Every week there’s a bunch of music-related stories, links, videos and other internet goodies that are a little on the trashy side, but for whatever reason get everyone in the office talking.
This is what the Tone Deaf Trash Can is all about: it’s our avenue for sharing the funniest, weirdest and downright tackiest music stories of the week to help you keep up to date with the best (and worst) things happening in pop culture. Don’t feel guilty – you’re allowed to enjoy it.
Rihanna Breaks Cop’s Phone Taking A Selfie. Signs It. Gets Sold For $70,000
Even though she might call herself BadGirlRiRi, it looks like Rihanna also likes to play good cop every once in a while.
The Barbados-born pop star found herself sitting next to President of the LA Police Commission, Steve Soboroff, who turned out to be a pretty big fan of her work. Doing what anyone brave enough would do, Soboroff asked Rihanna for a cheeky selfie but the cop’s hopes of social media fame literally shattered when RiRi dropped his phone mid-photo, breaking the screen and his heart.
However, there is a happy ending to this story.
Soboroff somehow saw Rihanna a few days after the courtside incident, and once again shamelessly asked the singer to sign his busted phone, to which she happily obliged and scribbled, “Sorry! I Love LAPD. Rihanna”.
The autographed phone was then auctioned off on eBay and eventually sold for $66,500USD ($72,000AUD). All the proceeds raised from the auction are going to the Los Angeles Police Department Foundation, and as NME reports, Rihanna has also thrown in an extra $25,000 donation on her own behalf.
If only everyone could rake in $70k for every tragic iPhone smash.
The Black Keys ‘Embarrassed’ For Jack Black Over Leaked Email Incident
Remember last year when serial pests TMZ breached Jack White privacy and leaked emails in which he called The Black Keys’ frontman Dan Auerbach an “asshole” and a “copy” and didn’t want their children going to school together? Well now, fresh from last week’s appearance in the Trash Can with his comments about Justin Bieber, media-friendly drummer Patrick Carney has brought their White Stripes beef back into the spotlight in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
While Carney admits he thinks White “sounds like an asshole”, the drummer has let most of the water go under the bridge. “I actually feel embarrassed for him… I don’t hold grudges, man. I really don’t. We’ve all said fucked-up shit in private, and divorce is hard,” Carney told RS.
“I really think personal things are personal things. Like, TMZ? Honestly, they should be fucking ashamed of themselves.”
They say the best friendships are made over a common enemy, so let’s hope that with The Black Keys and Mr White can buddy up over a mutual hatred of TMZ.
Macklemore’s Racist Costume Makes Even More People Hate Him
Part-time social justice warrior and full-time jackass, Macklemore, brewed a huge shit storm this week when he staged a surprise performance at a museum in Seattle.
The Grammy-winning rapper decided to go incognito and ruin the days of surprise unsuspecting patrons with a random performance of his hit song, ‘Thrift Shop’. Only, he thought it was cool to dress in a costume that scarily resembled an antisemitic caricature from a Nazi propaganda poster.
Apparently lacking the basic intellectual ability of better judgement, the ‘Same Love’ rapper stepped on stage donning a comically large nose, black wig, and a cheap suit, and it didn’t take long for twitter (including Seth Rogen) to rightfully call out the costume for perpetuating negative Jewish stereotypes.
.@macklemore, first you trick people into thinking you’re a rapper, now you trick them into thinking you’re Jewish? pic.twitter.com/3rtaE4GHje
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) May 18, 2014
Of course, Macklemore since passed it off as a coincidence and apologised in a lengthy blog post, but it really doesn’t matter if his fuck up was an accident or not: the guy was still brain-numbingly stupid enough to do it, and people were really offended.
Ultimately the golden question here is: how didn’t Mackelmore, or anyone in his surrounding team, stop to think that maybe this whole ‘Jewish-looking’ costume thing isn’t the best idea?
Lorde Wins Billboard’s Top Rock Song, Is As Confused As Everyone Else
This week, old mate Ella Yelich-O’Connor continued giving very little to zero fucks about things, this time with her flawlessly confused reaction to her bizarre win in the Top Rock Song category at this year’s Billboard Music Awards.
Sure, Lorde does have her fair share of rawk and roll credibility – she did, after all, temporarily front Nirvana at their one-off reunion show at their Hall Of Fame induction as well as giving a shout-out to rockabilly legends The Cramps on the cover of Rolling Stone. But anyone with hearing knows that ‘Royals’ – with its off-kilter electronic production and earworm pop hooks – clearly doesn’t fit into the rock category. And evidently, even Ella got a kick out of this, too.
Catching wind of the now viral .GIF capturing her puzzled face when stepping up to the podium, Lorde tweeted it out to her 1.6 million followers with the caption, “this is me confused about unwittingly having written best ~rock~ song lol dork”.
Andy Samberg’s EDM Pisstake Is Hilarious, Unfor-Guetta-ble
The Lonely Island frontman and reigning king of musical satire Andy Samberg made a brilliant homecoming return to SNL on the weekend, giving the show one of its most memorable skits of the series so far.
In what some will argue is a scarily accurate portrayal of popular EDM, Samberg plays the role of a DJ named Davincii (*applause*) who makes the crowd go frothing-at-the-mouth insane with his dancefloor anthem ‘When Will The Bass Drop’ which gives a nod to DJ Snake’s ‘Turn Down For What’ featuring Lil Jon – the latter of whom makes a brief appearance before the titular drop finally lands.
Davincii exploits the good old suspenseful buildup trick, standing behind a glowing Macbook screen that does all the work while he fries eggs, plays game,s and collects bags of money, while a blissfully unaware crowd showers him in praise with golden lines like: “This is music!” and “He is the King!”
Watch the video below. When the bass drops, you’ll shit bricks.
