Culture

While You Were Sleeping, Myspace Became Cool Again?

The site officially re-launched overnight, and it kinda seems like Justin Timberlake knows what he's doing, which is weird. Also, other news!

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So, Justin Timberlake kinda knows what he’s doing with Myspace? This can’t be right.

Myspace, that once essential website featuring the reassuring smile of ‘Tom’ amongst your beloved ‘Top 8s’, officially re-launched overnight. Head over to the site and you’ll find a slick new design and a whole bunch of a streamable songs, videos and exclusive playlist mixes.

To celebrate the occasion (and highlight their hip new taste), Myspace even hired cult photographer Ryan McGinley to shoot a commercial. He pretty much filmed our dreams: musicians Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira, Schoolboy Q, DIIV, Pharrell, Riff Raff, Iggy Azalea and more, partying together in what must’ve been the greatest party that ever partied.

Well played, JT. This could convince me.

Kanye did an interview and people can’t stop talking about it

Shy and retiring rapper, Kanye West, who’s currently promoting his upcoming album Yeezus (out June 18), lent his time to music critic Jon Caramanica recently for an interview that appeared yesterday in The New York Times. Needless to say, it’s typically nuts.

Besides comparing himself to Michael Jordan and blaming all his life problems on his 8th grade basketball coach, Kanye indulged in furniture-talk (“You know, this one Corbusier lamp was like, my greatest inspiration. I lived in Paris in this loft space and recorded in my living room… I would go to museums and just like, the Louvre would have  a furniture exhibit, and I visited it like, five times, even privately…”) and revealed that his favourite song of all-time is J-Kwon’s club classic, ‘Tipsy’ (“People would think that’s like a lower quality, less intellectual form of hip-hop, but that’s always my No.1.”).

Read the whole thing here. And then watch him sulkily walk into a pole again!

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me looks like it could be pretty good for a rock doco

Led by the now departed clashing duo of Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, Big Star were a cult ’70s rock act whose brief discography went on to inspire countless jangling rock bands from The Replacements to REM to Teenage Fanclub, although, let’s be honest, they’re more famous these days for that opening theme song from That ’70s Show. Their story’s being told in the upcoming doco Nothing Can Hurt Me, whose trailer was released overnight.

The film, which scored rave reviews at this year’s SXSW, features interviews with ’70s rock-crit icon Lester Bangs, filmmaker Cameron Crowe, and musicians like REM’s Michael Stipe and Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips. It’s being released in July, but really, it should be released in September.

Jackie Chan is writing a stage musical based on his own life

Even legendary martial arts masters get tired of beating up people with chopsticks… Hong Kong action superstar Jackie Chan announced that he’s working on a musical adaptation of his 1998 memoir, I Am Jackie Chan: My Life In Action. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it will focus on his time as a teenage acrobat, “chronicle his early education at the Peking Opera School”, and “his quest to step out from behind the shadow of the iconic Bruce Lee”.

Whatever it is, it better have raps:

How did we never notice this before?