair grounds, and performers singing to much smaller throngs of people than they ever anticipated. And despite his enthusiastic insistence that he would be performing at the fair (unlike the vast majority of the other announced talent), Vanilla Ice never got on stage due to “inclement weather” that never really materialized. Of course after all these facts were shared online, our fearless leader did the “mature” thing and had a public crashout claiming that the crowds were “packed” and everyone else was lying. It’s nice to see a good old-fashioned flop from the president — and a lovely distraction from all the bullshit going on in Washington.

And that’s gonna do it for this week’s edition of the newsletter! Next week, we’re breaking the format again as I offer up a good old-fashioned list for the people. Stay tuned! :)

Welcome back to Personality Hire! What a time to be alive in New York City — the Knicks finally clinched an NBA championship title, Europeans are literally everywhere for the World Cup, the weather is perfect and it’s gay as hell out here for Pride Month.

But we’re not talking about any of that today, so let’s dive into what we are talking about this week:

Ariana Grande’s Body Isn’t the Problem.

Content warning: this section will talk at some length about body dysmorphia, disordered eating and societal body standards.

For pretty much the entirety of her time in the public eye, Ariana Grande has had every part of her persona scrutinized and examined by the public. Whether it’s her relationships, her lyrics or her fashion, the 32-year-old star has been subjected to eyes on her for over a decade.

Of the many analyses that have been foisted on Ariana throughout her life, few have been more talked about than her body. From the shade of foundation that she used to the amount of skin she showed to her weight, the singer has made it clear that the constant conversation around her physical appearance has taken a toll on her.

“I just wanted to address your concerns about my body and talk a little bit about what it means to be a person with a body and to be seen and to be paid such close attention to,” she said in a video published in 2023. “I think we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what.”

It’s a refrain she’s repeated often, especially during the intense public attention of her Wicked press tours in 2023 and 2024, as fans and critics alike commented on how thin she looked. Yet it hasn’t stopped the onslaught of comments, especially as she’s embarked on her first tour in years.

On social media, users have used multiple opportunities to share photos of Grande on stage during her Eternal Sunshine tour stops looking incredibly thin, making claims that she is suffering from an eating disorder, that she’s does not look well, that they’re concerned for her health and safety. This has then prompted other fans to chime in and say that Ariana’s physical appearance is no one’s concern but her own, that it is never appropriate to comment on the appearance of a woman’s body, and that Ariana seems to be doing just fine.

It’s a demoralizing conversation1 to watch, most of all because there’s so little room on either side for nuance.

My default is to generally say that inspections and judgements made about another person’s body are at best unwarranted, and at worst directly harmful to that person’s mental well-being. Ariana Grande, as a general rule, doesn’t owe anyone an explanation when it comes to her appearance. If she says that she is happy and healthy (which she has done multiple times) and is asking people to stop commenting on her appearance (which she has also done multiple times), then that should be respected.

But I cannot help but see the photos of Ariana on tour and feel a twinge of concern. The difference is that my concern has less to do with Ariana herself — as I stated, if she says that she is healthy and okay, then there isn’t much else to be said — but for the larger context around it.

We’re living in a culture right now where everyone — but women most of all — are being subject to some of the most frightening instances of unrealistic body standards in decades. The rise of GLP-1s as a democratized weight loss option2, as well as numerous instances of celebrities once again featuring the “heroin chic” look so publicly, has helped exacerbate a culture that was already so hellbent on making sure that women did everything they possibly could to look as thin as humanly possible. Those external pressures being put onto people everywhere can lead to behaviors that develop into disorders, and the more we see images of gaunt, absurdly thin famous people, the more potential for long-lasting damage there is.

So let’s reframe the conversation. This isn’t about Ariana Grande, and frankly, it never was — it’s about doing everything we can as individuals to communicate to vulnerable people seeing these images that the standards we hold women’s bodies to are unrealistic and harmful. It’s not about Ariana Grande’s health or well-being, because as any clinical dietician will tell you, you cannot diagnose someone on appearance alone. It’s about getting the message across that everyone’s body is different, and allowing everyone to be comfortable in their own body.

For the future, instead of fighting about whether or not we should be talking about Ariana Grande’s body, let’s actually have some discussions about the way we speculate about women’s bodies in the first place — and how that sets a dangerous precedent for everyone else.

Give Me the Amanda Seyfried Blue Recordings NOW

On a lighter note, when this story came out earlier this week, I nearly wept at the thought of never getting to hear Amanda Seyfried sing the entirety of Joni Mitchell’s Blue. While I understand we will likely never get to see the shelved biopic that she was set to star in, can we at least get an official recording of these songs?? I’ve been Team Amanda Seyfried’s Voice ever since Mamma Mia3, and especially since watching The Testament of Ann Lee earlier this year. We’ve already heard her play the dulcimer and cover “California” beautifully, so now I won’t be able to rest until I hear her rendition of “River.” Someone, somewhere, PLEASE do something about this.

Ned Fulmer, the King of Never Taking a Hint

@nedfulmerI lived a day as a stand-up comedian and performed my first ever set in a public show

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Let’s close this out with a little bit of a rant. Ned Fulmer, former member of the viral group The Try Guys, cannot seem to accept the fact that people don’t seem to be even remotely interested in him since his infamous 2022 cheating scandal that got him fired from his job. He tried putting out a podcast; after his ex-wife read him for filth4 in the premiere episode, viewership tanked. He tried blatantly ripping off the Try Guys format; people online saw through it and called him out on it. Now, he’s trying stand-up comedy and, spoiler alert, it’s bad! Turns out, when all of your material is about the time you cheated on your wife and didn’t take very much responsibility for the subsequent consequences, people won’t find you that funny. But I’m mainly sitting here thinking … what is it going to take for this man to get that the audience is just not that into him? It’s all starting to feel like a weird public humiliation ritual, or something that happens when a lack of shame crashes into a stunning lack of original ideas. Either way, here’s hoping that my algorithm stops showing me this man’s content ASAP <3

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Welcome back (finally) to Personality Hire, and happy Pride! Apologies for the radio silence last week, I was a wee bit sick and couldn’t bring myself to pull a post together. But we’re back, and this time we’ve got good news:

Your boy wrote a cover story for PAPER!! I got the opportunity to chat with the cast of the new Mindy Kaling show Not Suitable for Work about how they put together a fun new sitcom for a younger generation, the struggles of finding work-life balance in 2026, on-set hijinks and lots more. A huge shoutout to Ella, Avantika, Jack, Nicholas and Will for the very fun conversation, and to the whole team over at Paper for giving me a shot with this one :)

Now, onto all the stuff we absolutely need to talk about from this week:

The Great American State Flop

For years, we have been hearing about the great, glorious, all-encompassing culture war that Donald Trump and his MAGA acolytes have been aiming to wage on society as a whole. We heard about how “woke” art was going to fall to the wayside, how those celebrating diversity would be shunned, and how Trump himself would usher in a “golden age” of real, American culture.

If his latest effort is any indication, that “golden age” might be reaching its sunset soon.

For those who didn’t see — the Trump-backed Great American State Fair scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C. at the end of June/early July is falling apart. A concert series set to feature late-90’s, early 2000’s stars like Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida and more is bleeding headliners. Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, The Commodores, Young MC, Morris Day & the Time and Milli Vanilli — that’s five of the original nine acts set to perform — all announced that they would not be performing after being “misled” about the partisan nature of the event. While Vanilla Ice has doubled down on performing at the event1, there’s still a lack of clarity over whether Flo Rida or C+C Music Factory would perform.

But that all might not matter at the end of the day, because Trump himself floated the idea of cancelling his big, beautiful event in place of … yet another MAGA rally that he would headline2. It’s another obvious indication of what Trump’s ultimate priority always is — attention and credit that he doesn’t deserve. Whether he’s superimposing his name onto literally everything he can, trying to build gaudy monuments on the national mall or even the creation of his own planning organization to make sure America’s 250th birthday is still all about him, Trump is desperately trying to memorialize himself (probably because he knows no one will want to memorialize him after he’s gone).

This all might seem pretty dire, but for me, I can’t help but smile looking at what’s happening here. It’s just yet another example that MAGA’s view of culture is so severely warped and out-of-touch that he cannot help but fall flat on his face. For all of the right’s talk of wanting to turn everything into a “culture war,” they seem to been blithely unaware of what the culture around them actually cares about.

Just take a look back at the last year-and-change of the right’s ham-fisted attempts at gaining cultural influence. At Trump’s second inauguration, technical issues were so pervasive that multiple artists involved ended up furious about how poorly received their performances were. When Trump took over the Kennedy Center and made it clear that he would steer it away from “woke” ideas, so many artists and performers pulled out of their upcoming engagements that Trump had no choice but to close the center down. When Turning Point USA wanted to pull focus away from Bad Bunny’s record-breaking halftime show earlier this year, they ended up putting on a widely mocked, hilariously bad interpretation of “Americana” with their alternative programming.

For a political movement relying heavily on “fixing” culture, it seems more and more like they have no idea (or interest, for that matter) in what people actually seem to care about. They can whine and scream about how much they hate how woke film and television and music and art and culture at large has become, but nearly every attempt they’ve made to offer a meaningful alternative has been met with crickets.

Of course, many on the right (Trump likely included) don’t actually care about changing the culture — they merely care about grabbing power where they can, holding onto it as tightly as possible and changing the rules so it can’t be taken away from them. So, along with voting when the time comes,3 it’s now our responsibility to point and laugh at them when they fall face-first into an embarrassing cultural failure like the Great American State Fair fiasco.

Here’s hoping those poll numbers keep getting lower!

Patagonia vs. Pattie Gonia Is An Absolute Mess

This is not the way we wanted to start Pride Month, but here we are. For those out of the loop, Patagonia (the outdoor apparel brand) is suing Pattie Gonia (the drag queen and environmental activist) for trademark infringement. Pattie has framed the lawsuit as a major corporation trying to bully a climate activist into giving up her name and called on them to drop the suit. Patagonia has said that they didn’t want to sue but felt they had no choice but to protect their brand. There’s a lot of details, and you can read all of them in the actual filing here.

Now, the internet is being flooded with people fighting over who is right or wrong here, and it has become truly exhausting. Yes, of course we don’t want to see Pattie, who is an incredible queen and activist getting sued like this. But, if the legal aspect of all of this appears to be what it is, then it looks like she may very well be in the wrong, and that Patagonia has an obligation to try and protect their brand. All I know for certain is this is a very bad look for literally everyone involved the longer this goes on. It’s Pride, damn it!! Everyone stop fighting!!!

Of Course Jay-Z Responded to Drake

Speaking of people who are fighting, on to the most predictable clap back of the last week, when Jay-Z took to the stage at the Roots Picnic and went in on Drake after getting dissed on Iceman. “The jig is up/ We got up 10, wrong chart champ /You gotta look up again/ N—s look up to Hov/ I never looked up to them … Them crackers got your publishing gangsta, go talk tough to them, don’t talk success to me/ You n—-s is workers, in perpetuity is how your contract is worded/ Don’t make me go further, man.” You would think that Drake learned his lesson after getting spanked so thoroughly by Kendrick Lamar, but it’s clear that he wants to keep his name in the news, so I wouldn’t be shocked if he tries to respond to Jay’s response. I just hope he knows what he’s in for, because Jay-Z is NOT the rapper I’d try this shit with.

