Quick Hits

• Release-day warfare, pop girl edition. Olivia Rodrigo dropped her new song with Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift randomly released new music of her own the same day — per BuzzFeed, the overwhelming response to the timing is "disappointed but not surprised," with some calling the move "actually shameless." No accident allegations, just vibes, and the vibes are loud.
• Zach Bryan and Lana Del Rey have a duet. It's called "Lies," it lives on his new EP Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs (out Friday), and honestly the EP title alone deserves its own press cycle.
• Rosalía's SNL moment is paying off — Rolling Stone reports streams of "Magnolias" surged 300 percent after her evocative, viral performance this week.
• The ticket scalping story is staggering: Rolling Stone reports the DOJ alleges one broker illegally bought 18.5 million tickets to Beyoncé, Post Malone, Pitbull and more — including 7,624 tickets to a single Renaissance show, netting roughly $833,000 in scalping profit.
• The Spider-Man: Brand New Day VFX crunch is unhinged — Variety reports the film had nearly 2,000 VFX shots and just 24 weeks of post, with 445 shots delivered in ONE week, per VFX supervisor Jerome Chen. Those artists need a nap and a raise.

What's Trending

• The Kelly Clarkson bird automaton saga is apparently the gift that keeps on giving: a Hollywood star seemingly just picked a side, and BuzzFeed says it looks like he's Team Brooklyn Store. The reaction — "this is sending me, he's so messy when he wants to be" — is exactly right.
• BuzzFeed's friendship-breakup confessions post is doing numbers, and "I hung up and never spoke to her again" is now the most haunting sentence on the internet today. Flabbergasted is the official word being used, and same.

Music

• The Taylor/Olivia chaos has a genuinely cute silver lining: Chappell Roan told Apple Music she joined the "Expectations" remix to bring her own perspective, saying, "I love making things a little gay." Icon behavior.
• New Music Friday is stacked: Tate McRae's lavish "Housewife" video has her pushing a baby carriage stuffed with cash and gallivanting with suitors (per Rolling Stone); A$AP Rocky finally put the trippy "Shroom Clouds" on streaming as the rollout for Don't Be Dumb – Disc 2 begins; and The Avalanches are back with No Bad Memories, which Billboard treats as the event it is.
• Down under, Troye Sivan just notched his best-ever start on the ARIA albums chart — though Olivia Dean's The Art of Loving still holds #1.
• Powderfinger's reunion tour demand is literally "off the charts," so more dates are coming. The band called it a "pretty weird" week — in the best possible way, they clarified.
• Billboard also ranked every single Fontaines D.C. track on Dopamine Chamber for anyone who wants to fight about song order today.

Movies & TV

• Bad Fairies just leveled up its cast: Kylie Minogue, Jonathan Groff and Catherine Tate are joining Cynthia Erivo in the Warner Bros./Locksmith animated musical comedy, per Variety. That voice cast is stacked.
• Prime Video has a Five Guys docuseries, On the Line: The World Burger Games, following the burger chain's global employee competition across five episodes. Corporate content has never sounded so watchable.
• Variety reports last month's FlyDubai hijacking incident is already being developed as a narrative film — described as "harrowing but ultimately hopeful" — by Dori Media Group and India's Sphereorigin.
• Avatar: Fire and Ash composer Simon Franglen got blunt about AI at Ghent's film music days: "We must continue to defend our art." Hundreds of real musicians played on that score, and he wants everyone to know it.

Celebrity Tea

• TMZ caught Hilary Swank in an awkward autograph moment in NYC — their photog could barely get a question out before things got weird on camera. Low stakes, deeply watchable.
• T.I. is pulling double duty at Tuskegee University's homecoming: Grand Marshal AND halftime performer, per TMZ Sports. That's a busy Saturday.

TikTok & Internet

• The internet has collectively abandoned productivity for Map Ranker, the geography game that's spawned two "arrange these countries" challenges in two days — one of which has BuzzFeed writers "rethinking study abroad." The geography quiz industrial complex is thriving.
• Also in the quiz economy: a blue-shades color test that begs you to turn your brightness up, and a 2000s cartoon outfit quiz explicitly reserved for "Reformed Couch Potato Children" in their thirties. Respectfully, I failed.
• And the generational discourse machine churns on: BuzzFeed is now collecting older generations' complaints about "unprofessional" Gen Z workplace habits. Corporate etiquette has, famously, left the chat.