Little more than a year ago, Kanye West’s latest excursion on his insatiable quest for any crumb of attention included proclaiming himself a Nazi on X (again). But that was old news by then. Few remember that West, whom I refuse to call “Ye,” has been perpetuating hateful ideology since the early 2010s, including comparing himself to Hitler onstage, making antisemitic comments on The Breakfast Club, and selling the Confederate Flag on the Yeezus tour. But since his 5150 in late 2016, he’s been on a downward spiral, reaching new levels of depravity with his behavior for a full decade.

These antics include, but are not limited to:

• Antisemitism & white supremacy: Identified as a Nazi on Alex Jones, praised Hitler, denied the Holocaust, dined with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, debuted White Lives Matter shirts at Paris Fashion Week, posted a swastika on X, ran a Super Bowl ad selling swastika merch, and released a song titled “Heil Hitler” in May 2025.

• Harassment & threats: Released a video depicting Pete Davidson being kidnapped, decapitated, and buried alive; urged fans to harass him publicly; hired PIs to surveil his current wife, Bianca Censori.

• Harmful public statements: Called slavery a “choice,” claimed Harriet Tubman “never freed the slaves,” and publicly revealed he pressured Kim Kardashian to abort their daughter North — all while running for president.

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Despite his frequent, consistent, and alarming pattern of behavior, he has continued to move through elite cultural spaces largely unimpeded. He has graced the front rows of Paris, Milan, Berlin, London, and New York Fashion Weeks, attending shows for major fashion houses including Kenzo, Schiaparelli, Balenciaga, Burberry, Givenchy, and Marni, and even walking the Balenciaga runway himself. He performed on SNL multiple times, earned a Grammy nomination, and has remained a fixture on the festival and touring circuit — appearing on Travis Scott’s tours and headlining Rolling Loud 2024. Most recently, his 2026 album topped the charts, he sold out two nights at SoFi Stadium, grossing $33 million, attended by several celebs such as Dave Chappell and Erykah Badu. He was also recently announced as a headliner for Wireless Festival, based in London.

Ultimately, the line for Kanye West was finally drawn by the British, who denied his entry into the U.K., effectively canceling the Wireless Festival in its entirety. When it comes to famous American men, consequences come few and far between. Chris Brown is selling out arenas, and Louis C.K. is releasing a Netflix special in 2026.

Cancel culture, as Americans have come to understand it, has never been a neutral force applied to bad behavior. It is a selective mechanism — one that moves fast when women make men look bad, but allows men to wreak documented, repeated, legally actionable havoc… until they try to bring their chaos abroad. This uniquely American problem is a symptom of our Trumpism. When the most visible consequence for bad behavior (34 felony convictions, civil liability in a sexual abuse case, the infamous Access Hollywood tape, and even the implications in the Epstein Files) in America is the presidency (twice), the message to every powerful man below that threshold is clear. With a little bit of money comes power, and with power comes immunity. And with immunity comes audacity. Yet they hide behind the veil of “cancel culture” while breaking podcast streaming records.

When women in entertainment behave badly, or inconveniently, or publicly, or in ways that make powerful people uncomfortable — the industry moves fast. Taylor Frankie Paul lost her ticket out of an toxic relationship for her part in a crime that was public knowledge before she was ever cast. Zara Larsson lost a $3M brand deal over a social media comment. Britney Spears lost 13 years of her life to a conservatorship for shaving her head. In America, the most unforgivable thing a woman can do is embarrass her brand partners. The most forgivable thing a man can do is everything else.

Alex Cooper is on top of the world, and it’s built on other women. She just hosted the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special on Disney+. Love Overboard, Unwell Productions’ first unscripted television series hosted by Gabby Windey, just premiered on Hulu. A new series was just announced. But what exactly got her here?

It’s not her interview skills, which are frequently and widely criticized — on TikTok, critics have called her “a PR opportunity, not a journalist or actual interviewer.” And it’s not the raunchy, sex-forward content that first put her on the map.

It’s ironic, actually, that the answer seems to be Alex’s approachable girl’s girl persona. Alex is just like you — she fan-girls over celebrities, she spends most of her time in sweats, and she loves to yap. She frames her approach as making guests “feel safe” rather than holding them accountable: “I have been on many shows — not to put other shows down — but the host is looking five inches to the right of my head and reading a teleprompter.” She’s just a girl you’re having a heart-to-heart with at the sleepover.

It’s difficult to stomach, but the truth is that the girl’s girl persona is just a clever ruse she uses until she gets close enough to take what she wants.

A Trail of Burned Women

Sofia Franklyn

Sofia Franklyn and Alex Cooper, roommates at the time, launched Call Her Daddy in 2018 and took off immediately. Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports purchased the rights just one month after its first episode debuted. The concept was genuinely novel: women talking about sex in graphic, unapologetic terms — the female equivalent of locker room talk, if locker room talk were actually interesting. Downloads rose from 12,000 to 2 million in just two months, so it tracks that the pair would want to renegotiate when the time came. As Sofia tells it, she and Alex had been aligned on their strategy for months — until she felt what she described as a “shift of insane magnitude” when Alex met with Portnoy in secret and signed a deal without her.

Since the split, Alex has gone on to build a $125M media empire off the shared intellectual property and cultural cachet of Call Her Daddy — and off the word “Unwell,” which fans widely credit Sofia with coining on the podcast.

Alix Earle

Following Alix Earle’s overnight rise to fame via her GRWM TikToks, Alex Cooper signed her as the first Unwell Network podcast, Hot Mess. In early 2025, Hot Mess was dropped from the network. Sources cited business friction, with Earle’s father concluding it “ended up not being a smart business move.” Earle later hinted at the falling out on her Co-Star app TikTok, saying the app told her she “can start s—” and that she had “so much information” — before a fan asked what happened between her and Cooper, and she replied: “How much time do you have?” But here’s the thing about Alex vs. Alix: Cooper has clearly learned from the Sofia fallout, which means there are almost certainly ironclad NDAs in place. We may never get the full story, but the pattern speaks for itself.

A New Level of Depravity

Taylor Frankie Paul is having a rough stretch. I’m not excusing her behavior (I’m actually quite repulsed), but it’s impossible to ignore that her ex and the father of her youngest child, Dakota Mortensen, is, at minimum, 50% of the problem. The coordinated media blitz that kicked off just days before TFP’s Bachelorette season was set to air was not a coincidence.

So imagine my surprise when Unwell Productions announced Unwell Winter Games this week, featuring none other than Dakota Mortensen as a cast member. Since so much has transpired, fans might have forgotten that TFP actually announced her Bachelorette casting on Call Her Daddy on September 10, 2025 — so platforming the other party in her public unraveling feels less like a creative choice and more like a statement.

In addition to the Mormons, Huda from Love Island was a baffling and problematic casting choice. During an Instagram Live in October 2025, a viewer called Olandria the N-word — and Huda laughed before ending the live. That’s not a gray area, and it’s not something you quietly move past.

The Bottom Line

Alex Cooper has chosen money over self, friendship, and allyship, yet she successfully became a cultural lightning rod off the brand positioning that she is one of us, that she is for women, by women. But Alex Cooper is a vampire. She just feeds on cash instead of blood.

Sofia Franklyn’s Daddy Issues hits November 10th. Watch this space!

Over the weekend, the internet erupted in speculation about a potential earthquake in the Bravo universe. This time, with the Summer House cast. Fans began to piece together some clues from cryptic social media posts to damning photo evidence of hoodie-swapping. The culprits? West Wilson and recently separated Amanda Batula — housemates in the Hamptons sharehouse — who are rumored to have either “hooked up” or are casually seeing each other. The kicker is that West had previously dated another housemate, Ciara Miller, a close friend of Amanda’s. This bombshell comes at an interesting time, only a couple weeks after an episode aired where the cast members discussed how the interracial element of Ciara and West’s will-they-won’t-they situationship affects Ciara, including social media comments like “You let a white man play you on national TV.”

A blind item on Deuxmoi first surfaced on March 5, and was picked up by other reality blogs like Reality Blurb and Reality TV. After a quasi-denial in US Weekly where an insider pushes back, saying “she is going out with friends,” the rumors fell quiet for a few weeks until a branded Instagram Live event that was meant to feature both Ciara and Amanda ended up being broken into two separate events, with Ciara and Amanda attending separately. This led to the re-ignition of the rumors and added evidence – photos of Amanda wearing West’s clothes. A source in fashion working with Ciara’s team told Entertainment Now she received verbal confirmation something happened between Amanda and West, and has been adjusting professional plans accordingly.

West Wilson represents a very specific archetype of white man. He’s the guy who gravitates toward Black people for the cultural cache – the fashion, the music, the energy. He surrounds himself with Black friends, absorbs Black culture as his entire personality, and uses that proximity as evidence of his open-mindedness. He’ll mess around with Black women, because he is attracted to them, but that attraction doesn’t extend into commitment or protection. He said as much at the Season 8 reunion, when he admitted he wouldn’t commit to Ciara for “show-related reasons” — translation, he didn’t want to be locked down publicly while building his Bravo brand. Despite this, he took her to meet his family in Missouri, introduced her to his brother in Chicago and attended weddings with her. And then when it was time to make it official, he cited the fanbase. The Black cultural fluency is simply a performance, functioning as a shield that makes men like West read as “safe,” as allies, as the good guys, when their behavior quite pointedly contradicts this.

Another prime example of this archetype is Travis Kelce, who dated influencer Kayla Nicole on and off for five years, but never quite truly committed. There were whispers of infidelity and even financial manipulation. And then when Taylor Swift entered the picture, Kayla became a target. She was harassed, racially mocked, leading her to pen an open letter to Black women just to assert her own worth — while neither Travis nor Taylor said anything publicly to call it off. “You’ll hope the ones closest will protect you, but you will quickly find out people don’t protect what they don’t value,” Kayla said at the time.

