This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
This week:
Bridget Everett Is Giving a Performance
Has a person ever won an Emmy Award for…breathing? In the most recent episode of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, Bridget Everett performs a scene where she is doing a deep breathing exercise at a voice lesson, and there is something so intimate and soulful about it that I didn’t even realize how my eyes had welled up with tears, until they were trailing down my face.
Something similar happens to Everett’s character, Sam, too. Her teacher has one hand on her heart and another on her diaphragm and, after one breath, says something to Sam that cracks her open. Emotion launches out of her, like a Pandora’s box of feeling that she didn’t mean to open and has no idea what to do now that it’s all escaped. It’s the quietest scene I’ve ever watched and thought, immediately, “This deserves an award.” Then again, while writing this, I realize that maybe it’s also the loudest scene, too.
Somebody Somewhere isn’t just about these kinds of moments—though they are plentiful. It’s about living through middle age and trying to understand your place in life, or if you’ll ever even have one. It’s often uproariously funny and crude; the previous episode ends with Sam and her best friend, Jeff Hiller’s Joel, on the phone comforting each other, while they each sit on the toilet, battling explosive diarrhea.
My first encounter with Everett was at one of her bawdy New York cabaret shows, where she, and this is not euphemism, buried my head in her cleavage and had me motorboat her while she sang a song called “Titties,” afterwards winking at me and calling me “Blue-Eyed Titties.” There was a lot of talk when Somebody Somewhere first premiered about how it was a revelation of Everett’s range, given her raunchier reputation. I think it shows how limited we think people’s talent can be.
Everett’s cabaret was such a sensation because of the well of feelings it unleashed, much in the same way as that breathing exercise. Sure, in the cabaret case, it’s feelings of inhibition and guilt, allowing the audience to be free. But it makes sense that a person capable of that at her downtown shows is also capable of stirring up such intense and powerful emotion on Somebody Somewhere as well. As Sam’s voice teacher tells her in the episode, when she doubts if her particular skills are enough for the world: “Sam, you have a rich, full instrument. Not a heavy voice.”
Beyoncé Is Not of This World
The myriad photos and video clips that have been posted from Beyoncé’s first concerts of her Renaissance tour in Sweden are both saving and killing me.
They are so good. She looks better than she’s ever looked before. The sets are outrageous; the costumes are spectacular; the choreography has me wondering how a human body is even capable of moving like that for an entire concert. (Is “Alien Superstar” a coded autobiographical song?) More, she pulls off the impossible task of celebrating and embodying the queer culture that inspired her album, without it ever feeling like appropriation.
Beyoncé performs onstage during the opening night of the “RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR” in Stockholm, Sweden.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Parkwood
I know all of this, because I have basically seen the entire concert, despite the fact that I have not been to Sweden since 2008. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, in an age where we record and post every single thing we do, so much footage from the shows would end up online. I even heard that you could access livestreams of the show, filmed by people in the audience. Yet, ever the fool, I was surprised!
I don’t think I’ve ever unwillingly encountered this much content from a tour I am attending at a later date. It’s not that I ran away from the posts; in fact, I watched and delighted in each and every one. But I do wonder what impact they will have on my (very expensive) future experience!
In any case, if one thing is clear from seeing all those clips, it’s that my creaky self needs to start stretching, if I am going to survive all the dancing I’m about to do at this concert without pulling something.
Janet Jackson Still Is the G.O.A.T.
Speaking of creaky dancing at concerts, I was in rare form doing my little step-shuffle, hip-wiggle, shoulder-shimmy grooving at the Janet Jackson concert in New York this week.
It’s not particularly novel to fawn over how good Janet Jackson is in concert; her last tour was fairly similar to this one, and she was as good then as she was this week. But it does blow your mind, when considering how dynamic her career has been, that she can still channel so much of that power into her performance—at age 56!—and that everything about her music, message, and celebrity still feels so fresh.
She worked her high pony that trailed down to her calves like a rodeo cowboy with a lasso. At one point, she gave her shirtless backup dancers lap dances. There were several times that she smiled, and it was so electric, I wondered if Madison Square Garden was going to short-circuit.
Moreover, the ticket said the show started at 7:45, and I’ll be damned if her opening act, Ludacris, wasn’t on that stage by 7:49. That’s called respect.
My Big Fat Greek Emotional Breakdown
I don’t know what it is about me and these cheesy-ass movies, but I got teary-eyed at the trailer for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. (Watch it here.)
What to watch this week:
The Mother: Jennifer Lopez truly is Mother for this. (Now on Netflix)
Monica: The most important movie you’ll see this year. (Now in theaters)
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: One of the best Drag Race premieres in herstory. (Now on Paramount+)
What to skip this week:
Hypnotic: The Ben Affleck hot streak is over. (Now in theaters)
City on Fire: A flaming hot mess! The puns write themselves! (Now on Apple TV+)