The Hacks Finale Was Practically Perfect

I know there was another highly decorated HBO show that finally ended last week that everyone is talking about, I am simply too busy reveling in my love for Hacks and it’s phenomenal series finale that aired last Thursday. Without spoiling too much for my dear readers who haven’t caught up, the show neatly wrapped up a lot of its loose ends while playing with a heartbreaking idea for about 45 minutes. It ended up being a perfect showcase for Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder to showcase not only their individual acting chops, but their incredible on-screen chemistry. While part of me low-key wishes the show committed to the darker ending that they seemed to set up for the episode, I understand why they felt the need to pull away at the last second. All in all, this is one of the best modern TV comedies (and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise), and I’m thrilled that they managed to stick the landing as flawlessly as they did.

Ariana Grande, “Hate That I Made You Love Me”

Ariana has been sick of some of her fans for a while now, and never has she made that more clear than on “Hate That I Made You Love Me.” On this remarkably honest (and gorgeously produced) song, Ariana sits her fans down and explains — like a parent trying to be gentle with their children’s feelings — that she never asked for a lot of this. The lyrics could be seen as sly and non-specific (maybe she’s talking to an ex??) until you get to the bridge, when she stops using singular pronouns and instead addresses the collective:

I’ve held your projections when you’ve felt so insecure
Tell me, why is it this way?
Why you so hate to see women endure?
Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts of your own accord?
I don’t really think so.

Not only is this a great addition to the “Ariana Singles That Are Bound To Somehow Be Underrated” catalogue (alongside “Yes, And?,” “POV,” “Monopoly,” “Breathin’” and plenty of others), but it’s a poignant and deeply necessary song for all pop fans to hear, even if the message will be lost on many of them.

Kim Petras, Detour

I, like pretty much every one else, was not expecting to hear Detour until much later this year. But now that it’s out, I can confidently say that Kim Petras’ latest album is her best since Clarity, and honestly maybe ever? Songs like “101” and “Brutalist” perfectly toe the line between reinvention and liberation — which feels fitting considering the apparent dissolution of her deal with Republic Records after their public dispute earlier this year! Detour is Kim at her most vulnerable and real, while also still managing to provide all the fun that we’ve come to expect from her. So, naturally, I love it.

Ravyn Lenae, “Handle”

I was slow on the uptake when it came to Ravyn Lenae, but thank goodness I eventually caught up, because “Handle” is THAT girl. It’s grungy and indie-rock inspired while still letting Lenae show off those vocals, and I simply cannot get the bleary-eyed chorus out of my head. Blue Island cannot come soon enough, I need to listen to this whole damn album ASAP.

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Welcome back to Personality Hire! I’m coming off an eventful weekend, helping out with some social coverage of Brooklyn’s Sounds That Move for PAPER1, and putting some finishing touches on a piece coming out in a few weeks!

But now, onto all the weird stuff that happened this week:

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The Iceman Melteth

At this point, I was convinced that Iceman was never coming. After a series of bungled, poorly-received singles releases last year — along with all of the other drama going on in his life — it seemed like Drake was going to have to go back to the drawing board for his next project.

Well, he certainly zigged where I thought he might zag. Not only did Iceman finally arrive on Thursday night, but it did so alongside two other new Drake albums as well, titled Habibti and Maid of Honour, respectively. All told, Drake gave us 43 songs clocking in at a whopping two-and-a-half hours in total — and none of it feels like the redemption tour that he so clearly wanted it to be.

As I walked around my neighborhood running errands on Sunday, I played through all 43 songs of this mammoth drop, and my only real takeaway is that I feel kind of bad for Drake at this point. He’s still clearly stuck on the public humiliation ritual that Kendrick Lamar put him through in 2024 and 2025, to the point where he continues aiming at Kendrick (and a whole bunch of others) on multiple tracks.

But more than just the soundtracks of a man seeking retribution, Iceman, Habibti and Maid of Honour all feel like Drake trying to reassert his dominance over the format. We’ll see how successful that endeavor is; he’s already managed to set a 2026 streaming record with just Iceman, which means it’s probably going to chart very well in the weeks to come. But, as I’ve said in this very newsletter multiple times already, music is not sports, no matter how much we try to make it that way. The charts and streaming numbers are useful tools to track popularity, but when people treat them as the be-all and end-all of what is “good” in the music industry, they lose sight of the inherently subjective nature of the artform. Someone can dominate the charts with inherently cynical and soulless art — and for the sake of my own self-preservation, I’m going to refrain from using specific examples here.

Of the three albums, Iceman is the one with the highest highs — tracks like “Ran to Atlanta” and “National Treasures” feel like genuinely good Drake cuts that evolve his sound and also touch on his current state of mind. And that album as a whole at least feels like an attempt at responding to everything he’s been through since the Kendrick beef. Habibti, meanwhile, sees Drake jumping back to the more minimalist R&B sounds of his Take Care era (to middling results, imo), while Maid of Honour really tries to recapture the dancefloor euphoria of his hits like “Hotline Bling” and “Nice for What” (and again, imo, fails at doing so).

All told, of the two-and-a-half hours of content Drake delivered, I’d say there’s a solid twenty to thirty minutes worth of music that made me go, “Ok, now we’re cooking.” The rest of this bloated, meandering mess falls into one of two buckets: mindless flexes or pointless rehashes of his past beefs.

The latter has certainly taken up a lot of the headlines surround this three album drop — Drake goes after not only Kendrick in his lyrics, but J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, Jay-Z, LeBron James and a whole host of others all throughout these songs. And while watching arguably the most successful rapper in the world attempt take down a series of other extremely successful, powerful people would normally be a source of rapt entertainment for me, here, it just feels like a temper tantrum. Drake’s main problem with these people appears to be that they didn’t adequately show him support in his war with Kendrick, and now he’s lashing out at them for failing to kiss his ring.

But that, to me, is the story of these albums. All throughout the projects, I could not help but feel like I was listening to an artist who trying to rewrite history after losing a fight that he continually escalated. On the albums — and in real life — Drake continues to spin the story that Kendrick’s streams on “Not Like Us” were inflated by streaming platforms and his own label2, that he won on a technicality, and that he remains on top. Drake wants to live in a world where he’s getting gassed up by more than just his favorite manosphere influencer Adin Ross, and not the one where both of them are being sued for promoting an allegedly illegal online casino operation and using the money made in the process to inflate his streams, the very thing he accused UMG of doing for Kendrick.

Simply put, Drake wants to live in a world where he is respected and acknowledged as the biggest and the best rapper in the world. But he refuses to recognize that that world doesn’t exist anymore — and it certainly can’t exist if he keeps using his art to whine about getting dunked on.

You Seem Pretty Puritanical For a Stan So Online

We’re gonna hit this one really quick, because from the moment it began last week, I was already over this story. The short version: Olivia Rodrigo got in trouble online because a bunch of people were upset that she was wearing babydoll dresses during her live performances, music videos and promotional appearances ahead of her third album. A lot of the comments were claiming that she was both sexualizing and infantilizing herself through the style of clothes that she was wearing. That’s … stupid! Babydoll dresses have been big for years, and claiming that wearing clothes means Olivia is somehow supporting the sexualization of children is inherently ridiculous, and rooted in a deep-seated misogyny that I’m really sick of seeing! There’s so much3 more to say, but honestly, Brittany Spanos said it better than I (or frankly a lot of others) possibly could in this very excellent piece for The Cut.

Stay Mad, Chris Brown

Unlike the three Drake albums, I simply refused to listen to Chris Brown’s new album over the weekend — I’m good with not supporting the music of an abuser! But Chris was clearly not happy with the way his album was received, especially the fact that Pitchfork gave it a 1.9. So, he took to his Instagram and told his followers that he only cared about making music for his fans that loved him, and that everybody else should “go listen to motherfucking Zara Larsson or somebody.”4 Maybe Chris used Zara as an example because she’s been very open about not fucking with Chris Brown in the past, maybe he just used an example of a very successful pop star who’s enjoying a massive moment. All I know for sure is that the people are very clearly invested in Zara Larsson — and they don’t seem to care all that much about new CB.

Gracie Abrams, “Hit the Wall”

I’ll be the first to admit that Gracie Abrams has always been a blurry spot in my field of vision for the pop scene. There are songs of hers that I’ve really liked in the past, but on the whole, she never quite been someone I’m one hundred percent in on. Her new song, “Hit the Wall,” might be the tipping point where I become a full-blown fan, though. I love the minimalist synth-heavy production that she, Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon put in place here, and the songwriting is unreal. To open a pop song like this with the lyric “I'm a crack in the pavement, I'm a slipknot/ I'm afraid that my fortress is a glass box” is insane. Really loving this one, and will be listening to it a lot in the days to come.

Towa Bird, Gentleman

I’ve been picking up everything Towa Bird has been putting down for the last few years, and Gentleman is probably my favorite project of hers already. All throughout the album, Towa does a great job of bridging the gap between her rock influences and a more mainstream pop sound, all while dancing on the line between the two. Early faves are “Dog” and “All Gone” with Kathleen Motherfucking Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre fame!

Also Jamming Out To: Tove Lo’s “i’m your girl right?,” Rostam & Clairo’s “Hardy,” Genesis Owusu’s Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge, Zolita’s “Hell’s Belles” and Dua Saleh’s “Firestorm”

Welcome back to Personality Hire, darlings <3. I had a lot of Big Feelings™ to process this week thanks to our Main Event, so let’s not waste any more time:

Chappelle Groan

There are certain things I have long hoped we would leave in 2017: fidget spinners, the phrase “romphim,” and exhausting conversations about Dave Chappelle making anti-trans “jokes.”

Well, two out of three ain’t bad, I guess.

Over the last few weeks, the oft-celebrated but simultaneously controversial comedian has appeared in multiple interviews where he’s talked about his jokes regarding the trans community. First, it was an NPR interview, where Dave complained that right-wing politicians took his material at face value and used it to justify their legislation and actions taken against trans folks. “I did resent that the Republican party ran on transgender jokes,” he said, recalling an instance where Republican representative Lauren Bobert took a photo with him and used it to spread hate towards the community online. “I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing.”

Now, Dave sat down for a nearly two hour interview with Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson on their podcast, during which he defended his right to make the jokes that he made. Or at least, that’s the closest I can actually get to understanding the word salad he used. I’ll let you try and decipher it for yourself:

“I was doing jokes that some people thought were controversial and some people didn’t. But that experience, from my perspective, is much different than what it must have been like watching it because, listen, people would think it’s me versus the gay community. I never looked at it like that. I always thought it was corporate interest and culture negotiating itself1. So, you know, most of those people who were critical of what I was doing didn’t seem like they were of it. They had their faces pressed against the glass, commenting on what we were doing in there, but they weren’t in there doing it. And I think I spoke to you about this earlier: Every opinion you can think of is represented in a comedy club. Every type of person you can imagine does stand-up comedy: transgender stand-up comics, Black, white, Asian, every kind of perspective. And we all champion whatever opinion we champion, and we would never think to silence one another.”

My best attempt at translating this weird-ass statement ends up sounding something like this: “Some people were mad that I made anti-trans jokes, but they’re not comedians, so they don’t get it, and even if they were, they still don’t get to try and stop me from saying what I want to say.”