This love triangle exposes what was always true about West and Ciara – Ciara wasn’t the person West wanted to hitch his reality TV wagon to. She was the person for the moment, until a white girl became available.

Men like West and Travis are attracted to Black women, but they don’t value them. They excuse misogynoir and even perpetuate it — casting Black women as too intimidating, too emotional, too much, the moment those women have a feeling that inconveniences them. West described Ciara as someone he had to “tiptoe around.” Travis let an entire fanbase harass Kayla Nicole into writing an open letter just to remind herself she was worthy. Neither man said a word.

And then, right on cue, they both turned toward someone softer. Someone safer. Someone the world would celebrate them for choosing, and notably, damsels in distress just coming out of tumultuous relationships where they felt undervalued and not chosen. Men like West and Travis aren’t looking for love –– they’re looking for a hero arc. Strong, self-assured Black women don’t fit that bill. Choosing a Black woman publicly, loudly, and fully costs something. And both men have made clear, through their actions and their silence, that they aren’t willing to pay it.

Ultimately, this is a story of a Black woman who gave this man her vulnerability, her forgiveness, and her friendship being hung out to dry. Again. And this time, in favor of her close friend. In Kayla’s words, the people closest to Ciara should have protected what they claimed to value. The fact that they didn’t tells you everything about how much they actually did.

Between the release of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 4 and the scheduled premiere of The Bachelorette Season 22, an alarming video surfaced via TMZ including footage from Taylor Frankie Paul’s 2023 domestic violence arrest, depicting her hitting, kicking, and throwing furniture at her ex, Dakota Mortensen. Her child was present throughout. While this incident had always been publicly known, the public had never seen the footage… until now.

In the video, Taylor grabs a metal barstool and hurls it at Dakota. He can be heard saying, “your daughter is sitting right there.” At that moment, the 5-year-old girl — curled up on the couch — begins crying. Even this doesn’t break Taylor away from her rage in that moment. She remains transfixed. The police report states she later had a “goose egg on her head.”

Shortly after the footage was published, ABC confirmed the season was canceled — the same day Taylor was trotted out for several interviews on the morning show circuit to promote the series.

“In light of the newly released video that surfaced today, we have made the decision not to move forward with the new season of The Bachelorette at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” a spokesperson for Disney Entertainment Television said in a statement. The season had been set to premiere this Sunday.

Taylor’s spokesperson’s response to the TMZ video called it “the latest installment of [Mortensen’s] never-ending, desperate, attention-seeking, destructive campaign to harm Taylor without any regard for the consequences for their child.”

I want to be careful here, because Taylor’s relationship with Dakota is genuinely complicated, and I believe he is capable of his own despicable behavior. The show has documented that complexity across its four seasons. But from a pure crisis communications standpoint, this statement is a disaster.

The moment footage exists — especially behavior involving a child — the only defensible response is accountability and forward-looking messaging. Pivoting immediately to attack the person who released the video, before acknowledging what’s in it, reads as evasive. And evasive, in a moment like this, is worse than silence.

Whoever is doing her PR is not familiar with crisis comms, and this speaks to just how many so-called industry professionals are steering these women in the wrong direction, collecting a check while the house burns down.

Follow the Money

When ABC cast Taylor Frankie Paul as its next Bachelorette, the network knew they were making a ballsy move. TFP was a significant departure from the squeaky-clean Christian leads of most seasons past — already a reality star in her own right, with three young children from two different fathers, a divorcée. Even the way the news broke was unconventional, announcing the news on an episode of Call Her Daddy rather than through their own channels.

Despite all these qualifications and the flashy marketing, the casting is simply low-hanging fruit. The kind of idea that looks brilliant in a slide deck and falls apart the moment someone asks a single question. Yeah, okay, she has 6.1 million TikTok followers who are deeply invested in her love life. Sure, it makes sense… if your only filter is buzz, with no regard for consequence.

It’s also worth noting that a Black woman with this exact record would never have gotten an opportunity to lead a legacy franchise. ABC’s willingness to rationalize Taylor Paul’s red flags is not unrelated to the grace that gets extended to white women in the public eye. Whiteness functioned as a mitigating factor in that risk assessment, whether anyone in that room said so out loud or not.

Part of my job is vetting talent for campaigns and activations. When we go through that exercise, we weigh “risk factors” against a talent’s “mediability” or their cultural cache, against any mitigating factors. When it comes to legal issues, violent charges are always the worst-case scenario. They are uniquely difficult to defend, uniquely repellent to brand partners and audiences, and uniquely impossible to contextualize your way out of once footage exists.

Taylor Frankie Paul was cast as the next Bachelorette when her 2023 arrest was already fully public. The incident was covered during Season 1 of the Hulu series, meaning ABC knowingly cast a talent with a violent charge on her record and a chaotic, still-ongoing situationship with her accuser, then proceeded to film an entire season and plan a premiere. Paul’s Bachelorette season wrapped production in December — two months before the latest alleged domestic incident with Dakota.

The network probably saw Paul and the chaos that followed her as a calculated risk, figuring ratings would be worth whatever controversy her season could create. I can say with near certainty that the PR and corp comms teams at ABC and Disney fought against this, but the marketing team won.

To be abundantly clear: nothing here is a defense of Taylor Paul or her behavior. What was shown in the video is inexcusable. A child was physically harmed. But accountability for her actions and accountability for the industry machine that put her in this position are not mutually exclusive, and the latter has gone largely unscathed.

In late February, police made contact with both Taylor and Dakota on February 24 and 25 amid a new alleged domestic incident, with the Draper City Police Department confirming an open domestic assault investigation and that “allegations have been made in both directions.” Details remain limited as the investigation is ongoing.

On March 7, Disney convened a Zoom with the full Mormon Wives cast. Three Disney executives attended, including Rob Mills, EVP of unscripted and alternative entertainment at Walt Disney Television. Cast members agreed on the call to pause filming until TFP’s legal situation was resolved. One cast member told executives: “It’s a dangerous situation, it’s a sad situation, and we don’t know how to navigate it because Taylor is our friend.”

As cast members shared their accounts of Paul’s alleged behavior, Mills said, “I don’t know a lot, nor do I want to know too much.” When a cast member asked directly if he was “aware she’s hurt a child,” Mills replied, “I don’t think, for us, getting into it is right.”

So there we have it: Taylor Frankie Paul was not remotely ready to become the Bachelorette. Her friends knew it. Her castmates knew it. ABC and Hulu knew it — and then kept filming anyway, kept promoting anyway, kept her on a press run through the week of the premiere. As recently as Wednesday, a network source told Yahoo the show was still expected to premiere as scheduled. The Bachelor franchise has been dying for quite some time, yet instead of evolving, ABC clung onto it and attempted to breathe life back into it with guaranteed drama and a disregard for what actually made the show compelling at one time.

This is the outcome of viewing human beings as content and drama as dollars. When you put profit over quality, when you disregard the flags, when you mistake cultural momentum for personal readiness — this is what you get. You face plant, you lose revenue, brand partners pull out, and you cause genuine turmoil in people’s real lives.

The Issue Going Unaddressed

Danielle Pistotnik at Select Management Group first signed Taylor, Mayci and others, about two years before the swinging scandal broke. Select’s Lisa Filipelli later stepped in and brought on a production partner with a relationship at Hulu, ultimately landing the deal for SLOMW. These folks are largely credited with making these women famous, as all six cast members are managed by this agency.

This season, I found myself questioning their approach. We saw Jen Affleck join Dancing with the Stars eight weeks postpartum. Whitney had to balance her existing career, motherhood, DWTS, and a million different opportunities including a Broadway run as Roxie Hart in Chicago. Mayci was juggling being postpartum while going on a book tour for her memoir. And Layla, a single mom, was being prepared to potentially move to New York City for three months had Ford Models signed her. All of this, under a nearly relentless filming schedule. (Notice they’ve released 4 seasons in 2 years!)

Select also manages Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles, who in the months following the very public and painful stripping of her bronze medal was simultaneously competing collegiately at UCLA, appearing on Dancing with the Stars, releasing a memoir, and maintaining ambassador deals with Nike, Beats by Dre and Netflix.

It’s one thing to help talent level up and ~get their bag.~ It’s another to optimize for revenue at the expense of sustainability and of the personal lives these women have explicitly put on camera as their entire brand. When a single mom is being prepared to move to New York City for three months, when a woman who just gave birth is being booked for DWTS eight weeks postpartum, someone in the room should be asking: is this right for her life, or just right for her career? The entertainment industry runs on relationships, and it’s perfectly normal for deals to take time to come to fruition. “We’re interested, but now is not the right time” is a very common, perfectly acceptable statement to make when booking gigs.

The House Always Wins

As corporations grow desperate in a sinking economy, the machine gets hungrier. ABC didn’t cast Taylor Frankie Paul because someone believed in her. They cast her because someone sold her a view-booster, and everyone in that room was too busy chasing the numbers to push back. Meanwhile, the reps who built these women into a franchise are playing the same game — optimizing for maximum output in minimum time, because that’s what the market rewards. Nobody in this story set out to blow up a person’s life. They set out to make money. The difference between those two things stopped mattering a long time ago.

Offender #1: Donald Trump

The month kicked off with Donald Trump’s heinous depiction of the Obamas as apes. Late on February 5, he posted a 62-second video with Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces superimposed onto ape bodies, dancing to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to defend the video as a “Lion King parody” and dismissed the backlash as “fake outrage.” However, the offense was so blatant that even Republicans like Sen. Tim Scott spoke out against it. Scott called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” while Republican Rep. Mike Turner called the images “offensive, heartbreaking, and unacceptable.” The video was eventually deleted after about 12 hours, with the President blaming a staffer for the post. But the damage was already done.

