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How Not to Get Fired From ‘The Tonight Show’: A Guide for Jimmy Fallon

By Jason Bailey on

So it’s official: Jimmy Fallon, SNL character-breaker turned Late Night host, will take over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno next February. The handoff has been confirmed by NBC, Leno, and Fallon, who told the New York Times, “I have nothing but respect for Jay. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have a show to be taking over.” That’s a nice (if slightly inaccurate) bit of car-waxing from Mr. Fallon, who is wise to keep on the best possible terms with Mr. Leno, a man known for doing whatever it takes to hang on to Tonight. And with the outgoing host already making joking-but-not-really overtures that he’s not quite done yet (“Would I do it again? Believe me, the phone’s not ringing off the hook. It will be nice if people seem interested. But I’ll let it sit where it is”), and slightly ominous pronouncements about his expectations for his successor (“I would like to see Jimmy keep it at No. 1, which I’m sure he will”), Fallon’s gonna have to be very careful that Leno doesn’t end up repeating what he did to Conan and showing up behind the desk again nine months later. With that in mind, we’ve got a few suggestions that Jimmy might want to consider if he wants to keep Tonight. … Read More

Television

Watch Mariah Carey, The Roots, Jimmy Fallon, and Children Perform Adorable Rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You”

By Judy Berman on

We’ve already established that Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the most perfect holiday tune of the past two decades. In fact, it’s pretty much the only Christmas song we ever look forward to hearing. (Sorry, Sufjan.) So we were thrilled beyond words to learn that Jimmy Fallon, reviver of many great ’90s cultural artifacts, had Carey on the show to perform an unspeakably adorable rendition of the song. Backed by The Roots and the host himself on a selection of instruments you might remember from your elementary-school music class, the performance also featured a small menagerie of kids to sing along on the “you-oo-oo, baby” parts. If you missed it (or just need to see it again), click through to see the diva in action. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Thanks to an accidental tweet from Def Jam France, we now know that Rihanna has a new record coming out in November, and the first single is due out this Monday. [via NME]

2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute has announced that next spring’s big show will be “Punk: From… Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. If you missed last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Fiona Apple stopped by to perform “Anything We Want” and a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Let Me Roll It” with The Roots. She also discussed her infamous Roseland Ballroom meltdown. Watch the footage here.

2. The fact that Hans Zimmer is scoring… Read More

Music

A Brief History of Music’s Most Epic Afros

By Tom Hawking on

The new Mars Volta album is out this week, and while we’ve not always been able to digest the band’s multi-part prog opuses, we’ve always admired them for at least one reason: their hair. We don’t want to be overly superficial here, but core Mars Volta duo Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López have sported two of the best Afros in music over the last decade or so, and the duo’s hair has inspired serious Afro envy in irredeemably white and boringly straight-haired music journalists like us. So to celebrate the release of Noctourniquet, we thought we’d have a light-hearted look at some of the other glorious ‘fros that have bedizened the world of music over the years. Who did we miss? … Read More

Music

All Tomorrow’s Parties Announces Amazing 2012 Asbury Park Line-Up

By Judy Berman on

In our humble opinion, All Tomorrow’s Parties is the best music festival in the world — the kind of event that music nuts like your Flavorpill editors spend idle moments fantasizing about. So, like the rest of America’s ATP junkies, we’ve been impatiently awaiting an initial line-up announcement ever since we heard in December that a reunited Afghan Whigs would be headlining and co-curating this year’s I’ll Be Your Mirror in Asbury Park, NJ. And now it’s here, and it’s fantastic!

The biggest news is that Ian Svenonius’ reunited late-’90s gospel-punk project The Make-Up, who are playing an ATP in London this spring, are on the bill, despite uncertainty about whether they’d play any stateside shows outside their native DC. Comedy fans, meanwhile, will be excited to hear that Louis CK — probably the biggest comedian the festival has even drawn — will perform. The rest of the line-up is just classic, awesome ATP: Mark Lanegan, Dirty Three, Scrawl, Sharon Van Etten, The Roots, Thee Oh Sees, Factory Floor, etc.

Tickets go on sale Monday (2/27) at 10 am ET, via atpfestival.com — and this year, if you buy before March 27th, you can purchase your weekend passes for only $199. (The price will climb to $249 after that.) Click through to see the full list of who’s playing, and remember, additions will be forthcoming in the months before the festival. … Read More

Music

10 Great Musical Double Bills That Should Play Occupy Wall Street

By John DeFore on

The Occupy movement is famous for welcoming anyone who wants to join. But you can’t help but wonder if, for campers who’ve endured taunts and snow and pepper spray, some musical guests are more welcome than others. Yes, it’s a thrill to see Philip Glass using the people’s mic at Lincoln Center, but too many of the celebrities who visit OWS seem (at the risk of being uncharitable) to be using its fame for their own good instead of vice-versa. One wonders, for instance, how many impassioned discussions of banking regulations and foreclosure statistics were ever interrupted by the comment, “You know who I’d love to hear right now? Third Eye Blind.”

With that in mind, we offer ten dream concerts for OWS — double bills of music that’s relevant and rousing, from artists (unlike these movement-friendly newcomers) with enough name recognition to draw both fans and media attention to Zuccotti Park, or anywhere else the 99 percent are trying to make themselves heard. … Read More

News

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Ryan Seacrest may be taking over Matt Lauer’s anchor spot at Today. Our gut instinct is that this would be horrible, but given the number of thrilling moments Kathie Lee’s unlikely presence on the morning news show has bestowed upon us all, maybe it’s a good thing? [via THR]

2. Here is… Read More

Music

A Selection of Hip-Hop Albums You Can Bring Home to Mom

By Tom Hawking on

No matter your parents’ political persuasion, hip-hop can be a hard sell when it comes to co-opting the stereo at home — liberally inclined parents will complain about the genre’s perceived misogyny, glorification of crime, and naughty language, while conservatives will rant and rave about… well, basically the exact same things, albeit for different reasons. Still, with the release of The Roots’ undun this week, we got to thinking about hip-hop that can help change — or at least — challenge these broad conceptions. Here’s a few of our picks. If your parents aren’t quite ready to embraced the Based God quite yet, you can get them started with the records you’ll find after the jump. … Read More

Music

5 Albums to Stream for Free This Week: The Black Keys, The Roots

By Tom Hawking on

December 6th is pretty much the last big release date of the year (unless the T-Pain album floats your boat, in which case get thee to Auto-Tune detox immediately), so happily there’s a reasonable amount of fairly worthy pre-release streams floating about on the Internet. As ever, we’ve started our working week by collating five of the best and/or most noteworthy for you, and they await you after the jump — along with new albums by The Black Keys and The Roots, there’s the ever-prolific Boris’s third album of the year, a live album by The Dropkick Murphys, and also (gulp) Korn’s new dubstep direction. Yikes. … Read More