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Tag: Del Rey

  • Q&A: JD Vance is the GOP candidate for vice president. Here’s how he’s spent his time in Alexandria and DC – WTOP News

    Q&A: JD Vance is the GOP candidate for vice president. Here’s how he’s spent his time in Alexandria and DC – WTOP News

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    D.C. Axios reporter Cuneyt Dil joined WTOP’s Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller and Dimitri Sotis to discuss Sen. JD Vance’s history in the D.C. area.

    Former President Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance went from the Appalachians to Alexandria, Virginia, in a matter of years.

    Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks at the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Wednesday, July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)(AP/Carolyn Kaster)

    But does the junior senator from Ohio have the same persona here in Washington that he does in the Buckeye State?

    WTOP asked D.C. Axios reporter Cuneyt Dil about the latest reporting on Vance’s life in the D.C. area and how a GOP White House could affect the District.

    Listen to the full interview below or read the transcript. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. 

    D.C. Axios reporter Cuneyt Dil joined WTOP’s Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller and Dimitri Sotis to discuss Sen. JD Vance’s history in the D.C. area.

    Cuneyt Dil: You could say JD Vance is an Appalachian turned Alexandrian. Me and my colleagues at Axios D.C., we looked at JD Vance’s Washington persona. And, some things we know about him: He lives in the Del Rey neighborhood — you know, liberal neighborhood, of course in the Washington region.

    And he’s traveled in Washington circles before.

    He has worked at this venture capital firm cofounded by Steve Case, the AOL co-founder, called Revolution. In fact, he even overlapped there with Joe Biden’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain. So we look at how JD Vance has sort of swam in this liberal world of Washington and what that would mean, perhaps if Trump does win a second term as President. Where will the MAGA crowd gravitate toward?

    Mitchell Miller: One of the interesting things related to the MAGA crowd and the Republicans is they have their own vision for D.C. And it includes, in the views of people from D.C., or at least D.C. government officials, encroaching on the city’s Home Rule. The mayor recently returned the city budget to the council. It was unsigned.

    What kind of sense are you getting in terms of D.C. and whether that is stoking some fears about what might happen under a new Trump administration?

    Dil: Yeah, absolutely. You just have to listen to what Trump himself has said, which is he promises to “take over our horribly run capital city now.”

    The mayor this week returned the city’s budget unsigned to the council, which is a rare move. And the fear here is that this is a tacit invitation to Congress, to possibly intervene.

    Essentially, if the mayor is not endorsing the budget, when it goes to Congress, this could be a sign for Republicans there to say, ‘The mayor doesn’t support the budget. We’re gonna fix it.’ And when, if Republicans go to endeavor to fix the budget, that means they’re not going to let the city have a say in what they change.

    So D.C. is preparing for a whole flood of intervention from House Republicans and the GOP if they win the presidency, and both chambers of Congress.

    Dimitri Sotis: Cuneyt, these are very serious times. And I don’t mean to push us into lighter material, but I think people might be curious: Why is it that JD Vance and his family chose Del Rey? Is it, you know, the wonderful ice cream shop, the coffee shops? I mean, I know that’s why I stopped by there once in a while. Is that what he did too? And you know, there are a lot of different places in the metro area you can choose to live.

    Dil: Well, sure, right. Like many people, I think he saw it, I’m sure, as a wonderful neighborhood. Now my colleague, Mimi Montgomery reports that there are few spottings of him out and about in Del Ray, but the neighbors interestingly “yarn bombed” — threw yarn all over his house — last year when reports said he bought it. So obviously some tension there between the liberal neighbors and himself. But look, I mean, it’s a great neighborhood. I’m sure he found the same thing when he was looking, shopping around the area.

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  • Lana Del Rey Spotted Working Shift At Alabama Waffle House

    Lana Del Rey Spotted Working Shift At Alabama Waffle House

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    American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey was recently spotted wearing a uniform and working a shift at a Waffle House in Alabama for reasons still unknown. What do you think?

    “A true multi-hyphenate.”

    Kelly Hamlin, Greeting Card Consultant

    Federal Reserve Calls For More Poverty

    “Well, I’m sure she has some perfectly offensive reason for it.”