Studies have shown that the behavior of leaders tends to determine what is normalized in society. Specifically, a 2023 Boston University study found that reported hate crimes against Black people surged following Trump’s initial 2016 election, and white survey respondents began to describe Black people in more dehumanizing ways. In other words, Trump’s bigotry has emboldened people to wear their racism proudly.

Offender #2: The US Men’s Hockey Team (and Donald Trump)

Trump also managed to ruin a historic first in women’s hockey. Laila Edwards made her Olympic hockey debut on February 5 and became the first Black woman to play for Team USA, the first to score a goal, and the first to win Olympic gold in the sport. This feat was overshadowed by the utter disrespect shown by the men’s team and our President. Following the men’s gold medal game, Trump congratulated them, invited them to his State of the Union, and then “joked” that he had to invite the women’s team too or he’d get impeached. This “joke” was then met with hysterical laughter from the locker room. It’s important to note that the women’s team beat the exact same country with the exact same score; the only difference between the two teams is that the women’s team consistently medals. In fact, they have medaled in every single Olympics since the women’s team's inception. They won the very first gold medal in the sport in 1998. The women’s team declined Trump’s “invitation” to the White House, instead choosing to celebrate in Vegas with unlikely feminist Flavor Flav this summer.

Offender #3: KATSEYE

On February 20, KATSEYE announced that its sole black member, Manon Bannerman, would be taking a “temporary hiatus” from the group for her “health and wellbeing.” However, fans noted that Manon had liked a social media post about Black girls in girl groups being subjected to racism and mistreatment. In a recent interview with The Cut, she said that “being called lazy, especially as a Black girl, is not fair. Now I feel like I always need to put in extra work to prove something.” Fans have also pointed out that Manon has been treated differently from the beginning. The group’s first music video, “Debut,” was heavily criticized for keeping Manon mostly hidden in the back and barely visible. The situation has drawn comparisons to Normani (Fifth Harmony) and Leigh-Anne (Little Mix) who have experienced similar mistreatment as the sole Black members of a multiracial girl group.

Offender #4: BAFTAs and BBC

At the BAFTAs, Ryan Coogler became the first Black winner for Best Original Screenplay, but this historic win was overshadowed by a deeply disturbing incident during the ceremony. Tourette syndrome activist, John Davidson, who was the inspiration for a BAFTA-nominated film I Swear, shouted the N-word while Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, both from the Sinners cast, were on stage presenting the award for best visual effects. Crucially, the BBC, which aired the ceremony on a two-hour delay, failed to edit out the slur while choosing to edit out other moments, including a presenter saying “Free Palestine” and a homophobic slur shouted by Davidson while the show’s host, Alan Cummings, was on stage. BAFTA and BBC both issued half-assed apologies publicly, but not directly to the actors. Davidson said he felt “a wave of shame” and was “deeply mortified,” and he rightfully questioned why he was seated so close to the microphones when the organization was aware of his tics. Reportedly, the incident left Michael B. Jordan’s parents in tears.

Offender #5: Jonathan Majors

Back in 2023, actor Jonathan Majors was convicted of assault and harassment against his ex, effectively ending his mainstream career. However, on February 26, news broke that he would be teaming up with Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire to star in an “anti-woke Sinners” action film. This is not the first abuser The Daily Wire has offered a lifeline to, as the company previously featured Armie Hammer in a film called Frontier Crucible. The Daily Wire and Ben Shapiro are also known for their extremist, white nationalist views. He has railed against the rap genre, even releasing a song that critics called an “exercise in minstrelsy” and cultural appropriation, with lyrics that referenced Black people being “thugs.” He also frequently denies the existence of systemic racism, entirely dismissing the relevance of slavery to present-day Black inequality. In fact, the most successful film by The Daily Wire is Am I Racist?, a mockumentary featuring Matt Walsh, which satirizes DEI and anti-racism work. It grossed $12.3M domestically.

February gave us the first Black woman to win Olympic gold in hockey and a sitting president who depicted the first Black President and First Lady as apes – all in the same week. Ryan Coogler made BAFTA history in the same ceremony where two Black men were subjected to a racial slur on live television. This is a microcosm of the world at large. The more Black people succeed, the more progress that is made, the louder the opposition becomes. The wall of shame is long this February, but so is the list of people they couldn’t stop.

The discourse around Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” has been rampant, and prior to the critics’ reviews, was dominated by accusations of whitewashing in response to the casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. Social media exploded with text-truthers insisting that a person of color should have been cast instead. But this response, while textually informed, is critically shallow, bordering on covertly racist.

The director of “Wuthering Heights” has been vocal about her choices. She isn’t claiming allegiance to the verbatim text, and she acknowledges that film renders novels to a two-dimensional format. The trailer even describes it as “inspired by the greatest love story” rather than “based on.” In her Fandango interview, she explained the quotation marks around the title:

“The thing for me is you can’t adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book. I can’t say I’m making Wuthering Heights. It’s not possible. What I can say is I’m making a version of it.

There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is ‘Wuthering Heights’, and it isn’t.”

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The “whitewashing” critique comes primarily from white English majors who haven’t grappled with what representation as a gothic villain actually means, particularly in the film medium. The text of Wuthering Heights is rife with racist commentary about Heathcliff, yet it offers remarkably vague physical descriptions and background clues.

He is said to be “dark,” “black-haired,” and “gipsy in aspect,” found starving in Liverpool, possibly arriving from the Lascar colonies (suggesting South Asian descent) or possibly even of Romani heritage. But this is deliberately ambiguous and open for interpretation. Brontë gives no actual cultural context: no language, no traditions, no community. “Gipsy” functions purely as a slur and shorthand for dubiousness and permanent outsider status. In stark contrast to these infrequent physical descriptions, the novel is saturated with racialized language and dehumanization. He is repeatedly called “it,” “dog,” or “dirty,” and constantly likened to brutes, savages, animals or beasts.

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On screen, any specific racial identity risks reproducing harmful stereotypes about violent, criminal brown men – stereotypes that have endured since the Victorian times to today. Without any cultural grounding, this “representation” would more likely read as tokenization. And I’ll save you the rant about the sexualization of Black people in media dating back centuries, as that conversation is taking place surrounding Teyana Taylor’s character in One Battle After Another. By removing the racial question entirely, Fennell can focus on what the novel actually explores: class, ambition and the violence of social hierarchy (and codependency, the lasting effects of childhood trauma, etc., etc.).

Fennell knows the text. She knows the racial coding. She’s worked with the Brontë Parsonage Museum to produce this film. The title’s quotation marks suggest she’s made conscious choices to deviate, in my opinion, correctly navigating the challenge of adapting this “complex” text in 2026.

And sure, Fennell’s adaptation was somewhat kind to Heathcliff, but his real deviousness amps up in the second half of the novel, which almost no filmmaker has dared to touch. Thus, had she cast a man of color and centered his racial identity as the text suggests, at best, you would even further humanize a character Brontë wrote as fundamentally irredeemable, and at worst, you would suggest his race is intrinsic to his irredeemability.

Sometimes the ~progressive~ thing to do is recognizing that a text is too embedded in racist stereotypes to adapt “faithfully.” Sometimes representation means saying, “Actually, we don’t need another story about a violent, criminal, irredeemable brown man, even if the source material suggests he is not white.” And this is not a takedown of my girl Emily Brontë!!!! The woman had connections to the abolitionist movement. Creating a possibly Black/South Asian/Romani protagonist who successfully climbs the social ladder, owns property, and successfully exacts revenge was edgy, even potentially revolutionary for 1847.

But what does it mean to regurgitate that narrative in 2026? We know more now about how stereotypes function. We understand the harm of representing non-white people primarily as violent, scheming villains: the hypersexual threat to white women, the vengeful outsider sabotaging civilized society, the irredeemable criminal climbing the social ladder only to destroy it. So, resist the urge to jump straight to “Why didn’t they cast a POC?” and stop to consider “What kinds of stories do we want to tell about this marginalized group of people, and is this one of them?” I know it’s hard to fathom at times, but this world has made some progress over the last 150 years. Time gives us perspective, even, or maybe especially, on our most beloved texts.

Between Justin Bieber returning from a three-plus-year hiatus with a *stripped* performance at The Grammys and Harry Styles rolling out an ungodly expensive “residency” at Madison Square Garden, I am fit to be tied over the disparity of work ethic between our male and female pop stars.

Both men have spent the better part of the 2020s in intentional obscurity. We only see Justin fighting with paparazzi (or his wife) on the streets of LA or NYC and Harry can usually be found on a Parisian rendezvous with a racially ambiguous actress. But lately our little recluses have begun to emerge from the shadows and count on their rabid female fanbases to give them a nice windfall of cash. With these two, their fan loyalty is always guaranteed, assumed, and never requires re-earning.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Grammys executive producer Ben Winston claimed that Justin only rehearsed for 15 minutes and speculated that he hadn’t chosen his wardrobe until right before he was about to walk out on stage. Charming.

However, their female counterparts are not allowed hide. Take Chappell Roan, who has been vocal about her discomfort with her newfound fame, continues to slowly drip out new music as she works on her next album. Despite only having released one album as Chappell Roan, she put together her own mini festival that visited three cities for several nights where she sang nearly her entire discography for hundreds of thousands of fans.

Charli xcx has managed to extend Brat Summer for a full 18 months, putting a bow on the era with her mockumentary “The Moment,” which just debuted at Sundance. In addition to “The Moment,” she recorded an album for the upcoming film “Wuthering Heights.” Sabrina released two Grammy-nominated albums in two years, touring all the while.