These comments ultimately constitute the closest thing we’ve seen thus far to Chappelle’s attempt at offering an explanation for why he made all the anti-trans jokes he’s made for years. It’s not an apology, nor do I think Dave wants it to be misconstrued as one. And that, folks, is a big part of the problem.

Since his 2017 Netflix special The Age of Spin, Dave has been constantly making fun of the trans community, and specifically making fun of the community for being offended at his jokes. In his 2021 special The Closer, he used the words of a deceased transgender woman he was friends with to try and defend himself from critique. At nearly every opportunity he’s had to simply move on and stop punching a community that is already prone to attack, he’s doubled and tripled down. He even aligned himself with TERFs like J.K. Rowling during one special, proudly declaring that he was “team TERF.”

What his latest comments, both to NPR and to the former First Lady, indicate to me is that Dave seems more interested in rewriting the history of his jokes than he is in actually figuring out why so many people were offended by them. He wants to frame this as a disingenuous smear campaign that was orchestrated against him, and not an honest reaction of anger from fans who expected better of him.

No one is making the argument that Dave Chappelle is responsible for all of the horrible shit that trans people have been forced to deal with, especially from this administration. A lot of us are making the argument that his jokes were (and still are), at best, lazy shots at easy targets, and at worst, dressed-up bigotry that only serves to add fuel in the tank of very real attacks being made against trans folks. I’ll always concede that, yes, Dave is perhaps one of the greatest standup comedians of this century, and was maybe one of the best comedians of all time. That doesn’t make it any less true that his anti-trans jokes are both hurtful and incredibly unfunny.

Dave is suffering from the same problem that so many other older comedians can’t seem to get past — everyone (including me, a non-comedian with a newsletter) is entitled to speak their opinions today. All of this talk of people trying to “silence” him is bullshit. He continues to be one of the highest paid comedians working today, and he routinely sells out every date he performs. Hell, he’s on Michelle Obama’s podcast talking about how people don’t want to let him say his piece! Look around you, my guy!

Yet the most infuriating thing about his latest comments is the fact that he wants people to see him as different than the politicians who are stripping the trans community’s rights away when he has done exactly nothing to speak out against those attacks on the community. If he was so furious about Lauren Bobert and other representatives using his jokes as weaponry, why didn’t he go out of his way to denounce their attacks on the community?

I don’t know if Dave is doing all of these interviews to promote a new special or a new project or whatever. What I do know is I am done hearing this man talk as often as he can in public about how he allegedly cannot say whatever it is he wants to in public. If Dave wants to keep making jokes at the expense of the trans community, no one is stopping him from doing so — he simply cannot then expect that his attempts to gaslight everyone into thinking that he’s supportive of trans rights will be successful.

Swifties, You Need to Calm Down!!

If Dave Chappelle wants an example of people actually being unable to take a trans-related joke, he should look at the Swifties. After pop singer Eli made the truly innocuous joke “Taylor Swift you will never be trans,” a phalanx of her fans united in attacking Eli — deadnaming her, mocking her appearance, and saying all manner of extremely bigoted things about her being a trans woman. But Eli doubled down in a way that actually counts; after calling out Taylor as “the Jeff Bezos of the music industry” and criticizing her for acting as a businesswoman first and an artist second, Eli proceeded to write an open letter asking Taylor to use her platform to advocate for the abolishment of “abusive systemic structures” in the music industry. Among those structures, she specifically used streaming royalty splits and record/publishing deals that promote “oppression and exploitation of working musicians.” I’ve yet to see how, exactly, Eli was wrong in anything that she said. While I’m sure this isn’t going to stop the hate train from speeding after her, I’m thrilled to watch Eli hold a toxic fan army to account. Go off, girlie!

Why Am I So Obsessed With the “Crank It” Graduation Trend?

@nateconklinILY @Ohio University 😸 & @slayyyter (thank u @grace for the idea 😽)

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Ok, we’ve done a lot of deep, hard conversations today, so let’s do a fun one.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was a little late to the Slayyyter hype. I really liked WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, but I was so caught up in my obsession with the RAYE album that I didn’t give it the attention it so rightly deserved.2 Now that I have learned to appreciate the hell out of this dance-pop masterpiece, I’m thrilled to see “CRANK IT” becoming its own viral trend during graduation season, as new college graduates look dead into their universities’ livestream cameras and mouth the title. This is the kind of stupid, silly, grassroots trend that the internet is built for, and every time I see one, I immediately go looking for more. The kids are, in fact, alright.

MUNA, Dancing on the Wall

My expectations were sky-high for MUNA’s new album, and they didn’t once disappoint me on this A+ LP. From tip to tail, Dancing on the Wall never takes its foot off the pedal, weaving in and out of emotions, sounds and vibes that coalesce into a chaotic, honest interpretation of what the hell is going on in the world today. For a band that’s become so synonymous with the image of “queer joy,” MUNA leans hard into messier feelings on this album — “On Call” details a pattern of self-sabotaging romantic entanglements, “"Girl’s Girl” wonders aloud why your crush won’t pay attention to you, and “Big Stick”3 smacks you in the face with the political hellscape of the world. More than anything, DotW feels like MUNA at their realest, balancing the ebullient anthems that made them so huge in the first place with the rage we can’t escape in 2026.

Charli XCX, “Rock Music”

Everyone’s been focused on whether or not “Rock Music” is, well, rock music, and I finally can say — I don’t care! Whatever the hell it is, I like it a lot and I need about 10 more songs just like this! The distorted guitars and glitchy vocal effects pulled me in on my first listen, to the point where I fully missed the excellent lyrics Charli was delivering. My personal favorite is currently “I'm really banging my head/ I'm really hurting my neck/ The nervе damage is real/ But it's the only way to feel somеthing.” Rock or not, this is the new Charli that I need more of pronto.

Also Jamming Out To: Kelela’s “linknb,” Kim Petras’ “Jeep,” Lykke Li’s The Afterparty, Father John Misty’s “The Payoff” and Deb Never’s ARCADE

1

It’s this part where I started looking like this:

Welcome back to Personality Hire! It’s been a gorgeous (and finally sunny) weekend here in NYC, and I got to spend the weekend with friends — specifically celebrating the release of my girlie Kim Narby’s debut novel (!!!) Saturn Returning1 on Sunday. No, I did not get a chance to go see The Devil Wears Prada 2 just yet, despite the fact that the original film has been a cornerstone of my personality for the last 20-ish years, so please don’t spoil it.

It was yet another banner week in the world of pop culture, so let’s cut to the chase and get to the news:

The 2026 Met Gala Happened, I Guess!

Let me start by saying that no, I do not know very much about fashion. No, I am not embedded in the world of fashion. No, I don’t ultimately care all that much about the Met Gala, except for the fact that it is usually an event marked by getting to see celebrities take big swings with their fashion that they otherwise wouldn’t while on a red carpet.

But this year’s Met Gala was different for myriad reasons. The first and most all-encompassing of those reasons was a certain CEO by the name of Jeff Bezos. The billionaire owner of Amazon served as one of the honorary chairs (and the primary funder) of the evening. There were dozens of counter-protests to the event being held throughout the city on Monday2, mayor Zohran Mamdani declined to attend, and a whole lot of people online called for boycotts of the event. Of course, that didn’t stop the annual event from taking place, but it sure as hell made enough noise that it was impossible to ignore.

In my humble opinion, yes, the outrage towards Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez-Bezos bankrolling so much of the annual event is deeply valid, even if it’s all slightly more complicated than some want to make this. Yes, the whole point of the Met Gala is to raise funds for the Met’s Costume Institute, and because of all the spectacle, there is plenty of reason to celebrate having a lot of money going to the preservation of this collection. But in a time where Bezos in particular is actively eliminating thousands of jobs, providing cloud computing technology to ICE and actively using his platform to kiss the President’s proverbial ring, the organizers of this event could have easily put this on without his help — the choice to include him is, well, a choice.

While that particular discourse does continue to be my primary problem with this year’s event, I’m also here to talk about a much smaller quibble I had with the 2026 Met Gala:

The theme was lame.

I get what the organizers were going for — the “Costume Art” exhibit led to the “Fashion Is Art” dress code, which encouraged attendees to focus not only on the intersection of art and fashion, but on the “centrality of the dressed body.” But the Met Gala is already prone to attendees just fully ignoring the theme and wearing something pretty regardless — when you give them an idea this broad, it is bound to lead to a collection of outfits that feel extremely “meh.”

Remember the 2019 Met Gala? The theme was “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” and that is the kind of theme I’m looking for with the Met Gala! There’s so much thought that has to go into a “camp” red carpet outfit, and it forces people to really actively try. It was a great year because there were so many huge failures3, but also so many massive triumphs4. People love to say “thE mET gALa iSnT a CoSTuMe PaRTy,” but I’m sorry, they’re incorrect!! It is the most expensive costume party in the world, and if we’re going to do it, then I want to watch celebrities and their stylists go balls to wall to make some insane costumes on the red carpet!!!

Now, that’s not to say that nobody did the “Fashion Is Art” theme well this year. Ending her 10-year hiatus from the event, Beyoncé absolutely stunned with her skeleton-inspired dress by Olivier Rousteing.5 Bad Bunny dressing up as Old Bunny thanks to prosthetics from Mike Marino was a huge gag. Emma Chamberlain’s Mugler dress literally made me gasp when I saw it! Some folks like Madonna, Rachel Zegler and Hunter Schafer took inspiration from actual paintings to varying levels of success, and I at least appreciate the effort!

But so many others just wore … a nice dress or a well-tailored suit. That, to me, is the biggest waste of all our collective time when it comes to this inherently silly event. If we’re going to burn millions of dollars and have a literal Bond villain sponsor this event, then the least that I expect is for the celebrities at the Met Gala to show up looking like citizens at the Capitol in The Hunger Games! Even if you’re not on theme, at least go big!! Don’t waste all of our time wearing a nice, floor length beaded red gown6 — if you’re going to attend this parade of wealth and excess, then at least give us EXCESS.

…So Charli XCX Isn’t Making a Rock Album? Oh.

It turns out those headlines from a few weeks back that Charli XCX was going to make a rock album were not exactly correct — when Charli said “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music,” it turns out she meant it literally. She teased a song last week that is literally called “Rock Music,” and added in the caption that “i never said i was making a rock album.” Normally, I’m a huge fan of people using semantics to get out of the things they said, but this feels … silly? Of course people thought she was going to make a rock album, and while it is funny that she’s just releasing a song titled “Rock Music,” that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t feel a little sad that we won’t get to hear a full album of rock songs from Charli! At this rate, I need Beyoncé’s Act III to be the rumored rock album, because if we get another bait and switch like this, I’ll be devastated.

Ariana Really Said “Nevermind, I Am Releasing Another Album”

After the ridiculous few years she’s had, Ariana Grande has been perpetually on the record about the fact that fans might have to wait for a little while before getting new music from her. In January, she told Variety that while she loved her fans, she wanted to ask them “‘Do you think there’s another version of me out there who had time to write an album?’ Not yet — but soon enough.” Well, turns out she did have enough time to do exactly that, because her next studio album Petal is coming out on July 31. We know next to nothing else about the album, but I am curious to see how different Ariana can make this project sound when she’s been so tied up in filming movies for the last few years.