    Chris Tubbs, Unemployed

    “Maybe one day she’ll be successful enough to wait tables full time.”

    Alex Davari, Livestock Manager

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  • Taylor Swift drops ‘3am’ edition of ‘Midnights,’ music video

    Taylor Swift drops ‘3am’ edition of ‘Midnights,’ music video

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    NEW YORK — Taylor Swift has said “Midnights” was inspired by certain key sleepless nights — something many of her fans undoubtedly experienced as the singer-songwriter dropped seven bonus tracks and a music video just hours after the album’s release Friday.

    “Midnights” was released at, well, midnight Eastern time and had become Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day by 6:15 p.m. With a runtime of around 44 minutes, listeners would have had the opportunity to play the album four times before Swift unleashed “Midnights (3am Edition).”

    “Surprise! I think of Midnights as a complete concept album, with those 13 songs forming a full picture of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour,” she wrote on Instagram. “However! There were other songs we wrote on our journey to find that magic 13.”

    The bonus tracks fit tonally with the rest of the darkly electric and moody album, beginning with “The Great War,” sweeping across “Paris” and exploring “High Infidelity” before ending with “Dear Reader.” In all, the seven additional songs — added to the end of the original “Midnights” track listing, encompass about 25 additional minutes.

    Swift is the sole credited performer on the bonus tracks — the only person to get a featured credit on any “Midnights” track is Lana Del Rey. The extra songs are primarily written by Swift, Jack Antonoff — her “co pilot” on the album — and Aaron Dessner, a founding member of The National and another frequent Swift collaborator who was otherwise absent from “Midnights.”

    And five hours after “Midnights (3am Edition),” Swift treated fans to a visual feast with a muted but lush music video for “Anti-Hero.”

    Written and directed by Swift herself, reunited with “All Too Well” cinematographer Rina Yang, the video sees the singer be chased by chintzy sheet ghosts and do shots with a glammed-up double who instructs her: “Everyone will betray you.” Dark glitter oozes from the yolks she cuts into at the breakfast table, her wound from an arrow and her mouth after one too many shots.

    “Watch my nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real time,” Swift posted on Instagram.

    The video includes references to Swift’s eating disorder, which she revealed in a documentary, and pokes fun at herself with a cutscene that breaks in midway. It features Mike Birbiglia, John Early and Mary Elizabeth Ellis playing her heirs (Preston, Chad and Kimber) who discover she’s left them only 13 cents in her will (Swift’s favorite number is famously 13).

    “There’s probably a secret encoded message that means something else!” Early exclaims in character, referencing the field of cryptology Swift has created over the years.

    “P.S. There is no secret encoded message that means something else. Love, Taylor,” Birbiglia reads seconds later.

    The “Anti-Hero” video racked up more than 9,700,000 views in the first 13 hours (apt) of its release and spawned the #TSAntiHeroChallenge. Swift is encouraging people to upload to YouTube Shorts a video of themselves sharing the traits that would make them an antihero. According to a blog post on YouTube, the challenge is “all about acknowledging and celebrating the traits that make each of us truly unique and showcasing one’s true self in a FUN way.”

    “An anti-heroic trait could be as simple as always grabbing the last slice of pizza, clapping at the end of movies, always putting your feet on the car dashboard, using the same word to start your daily Wordle, leaving your clean laundry in the basket until the next time you do it, pretending you didn’t already watch the next episode of the series you watch with your pals, or even treating your cat like a human,” the post said. Swift chose that last one for her own submission.

    While the challenge adds levity to the release cycle, Swift is clear on the tone she’s going for with the album and its associated projects.

    “Midnights is a collage of intensity, highs and lows and ebbs and flows,” Swift posted on Instagram when the original album dropped. “Life can be dark, starry, cloudy, terrifying, electrifying, hot, cold, romantic or lonely. Just like Midnights.”

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    Associated Press journalists Sophia Rosenbaum and Christina Paciolla contributed to this report.