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In addition to The Grind, the girlies are consistently reinventing themselves sonically and visually. They leverage fashion, album artwork, and distinct sounds to distinguish each ‘era’ from the next. Meanwhile, all the male acts look like clones of each other. They have the same haircut, the same stupid sequined set, and a mustache that signals bisexuality.

This isn’t exclusive to pop music either. The same can be said for rap – simply none of the men are doing it like Megan or Cardi. Country was perhaps the first genre to suffer from Lazy Man Syndrome.

While the music industry is completely sustained by women’s consistent, groundbreaking efforts, the men coast on legacy and the female fans who have been funding their lives since puberty.

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Note: I had a similar conversation on Threads after Timothee Chalamet beat out Michael B. Jordan at the Critic’s Choice Awards.

The Performances: Comebacks, Firsts, and Best New Artist Takeover

Justin Bieber’s Grand Return

The biggest performance story of the night belongs to Justin Bieber, who returns to the Grammy stage after a four-year hiatus—his first major award show performance since 2022. The last time Bieber performed at the Grammys, he delivered “Peaches” from his Justice album. This comeback is particularly significant given his health struggles with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, which forced him to cancel his Justice World Tour in 2023. Now, with four nominations for his album SWAG (including Album of the Year), Bieber is making his triumphant return to the award show circuit.

Pharrell’s First Performance in Over a Decade

Pharrell Williams is also making an anticipated return, performing at the Grammys for the first time since his orchestral rendition of “Happy” in 2015. The 13-time Grammy winner is teaming up with hip-hop duo Clipse (brothers Pusha T and Malice). Their collaborative album Let God Sort Em Out earned five nominations, including Album of the Year and Best Rap Album.

Best New Artist Showcase

Following last year’s tradition, all eight Best New Artist nominees will perform in a special segment during the ceremony. This year’s diverse lineup includes:

• Addison Rae: The TikTok star-turned-pop artist making her Grammy stage debut

• Alex Warren: The YouTube sensation whose “Ordinary” topped the Billboard Hot 100 and earned him Best New Artist at the VMAs

• KATSEYE: The six-member America-bbased girl group representing K-pop’s global expansion, who went viral for their GAP ad dancing to Milkshake

• Leon Thomas: The only R&B artist in the Best New Artist category, also nominated for six total awards including Album of the Year

• Lola Young: The British artist whose “Messy” went viral on TikTok last year

• Olivia Dean: The indie-turned-mainstream mega star who’s topping charts

• The Marías: The bilingual indie pop band who broke through with “No One Noticed”

• sombr – The alternative artist whose concert behavior caused viral TikTok drama

Pop Royalty Takes the Stage

Sabrina Carpenter, the first confirmed performer, leads pop’s charge with six nominations including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year for “Manchild” and Man’s Best Friend. Lady Gaga, in her ninth Grammy performance, arrives with seven nominations—her most ever—for her album MAYHEM and comeback single “Abracadabra.”

The Pop Categories: Sabrina, Gaga & the Rise of K-Pop

The pop categories this year reflect an industry in transition, with established stars facing fresh competition and K-pop making historic inroads.

Record of the Year: Pop Dominance

The pop representation in Record of the Year is formidable:

• Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild”

• Lady Gaga – “Abracadabra”

• Billie Eilish – “WILDFLOWER”

• Chappell Roan – “The Subway”

• ROSÉ & Bruno Mars – “APT.”

Notably, two of the eight Record of the Year nominees fall under the K-pop umbrella: ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT.” and HUNTR/X’s “Golden” from the KPop Demon Hunters Netflix film. This marks a significant moment for K-pop’s integration into mainstream Grammy recognition, with 25% of Song of the Year nominees coming from the K-pop sphere.

Album of the Year: Pop’s Power Players

Pop albums make up three of the eight Album of the Year nominations:

• Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend (6 total nominations)

• Lady Gaga – MAYHEM (7 total nominations)

• Justin Bieber – SWAG (4 total nominations)

For Sabrina, this marks her second consecutive Album of the Year nomination, following last year’s nod for Short n’ Sweet. Lady Gaga’s fifth Album of the Year nomination without a win mirrors Kendrick Lamar’s trajectory—both artists are looking to finally capture their respective category’s top recognition.

Best Pop Solo Performance: The Heavyweights

This category showcases the year’s biggest pop moments:

• Billie Eilish – “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”

• Chappell Roan – “Good Luck, Babe!”

• Justin Bieber – “Daisies”

• Lady Gaga – “Disease”

• Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild”

Best Pop Vocal Album: Gaga’s Comeback

Lady Gaga’s MAYHEM represents what many critics are calling a return to her dark pop roots—reminiscent of The Fame and Born This Way. The album’s lead single, “Abracadabra” features bass-driven beats and pulsing synths that evoke her earliest work, with its hypnotic chorus drawing comparisons to “Bad Romance.”

Best New Artist: The Most Diverse Class Yet

This year’s Best New Artist category is remarkably versatile in genre, spanning:

• Traditional pop: Alex Warren, Olivia Dean

• Alt-pop: sombr, The Marías

• Global pop: KATSEYE

• Pop-R&B fusion: Leon Thomas (nominated for 6 total awards, the most of any Best New Artist nominee)

• TikTok-to-mainstream: Addison Rae, Lola Young

Leon Thomas: The R&B Standout

Leon Thomas enters as the lone R&B voice in a pop-heavy category, but he’s hardly an underdog. With six total nominations, including Album of the Year for MUTT, Best R&B Album, Best R&B Performance, Best R&B Song and Best Melodic Rap Performance, Thomas represents a genre-blurring approach that could make him this year’s Chappell Roan—last year’s Best New Artist winner who similarly dominated across categories.

Hip-Hop & R&B: Kendrick’s Continued Reign and a Reunion for the Ages

Kendrick Lamar’s Historic Run Continues

After sweeping five awards at the 2025 Grammys for “Not Like Us” (including Record and Song of the Year), Kendrick Lamar returns as the most-nominated artist of 2026 with nine nods. His surprise-released album GNX and single “luther” (featuring SZA) position him for potential back-to-back dominance. With 66 career nominations and 22 wins, Lamar continues to cement his legacy as one of the most Grammy-decorated rappers ever.

Album of the Year: Hip-Hop’s Triple Threat

For the first time in the 2020s, three rap albums earned Album of the Year nominations:

• Kendrick Lamar – GNX (9 total nominations)

• Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out (5 total nominations)

• Tyler, The Creator – CHROMAKOPIA (5 total nominations)

Best Rap Album: The Veterans vs. The Rising

The Best Rap Album category features:

• Kendrick Lamar – GNX

• Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out

• Tyler, The Creator – CHROMAKOPIA

• GloRilla – GLORIOUS

• JID – God Does Like Ugly

R&B’s Moment: Leon Thomas Leading the Pack

In Best R&B Album, Leon Thomas’s MUTT competes against:

• GIVĒON – BELOVED

• Coco Jones – Why Not More?

• Ledisi – The Crown

• Teyana Taylor – Escape Room

Thomas is the only R&B artist nominated for Best New Artist, highlighting both R&B’s competitive landscape and his crossover appeal.

Record and Song of the Year: Hip-Hop’s Big Moments

Two major hip-hop and R&B tracks compete in both Record and Song of the Year:

• Doechii – “Anxiety” (5 total nominations)

• Kendrick Lamar & SZA – “luther” (the single topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 13 consecutive weeks)

Doechii’s five nominations tie her with Clipse, Sounwave, SZA, and Tyler, The Creator, making her one of the ceremony’s most-nominated artists. Following last year’s win, she’s poised to build on that momentum.

What to Watch For

• Justin Bieber’s emotional return after years away from major performances

• Pharrell’s first Grammy performance in 11 years, marking a full-circle moment

• The Best New Artist sweep of performances, showcasing the future of pop music

• Kendrick vs. himself: Can he repeat last year’s historic sweep?

• Lady Gaga’s quest for Album of the Year on her fifth nomination

• K-pop’s growing Grammy presence, with multiple nominees across major categories

• Leon Thomas’s potential breakout, potentially becoming the second Victorious star to win a Grammy

The 68th Annual Grammy Awards air live on CBS and stream on Paramount+ on Sunday, February 1st at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. With 95 total categories, this year’s ceremony promises to be a celebration of music’s most innovative year yet—and a proper send-off for the venue that’s hosted Music’s Biggest Night for over two decades.

Brooklyn Beckham posted Instagram stories blasting his parents for “controlling narratives” and prioritizing branding over family. His evidence? Victoria allegedly bailed on designing Nicola’s wedding dress and danced inappropriately with him at his wedding.

The problem: There are three completely different versions of the wedding dress story, and Nicola’s year-long Valentino couture process proves Victoria didn’t bail “last minute.”

The real tea: Brooklyn went from living off the Beckhams ($637M) to living off the Peltzes ($1.6B). Nelson Peltz bought him a $14.7M mansion and funds all his vanity projects. He’s not choosing independence—he’s choosing a bigger trust fund with fewer expectations.

Who is Nicola? Daughter of billionaire Trump donor Nelson Peltz. Known for allegedly bullying staff as a teen, going through three wedding planners, and being called a “monster” by her former hairstylist.

Full breakdown in the episode →

It Ends With Us: The Receipts Are In

Unsealed text messages from Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni just dropped, and they’re damning. I have not discussed this much because I felt like it was so messy and trivial, but I do want to talk about the text messages a bit and what they illustrate about power dynamics in Hollywood.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are in a legal battle over It Ends With Us. The unsealed text messages reveal a Hollywood power play that’s more interesting than the actual allegations. Blake rallied her famous friends to overtake Baldoni’s creative control as the film’s director and producer.

