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.
Robin Thicke’s New Album Flops Spectacularly, Sells Just 530 Copies
Robin Thicke, the man who could probably ease tensions between North and South Korea through mutual hatred, has learned the hard way what happens when you write a rapey song that pisses everyone off, then your wife divorces you, and then you write an album about said estranged wife trying (and failing) to win her back. Hint: it’s not going to end well.
Thicke’s newest album, Paula, only scraped in at No. 200 on the Official U.K. albums chart after managing to sell a miserable 530 units in its first week, as Billboard reports. To demonstrate how dePaularable that is, by comparison, last year Thicke’s breakout album Blurred Lines debuted at No. 1 in the U.K. after selling 25,000 copies. That’s a 98 per cent sales drop.
Guys, I don’t want to jinx it, but I think maybe, just maybe, the Thicke virus might be dying off.
We can only hope.
Britney Spears Without Autotune Sounds Exactly Like You Singing Britney Spears
Britney Spears’ liberal use of the old Auto-Tune is one of those things in life everyone that has grown to accept; much like Robin Thicke’s woeful album sales, it doesn’t really come as a surprise to hear that the 32-year-old doesn’t really sound the same without some computerised assistance.
That being said, this recently-leaked recording of Spears singing her new single ‘Alien’ sans-AT is still pretty hilarious despite shocking precisely no-one.
In the wake of the leak, the track’s producer William Orbit has since come to defend Spears’ canary-like, is-she-about-to-sneeze vocal pipes, claiming what we’re hearing is actually just a warmup before she got her srs face on.
“Warming up is essential if you’re a pro, as it is with a runner doing stretches, and it takes a while to do properly,” Orbit wrote on Facebook, adding, “The point is that it is not supposed to be shared with millions of listeners.”
American News Show Calls EDM Ecstasy In This MDMAmazing Segment
Kids these days, amirite? What with their bloody EDMs and MDMAs and DMA’s and their other flaming acronyms. Well apparently today’s molly-obsessed #youthculture is a little too hard for awkward middle-American news anchors to keep up with.
This week CBS Boston aired a segment about the rise of ecstasy, and in their desperate attempt to strike fear into the hearts of parents worried about their little Jimmy, fatally exposed how cripplingly out-of-touch they are with ~the times~ by stating that ‘EDM’, an already dated term in itself, is a commonly-used street slang for ecstasy.
The full video has since been taken down from YouTube, but luckily someone captured the essential one-liner in a rotating Vine that will haunt CBS Boston forever:
BRB, gunna go snort some EDMs.
Lady Gaga Caught Claiming Picture Of Fans At Metallica Concert As Her Own
Lady Gaga’s grasp on the Queen of Pop crown continues to slip away from her, with yet another embarrassing headline added to her growing pile over the weekend.
As the story goes, Lady Gaga Instagrammed a picture of the crowd at her performance at Festival D’été in Quebec, captioning the snap, “Those little dots are fans, and that’s our stage and lights beaming from the center… Unreal 90,000 ppl showed up! What a magical night,” and finishing it with the hashtag, #artraveQuebec.
It was all fine and dandy until some particularly eagle-eyed internet dwellers noticed that Gaga’s picture wasn’t of her own 90,000-strong attendance, but it was actually of Metallica’s 130,000-strong army from their performance at the same venue three years prior.
After people called the poker-faced pop star’s bluff, Gaga posted actual photos from her (still impressive) concert while using the opportunity to take a blind swipe at her old frenemy, Madonna.
@ohnotheydidnt here’s a proper pic. Maybe the Madonna fans on your site can use a microscope to count the fans pic.twitter.com/y9BWdn2et5
— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) July 5, 2014
Take a seat Gaga. There’s 40,000 spare ones in your arena – take your pick.
Harry Styles Accidentally Favourited A Porn Tweet And Changed Tween’s Worlds As They Knew It (NSFW)
One Direction are quickly becoming Trash Can favourites, what with all their weed-smoking and six-figure fan fiction-inspiring. Their latest entry into the bin comes with obviously-future-soloist Harry Styles making a little blunder on Twitter that exposed about 21 million pre-teens to this pornographic image:
On Sunday night, 1D fans noticed that Harry Styles’ number of favourites had suddenly jumped from 10 to 11 for the first time in over two years. What they found shocked them and changed their pre-pubescent worlds forever, and shortly after the hashtag #HarryDontLickAnything was trending number one worldwide. Below are some terrific reactions to Styles’ thumb-slip, whether it was his own doing or not:
i bet harry didnt realize he favorited that tweet & when he sees all the tags he’ll be like #HarryDontLickAnything pic.twitter.com/N96VrdVo2v
— h.e.s. my world (@aweestyles) July 7, 2014
omg i just looked at harry styles favorites….im done — Sheila Sykes (@sxmpiternal_cut) July 7, 2014
OMG HARRY STYLES FAVORITES… I CAN’T STOP LAUGHING!!!!!!!
— 1D or 5SOS PLEASE :) (@JessAlonso22) July 7, 2014
#HarryDontLickAnything Harry’s reaction when he sees this trend pic.twitter.com/JineUo7XSe
— Jasmine || Zayn pls (@cxddIymalik) July 7, 2014
This is why he’s our favourite.