This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
This week:
- Blockbuster deserves better!
- Mariah vs. Martha
- Important Sister Act news
- Rihanna, wyd???
- Hope for the future
It’s Tiiiiiiiiiime
It is time to make an addendum to the popular, historic idiom: In this world, nothing is certain but death, taxes, and a Mariah Carey Christmas.
The story of Carey’s decades-long journey to Yuletide dominance—Santa who?—need not be reiterated. She has told it. I have told it. She has told it to me. (It has been nearly a year since Mariah Carey said that she would like one of you to date me for Christmas, and it’s been frankly rude of you to so blatantly ignore her.)
What’s remarkable is that her annual omnipresence is, somehow, not irritating. We’re a society that scoffs when things become too mainstream, too popular, and too fun. (Nothing kills a cultural phenomenon quicker than the realization that people are enjoying it.) Yet, anecdotally, that hasn’t seemed to happen with Carey’s yearly Christmas blitz. If there’s something “basic” about obsessing over Christmas, obsessing over a celebrity who is obsessed with Christmas is basic to exponential levels. To not feel embarrassed about that? It’s a holiday miracle. God bless us, everyone.
The reason for this stating of the obvious—Breaking: Mariah Carey is popular at Christmas—is that it’s time. As in, as Carey musically coos, tiiiiiiiiime. Halloween is over, it’s November, and it’s permissible to think about the holidays. Everything was running as planned (there were the requisite videos and memes as the clock turned to Nov. 1) until pop culture’s other holiday royalty derailed things. An early Christmas treat for all of us: Martha Stewart and Mariah Carey are (playfully) feuding.
Listen, everything about this “feud” is dumb and not real. But I cherish such distraction as I skip through life towards the apocalyptic abyss.
Stewart was on the Today show this week, reacting to a video Carey posted that suggests that once Halloween is over, it is Christmas time. “You cannot give up Thanksgiving!” Stewart says into the camera. Carey responded with a tweet that was both good-natured and shady: “Dearest Martha!! NEVER will I give up Thanksgiving!! But we can still start getting into the festive spirit now! P.S I’d love to have you at my Thanksgiving dinner although I’ve yet to be invited to your Thanksgiving extravaganza! And THAT is MAJOR! Esp if Snoop’s coming!”
Feud over! Back to listening to “All I Want For Christmas Is You” on repeat!
A friend asked me recently if I thought there was something desperate or slightly beneath Carey about seizing on the whole Christmas thing each year. In a strange coincidence, that friend has gone missing. Weird! But I think what makes the Christmas content hyper-drive so fun is that everyone involved knows it’s silly—from Carey, to the meme makers, to the brands that jump on board, and to all of us who imbibe in the festiveness. If you’re a music legend who is going to embrace something silly, why not insist on being the best, most famous, indelible figurehead of them all?
Oh Happy Day
As Elon Musk runs through Twitter HQ tossing grenades, hell-bent on destroying the site, many people have been eulogizing what the platform has meant to them, including the community they formed on it.
That is very sweet, and I’d like to believe they’re being sincere. Yet not one of you alerted me to the fact that Jennifer Hudson performed a 10-minute medley of songs from Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit on her talk show, while dressed as Whoopi Goldberg’s character for Halloween. “Community,” you say? I’ve never felt so abandoned and alone. I had to learn of this video’s existence on my own!
And once Twitter is gone, where will we turn for updates on the two most important things in our lives: the song that Kelly Clarkson covered for “Kellyoke” that day, and any time the music from Sister Act makes an appearance in pop culture? It’s a harrowing future we face. Thanks, Elon.
The Rihanna Comeback Is Not Going Great…
Now that it has been confirmed that Rihanna inexplicably booked sentient toadstool Johnny Depp to walk in her Savage x Fenty fashion show, I think we can all feel a little safer complaining about her new music. We did not wait six years for a new Rihanna song only for it to be a sleepy ballad for the end credits of a movie.
A Spiritual Image
What to watch this week:
Causeway: That Jennifer Lawrence can really act! (Now on Apple TV+)
The Crown: It’s a shame this show has such little family drama. (Wed. on Netflix)
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story: OK, however weird you think this is going to be, think weirder. (Now on The Roku Channel)
What to skip this week:
Blockbuster: It’s shockingly unfunny! (Now on Netflix)