Full breakdown in the episode →

Oscar Nominations Broke Records

• Sinners received 16 nominations—the most in Oscar history

• Timothée Chalamet becomes the youngest actor with 3 nominations since Marlon Brando

• Wicked For Good was completely shut out after 10 nominations for the first movie

Full breakdown in the episode →

New episodes drop whenever I feel like it. 💅

Award Season Is Actually Just Campaign Season

Let’s be real: award season has become less about artistic merit and more about who campaigned the hardest. Studios are dropping millions on screenings, fancy dinners, and gift baskets that cost more than most people’s rent. The Golden Globes are basically the fun, messy, slightly drunk aunt of award shows—and this year did not disappoint.

In this week’s episode, I break down why the Golden Globes matter (spoiler: they don’t, but they’re fun) and who the front-runners are for the Oscars race. Plus, the Golden Globes’ category placements make absolutely zero sense, and I have thoughts.

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The Red Carpet Made a Statement

Several celebrities showed up wearing “Be Good” and “Ice Out” pins in honor of Renee Nicole Goode, who was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Mark Ruffalo and Jean Smart gave particularly powerful interviews about why they couldn’t stay silent, even at a glamorous event.

This wasn’t performative activism—these were genuine moments of political courage on a night when it would’ve been easier to just smile and pose. I dive into what they said, why it mattered, and how it set the tone for the entire evening in the full episode.

Nikki Glaser Roasted Everyone and Bill Maher Didn’t Think It Was Funny

Nikki Glaser’s monologue was a masterclass in reading the room while simultaneously burning it down. She went after the Justice Department, CBS, the studios, and basically everyone sitting in the audience. There were Epstein references, Leo DiCaprio jokes that went beyond the usual young girlfriend material, and one person who was visibly not amused.

One Battle After Another Dominated

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another swept with four wins, including Best Picture in Musical/Comedy. Yes, you read that right—Musical/Comedy. For an action film.

Meanwhile, Teyana Taylor gave one of the most moving speeches of the night, Timothée Chalamet finally won his first Golden Globe after four nominations, and Stellan Skarsgård walked to the stage while “Yeah!” by Usher played. The chaos was everything.

I also get into the shady coverage Sinners got from Variety compared to other films, and why its win for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement felt particularly sweet.

The Fashion Deserves Its Own Category

Jennifer Lawrence showed up in a sheer Givenchy gown and said “I’m naked”—and she was right. Colman Domingo explained how every detail of his look was intentional storytelling. Michael B. Jordan proved you don’t need a black tux to look incredible at a formal event.

Reality TV Is Reality TV-ing

The Traitors US just premiered with a cast that includes Housewife alums, drag royalty, and, inexplicably, Michael Rapaport. There’s a secret traitor twist that has me hooked, and I’m already obsessed.

Meanwhile, the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City reunion is giving me whiplash. After a season where Meredith and Lisa finally got vulnerable during the Greek play episode, they immediately reverted to lawyering everything at the reunion. The semantics arguments, the rules for thee but not for me energy, the boundary violations—it’s all too much, and I have a theory about what happens when certain personality types stay on these shows too long.

If you’re a Housewives fan, you need to hear my breakdown of the Lisa/Braunwyn dynamic and why it reminds me of the Lisa Vanderpump/Lisa Rinna situation that broke Beverly Hills.

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The chaos began on January 3rd when the U.S. military struck Venezuela’s capital and captured President Nicolás Maduro. The operation immediately froze Caribbean airspace, grounding all US-registered flights and trapping the island’s elite visitors in a golden cage. Leonardo DiCaprio found himself marooned on Jeff Bezos’s superyacht. Even Wendi Murdoch couldn’t leave. Influencer Alix Earle, TV personality Bethenny Frankel, and dozens of other internet darlings were suddenly stuck.

Hotels grew overcrowded, putting beds in living rooms of villas. Lavish parties erupted as the stranded elite made the best of the close quarters.

@aranisagoodboy#stbarths #chlamydia

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The TikTok That Started It All

Then came the video that spread like, well, a virus. A TikTok user claiming to work on a yacht in St. Barts alleged that an facial STI was spreading rapidly among visitors and crew, moving “from yacht to yacht.” According to the TikToker, an unnamed influencer was “Patient Zero”—and while never publicly identified, the poster claimed everyone on the island knew exactly who it was.

The comment section exploded. Fingers quickly pointed to Alix Earle, especially after rumors surfaced that she’d been “hooking up” with Tom Brady throughout the week with photos to support.

@bethennyfrankelVILE

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Bethenny’s Infection Goes Viral

But when Bethenny Frankel revealed that she and her daughter Bryn had developed a severe bacterial infection on their faces during their Christmas trip, even more dots began to connect. Frankel shared graphic close-ups of angry, inflamed skin. Good ole Bethenny – classy as always.

The infection was so severe that they’d left the island three days early and were on strong antibiotics. She blamed contaminated hotel linens—”pillowcases, towels or bedsheets.”

But it was her Instagram posts from before the infection that really sent social media into overdrive. Frankel had been photographed with Alix Earle, along with Glen Powell and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. The proximity seemed like confirmation, and soon, social media immediately linked Frankel’s very real, very visible skin infection to the alleged “Super Chlamydia” outbreak.

What Actually Happened?

Medical experts have pointed out that chlamydia doesn’t present as facial skin infections, but who’s to say the billionaire class hasn’t created an infection of their own? While no hard facts point to an actual STI outbreak in this paradise for the elite, the scenario doesn’t sound entirely far-fetched… Wealthy people trapped together, partying in close quarters, alleged hookups, all culminating in a mysterious infection? Sounds like a recipe for a Netflix special.

What do all the remakes and reboots, influencer culture, and millennial pop flops all have in common?

An unwavering commitment to safety.

Palatability at its most reductive, worship at the altar of consumerism at its most grotesque. Risk aversion has become the norm, demonstrating a sort of authoritarian aesthetic where all the output is identical. Even when the envelope is pushed—take Sydney Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle campaign for example—it’s pushed in the direction of whiteness and formulaic palatability.

As America enters another war under the guise of freedom but ultimately to fatten the wallets of the wealthiest, it begs the question: why can’t we have some circus with our bread? Instead, not only are the big corporations starving us, they’re also numbing us to death.

Remakes, Reboots & Franchise Hell

As I’ve written before, movies and TV have become three-hour-long commercials. How the cheaper input lengthens the output is beyond me... I digress. But as time passes and studios continue to double down on this strategy, the commercial and critical reception has vindicated the original. Take A24’s Marty Supreme. The flick, starring Timothée Chalamet as a professional ping-pong player, has brought in $56 million domestically to date after opening on Christmas Day, making it A24’s third-highest-grossing domestic release. And yet, we’re soon to be subjected to a The Devil Wears Prada press tour, 20 years after the release of the first film. Shouldn’t Miranda be happily retired by now?

@itsjosezarateYall wanted pt 2 of mikayla nogueiras infamous luxury haul so here you go 👀😂 #mikaylanogueira #luxuryhaul #designerhaul #fyp #rich

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The Influencer Reckoning

Meanwhile, on TikTok, influencers are losing their luster. After Mikayla Nogueira’s $250K+ luxury shopping haul and subsequent failure to give back during the holidays alongside Jaclyn Hill’s tone-deaf lamentation of the drop in her engagement, a new conversation about influencers, overconsumption, and income gaps has come into focus. Viewers are tired of making people rich and famous, only to be dismissed and commodified. At some point, it becomes cruel to flaunt wealth extracted from the backs of others, while refusing to share that wealth.

Pop’s Creative Bankruptcy

All the while, we’re still feeling the aftershocks of the stink bomb that was Taylor Swift’s last album, The Life of a Showgirl, an ironic misstep also taken last year by her former foe, Katy Perry, with her previous album, 143. These two millennial divas proved themselves as unable to read a room as the aforementioned influencers, by releasing lazy, derivative slop, knowing that at least their loyal followers would lap it up. Both were still blindsided by their floppery, and responded with defensiveness and contempt for their own fans who weren’t able to get on board with what they were selling. Katy crashed out on TikTok on multiple occasions, and Taylor revealed too much truth, asserting that if you’re talking about her at all, you’re “helping.”

Audiences are fully aware that a large faction of artists and creators are simply chasing money, as opposed to their approval or admiration, which has made the viewer experience profoundly depressing.

The tragic irony is that audiences have never been more vocal about what they want—originality, authenticity, creative risk—yet the machine keeps churning out the same safe, sanitized product. As long as there's profit to be extracted, corporations will continue to prioritize their bottom line over our collective sanity. We're left waiting for the inevitable: either a creative renaissance born from rebellion, or more of the same numbing monotony until we're too exhausted to care.

THE FLOPS:

Tilly the AI Actor

The entertainment industry’s most tone-deaf moment of the year arrived when a video production company called Particle6 introduced its newest creation, Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated actor who could “play any role without the complications of human talent.” The backlash was, of course, immediate and brutal. SAG-AFTRA members rightfully lost it, audiences called it dystopian, and the whole thing reeked of Silicon Valley tech heads completely misunderstanding what makes performance art actually compelling.

The rollout was a PR disaster. The creator tried to position Tilly as “the future of storytelling,” but all anyone saw was job theft dressed up in buzzwords. Within weeks, the project was quietly shelved, the executives responsible were shuffled to “new positions,” and the industry got a harsh reminder that audiences actually care about real humans doing the work. Revolutionary? More like revolting.