Madonna & Sabrina Carpenter, “Bring Your Love”

Of course this song is great. Much like “I Feel So Free” off Confessions II, “Bring Your Love” isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, nor would I want it to! This is just a fun, house-inspired dance track that’s trying to curate a vibe. Both Madge and Sab sound fabulous, the beat is infectious, and I kept hitting repeat when the song was over. That’s a success if I’ve ever heard one!

Kacey Musgraves, Middle of Nowhere

I’m on the record as not being a big country music fan. It’s simply a genre that I’ve found is not entirely for me, with a few notable exceptions. Middle of Nowhere falls firmly into the category of “notable exceptions.” After years away from the genre where she got her start, Kacey’s return to her country origins is simply marvelous — she sounds even better than she did on an album like Pageant Material because she took the time to expand her sound. I keep going back to “Loneliest Girl” and her Miranda Lambert collab “Horses & Divorces,” but I have a feeling I’ll be finding new faves for weeks to come.

Also Jamming Out To: Maya Hawke’s “Lioness,” Halsey’s “Carry the Weight,” BLOND:ISH’s “In Da Jungle,” Sienna Spiro’s “Material Lover” and Claire Rosinkranz’s “Just A Man”

Welcome back to Personality Hire! It’s been a quiet week over on the Island of Stephen as I continue grinding away on a few upcoming projects, and I’ve been playing catch-up over the last couple days on the latest cultural goings-on. Turns out I had a lot to catch up on, so let’s start breaking it down:

“Who’s Bad?” This Damn Movie, That’s Who.

I went into watching the Michael Jackson biopic having a pretty clear idea of what I was going to see — a sterilized, predictable hagiography that lionizes its subject without actually digging into any of the very real things that complicated their legacy. And while I got exactly what I knew I would get, I still walked out of the theater absolutely confounded by the experience of watching this movie.

Let’s establish this from the jump: Michael is a bad movie. This film doesn’t really have a script, it’s more of a vague timeline of events leading up to the Bad tour, with some history rewriting thrown in for good measure. Forget choosing which moments to include in order to foster meaningful character development or, god forbid, establish themes — the movie can hardly manage to get us from point A to point B without jarring time jumps, completely out-of-character decisions, and little moments that call for a celebrity cameo. The individual performances are one-note (Jafaar Jackson does a decent impression of his uncle, but the acting itself is practically non-existent), the cinematography feels like an afterthought, and even in the few moments where we get show-stopping performances, they still feel almost entirely empty.

But Michael was always going to be this way. The Jackson estate has been tied up in the production of this film since the beginning, and their fingerprints are everywhere. When they reshot the film to omit any references to the child sexual abuse allegations that followed him around since 1993, they scrubbed any complicated feelings audiences might have with its central character as well. Even if they had gone with the originally shot version of this movie, which apparently used those allegations as a framing device, the goal would have been clear — exonerate Michael, vilify his accusers. Director Antoine Fuqua made that clear when he told The New Yorker of those accusers, “sometimes people do some nasty things for some money.” More on that in a bit.

I could spend this whole post breaking down all of the parts of this film that I found distasteful. But about halfway through the screening I attended last night, I found myself lingering on how huge this movie was at the box office this weekend. That was as forgone a conclusion as what the final product of the film would look like. This movie was bound to be a whitewashed version of Michael Jackson’s life, and it was simultaneously guaranteed to be a smash hit at the box office. It doesn’t matter that the film does nothing to examine MJ’s legacy or even further re-establish it — people were always going to come out in droves to watch this film. And we know that because the precedent has already been set.

Films like Bohemian Rhapsody, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Bob Marley: One Love, Back to Black, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and truly countless others have established our operating pattern for the modern, buzzy music biopic — shape the artist’s legacy the way you want it to be perceived, regardless of what is true. Bohemian Rhapsody, in particular, serves as the key touchpoint for Michael; so much of Freddie Mercury’s enigmatic, boundary-pushing bravado and potent queerness was left out in favor of an easier-to-swallow story about a young immigrant becoming an international icon. No need to over-complicate things, right? We just want to give people a good time! We already live in a world that is rapidly headed towards existing post-truth,1 so let’s just keep everyone entertained!

But the pattern is so astoundingly obvious here. Bohemian Rhapsody went on to make nearly a billion dollars worldwide, and it sent the sales of Queen’s entire discography through the roof. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic pulled in over $200 million at the box office and similarly revitalized his catalogue2. Rocketman did the same for Elton John, as did countless other biopics. Michael already made over $200 million globally in its first weekend, it will continue to make hundreds of millions more, and I expect we will see similar bumps for Michael’s catalogue in the weeks to come — just look at what happened to his sales each time he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct.

The formulaic, beat-by-beat biopic format makes a shit-ton of money, and that’s exactly why we keep getting them. Critical consensus on a film being poorly made doesn’t matter when the ultimate goal is to simply rake in the dough for everyone involved. Callouts of inaccuracies and falsehoods in the way an artist is portrayed only serve to bring the movie further into the discussion, making more people want to see it for themselves. Hell, I paid $15 to go see this genuinely bad movie so that I could write about it for this newsletter!3 Until we get a truly inventive and truthful music biopic that also makes a buttload of money at the box office, this pattern is just going to continue.

All of this brings me back to Fuqua’s comments he made about Jackson’s accusers. It’s a common refrain that Michael’s defenders have used time and time again to detract from the allegations of abuse levied at him — everyone coming forward is just in it for the money. Even after a new batch of accusers spoke up last week, the Jackson estate deployed its tried-and-true response again, calling the Cascio siblings’ lawsuit a “desperate money grab” and a “scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies.”

Interesting, considering that “desperate money grab” and “scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars” might as well be the log line of this heartless, incurious, money-printing new biopic.

Say It Ain’t (Tina )S(n)o(w)…

The audacity of straight men continues to astound me, despite literally all of the evidence to support just how ridiculous they continue to be. Megan Thee Stallion revealed that she and Klay Thompson had broken up, and she later went on her Instagram Stories to accuse him of cheating on her. Every social clip I’ve seen about this for the last few days has primarily been folks roasting Klay for fumbling Megan (rightfully so) and proceeding to compare this to the ongoing Summer House drama (I still don’t have a great grasp on what happened there other than the fact that another straight dude cheated on someone out of his league to begin with). My main takeaway: Does this mean we can get another scorched earth diss track from Megan? Please??

Someone Get Mike White on the Phone STAT

As a frequent visitor of The White Lotus and someone who loves drama, I am frothing at the mouth to find out WTF happened on set that made Helena Bonham Carter quit the show. Of course I’m thrilled that Laura Dern is replacing her, but is this a continuation of all the weird stuff that was happening on set with season 3? Was it just a miscasting? Did Princess Margaret and Ned Schneebly get into a fist fight, and if so, did anyone film it so I can watch???!?!?!

Maisie Peters feat. Julia Michaels, “Kingmaker”

I’ve been very into what Maisie Peters has been putting down since The Good Witch in 2023, and seeing her collaborate with another quiet fave of mine Julia Michaels is exactly what I needed this week. “Kingmaker” is all good vibes, shifting into Maisie’s softer pop sound and delivering gut punch lines like “I put gold on your head, should’ve put wax paper.” Spectacular, gimme 14 of them right now, Maisie.

Kehlani, Kehlani

This self-titled album really feels like a victory lap for Kehlani, and rightfully so!! She’s been one of my absolute favorite R&B acts for years now, and this level of recognition for her talent finally coming through feels utterly deserved. While I personally felt that the sheer number of collaborations on this album felt borderline too much4, getting to hear her sing with THEE Brandy again was a real delight.

Also Jamming Out To: Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide, horsegiirL’s “earth is turning,” Lucy Dacus’ “Planting Tomatoes,” Rostam’s “Back of a Truck,” Kim Petras’ “Need for Speed” and Durand Bernarr’s “AM I OKAY?!”

Welcome back to Personality Hire, babes! There’s no big long preamble or cryptic teasing of things to come today, we’re just diving right into the news:

The Great Wild Geese Chase

Of all the stories that happened in the last week, none captured my imagination quite as much as the big Geese news from last week.

For those who missed it: WIRED published a piece detailing how the Brooklyn indie rock group’s rise to national prominence was primarily driven by a digital marketing company called Chaotic Good Projects. Inspired in part by Eliza McLamb’s viral Substack post “Fake Fans” and an episode on Billboard’s On the Record podcast1 where the company’s founders explained how they engineered hype for artists online, WIRED confirmed that Chaotic Good had worked with Geese on promoting their rise to alternative dominance last year.

Cue the chorus of terminally-online individuals screaming “I TOLD YOU SO” at the top of their lungs. The headline of the story itself — “The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop” — appeared to confirm every accusation that the band was, as many love to say, an “industry plant.”

Of the many terms used to try and discredit certain artists’ success, “industry plant” is probably my least favorite. It lacks any specificity about what a singer or band is being accused of, yet still reeks of enough conspiracy to gain traction online. Every major artist — from Lana Del Rey and Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift and even Beyoncé —has been accused at some point of being an artificially hyped, forced-down-your-throat phenomenon that was back-engineered to be successful.

Every time I heard someone get accused of being an industry plant, I’d have one primary response: “Welcome to advertising!” It is not news that, yes, major and even indie labels are going to do everything in their considerable power to make sure that their signed artists find success. Turns out, that also happens to include marketing the hell out of your artists in a way that is going to work. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that it’s a bad thing for someone to use the tools at their disposal in order to try and find success.2

The problem people appear to be running into is a belief that the music business — or the online creator business, or any business for that matter — is a pure meritocracy. It is not! There are thousands upon thousands of extremely talented, incredibly hard-working artists and bands and creators that cannot manage to get ahead not because they aren’t good enough to succeed, but because the industry is looking for people who have already built a massive following in a landscape where it is increasingly difficult to build said following.

So, many turn to companies like Chaotic Good, who are filling a need in the market for the kind of surgical, tactical promotion that artists like this are looking for. Are some of their practices a little icky and predicated on the idea that people on the internet are fundamentally naive? Yeah, for sure! But the tactics themselves are less of an indictment of the industry itself, and more of one about how easily-led people are online.3

It’s all very reminiscent of what happened with GAYLE after “abcdefu” blew up online — when people found out the commenter who prompted the creation of the song was a marketing manager at Gayle’s label, they were furious. They felt that they had been lied to, and said that the song was tainted because it was “fake” now. The lesson that some took away from all of this was that artists should stop being fake online. Sorry, but that’s never going to happen. Brands, companies, artists and influencers are going to keep doing this because it works. It sucks, but the only thing you can do is actually try and boost up your media literacy.

And I have a message for everyone who used this opportunity to jump in and say “well I never liked Geese anyways” or “I knew that something weird was going on” or “I’m so smart, they suck and so do you,” might I offer a bit of advice?

1. No one is above getting sucked in by campaigns like this, including you. I guarantee that a band or artist you support with your whole chest has used the same online scaffolding that supports this kind of marketing in order to get ahead — that’s just the nature of what promoting yourself online looks like today.