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  • Review: Taylor Swift plays dark, electric on ‘Midnights’

    Review: Taylor Swift plays dark, electric on ‘Midnights’

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    Taylor Swift “Midnights,” (Republic Records)

    “All of me changed like midnight,” Taylor Swift confesses halfway through her latest album, the aptly named and moody “Midnights.” It’s a moment on the electric “Midnight Rain” that finds lyricist Swift at her best, reminding you of her unparalleled ability to make any emotion feel universal.

    The song’s chorus begins: “He was sunshine, I was midnight rain.” And continues: “He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain. He wanted a bride, I was making my own name. Chasing that fame. He stayed the same.” Then, that lyric: “All of me changed like midnight.” The sound feels experimental for Swift, opening with her own vocals artificially pitched down to an almost-unrecognizable tone. It’s among the album’s most sonically interesting, an indie-pop beat that feels reminiscent of her producer Jack Antonoff’s work on Lorde’s “Melodrama,” but also fresh and captivating.

    The song’s words, by Swift and Antonoff, are steady and detailed, but not distracting — allowing you to sink into the rhythm, flowing and feeling it with her.

    On the 13 tracks of “Midnights,” a self-aware Swift shows off her ability to evolve again. For her 10th original album, the 32-year-old pop star approaches the themes she’s grown up writing about — love, loss, childhood, fame — with a maturity that comes through in sharpened vocals and lyrics focused more on her inner-life than external persona.

    “Midnight Rain” could be a thesis statement for the project she’s described as “songs written during 13 sleepless nights,” an appropriate approach to the concept album for someone who has long had a lyrical appreciation for late nights (think “Style”: “midnight, you come and pick me up, no headlights…”). Of course, she’s centered her work around themes before — on “Red,” an ode to the color and the emotions it stands for, “reputation,” a vindictive reconfiguring of her own, and most recently on “folklore” and “evermore,” quarantine albums that expressed vulnerability in ways only isolation could.

    But Swift presents “Midnights” as something different: a collection of songs that don’t necessarily have to go together, but fit together because she has declared them products of late night inspiration. Positioning listeners situationally — in the quiet but thoughtful darkness of night — instead of thematically, feels like a natural creative experiment for a songwriter so prolific that her albums have become synonymous with the pop culture zeitgeist.

    And with that, comes a tone that is just a little darker, a little more experimental, and always electric.

    Track one, “Lavender Haze,” pairs a muffled club beat and high-pitched backing vocals from Antonoff with stand-out, beckoning melody from Swift. “Maroon” is a grown-up and weathered version of “Red,” a dive into lost love with rich descriptions of rust, spilled wine, red lipstick — images Swift is reconjuring with more bite.

    “Labyrinth” makes clear she’s carried the best of her previous pop experiments with her — the synth of “1989” and the softer alternative sounds of “folklore” — as she admits as only a songwriter can that a heartbreak “only feels this raw right now, lost in the labyrinth of my mind,” on top of a track featuring Bon Iver-esque electronic trills.

    Swift shines when she is able to marry her signature lyrical musings with this new arena of electronic beats. And while this isn’t another album of acoustic indie sounds like “folklore,” it is clear that Swift has taken a step forward in the indie-pop genre — even if it’s a step in a different direction.

    The album’s weaker moments are the ones where that balance feels off. “Bejeweled” is a bit too candy sweet, with lyrics that feel like an updated, glittery take on “Me!” The much anticipated “Snow On The Beach,” featuring Lana Del Rey, is poetic, pretty, and at times cheeky, but not as emotionally deep as the lyricists’ combined power suggests it could be.

    Even in those moments, “Midnights” finds Swift comfortable in her musical skin, revealing the strengths of a sharp and ever-evolving artist who can wink through always-cryptic allusions to her very public life or subtle self-owns dispersed amidst lyrical confessions (see: “Anti-Hero” and “Mastermind”) and hook even the casual listener with an alluring, and maybe surprising, beat.

    But like the love-soaked “Lover,” and intimate “folklore” and “evermore,” “Midnights” feels like both a confessional and a playground, crafted by all the versions of Taylor Swift we’ve gotten to know so far for a new Taylor Swift to shine. And like always, we’re just along for the thrilling late-night ride.

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    For more recent album reviews, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/music-reviews

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