Katy Perry’s Lifetimes Tour

Katy Perry’s 2025 tour was marketed as a celebration, fresh off the heels of her Video Vanguard Award presented to her at last year’s VMAs, and an eerily similar title to Taylor Swift’s triumphant Eras Tour. Instead of a victory lap, it became a cautionary tale about what happens when you lose touch with your audience and fail to keep up with a fast-moving industry. Tickets went on sale at premium prices, but the demand just wasn’t there.

The real tragedy is that Katy has the catalog and the talent, but both the album and the tour felt disconnected from where pop culture actually is right now. The production tried to recreate the spectacle of her imperial phase, but audiences have moved on to intimacy and authenticity. The choreography couldn’t have been worse. (Like, did Jojo Siwa choreograph it?) Multiple dates got canceled or “postponed,” and by the end, this tour had become shorthand for the perils of resting on legacy without evolution.

The TikTok “Ban” That Lasted a Few Hours

The great TikTok ban of 2025 will go down in history as one of the most absurd pieces of political theater we’ve ever witnessed. After years of “national security concerns” and legislative posturing, TikTok actually went dark for American users. Cue the mass panic, the frantic downloading of VPNs, worldwide discourse, and Gen Z having a collective meltdown about losing their primary form of communication and income. For a brief moment, it felt like we were witnessing the end of an era.

And then, just hours later, TikTok was back. The whiplash was spectacular. All that drama, all those think pieces about what a TikTok-less America would look like, all those creators talking about migrating to RedNote—gone in an instant. The whole situation exposed how performative the entire “ban” had been from the start, turned lawmakers into punchlines, and left everyone feeling like they’d just witnessed the most expensive, poorly executed PR stunt in history. It was chaos, it was confusing, and it was peak 2025—lots of noise, zero forethought, and everyone left wondering what the fuck just happened.

Happy Gilmore 2

Netflix thought they had a guaranteed hit with Happy Gilmore 2, banking on ‘90s nostalgia and Adam Sandler’s enduring appeal. What they delivered instead was a soulless cash grab that reminded everyone why some movies should stay in the past. The script felt like it was written by an algorithm trained on “remember when” tweets, the cameos were painfully forced and the product placements overshadowed the plot.

This is a perfect microcosm of the perils of Hollywood’s recent obsession with regurgitated IP. This is clearly executives mining our nostalgia instead of trusting new ideas. Critics, audiences and even die-hard Sandler fans admitted this one missed the fairway entirely. The vibe felt cynical, like everyone involved knew they were making something mediocre but did it anyway for the Netflix check. In a year where audiences were desperate for originality, Happy Gilmore 2 became the poster child for Hollywood’s creativity crisis. Some things are better left as perfect time capsules.

Jeff Bezos’ Wedding to Lauren Sanchez

When one of the richest people on Earth gets (re)married, you expect extravagance. What we got instead was a masterclass in how money can’t buy taste or self-awareness. The Bezos-Sanchez wedding became an internet spectacle for all the wrong reasons—over-the-top fashion choices that ranged from “trying too hard” to “is this a costume party?”, and a level of wealth display that felt particularly tone-deaf given, well, everything happening in the world.

Social media had a field day dissecting every detail: the pitiful Grace Kelly and Sophia Loren cosplay, a venue that cost more than most people’s lifetime earnings, and the guest list rife with the cancelled and the capitulating. What could’ve been an elegant celebration instead became a symbol of disconnected excess. The discourse around it perfectly captured 2025’s growing exhaustion with billionaire culture—we’re all just tired of watching people play Marie Antoinette while Rome burns. Read the room, Jeffrey.

American Eagle’s “Good Jeans” Campaign

American Eagle thought they had a clever play on words with their “Good Jeans” campaign starring Sydney Sweeney, or perhaps, the dog whistle was intentional. The campaign’s emphasis on blonde hair, blue eyes, and all-American aesthetics hit way too close to some very uncomfortable historical parallels—specifically eugenics-era “good genes” propaganda. The visual language, the casting choice, the script’s wording: it all added up to something that felt like a subliminal signal to appeal to a particular group of Americans.

As I wrote about at the time, there were obvious alternatives that could’ve kept the pun without the problematic undertones. But American Eagle either didn’t see the issue or didn’t care, and the internet rightfully dragged them for it. Both Sweeney and the brand’s responses to criticism were defensive rather than reflective, and the whole situation became a textbook example of what happens when marketing teams skip the “maybe we should think about how this reads” step. Some controversy just isn’t worth it, and this was exhibit A.

Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl

Even Taylor Swift, the seemingly untouchable force of pop music, had her first real stumble this year. “The Life of a Showgirl” arrived with massive expectations and left fans genuinely confused. The concept felt muddled, the sonic direction was all over the place and the beef was manufactured for clicks and views. For the first time in years, the Swiftie consensus was “this ain’t it.” Initial streaming numbers were strong (because of course they were—it’s Taylor), but the conversation quickly shifted from celebration to concerned analysis, and then worse – no discussion at all.

What made this particularly notable was watching the stan defense machine sputter. Even her most devoted fans struggled to mount a convincing case for the album’s brilliance. The writing felt rushed, the content was boring, and the whole project lacked the narrative cohesion that typically defines Swift’s work. It wasn’t a disaster by usual standards, but for an artist who’s built a career on exceeding expectations, meeting them with a shrug felt like a seismic shift. Sometimes even the greats need a reset — here’s hoping this leads to something better… after a much-needed break.

THE FEATS:

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners

“Sinners” was a film that nobody saw coming and everyone couldn’t stop talking about. The Black-led indie thriller managed to be both critically acclaimed and genuinely buzzworthy, a rare combination in today’s fragmented media landscape. Word-of-mouth was explosive, film Twitter lost its collective mind over the cinematography, and suddenly everyone was trying to avoid spoilers while desperately seeking out screenings.

What made “Sinners” such a feat was how it proved there’s still appetite for original, challenging cinema when it’s actually, you know, good. No franchise fatigue, no IP baggage. Its success gave a much-needed middle finger to the “nobody wants original content” narrative. This is what happens when you trust audiences to show up for originality.

Selena Gomez’s Wedding to Benny Blanco

In a year full of celebrity excess and cringe, Selena Gomez’s wedding was a masterclass in doing it right. Intimate, elegant, and genuinely joyful, it was everything the Bezos wedding wasn’t. The fashion was impeccable without being ostentatious, the guest list felt personal rather than transactional, and the whole affair radiated genuine love rather than performance.

Social media fell in love with how Selena handled the entire thing—selective sharing that felt generous rather than exhibitionist, gorgeous aesthetics that didn’t scream “look how rich I am,” and a phone-free vibe that reminded everyone that celebrity weddings can still feel human. In the era of everything being content, Selena proved you can give people enough to celebrate with you without turning your marriage into a brand activation or personal ‘coming out’ party. This was the blueprint for how to demonstrate high-profile romance with grace.

Lady Gaga’s Mayhem

Lady Gaga got her ass up and werked to deliver “Mayhem,” an album that reminded everyone why she’s an unparalleled generational talent. After years of Vegas residencies and acting roles, Gaga came back to pop music with something dark, weird, and absolutely HER. The production was adventurous, the lyrics were sharp, and the whole project felt like an artist reconnecting with her freak flag after playing it safe.

Critics lost their minds, fans went feral, and even the “she fell off” crowd had to admit this was a moment. The rollout was chaotic in the best way—guerrilla performances, fashion that made headlines, and a clear “I’m not here to make you comfortable” energy. “Mayhem” didn’t just meet the moment—it created one. In a year where so many legacy artists fumbled their comebacks, Gaga showed everyone how it’s done. Welcome back, Mother Monster. We missed this version of you.

Cardi B’s Am I the Drama?

After a seven-year hiatus that had people questioning if she’d ever return to the rap game, Cardi B made a major splash with “Am I the Drama?” reminding everyone why she’s one of the defining voices of her generation. The album went platinum within hours, and for good reason—it’s a masterclass in balancing spectacle with substance. Sharp diss tracks like “Pretty & Petty” sit alongside vulnerable divorce anthems like “Man of Your Word,” and the whole project showcases an artist who’s grown without losing any of her bite.

As I wrote in my review, this is Cardi feminizing rap without sacrificing edge, proving she can disappear for nearly a decade and still return to dominate on her own terms. The album isn’t flawless—a few tracks like “Principal” feel like missed opportunities—but it doesn’t need to be perfect to be a success. Critics called it a “massive comeback,” and they weren’t exaggerating. In a year full of underwhelming releases from major artists, Cardi showed up with one of the strongest rap albums of the 2020s. Worth the wait!

Wicked Press Tour Fashion

The “Wicked: For Good” press tour became a cultural phenomenon that transcended the movie itself. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo (and their stylists, Law Roach and Justin Bolden, respectively) didn’t just promote a film—they created a masterclass in method dressing, thematic coordination, and how to keep a press tour interesting for months. Every appearance was an event, every outfit told a story, and the internet obsessively documented each Glinda-pink and Elphaba-green moment.

What elevated this from fun fashion to cultural reset was the intentionality behind each look. These weren’t random designer pulls—they were a carefully crafted narrative that honored the source material while showcasing both actresses’ personal style. The chemistry between them was genuine, their mutual support was palpable, and the whole tour became a case study in how to build anticipation. By the time the movie dropped, everyone was so invested in the journey that the film almost felt secondary. That’s how you do a press tour — make the promotion as compelling as (or more than) the product.

Benny Drama’s “Overcompensating”

YouTube star Benny Drama dropped “Overcompensating,” a semi-autobiographical limited series about discovering his sexuality during his college years. Rightfully, the internet collectively lost it in the best way possible. The inaugural season was perfect encapsulation of what happens when internet comedy talent evolves into full-fledged artistry. What could’ve been a novelty project instead became a legitimate cultural moment, with clips going viral and critics actually taking it seriously. Benny proved that internet fame can translate into real creative output when you’re willing to take risks.

