The Songs, Books, and Tiny Desk Concerts We've Been Listening to This Week

HBO’s embattled series The Idol is over, and thank Christ for that. Fortunately, the good folks on TikTok are still learning the “World Class Sinner’’ choreography, reacting to that truly befuddling season finale, reenacting certain scenes or—best of all—just creating their own. Guess what? All of these takes on the show are infinitely funnier and more entertaining than anything that came from Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye.

Chloe Fineman’s impression of Lily-Rose Depp is fine, but TikToks like this and this will keep me giggling until the second season is announced and inspires a second Rolling Stone investigation. —Audra Heinrichs

Alright, it’s a little misleading for me to tell you to “read” Williams’ memoir because I, instead, listened to it on audiotape as I drove halfway across the country last week. While both mediums are certainly great, hearing Lucinda in her warbled Southern accent recite her memoir is an especially warm delight.

The book covers her tumultuous childhood and wayward young adulthood that she anchored through playing guitar and songwriting. Straightforward and honest like her lyrics, the writing circles people and places from her past in a way that feels like listening in on a good friend’s conversation with someone else. Plus, I was especially charmed by her unyielding list of crushes throughout her life. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

The coffee bean situation at our house was dire this week. Our regularly scheduled whole bean delivery was late, and the only halfway decent espresso option at the grocery store was ground. Instead of making my girlfriend recalibrate the espresso machine for grounds we’d only use for one week, we pulled out our phin, a Vietnamese coffee filter. It’s the easiest way to brew coffee and unlike pour over I don’t have to deal with a paper filter. Ours is from Nguyen Coffee Supply, which sells amazing bundles of excellent coffee grounds, adorable mug, and a phin. The phin saved my caffeine addiction this week. For that, I’m eternally grateful. —Caitlin Cruz

It’s good to watch trash; it’s better to watch gleaming trash. For the anniversary that no one was looking forward to (Jaws 2’s 45th), Universal has released a 4K Blu-ray disc of the sequel that looks magnificent. The ocean gleams, the sheriff broods with more intensity, and you can really see how fake the shark looks in more detail than ever. Jaws 2 is not a great movie, but it’s an OK sequel–it’s basically a slasher on the water–and I do feel divided about it. I grew up loving these movies and being terrified by them, while now it’s abundantly clear that they did active harm to shark populations. But refraining from watching this isn’t going to bring the slaughtered sharks back and it’s summer quintessential viewing anyway, so I’m enjoying this fun and goofy movie with more picture clarity than ever. —Rich Juzwiak

We’ve reached the point in summer where excitement about the fact that it’s bright out until 9 p.m. has transformed into an existential dread induced by the endlessly hot, sticky daytime conditions. That said, if you’re still planning to brave the outside, increasingly sun-baked world, I’ve recently fallen down the rabbit hole of SPF-infused makeup products to render sunscreen unnecessary. Off the bat there’s Ilia’s SPF 40 skin tint, but also Bare Minerals SPF-infused setting powder, Supergoop! Illuminating SPF 30 eyeshadow, and even ColoreScience’s SPF infused color balm for blush, eye shadow, and even a lip tint. Even if none of these brands speak to you, SPF-infused makeup is certainly a convenient little hack to both protect your skin, put on your face, and not feel like you’re piling on too many layers. —Kylie Cheung

As a lover of all things dainty and beautiful, the TikTok algo knew exactly what it was doing when it drop-kicked me into the world of vintage beauty. The obsession began with Hillary Clark’s account (@hillaryclarkmina), run by the eponymous makeup artist, beauty editor, and vintage collector. In this ASMR-adjacent corner of the internet, Clark sources vintage makeup products, mostly from the ’20s to the ’50s and often in their original packaging, and meticulously unwraps and tests them. Each product is like unpacking a miniature treasure trove: They’re often encased in golden metal and reveal the historical beauty needs of bygone makeup-wearers. From tiny, pop-out lipsticks to opalescent compacts, the visual pleasure of watching Clark delicately handle these perfectly preserved gems is a dopamine hit about as powerful as one can experience while rotting their brain online. —Emily Leibert

A few weeks ago, in the thick of feeling like there was nothing good to watch, I clicked on this trailer…then quickly paid 20 stupid bucks to rent the movie. And it was worth EVERY penny.