2. You sound like an asshole <3

Speaking of Weird Marketing Campaigns…

…girl wtf is going on with this Drake album promotion? His latest stunt appears to be dropping gigantic blocks of ice in downtown Toronto and encouraging fans to go smash through it in order to find out when his album Iceman is coming. The whole rollout of this album in the wake of all the Kendrick drama that went down two years ago has been, even at its best, extremely sweaty. Drake is clearly trying to prove something to somebody after his first couple singles off the project flopped, and I just don’t think that a huge ice block being smashed by a bunch of bros with sledgehammers is gonna move that public opinion needle the way he wants it to.

Give Madonna Her Stuff Back!!

After her surprise appearance at Sabrina Carpenter’s second weekend Coachella set, Madonna revealed that a bunch of her archived costume pieces that she brought for the performance disappeared. She’s apparently posting a reward for someone to return them to her, and I hope they do, but I’m genuinely curious about what the hell happened here. The internet already has Ocean’s Eleven-esque jokes about a “heist” being pulled, but the police seem to be under the impression that the bags full of her stuff … just fell off a golf cart. Imagine being bleary-eyed, trying to get the hell out the desert after a day of working Coachella, and you stumble on a tipped over bag filled with Madonna’s clothes?? I need an update for this if only to sate my own sheer nosiness.

The Onion’s Infowars Takeover Is the Gift That Keeps On Giving

Some days, you wake up only to read news that makes you want to crawl back into bed. Other days, you wake up to read about The Onion taking over Alex Jones’ repugnant Infowars brand and turning it into a parody of itself — which caused a massive shirtless crashout from the disgraced host — and you feel a fresh desire to face the day. It’s good to see The Onion doing what they do best and getting under this certified weirdo’s skin, and it’s even better to know that they’re taking his main weapon of misinformation and turning it back on him. Hopefully it continues to generate even more profits for the Sandy Hook families that Jones spent years gaslighting and attacking.

Olivia Rodrigo, “Drop Dead”

I was very clear about what I wanted from new Olivia Rodrigo when I wrote about it a couple weeks ago. And while “Drop Dead” doesn’t really fit into what I specifically was looking for, I’m very into with this song. The chorus is unbelievably catchy, the little descending guitar breakdown into the bridge is excellent, and the whole song is presenting this ABBA-meets-The Cure-meets-Taylor Swift vibe that feels both very familiar for Olivia but also refreshing. Go off, girlie!

Jessie Ware, Superbloom

Guess I’m jumping in with sword and shield to defend Jessie Ware again. The reviews of Superbloom have been very “meh” thus far, and I get it; Ware set the bar very high with What’s Your Pleasure? and That! Feels Good! over the last couple of years. Superbloom never quite reaches the sort of ecstatic heights that we got on either of those albums, but I appreciate the softer, gauzier sound she taps into here. I found myself going back and putting this LP on as background music while going about my day — and while that might not be the height of achievement, it’s better than I can say for a lot of other albums that came out in the last few weeks!

Madonna, “I Feel Free”

I mean duh. Of course this song is good, it’s Madonna doing a CoaDF redux with underground club vibes. Sure, it’s a little too long, and no, it’s not revolutionary, but who’s looking for Madonna to be revolutionary in 2026??? I’m here for a good time, and she’s providing it!! (I don’t know why I’m getting so defensive about liking this song, but I am). I’m always here for a big, buzzy “return to form” album4. and based on this first taste, Confessions II is going to be my jam.

Welcome to yet another edition of Personality Hire! Shoutout to everyone coming down from Coachella weekend — I am simultaneously jealous that you got to go see those performances and also relieved that I didn’t have to live through the deeply chaotic experience of trying to attend!

I’ve been hard at work on a couple of new projects this week1, but there’s always time for a quick pop culture catch up. Let’s dive into what happened this last week:

We Need to Talk About Lil Nas X

The much-needed update about Lil Nas X last week has me thinking a lot about him.

For those who aren’t aware of what’s gone down, here’s the short version: Back in August of last year, Lil Nas X was arrested by the LAPD after he allegedly charged at three officers while walking naked down Ventura Boulevard around 6 a.m., and was taken to a local hospital for a suspected drug overdose. Footage obtained by TMZ showed him walking down Ventura Boulevard wearing only a pair of white underwear and cowboy boots in a visibly altered mental state. He was later charged with three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and a felony count of resisting an executive officer, all of which he pleaded not guilty to. Last week, a Los Angeles judge granted Lil Nas X entry into a mental health diversion program, meaning that if he completes two years’ worth of treatment and obeys the law while doing so, the case against him will be dismissed.

I am so glad to see that Montero is being treated with a relative amount of care by the legal system. Had he been convicted of these crimes, he could have been facing up to five years in prison. While what he did wasn’t right, it’s become increasingly clear that the incident was a result of an untreated manic episode that had been ratcheting up for weeks.

While there has been a lot of discourse about what precipitated Nas’ episode, I cannot help but look at the sequence of events leading up to the incident for clues. After “Old Town Road,” “Call Me By Your Name,” “Industry Baby” and the genuinely excellent pop album that was Montero, Nas was stuck in a situation where he had set an incredibly high bar for his own success that many still continued to doubt. Claims that he was merely a “one hit wonder” persisted, despite the fact that he accumulated three No. 1 songs in just over two years. Some pop fans still saw him as a troll first and an artist second thanks to the shock-and-awe approach he took with his promotion. Right-wing Christian pundits still decried him as “evil” for taking the language they use to attack queer people and turning it back on them.

When his post-Montero music failed to reach those same artistic heights2, sweeping declarations were made that his career was “over” and that he “wasn’t gonna make it.” The tepid response to “J Christ” sent Nas back to square one with his new project, and when the string of songs he dropped a year later failed to make a splash, he went quiet. His sophomore album Dreamboy, despite all the promotion he’d put out there, appeared no closer to materializing.

It’s the oldest trope in the celebrity playbook; the only thing that people love more than watching a star rise is watching one fall. Name pretty much any pop star from the last 40 years, and you’ll likely be able to find some example of this same tired narrative playing out.

But Lil Nas X was never just “another pop star” — after the breakaway success of “Old Town Road,” he became the indirectly-appointed cultural standard-bearer for queerness, for Blackness, and for the intersection of both those identities. Because he was one of the only Black queer artists to achieve such immediate success, he became the polestar for whether or not this unabashedly vivacious vision of genre-bending and overt sexuality could find a lane for success in the industry.

Imagine the kind of metaphorical weight that sort of elevation would put on a person’s shoulders. I remember being awestruck watching his HBO documentary Long Live Montero by how composed he seemed when it came to the massive responsibility he’d been saddled with and that he never asked for. Even then, when he was still managing to keep himself grounded, there were cracks in the foundation.

The simple truth is, like so many queer artists of color before him, Lil Nas X was expected to do everything for everyone. He was expected to push the stringent boundaries of what is “acceptable” in the music industry forward, while also serving as a role model for his community and extending an olive branch to those who didn’t believe in him. The cultural wisdom of years prior said that he had to be perfect, full stop. Missteps and mistakes would be unacceptable, despite the fact that Nas was just 20 years old when his whole life changed. And when he inevitably stumbled, the consensus arrived: “He couldn’t hack it,” never mind the fact that the standard set for him was impossible to achieve in the first place.

So now, after having his rock bottom moment, Lil Nas X has been granted a chance to work on himself and his mental health. And I hope that in that process, he can come to terms with the fact that he does not, in fact, have to be everything to everyone. He doesn’t need to be twice as good at everything just because he is Black and queer. Hopefully, the pressure that was being placed on him can subside, and he can find his way back to his career when he is ready to do so.

For the rest of us, I hope there’s a lesson learned in seeing someone get a genuine chance at rehabilitation. Maybe we can all learn to treat Montero and artists like him with some more grace in the future.

Sabrina Carpenter, Zaghrouta & the Reason I’m Not on Twitter Anymore

In the words of Sabrina herself: “Oh boy.” During her headlining Coachella performance on Friday, Sabrina heard a fan crying out with a zaghrouta — a celebratory ululation in Middle Eastern and North African cultures — and mistook it for a yodel, proceededing to say “I don’t like it.” Users online quickly called her out for mocking that person’s culture, with some going as far as calling her response Islamaphobic, and Sabrina quickly apologized the next day, saying “my reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended. could have handled it better!”

Here, we have a situation where two things can be (and are!) true at the same time. Sabrina saying “that’s your culture, yodeling?” followed by “this is weird” is not a good look, and she therefore got called out on it. I find it very telling that a lot of the people saying “you have nothing to apologize for diva!!!” online are not part of the culture that was offended — if the members of that culture are saying it was offensive to them, then that’s that! But to Sabrina’s credit, she ultimately did the right thing — she apologized immediately, acknowledged that she should’ve handled the situation differently, confirmed that she is learning more about the culture she offended, and resolved to do better in the future. Making a mistake and doing everything you can to learn from it and reduce harm is okay! But instead, there’s been a flood of comments attacking everyone who called her out and saying “I think less of Sabrina for apologizing.” That’s not the issue here! Sabrina said something not great, she apologized immediately, and that’s literally the whole story! We’re not going down this ridiculous rabbit hole again! Maybe log off for a couple hours!!!

Stupid Games, Stupid Prizes (Wireless Edition)

The Fuck Around And Find Out method has struck again, folks! After the UK’s Home Office banned the artist formerly known as Kanye West3 from entering the country because of — lemme make sure I’ve got this right — oh yeah, his years and years of antisemitic and racist comments, Wireless Festival announced that they had no choice but to cancel their event and issue refunds.

I’m not even going to play the World’s Smallest Violin for these festival organizers, because they knew just how horrible everything that Ye has said over the last few years was, and they still decided to book him as the headliner for ALL THREE NIGHTS of their festival. Sure, Ye “apologized,” but unlike the story we just got done talking about, his rang completely hollow. If you spend whole years of your life promoting the genocidal worldview of Nazis and spewing garbage about an entire culture, saying “sorry” while also insisting that you actually “love Jewish people” simply isn’t good enough. Yes, he’s said that he was struggling with his bipolar disorder and was caught in a series of extreme episodes of mania — that’s not an excuse for spreading actual Nazi propaganda, and no one is obliged to forgive him for his behavior. There’s a great piece in The Guardian about all the things that went wrong here, and I highly recommend you read it.

‘Atta Girl, Addison

After DHS used a clip of Addison Rae’s song “Diet Pepsi” in their latest propaganda video about ICE, she filed a copyright claim against them for using the track without permission. I wish some other pop stars would be this quick with the takedowns, and I’m happy to see her cutting through this administration’s bullshit. Sure, there’s part of me wishes that she would’ve said something publicly (shoutout to Olivia Rodrigo who still had one of the best responses to ICE using her song last year), but I also understand not taking that route. DHS has openly stated that they keep using pop music without permission because it creates controversy and generates more attention, so not adding to the discourse is maybe a more effective way of putting a lid on things like this.

Kehlani feat. Missy Elliott, “Back and Forth”

HELLO??? KEHLANI AND MISSY ELLIOTT TOGETHER DOING AN AALIYAH TRIBUTE???? This is a dream that I didn’t even know I had coming true. I love that these two did a great job balancing a nod to the late star on the chorus, while also letting the song be it’s own artistic expression. Missy, as expected, delivers every time she pops up, and Kehlani still sounds absolutely unreal every time she opens her mouth. I simply cannot wait for her self-titled album to drop.