But the even bigger story was watching Benny Drama and Mary Beth Barone become one of 2025’s most beloved duos. Their chemistry is undeniable, their collaborative content is consistently hilarious, and they’ve managed to build something that feels genuine in an era of manufactured partnerships. Whether they’re roasting celebrity behavior, creating characters, or just riffing together, they’ve tapped into something the internet desperately needed: smart comedy that doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard. They’re not just internet personalities anymore—they’re actually shaping comedy culture, and “Overcompensating” was the moment that made everyone realize these two are here to stay.

What We Learned

2025 taught us that authenticity and originality still matter, audiences are more savvy than executives think, and sometimes the best moments come from the least expected places. The flops shared a common thread: disconnection from reality, whether through tone-deafness, capitalistic greed, or just horrendous timing. The feats, meanwhile, succeeded because they felt real, took risks, and reminded us that humans still crave genuine emotion in their pop culture.

Here’s to 2026—may it give us more pop gold and fewer AI actors, more romance and fewer billionaire spectacles. The bar has been set!

Katy Perry dominated the timeline – not because of a hit song or a triumphant comeback, but because both her album and tour were comically bad. Clips of stiff choreography, dated visuals and gaudy costumes presented a maximalist pop joy that felt like parody without the wink flooded the feeds. The internet was half confused by her and half sad for her.

Then came, her bizarre trip to space on the Blue Origin flight alongside the new Mrs. Bezos, on which she stared blankly into the camera, holding a daisy. What unsettled people wasn’t space travel itself, but rather the dissonance in a year marked by economic anxiety, cultural regression, and very real conversations about survival. The spectacle of wealthy passengers treating a vanity flight as spiritual transcendence felt grotesquely miscalibrated. The internet responded with ridicule, most of which was aimed at Katy due to her treating the experience as a sort of photo op. All this bad press seemingly got to her, as her engagement to Orlando Bloom ended abruptly.

Taylor Swift had a similar journey. As an OG Swiftie, it pains me to say this, but her virality this year had nothing to do with artistic excellence and everything to do with her deep insecurity. She dominated the conversation because of her clear inability to cope with other, younger artists rising around her. The result was a rushed album release that felt uninspired and compulsory, a sharp deviation from her typical formula. She needed to put something out. Anything. Even if it was slop.

And the lyrics were bad. Not “grower” bad. Not “maybe it’ll click later” bad. Certainly not “too deep to understand” bad. Just lazy, clunky, self-mythologizing bad. While the album’s visuals were the most overtly sexual we’ve seen from Taylor, the lyrics were laden with trad wife aesthetics, and fantasies about domestic bliss. Pair that with endless variants, aggressive promotion and parasocial oversaturation, what used to feel like a shared ritual between artist and fan turned into a public exercise in overcompensation and overconsumption. Then there was her bizarre beef with Charli XCX — sparked by Sympathy is a knife on last year’s Brat, a song all about insecurity and comparison. Instead of self-reflection or empathy for a peer, Taylor responded with a hierarchy check that exposed her need for mean-girl dominance and to prove she was still the most popular girl in school.

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Further, she allowed the White House to use her music while avoiding meaningful political engagement while two of her most prominent successors unequivocally took a stance against the Trump administration’s use of their music. In just a few years, Taylor went from staunch feminist to Republican Barbie and capitalism’s final boss.

Nicki Minaj’s arc this year was more sinister. Her appearance at a Turning Point USA event alongside bonafide sociopath Erika Kirk was rather illuminating. Barbs were forced to reckon with the very real, very disturbing fact that both her husband and her brother are convicted sex offenders, which she seems to simply accept. Questions about her finances began circulating. Is she broke? Is that why she’s cozying up to MAGA money? Whether those rumors are true almost doesn’t matter. The damage was already done. This is now what her name conjures. Not bars. Not legacy. Not influence. Just mess, compromise and a complete lack of morality.

These moments weren’t simply isolated missteps or PR blunders. They were symptoms of a growing problem with millennial stars — creative stagnation coupled with ideological decay. A generation of stars who once benefited from cultural goodwill and unwavering loyalty suddenly found themselves exposed by an audience that no longer feels obligated to defend them under this political climate. This isn’t about aging out, but rather the failure or refusal to adapt, a lack of growth, accountability, and the very self-awareness that made their artistry compelling in the first place.

Once the cracks in the illusion appeared, it changed how we talk about what we expect from celebrities creatively, ethically and culturally.

And yet, amid all that innovation, two of pop’s most bankable figures released albums that feel strangely stuck. Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl and Doja Cat’s Vie share something rare for artists this seasoned: a fear of being seen.

Taylor’s record sparkles with sequins, feathers, Vegas fantasy, but the shine covers unease. Lyrically, it’s obsessed with domestic peace and moral purity, the sound of someone insisting she’s content while quietly proving the opposite (which she’s done before on “Lavendar Haze.”) “Wi$h Li$t” reads like a press release for stability, painting her relationship as proof she’s transcended the shackles of ambition. Behind the showgirl costume is an artist who’s unsure. About what remains to be seen.

Doja Cat’s Vie feels distant for a different reason. After publicly rejecting pop, then drifting back toward it, the 80’s theme feels like armor, or maybe more of a guide — for an artist trying to locate herself in the genre she once renounced. Vie is sleek and airtight but emotionally empty, as if she’s creative directing her way out of confusion. It feels more calculated than cathartic, a key trait of her previous work.

Both albums share the same emptiness, and mistake control for growth or maturity. They aren’t bad — they’re competent, polished and occasionally catchy — but they pale next other releases in a year that’s overflowing with creative risk.

That’s what makes 2025 so exciting. The bar is high! Pop doesn’t need saving; it needs honesty. And until Taylor and Doja let the seams show, they’ll keep watching the rest of the genre lap them in real time.

Instead of a new Swiftian era, The Life of a Showgirl feels like Taylor rifling through the pop culture lost and found. Miley Cyrus already did the showgirl thing on Something Beautiful and Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl just gave Pamela Anderson her art-film comeback moment. Even Addison Rae’s breathy vocals and Sabrina Carpenter’s horny double entendres feel stamped onto this tracklist. It’s giving “relevance maintenance package” more than “visionary album drop.”

On her 12th studio album, produced by Max Martin and Shellback, Taylor hints at her excitement for domestic bliss on songs like Wi$h Li$t (dreaming of kids who look like Travis Kelce—couldn’t be me). But then, on Actually Romantic, she takes pointed shots just to generate the “who’s this about???” headlines she feeds on. That would be fine if she hadn’t already spent 32 tracks doing exactly that on The Tortured Poets Department. And it’s extra messy considering she was just praising Charli XCX’s lyrics and danced to her set at the Grammys earlier this year. Sympathy is a knife was Charli being insecure about her place in the industry; Taylor flipping it into a diss track lands less “fun shady” and more vindictive and mean-spirited.

And honestly, it makes sense. Now that she’s engaged and fully settled with someone who loves the spotlight as much as she does, the mystery that once built up excitement about listening to her music on its first release has been diluted. With Travis, there’s no tortured longing or messy situationship to decode. So instead, she’s drumming up drama by taking shots at Charli—manufacturing intrigue where her love life no longer provides it.

The bigger issue is that the formula feels off, much like the rollout did. Normally, Taylor’s the lyrical assassin with the best producers money can buy. Here, the production is the life raft and the lyrics are…half-baked. Some songs hit (Opalite has an undeniable hook), but others are straight-up embarrassing. Father Figure isn’t about Olivia Rodrigo—it’s clearly about Scott Borchetta. Which is wild, because she already nailed that exact subject in my tears ricochet—one of her sharpest, most haunting tracks ever. Why retread it with clunky metaphors? Same with Eldest Daughter with its meme-ified lyrics. While that is the lyrics’ purpose, it doesn’t make it any easier to listen to.

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What is abundantly clear from this album is that Taylor is on cloud 9, in love and satisfied both sexually and otherwise, but it also shows an artist past her peak. While she’d hate this, Taylor Swift’s albums have always been defined by their muses. The greatest eras came when she sharpened her pen on complicated, introspective partners. But since her whirlwind romance with Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end, Travis Kelce, the songs sound less sophisticated and more…corny. Previous muses (actors, artists, writers) brought complicated baggage; the lyrics reflected that. Here, the source material is surface-level charm, and the songs flatten into that shallowness.

That’s the tension at the heart of The Life of a Showgirl. Taylor sees herself as the tortured poet still bleeding brilliance into her diary, which maybe she once was. But the album proves what she’s actually great at: being palatable. She knows how to give just enough drama, just enough sparkle, just enough catchiness to dominate charts without alienating anyone — including her Republican besties like Brittany Mahomes. She doesn’t realize that this isn’t excellence—it’s accessibility.

Overall, the album is solid, though not her best, and certainly not one of the best albums released this year. Taylor will continue to see unprecedented commercial success, but not for her excellence at songwriting or as a musician but rather because she’s quite palatable, and she always has been. And as the New York Times put it, you can’t be the showgirl and the girl next door at the same time.

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Selena & Benny Tie the Knot
Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco pulled off a masterclass in modern nuptials. Sea Crest Nursery in Santa Barbara set the lush, intimate vibe; the guest list could’ve headlined Coachella (Taylor Swift, Steve Martin, Paul Rudd, Ed Sheeran, Paris Hilton —basically the Avengers), and privacy was enforced with a no-phone policy. Selena wore three custom Ralph Lauren gowns, while Benny wore a $1 million diamond watch, but instead of gifts, guests donated to the Rare Impact Fund.