The movie follows Ria Khan and her older sister Lena, both independent and rebellious Pakistanis living in London. But Lena has fallen into a depression after dropping out of art school and Ria, a high school martial arts master with dreams of becoming a stuntwoman, is determined to push her back into the life of an up-and-coming artist. Instead, Lena meets a hot, rich Pakistani guy, Salim (at a party that was thrown for him to find a wife). He’s a successful geneticist with an overbearing mother and a relationship with that mother that borders on incest. Salim sweeps Lena off her feet! They’re going to get married and move to Singapore! Ria is PISSED. Salim’s mom is out to get Ria because she needs this marriage to happen. The reason why is batshit insane and one of the best twists I’ve ever seen in cinema. I fucking loved this movie.

Luckily, you can now stream it on Peacock (even if you don’t currently have Peacock, it’ll only be $9.99 to sign up for a month, so you’re still saving $10, compared to me). This hilarious, campy, science fiction-y, action-comedy-Bollywood film thrilled me. It’s easy to spot the themes and movies that inspired it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. —Lauren Tousignant

I am a fairly ardent fan of Taylor Swift (if flying across the country to see her next month qualifies as “fairly ardent”) but Speak Now has never been one of my top albums. A bunch of its tracks are in my heavy rotation (“Dear John” and “Enchanted” specifically—duh), but my Swift fandom didn’t really swing into full gear until Red. All of that is to say that I wasn’t particularly jonesing for Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), unlike the Red re-record, which I listened to promptly when it was released at midnight. The new version includes six “from the vault” tracks (songs she wrote at the time that didn’t make the original album), one of which is “When Emma Falls In Love,” an absolutely perfect song about young love that made me tear up this morning when I first played it.

It’s upbeat, with a lovely piano melody, a satisfying drop when the chorus first kicks in, and some extremely Taylor-Swift-in-2010 lyrics (“all the bad boys/ would be good boys/ if they only had/ a chance to love her”). If you’ve been a Swift fan for well over a decade, like I have, you will recognize so much of her early musical influences in this song—as my friend, Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos, put it to me this morning: “The Train stan popped out.” This combination of old-Taylor-new-to-us evokes such a bizarrely beautiful sense of contented nostalgia, and I can’t recommend it enough. —Nora Biette-Timmons

[Editor’s note: Yes, we know we are recommending two songs on a very popular album, but the heart wants what it wants.]

As a Swiftie, Taylor’s rerecords have brought me an unspeakable joy that I truly can’t describe. But the vault tracks have brought me equal parts joy and misery. I can’t believe “Mr. Perfectly Fine” wasn’t on Fearless in 2008 and I’m so mad we didn’t get “I Bet You Think About Me” on Red in 2012. And with the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and its six vault tracks, I’ll be adding “Electric Touch” featuring Fall Out Boy (!) to the list of songs my younger, heartbroken, very dramatic self is pissed about missing out on.

This wistful, magical pop-punk ode to the anxious moments before you first meet up with someone you have a deep, deep crush absolutely lit up every single whimsical cell in my brain. The chorus, “All I know is this could either break my heart or bring it back to life / Got a feelin’ your electric touch could fill this ghost town up with life,” feels like the underlining emotion of the entire Speak Now album—a dizzying hope for something you’ve never experienced coupled with the paralyzing knowledge that this good thing likely won’t last. AKA exactly what it felt like to be 20 years old. I have no idea what I did in a past life to deserve getting to be alive during Taylor Swift’s life, but boy, am I grateful.—LT

I tend to have some insecurity about how my body looks in shorts and tanks and general summer fashion. Unheard of, I know. On July 4th I went to a corn-themed party (in Brooklyn, obviously) and decided to take a chance on my cute little shorter alls to fit the yellow theme. They looked absolutely adorable on my extremely curvy lower half and were loose enough to breathe in the thick smoke of fireworks and vapes. I wore a striped blue tank underneath and looked like a sexy Donald Duck and I loved every minute of it. Also, generous pockets to hold both my insulin and my vape. Sorry to say I got these on Amazon, but I am now a slutty shorter-all enthusiast and encourage you to adopt this lifestyle as well. —Vicky Leta

I don’t know the cross-section of people put under a spell by Imogen Heap’s 2005 song “Hide and Seek,” but middle school me was part of it. (So maybe it’s painfully quiet white girls in suburban Ohio?) I listened to it on my MP3 player a bunch, celebrated it when The Lonely Island featured it in their best skit ever (spoofing The OC), then forgot about it.

This week, though, a four-year-old NPR Tiny Desk Concert of Heap’s resurfaced on my TikTok, showing how she uses magic gloves to direct the reverbs, loops, and pitch fluctuations that make this song so…quintessentially 2005 angsty-twee. The process is so cool! I keep rewatching it, hoping to follow the glove logic—she walks the audience through a tutorial before diving into her performance—but much like memorizing dance steps, it’s really hard for me to grasp. Maybe you’ll have better luck. (Skip to 9:20.) —Sarah Rense