Holly Humberstone, Cruel World

I’ll be the first to admit that I have slept on Holly Humberstone for too long, but I refuse to make that mistake with Cruel World. She’s clearly cranked things up to Maximum Indie Pop on this album, which is fantastic news for me as a fan of that exact genre. The songwriting is clean and clean, the production kept me engaged for the entire first listen, and tracks like “White Noise” and “Blue Dream” had me reaching for the repeat button. All in all, Cruel World is definitely being added to my rotation of albums I listen to while staring into the middle distance.

Lady Gaga & Doechii, “Runway”

Woof, there’s a lot of feelings to break down about “Runway.” Everything about this song is something I should love; my all-time favorite artist teaming up with my current favorite rapper over a house beat for the sequel to one of my favorite movies. And Gaga and Doechii certainly deliver on some of that promise in “Runway!” Doechii’s flow remains unparalleled, and Gaga’s appearance on the song is Very Gaga™. The production itself feels … a little too familiar to “Vogue” and “Babylon” and every other song like them, but it’s very clear that was the intention. Bruno Mars is listed as a co-writer, which is … fine, I guess? He wouldn’t be my first choice for a c*nty dance track, tbh.4 “Runway” is not groundbreaking (much like florals for spring), but it does what it needs to do and unites two artists that I have desperately wanted to see collaborate. [looks you up and down with a devastating pursed lip]. That’s all.

Also Jamming Out To: Laufey’s “Madwoman,” Hilary Duff’s “Come Clean (Mine),” Kelela’s “idea 1,” Dua Saleh’s “Cállate,” Alabama Shakes’ “American Dream” & Tink’s “Strangers”

Welcome back to Personality Hire! We’re finally driving headfirst into Actual Spring1, which means there is LOTS of new pop culture headed our way ASAP.

So, without further ado, let’s start breaking some of it down:

OR3 Is About To Become My Whole Personality

Everybody say “[you seem pretty sad for a girl so in] love!”

After months, nay, years of speculation on when her next album would arrive, Olivia Rodrigo announced last week that her third studio album — you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love — will be released on June 12th. As someone who spent much of his free time over the last few years listening to Sour and especially Guts, this is huge news for my own personal mental health.

While there have been a swath of posts from other outlets listing out the things that we do know about OR3, the simple fact is we know very little about what this album is actually going to be. We know that Olivia is continuing to work with Dan Nigro, we know that she’s ditched single-word LP titles, we know she’s switched from a purple color palette to a dusty pink, and we know that there will be some “sad love songs” involved. Other than that, we’ve got nothing.

I’m bad at guessing what is going to happen next (ask anyone who has watched a murder mystery movie with me), so instead of making predictions, I’m going to spend my time simply manifesting what I want to see on this album. Here’s the three main things I’m hoping we get on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love:

1. Rock-ridgo Comes Back With a Vengeance

Olivia has always existed in two different sonic worlds at the same time: gauzy, tragic ballads and frenetic, catchy pop-punk. The title of this album — and her own revelation to British Vogue that there’s a lot of songs about “fear or yearning” on here — points to the fact that we’ll be getting plenty of the former on you seem pretty sad.

That would be a mistake, in my opinion! Yes, love is tender and sweet and fragile, but it’s also chaotic and unpredictable and hard, and there are few genres more adept at displaying that shift than rock. As a fan of Olivia’s rock side2, I wanna see her use this thesis about still being who you are while in a relationship to explore messier subjects in the genre that she is so skilled at using. Maybe that means she plays around with the kind of rock music she gives us — I’d be down for some Lilith Fair-coded tracks for a softer but still gritty sound!

2. She Breaks the Featureless Streak

I’ve always appreciated that Olivia makes her albums singular to her experience. She’s never seemed to try and sell a focus group-tested version of her own music, she’s simply been writing and releasing the songs that she wants to, and thus making the experience that much more authentic for everyone else listening at home. Part of that process included not using featured artists on her previous two albums — every song is just an Olivia song.

But with Olivia breaking away from some of the patterns she stuck to for her last two albums, I would like to see one or two features added to you seem pretty sad. She could go the obvious route and grab fellow superstars like Sabrina Carpenter (for the plot twist alone) or Billie Eilish or Sombr or even her longtime friend Conan Gray, and that would all be well and good. But my dream is for Olivia to take a left turn and grab someone from the alternative space for a collab. Imagine Olivia and Mitski raging out over unrequited love on this album? Or what if The Linda Lindas showed up with backing vocals on one of her songs? Honestly, just the thought of the phrase “Olivia Rodrigo feat. Deftones” gives me chills.

3. We Give Dan Nigro a (Very Short) Break

Like everyone else with taste, I am a huge fan of Dan Nigro’s production. He has been instrumental in shaping the sound of Olivia, Chappell and Conan’s music, and he’s extremely good at what he does. And from what we know so far about you seem pretty sad, it looks like Dan is once again on board for this album. That’s good! But I want to know what an Olivia song without Dan Nigro might sound like.

I feel the same way about Billie Eilish and Finneas — I think they make a uniquely great pair and the two of them have produced so much great music together, but I still want to hear what happens when Billie works with a different producer (or produces herself!!). I’d love to hear just one or two songs on this album that Dan Nigro didn’t have a hand in, if only so that we can hear what a Nigro-less Olivia sounds like.

Zara Larsson Continues to Be Right As Hell

During the Very Huge Moment™ she’s still having, Zara Larsson had a chat with The Guardian’s Owen Myers about the success of “Midnight Sun” and how she’s maintaining her own sense of self as she finds massive success. In this (really excellent) interview, Zara talked about losing out on brand deals because of how outspoken she is about the social issues she cares about, she defended Chappell Roan against the constant wave of abuse that she seems to receive, and she said that she doesn’t really monitor her own chart success.

That last line touched a nerve with die hard Swifties — her exact quote was “no one’s looking at the charts but industry people and maybe Taylor Swift fans” — and they did their thing by trying to stir up the controversy around her online. But I agree with her! The charts are important to the industry itself and they absolutely have their place in the cultural discussion, but so often artists get reduced only to chart stats that mean almost nothing in the greater scheme of their artistry. Music is not sports! You can have an extremely successful career without ever having a chart hit, and you will have still made a major difference in the lives of your fans!! Leave Zara alone and let her make fabulous music that we can all twirl to!!!

The Pitt of Despair

While everyone else was losing their minds over the Summer House drama this week,3 I was having my own personal meltdown about everyone’s favorite anxiety-inducing medical show The Pitt. It was announced that Supriya Ganesh, the actress playing my fave Dr. Samira Mohan, will be exiting the show after season two wraps. I’ll say it: I’m pissed!! (Warning, mild season 2 spoilers ahead).

The entire storyline with Mohan in season two has come off as unearned and hypocritical for the show. It has felt like they’re trying to simultaneously show us Dr. Robby having a mental health crisis so we have sympathy for him, while also showing us Dr. Mohan having a mental health crisis as a means of saying that she’s not cutout for emergency medicine. While I understand that burnout is so deeply real for ER doctors right now, I cannot help but feel like there could have been a way to portray that storyline without making it feel like we’ve just been shooing Dr. Mohan out the door all season! Here’s hoping my other favorite character Dr. Parker Ellis doesn’t get the same treatment as a series regular next season.

ICE Barbie’s Husband (Bimbo Version)

I know this isn’t really pop culture news, but I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna talk about this story. What a ridiculous week it’s been for politics — the Supreme Court made the extremely harmful decision to overturn a Colorado law banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ kids, Trump fired Pam Bondi, and it was announced that the war in Iran might be “over” in a few weeks. Yet much of that was massively eclipsed by a report from The Daily Mail, revealing that Bryon Noem — former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s husband — had been participating in a “bimbofication” kink online with sex workers for years.

Now, look. I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum, shame anyone’s kink, etc. If Bryon Noem wants to put on electric pink hot pants and put inflated balloons down his shirt to pretend like they’re boobs, then as long as everyone involved in the situation is a consenting adult, go for it, babygirl! Ideally, I’d like to see a little more commitment to the bit,4 but whatever floats his boat is fine by me. But I will absolutely use every given opportunity to point out the cruel irony that the guy cosplaying exaggerated secondary female sex characteristics is married to an odious woman who has spent the last decade or so of her career crashing out in public about the mere existence of trans people. Especially considering Kristi Noem’s own reported affair with Corey Lewandowski, it all just goes to show that this right-wing, puritanical hate train against trans folks is just a hypocritical play for airtime, and when left to their own devices, these people will do everything that they’re accusing others of. Hit dogs holler!

MUNA, “Big Stick”

For everyone wondering: THIS is how you write and release a protest song in 2026. Not only did MUNA drop “Big Stick” exclusively on their Bandcamp for just 48 hours to raise money for the Palestinian mutual aid organization Pal Humanity,5 but they made sure this was their most poignant song to date. Katie Gavin — the band’s lead singer and head lyricist — tells a full story of the connections between influencer culture, late capitalism and the return of fascism in under three minutes. Naomi McPherson and Josette Maskin’s production and performances create a sense of unrelenting momentum that only underlines the song’s message. And by the time you reach the final verse, the simmering anger in Gavin’s voice is palpable as she drives the point home: “We give kids in Palestine PTSD/ But we'll never fucking ever give them something to eat/ And if you've got a problem with it, you could end up in jail/ Send you to Louisiana, million dollar bail,” she sings, before letting the wrath in her voice take over. “Because I have a big stick I'm not afraid to use/ So I can make you do anything that I want you to.” I simply must be front and center for their New York show so I can rage out to this song with everyone else in attendance.

Arlo Parks, Ambiguous Desire

I’ve been vibing hard with Arlo Parks since Collapsed in Sunbeams, and Ambiguous Desire is yet another banger album from her. This time, she upgrades her sound to clubby, drum-heavy productions while still maintaining the top-shelf songwriting she’s become renowned for throughout her career. “Jetta,” “Beams” and especially “Heaven” stand out as brilliant uses of the push-pull dynamic of dance music, and Arlo’s voice sounds unreal on “Senses.”

Anne Hathaway (as Mother Mary), “My Mouth Is Lonely For You”

Anne Hathaway cosplaying as a St. Vincent-Lady Gaga mashup was never going to be something that I skipped over. The latest song from her new movie Mother Mary is as weird and wild as its title — the production is cool as hell, the lyrics are bonkers, and most importantly, Anne sounds incredible. I’ve known that she was a great singer since Ella Enchanted, but “My Mouth Is Lonely For You” is the best example yet that Anne Hathaway could have easily gone into pop music if this whole acting thing didn’t work out.

Also Jamming Out To: Thundercat’s Distracted, Jack White’s “G.O.D. And The Broken Ribs,” Ravyn Lenae’s “Reputation (feat. Dominic Fike)” & Emei’s “Night at the Opera.”

Hi everybody, and welcome back! First and foremost, let me offer a heartfelt thank you to everybody who subscribed after the launch of Personality Hire last week — your support means the world, and it was very cool and validating that we made a brief appearance on the Rising in Culture charts. So glad to have you here!