Cardi B’s Comeback: How to Nail a Sophomore Album (and Survive the Haters)
Seven years after Invasion of Privacy, Cardi came back swinging. Am I the Drama debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, went double platinum on day one, and clocked the biggest sales week for a woman in R&B/hip-hop this year. Critics were split—Rolling Stone called it a triumph, while others said it was “ambitious and chaotic”—but the numbers don’t lie.

She did it right: stayed consistent in the studio, got vulnerable on divorce-inspired tracks, showed softer sides on songs like “Safe,” while flexing with a sprawling 23-track list (draggy, sometimes but a streaming machine nonetheless).

Doja Cat’s Vie: When Playing It Safe Still Works (But Maybe Not Forever)
After Scarlet stumbled, Doja circled back to her sweet spot: 80s synths, quirky hooks, and endless energy. Standouts include “Cards,” “Stranger,” “Take Me Dancing” with SZA, and “Silly.” The slow tracks? Skip. The upbeat ones? Kitchen dance classics.

Critics are mostly positive but begging her to stretch more. And they’re not wrong—playing it safe works until it doesn’t.

The reality is not every album needs to be revolutionary. Sometimes a silly bop is exactly what we need. But if she wants longevity, risk is inevitable.

PLUS: Anticipation for The Life of a Showgirl, mourning Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban and a look back at the most shocking divorces as of late

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Doja Cat’s fifth studio album, Vie, is fun, but a little too cohesive for its own good. The 1980s-inspired record pairs seamlessly with her rap-pop hybrid, but the downside is that many tracks blur together. It’s clever lyrically, but rarely vulnerable, making the listening experience feel more like surface-level style lacking substance. Some of the more upbeat, dance-leaning songs will remain in my rotation, while others I’ll probably forget exist.

“Jealous Type” was the perfect lead single—catchy, dynamic, and promising a range that the album as a whole doesn’t consistently deliver. Instead, Vie presents one sleek mood and stays there. When it works, it’s a party. When it doesn’t, the redundancy dulls the impact.

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The Strengths:

The energetic tracks are the album’s strength —catchy, quick-witted lyrics and sticky beats. “Cards” and “Stranger” lean into shimmering ‘80s synths, showing off Doja’s pen, where “Take Me Dancing,” boosted by SZA’s presence, has been singled out by Riff for its chemistry—SZA grounds the song while Doja keeps it light on its feet, making it one of the album’s most replayable songs. “Silly! Fun!” earns its title, toggling between earnest hooks and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, taking a page out of the Sabrina Carpenter playbook. “One More Time” delivers a clean, hook-heavy closer that captures why Doja thrives in uptempo spaces: the tracks may not reinvent her formula, but they keep her quirky persona front and center. These moments prove that when she leans into maximalist, dance-ready pop, she’s untouchable.

The Weaknesses:

The slower tracks like “Couples Therapy,” “Acts of Service,” “All Mine,” “Make It Up” are the real drag. Instead of grounding the record with intimacy and vulnerability, they stall it. Without the gloss that props up the uptempo songs, the surface-level writing is exposed

Critics’ sentiment is split: Slant argued that Vie is more style than substance, too repetitive to make a lasting impact and Elle pointed out that Doja’s “sing-rap-sing” structure becomes formulaic, causing tracks to blend together. And even positive reviews from outlets like WTOP admitted the slower tracks were the weakest links. These reviews echo my main critique: cohesion that begins to veer into monotony.

Meanwhile, The Guardian praises Doja’s balance of “bubbly pop and her trademark provocative lyricism,” calling Vie a “nuanced evolution,” and Variety frames Vie as a statement that Doja doesn’t need to stay in one lane: that she can stretch between genres and still retain identity — fair!

The Verdict

Despite mixed reviews, album has performed well so far, garnering 13 million streams on Spotify on day one with six tracks charting on the app.

Vie is a reminder that Doja Cat can command the pop spotlight at will, even when the material doesn’t always rise above the aesthetic. It’s not her boldest or most surprising record, but it shows her mastery of mood. The highs are bright and fun, the lows are forgettable, but the overall vibe is polished enough to keep her firmly in the conversation.

After a seven-year hiatus, Cardi B returns with Am I the Drama, a record that is equal parts triumphant and vulnerable — and already a massive commercial success. Certified platinum within hours of release, the album instantly reaffirmed her status as a dominant force in rap. It’s also one of the strongest albums of the 2020s, a master class in feminizing rap without losing bite: razor-sharp disses, anthemic bravado, and emotional core tracks about Offset and identity sit alongside club bangers and melodic features. Overall, the album is a bold, dynamic, near-flawless comeback that proves Cardi can disappear for nearly a decade and still return to the top on her own terms.

Critics have largely echoed this sentiment. Rolling Stone praised the project as a “massive comeback triumph” that “made up for lost time” and reaffirmed her dominance. Variety called the album “unflinching, raw and refined,” pointing to divorce-driven tracks like Shower Tears and Magnet as some of her most affecting work. The Guardian praised her ruthless wit and musical range but noted the record occasionally drags.

Cardi showcased her growth over the past seven years by expanding her palette. Tracks like Safe showcase a softer, more reflective side, accompanied by a moody Kehlani feature that contrasts with her edgier tracks. Meanwhile, Hello feels like a mission statement — the perfect tone-setter that I think should have opened the record — and Pretty & Petty proves she’s still unmatched when sharpening her pen against opps. Even the weaker cuts, like Principal and Trophies, aren’t bad songs so much as pauses in an otherwise relentless ride.

Ultimately, Am I The Drama reasserts Cardi B as a cultural force who can balance spectacle with substance, heartbreak with humor, and bravado with vulnerability. It may not be flawless, but it doesn’t need to be. The album perfectly captures exactly why Cardi remains one of the defining voices of her generation.

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Track Highlights

Favorites

• ErrTime: A pure adrenaline rush and the kind of chant-ready anthem only Cardi can deliver. While not her sharpest lyrically, its booming production makes it the album’s immediate hype track. Officially my new hype song.

• Hello: I personally believe this track should have opened the album. It perfectly sets the tone, reintroduces her as rap’s dominant voice and indicates the start of a new chapter.

• Safe (feat. Kehlani): Kehlani’s ethereal voice perfectly offsets (no pun intended) Cardi’s intensity, creating one of the album’s most vulnerable and affecting songs. Proof that she can do intimacy as well as hype.

• Pretty & Petty: Cardi’s diss tracks are always headline-worthy, and here she unloads on rivals like Bia and JT with surgical precision. Her flow is relentless and unflinching and her pen is lethal.

• Man of Your Word: A standout among the divorce-inspired cuts, it blends raw emotion with sharp imagery and is surprisingly empathetic toward her ex despite his repeated infidelity.

Least Favorites

• Principal: A promising concept that never fully materializes. The Janet nod feels surface-level, and the song ultimately adds little to the tracklist.

• Trophies: A flex track that struggles to justify its place. Competent, but redundant next to sharper, more memorable moments.

Even these weaker cuts are more serviceable than outright missteps, making them rare lulls in a project that otherwise pushes Cardi’s artistry forward. Brava!

Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco — I Said I Love You First (Released: Mar 21, 2025)

Selena returned to music alongside her fiancé Benny Blanco with the intimate I Said I Love You First, featuring Gracie Abrams, J Balvin, Finneas, and the Marías. The album debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 with 120,000 units—the biggest first week of both their careers—cementing Selena’s evolution into a narrative-driven pop artist rather than just a singles star.

Miley Cyrus — Something Beautiful (Released: May 30, 2025)

Shortly after, Miley released Something Beautiful, a visual concept album centered on healing and reinvention. The project echoed showgirl motifs from The Last Showgirl (for which Miley recorded the title track) and repositioned her as the experimental veteran pushing format and spectacle on a Beyoncé scale. The album debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200, marking Miley’s 15th U.S. top-10 album.

Demi Lovato — It’s Not That Deep (Upcoming: Oct 24, 2025)

Demi’s new project’s title hints at levity after her heavier, rock-leaning projects and years of public mental health battles. She has stated she doesn’t “feel like [she needs] to sing huge emotional ballads anymore,” describing the new record as “a perfect reflection of where I’m at today” and her official “Popvato era” — lighter, dance-pop and unapologetically fun. As the final early aughts Disney alum to release in 2025, she closes out the trifecta.

While Selena leaned more intimate and Miley went visual and conceptual, Demi now has space to deliver something lighter and more mainstream — potentially reshaping her role in this alum resurgence. Over the years, these Darlings have cycled through hardcore phases, R&B detours, bubblegum pop and full-blown pop-punk, but what makes this moment resonate is how both the artists and their audience have aged together: the angsty preteens who once blasted these songs in their bedrooms are now 30-somethings still invested in the evolution.

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Hilary Duff — Hints of Return

Hilary has teased a comeback by signing with Atlantic Records, her first major label deal in nearly a decade. She’s also developing a docuseries with director Sam Wrench (Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish) to document her return.

A key piece: Hilary’s husband, Matthew Koma, is a well-established musician and producer. Beyond fronting indie-pop band Winnetka Bowling League, he co-wrote and performed vocals on Zedd’s Grammy-winning “Clarity,” co-wrote Zedd & Alessia Cara’s hit “Stay,” and worked on tracks for Carly Rae Jepsen, Shania Twain, Gwen Stefani, and Tiësto (“Wasted”). His track record suggests Hilary’s comeback could lean on pop credibility, not just nostalgia.

The Renaissance Completed

The Disney Darlings who once soundtracked middle school sleepovers and first heartbreaks are now delivering albums that speak to 30-somethings navigating reinvention, resilience and reclaimed joy. It’s a full-circle cycle—proof that the stars shaped by the Disney machine are still driving pop culture, this time on their own terms, with their original audience grown up and still listening.