I’ve been hard at work pitching and refining pitches and following up on pitches1, but I finally found some time to actually take a look at what’s going on, and woof, what a weird week it’s been, culturally speaking.

So, today, I’m gonna play with my (not-at-all established) format a little bit by dividing the newsletter up into sections. I’ll break down each section as we go on, but let’s start with The Main Event, shall we?

The Main Event will serve as … well, the main thing we’re talking about, the cultural story that I want to break down the most this particular week.

“Nobody’s Perfect,” I Guess?

When Disney & Miley Cyrus announced back in February that the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special was officially happening, I’ll admit to being pretty excited. Hannah Montana premiered right in that sweet spot of my pre-adolescence that made me its target audience. I bought the albums, I blasted “I Got Nerve” on my knockoff MP3 player on repeat, I thought more about wigs than I ever had in my life. Even though I didn’t stick around for the entirety of the show’s run,2 I was invested in the cultural phenomenon that was Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana.

After sitting down and watching the full hour-long special on Wednesday night, my main takeaway is … that’s all? Was this needed? Why was there so much hype for something that ultimately felt so scrubbed clean?

That’s not to say the entire special was bad, at all. It was fun! There were plenty of moments that I personally loved, and I will list them below:

• Miley performing three Hannah songs was predictably great. “This Is the Life,” while being one of my least favorite HM songs, was my favorite performance of the night.

• Chappell Roan giving Miley the flowers she deserves was so sweet.

• Outside of Chappell, the guest stars who did show up — with a few glaring exceptions — did not disappoint! Her and Selena reuniting as Hannah and Mikayla was a sweet little treat.

• Miley’s teary tribute to her character felt like the reason behind this whole special, and it was the only moment that really made me go, “Okay, I get it.”

The rest of the special was … there, I guess. Picking Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy to be the host of the special was certainly a choice3, and one that Miley herself appeared to have some thoughts on as well. I get that she’s a “superfan” of the show, but it still doesn’t make her a good interviewer, regardless of whether or not she has a whole interview podcast. I found myself reaching to skip over their interview segments because they felt painfully bland, and completely lacking in any real noteworthy retrospectives (which is, to me, the whole point of a special like this).

Miley’s “reunion” with her dad Billy Ray — especially after all of the rift rumors that have spread about the two of them over the last few years — felt deeply uncomfortable. The lack of appearances from Miley’s actual co-stars (Emily Osment hive, rise up) was disappointing. The few morsels of behind-the-scenes revelations were tepid, at best. Her “tea” about Taylor Swift appearing in the Hannah Montana movie was ultimately nothing.

All of this is to say that the special was, ultimately, fine. I would accuse it of being overly nostalgic, but it’s an anniversary special — that’s literally what they’re designed for. Really digging into it, I realize I wanted this to be one of two things:

1. A full filmed Hannah Montana concert.

2. A more substantive, documentary-style event — but when it’s being hosted/paid for/promoted by/streamed by the company that originally made the show, it’s pretty hard to really dig into the stuff that I would want to hear about.

My larger problem with the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special has more to do with the anniversary/reunion special format itself. I felt the exact same way about the Friends reunion back in 2021 — it started strong with doc-style interviews of the makers of the show about how it actually got made and the challenges of casting each of the titular friends, but then it devolved into games and inside jokes and a host whose interviewing skills were so bad that it made me want to crawl out of my skin.4 Hannah Montana meant a lot to a lot of people, and while I was happy to see Miley dive back into her origin story, I just wish we could have gotten something a little bit … well, more.

Quick Hits will be the rapid-fire rundown section of Personality Hire, where we run through a the pop culture stories of the week that intrigued me most in roughly a paragraph or two.

Don’t Be a Sora Loser

At long last, OpenAI announced last week that it was shutting down Sora, the AI-slop video generator that had an unprecedented $1 billion deal with Disney. Now, before we get to the celebrating, let’s be clear — the problem of AI slop is not going anywhere, there’s a ton of other platforms people can keep using, and we’re still mostly cooked when it comes to the future of creativity and, I guess, overall employment.

Anyway, wheeeeeeeeeeee, let the people dance in the streets!! The whole reason that the app was shut down in the first place was because of how expensive it is to actually generate AI video, and it’s clear from OpenAI’s statement (and some of the great reporting around Sora’s demise) that people just weren’t using this app the way the company thought they would. Maybe this will finally make some other AI companies start to realize that they actually have to have a product that people want to buy before forcing it into literally every part of our lives? Probably not, but a girl can dream!!

No Weapon Formed Against Chappell Roan Shall Prosper

After talking about all the deeply weird Chappell Roan drama in my first edition of this newsletter, I really thought that we were done with this story. Turns out I was horribly naive! First, the security guard who was involved in the incident with Jorginho’s stepdaughter came forward and confirmed Chappell’s side of the story; he was not working as a part of her security outfit, neither Chappell nor anyone from her team asked him to intervene, and he took sole responsibility for what happened. Then, a report came out showing that a portion of the “discourse” happening online was part of a bot-driven smear campaign against Chappell.

I’d say that I feel vindicated, but honestly, I just feel annoyed. Nothing about this story needed to be this overblown, and yet people leaping at the opportunity to attack a famous queer woman is not remotely surprising. Everyone, everywhere, needs a severe reality check about the things that actually matter — someone claiming that a pop star was allegedly a little rude to their daughter should not be on our list of Things to Be Outraged About in 2026. And please, for the love of all that is good, let this be the last we ever hear about this story.

This Is Not the ‘Confessions Pt. III’ People Wanted, Usher

Just a couple weeks after he allegedly got in a fight with his former protegé Justin Bieber at an Oscars afterparty, Usher is once again in the headlines. Surely, it’s with an explanation for fighting with Biebs? Right? Right?? Wrong, he’s in the news for saying that he had didn’t “have anything negative to say” about Diddy, the disgraced rap mogul and convicted felon.

It is one thing to say you want to “separate the art from the artist,”5 it is another thing entirely to say you have nothing bad to say about a man currently in prison for committing sex crimes. Saying that Sean Combs made “valuable contributions” to the way we consume art while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge his documented history of abuse, sexual assault, and his sex trafficking convictions is a wild and damaging way of trying to rewrite history and refuse accountability.

Finally, Jamming Out will focus on the new songs & albums of the last week that I cannot stop listening to.

RAYE, THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.

I’ve been looking forward to the new RAYE album for months now, and let me just say: ART IS BACK. What a phenomenal album THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE is. RAYE is playing with the format and function of pop music like nobody else right now,6 and she takes massive swings all throughout TMMCH. The way she manages to balance constant musical left turns with a vocal that remains perfect is already impressive. But the fact that she could turn such a specific, mercurial set of songs into an album that must be listened to in its entirety is a feat unto itself. The stand-out songs so far, for me, are “Life Boat,” “I Hate the Way I Look Today” and “The WhatsApp Shakespeare,” but at this rate, I’m probably going to have three more favorites on my next listen alone. Give her AOTY at this point, because I cannot foresee many other albums making me feel like this in 2026.7

Robyn, Sexistential

It’s a new Robyn album, how was I not going to be obsessed with this? First off, Robyn is not totally wrong — long albums can get boring, and Sexistential does an excellent job of not overstaying its welcome. Would I have liked more of this album? 100%, no question. But what we did get is near-perfect; a dance-pop album that gets ambitious with its production and downright wild with it’s songwriting. I’m really into the opener “Really Real” in particular, but the entirety of Sexistential is a delight.

Snail Mail, Ricochet

I’ve been a fan of Lindsey Jordan since 2021’s Valentine, and I must say, Ricochet does not disappoint as its long-awaited follow-up. Her voice has never sounded better, and she clearly has a lot of stuff to talk about from the last five years — which means we get incredible lyrics like “Don't need this vessel, don’t need this frame/ I wanna waste my whole life away/ Sick with a rage that I can't contain/ Sweeter than candy in my veins.” I mean, “Tractor Beam” alone is one of the most beautifully optimistic songs about falling out of love I’ve heard in a long time. If you’re looking for smart, dramatic indie rock vibes, this Snail Mail album is exactly for you.

Also Jamming Out To: Slayyyter’s WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, Jessie Ware’s “Automatic,” Suki Waterhouse’s “Back in Love,” Courtney Barnett’s Creature of Habit & Artemas’ getting up to no good.

And that’s it! Thanks for reading the first proper edition of Personality Hire. I’ll be back next week with more in your inbox.

xoxo Stephen

Hi, friends! Welcome to a very special, “I Had a Dumb Idea That Needs To Get Purged So I Can Think About Other Things” edition of Personality Hire! We will still have our first, proper edition of the newsletter at the top of next week, but once I saw the Bridgerton news, I knew I needed to get this out of my system ASAP.

(Spoilers ahead for season four of Bridgerton!)

As many of you may know, Netflix confirmed this week that season five of their hit romance series Bridgerton will focus on our recently widowed wallflower, Francesca Bridgerton. Subsequently, that means we’re going to get to one of the biggest changes from the Bridgerton books — Fran’s queer now, and she’s going to end up with her dead husband’s favorite cousin, Michaela.

(Fun fact: Bridgerton is my not-that-guilty pleasure. Sure, it makes me feel like a 40-year-old suburban straight white lady who mainlines pinot grigio and tries a little too hard to relate to her pre-teen kids, but I’m at peace with that!)

I still don’t really know how a show that is all about the stringent rules of polite society is going to try and square the circle of two noblewomen falling in love. They’ve already done some history rewriting (to everyone’s benefit), but with most of season four focused on how a gentleman like Benedict couldn’t marry a person outside of high society like Sophie — and with the closeted love affairs the show has already established with characters like Lord Granville way back in season one — I’m at least curious to see what they do with this lesbian storyline.

But right now, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is what songs are the Vitamin String Quartet et al going to play for this extremely gay season of television???? As a former band kid, I always look forward to hearing how certain pop songs get arranged, and the past few seasons have been pretty spot on with some really good covers.1

So, allow me to take a quick detour and list out the Julia Quinn-tessential queer songs that I demand we get covers of next season.

The Veronicas, “Untouched”

This one’s a gimme, and it is also non-negotiable. If we don’t get “Untouched” in season five, then we storm the gates of Bridgerton House.

The Veronicas themselves have (correctly) referred to this as “the gay national anthem,” and this is an obvious pick for the song that needs to play when Francesca and Michaela have their first “I’m gonna almost kiss you and talk directly into your mouth about how much I want to kiss you” moment. It literally opens with an iconic string section!! This is the easiest win!!!!!

Kehlani, “Honey”

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been obsessed with this song for the past eight years of my life, and I will not put aside my bias — “Honey” must be included in season five of Bridgerton.

I can literally hear the staccato violins playing the guitar part while a cello gets that rich, resonant sound for Kehlani when she sings “I like my girls just like I like my honey; sweet.” I’m picturing a ball scene, where Francesca and Michaela are both dancing with male partners, but they just cannot stop looking over at one another. Lots of averted glances, maybe they accidentally bump into one another at one point, and all of it soundtracked to this supremely gay song.

Chappell Roan, “Picture You”

So, the obvious choice for Bridgerton season five would be a “Good Luck, Babe” or “Pink Pony Club” moment. And sure, those would both be great, and I would absolutely like to hear them. But this Midwest Princess B-side is THE song for a forbidden queer love story!! You know they’re going to lay on the tragic longing thick this season, and what better song to do it to then one with lyrics like “Do you feel the same? I'm too scared to say/ Half of the things I do when I picture you????”

Imagine a heated exchange between Francesca and Michaela about how “we cannot possibly entertain this as a feasible relationship,” complete with all of the yelling about how “you are the cousin of my late husband and you’re a woman, WHAT WILL THE TON SAY?!” Then, one of them rushes out of the room and locks themselves in some other palatial suite, sliding down the door, crying. THEN, the strings come in with “Picture You.” It practically writes itself.2

MUNA, “Silk Chiffon”

Again, c’monnnnn guys.

It’s the perfect tempo and vibe for a strings cover. You could remain true to the sunny atmosphere of the track, you could turn it into a really gorgeous slowed-down ballad, you could even pick up the pace and make it more frenetic and urgent — the options are endless! I’m picturing this as the “happy ending” song we get pretty much every season (think “Wrecking Ball” from season two, “All I Want” from season three, so on). If we’re doing lesbian romance on a show as mainstream as Bridgerton, then MUNA has to be represented in the music, and this is the very clear choice to make that happen.

And finally:

Janelle Monáe, “Make Me Feel”

We need one frenetic, chaotic, lusty song that can soundtrack the one sex scene each season that people breathlessly refer to just by its location.3 While I was close to picking “Pynk,” I just think that “Make Me Feel” has so much more to offer in the way of drama for that scene.

Think of the downward guitar riff of this song, replaced by strings, and happening while … well, downward is certainly the keyword. I cannot think of a better song to pick for The Big Moment™ of season five.

And those are my five must-have queer songs for Bridgerton season five! Obviously, there’s lots of other queer artists we would love to see get represented in the season: Girl in Red, Clairo, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Arlo Parks, Orion Sun, and dozens of others came to mind. Feel free to let me know which songs you felt I missed.

Thank you for joining me on this very haphazard bonus post, and stay tuned for next week’s first proper newsletter <3

xoxo Stephen

Welcome, staff, to Personality Hire. We’re so happy you could join us today for this very special all-hands meeting.

For those of you who already know me, whassup! Thanks for checking this out, besties, I appreciate you <3

For those of you who don’t yet know me, hi! Nice to meet you. I’m Stephen, an entertainment and culture journalist who’s spent the last decade-plus writing about (mostly) music for Billboard, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Tonight and a few other publications. Now, I’m breaking out on my own and talking about whatever I feel like — music, television, movies, celebrities, social media, comedy, that one random video I’ve watched like 36 times this week — on my own platform.

I am certain that you have questions about what the hell is going on here, so I’ve organized a FAQTNABIPTD1 for you below:

How are you, Stephen?

That’s so nice, thank you for asking! I’m good.2

Why are you starting a Substack? Don’t you write stuff for Billboard?

Short answer: I used to work for Billboard, I don’t anymore, and now I’m here writing this!

The (much) longer answer: For the last 8-ish years of my life, I worked what was my dream job; writing about music and LGBTQ+ culture for one of my favorite publications in the world. I got the opportunity to shine a light on some extremely talented artists who were otherwise not getting what I felt was the recognition that they deserved3; I got to interview some of my all-time favorite artists4; I wrote three cover stories. I could go on, but that would take up this entire post — working at Billboard was a dream come true, and I loved pretty much every second that I was there.

But, as has become the custom with media jobs nowadays, that dream got cut short. On December 12, 2025, I was laid off, along with about a dozen of my extremely talented coworkers. I was devastated. I’d always been mildly paranoid that this might happen, yet I was still caught off guard when it finally did; I had been growing our audience and regularly improving my work, I had won a major award for my reporting, I felt like I was only getting better at my job. As anyone who works in journalism knows, though, there’s often never a good reason for layoffs like this — they can happen to anyone for virtually no reason.

So, after some time off, I’m now getting back into the swing of things. This Substack is a place where I can keep writing, simply because I love doing it. I want to keep talking about culture, and for the time being, this is one of the best ways for me to get to do just that.

Does that mean you’re done writing for other publications??

No! At least I hope not!

If you’re an editor at a culture publication and you’re looking for writers to work with, hello! Hi! I can do that! If you’re a publicist looking for someone to write up artist or album bios, I can do that, too! If you work at a label and you need someone to moderate Q&As with your artists at album release shows or showcases, I can also do that! My inbox is open if you want to connect <3.5

This Substack is just a way for me to keep doing what I love while also continuing my career as a journalist.6

Wait, why are you calling this newsletter Personality Hire? Isn’t that the thing where people are just charismatic but not actually good at their jobs?

For a long time, I was petrified that that’s all I was. I knew my coworkers liked me and thought I was fun to be around, but I also felt deeply insecure about my abilities as a writer, editor, interviewer and journalist. I would joke with them that I was the “personality hire” on our staff, and it didn’t matter how often people corrected me and told me that wasn’t the case; I still felt like I was sitting in the shadows of my enormously talented peers. Imposter syndrome is a bitch.

But, with the benefit of hindsight and a lot of time spent on LinkedIn thanks to unemployment, I’ve decided to embrace my self-imposed role as a personality hire. Turns out, being the personality hire doesn’t mean you’re not also really good at your job; it just means that you have a lot of “soft skills” outside of its immediate requirements. So, I’m using this Substack to flex those soft skills, alongside the harder ones.7

Be honest: Is the fact that the title abbreviates to “ph” like the “ph” in your name that everybody misspells a coincidence?

Did I intend for that to happen? Definitely not.

Was I delighted when I learned that the silly name I came up with for my pop culture newsletter started with the two letters I constantly have to correct people about? Absolutely.

Who made you want to start a Substack?

There are a lot of people I admire who’ve started their own newsletters and blogs, and I wouldn’t be here doing this if I hadn’t seen the excellent examples they set.

Brittany Spanos has long been the person I looked up to most in my career, and after she was inexplicably laid off from Rolling Stone last year, she started her excellent newsletter BRIT POP, which I have been reading religiously (and you should too because it’s excellent). Through her, I found her fellow former-RS writer Andre Gee’s Substack, the andre gee newsletter, where he has been penning some of the best takes about pop culture I’ve read in a while. My former coworker and actual literal superstar Heran Mamo has been bringing back her HMix playlists in a way that makes me want to listen to literally all of her recommendations. Like everyone else with good taste, I adore Hunter Harris and Hung Up (she’s one of the few writers brave enough to admit that Dr. Park the Shark is The Pitt’s best character because he’s probably a sociopath). And of course there’s my sister, Colleen Daw, who’s been back at it over on her Substack Doodles’ Distractions with some killer book recommendations, reviews and personal updates.

What’s the format here? What are you actually going to write about?

Honestly, I’m still figuring that out! The plan, for now, is a post once per week tackling a cultural topic I can’t stop thinking about. Sometimes it will be about something extremely timely and relevant, sometimes it will be a little more abstract, sometimes it’ll be fully out of left field.

In the future, maybe I’ll make playlists, or a more quick-fire style culture roundup. I’m keeping my options open for the time being.

Can we get an example? Pleeeeeeease?

Sure. This week, for example, I’m pretty hung up on the latest drama involving Chappell Roan.

For those who didn’t see, soccer star Jorginho went on his IG Stories over the weekend and claimed that when his 11-year-old stepdaughter walked by Chappell at a hotel in São Paolo, the singer allegedly sent a member of her security team over to speak to the young girl and her mother “in an extremely aggressive manner,” saying they shouldn’t “‘disrespect’ or ‘harass’ other people.” He said this made his daughter cry, called out Chappell for her alleged behavior and sent public message to her saying “without your fans, you would be nothing.” He even told her fans that “she does not deserve your affection.” It got to the point where the new mayor of Rio de Janiero banned Chappell from performing at Todo Mundo no Rio because of the incident.

Chappell proceeded to weigh in, providing her side of the story via her Instagram. She made it clear that the security person who came and said what they said to Jorginho’s family was not, in fact, a part of her security outfit, and that she did not tell them to accost a young girl for simply looking at her. She apologized for the incident anyways, and I’ll just let Chappell speak directly here:

“It's unfair for security to just assume someone doesn't have good intentions when they have no reason to believe because there's no action even taken. I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children, that is crazy. I'm sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something, and if you felt uncomfortable, that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.”

THEN, the girl’s mother, Catherine Harding, put out her own statement via video, saying that she “would like to hope” that Chappell was telling the truth about not sending the security guard to their table, but still pinned the responsibility onto her regardless. “I think that you have a responsibility when you are a celebrity to make sure, I guess, that the people who work for you and that act on your behalf are acting on your behalf,” she said. She also added that “I didn't realize it would get this crazy,” and girl, NEITHER DID ANY OF US.

To quote Oprah Winfrey: “So what is the truth??” The truth is, we’re never going to truly know what actually happened — even if, as some unhinged comments have suggested, people pull CCTV footage from the hotel to determine the identity of this security guard.8 But what I do know is the reaction to this incident has been wholly disproportionate, especially when it comes to Chappell’s side of things.

So many voices online have weighed in over something that shouldn’t have really been a story in the first place, just as they did when she first spoke up about boundaries in 2024, claiming that she is “not cut out for stardom,” or that this incident will “end her career.”9 There was a provably fake Instagram Stories post that made the rounds online, specifically from blue check accounts on Twitter, allegedly showing Chappell saying the exact opposite of what she said in her video. That led to people dogpiling, people raging and then people questioning Chappell’s actual response when it came out. It’s a perpetual, self-reinforcing cycle of gaslighting and screaming into the void, and more importantly, it’s the same shit we’ve been doing to female celebrities for [checks notes] the whole of human history, I guess! So many bad actors are using this deeply weird incident to try and invalidate Chappell’s entire stance against public harassment, continuing to call her “annoying” and “ungrateful” for setting boundaries with the world.

So let’s all get on the same page about this: No, young girls shouldn’t be harangued by adult men for simply looking at someone famous, and there should be some kind of consequences for the security guard who did that. But also, no, it is not “normal” for women like Chappell to be harassed and physically assaulted in public simply because they are famous, and no, female celebrities should not simply grin and bear it because “that’s the price of being famous.” The fact that we have so many examples of this shitty behavior happening to famous women throughout history is an indictment of the way we treat women in the public eye, not an excuse for anyone to keep doing it. Chappell attempting to break that cycle is, in my humble opinion, very cool, regardless of whether or not people (and a lot of bots!) on the internet find it “annoying.” And finally, no, you should not believe everything you see online, especially if you’re reading it on Twitter!!

Hope that was a good enough taste for y’all!

So, do I have to pay for this?

No, you do not, at least not right now.10 Things are hard enough as it is for everyone, and this is mostly for fun.

If you want to become a paid subscriber, I would of course love that, and I’m intentionally keeping the cost as low as possible. Think of it less as paying for access to this newsletter, and more like you buying me a coffee once per month — it’s a very nice gesture that would be greatly appreciated, but it’s also entirely unnecessary.

Ok, I think I’m out of questions, is there anything else to say?

Thank you for reading this! I’ll be back next week with the first official post on Personality Hire — I hope you’ll be here, too. <3