 with Kevin Fallon Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
This Week:
Meet the Song That Will Be Stuck in Your Head Forever Bing bang bong. Sing sang song.Ding dang dong. UK, hun? It is a masterpiece. It is art in its highest form, a lyrical triumph invigorated by a level of musical proficiency hitherto unknown to the human ear. It is also utter nonsense, and it has not been out of my damn head this entire week. The equivalent of a watch alarm beeping somewhere in your apartment but you can't find it, it is constant, slightly annoying, but, now, inevitable; it is a part of you. Bing bang bong. Sing sang song. Ding dang dong. This is now the soundtrack to my life. Nay, it is my life.  It is only with a hint of hyperbole that I say "UK, Hun?" the novelty song that debuted last week on RuPaul's Drag Race U.K., is the best song I've heard this year, and that it may also be the death of me. It's a bona fide hit, having topped the iTunes download chart across the pond, which is a factoid I love so much. A deranged ditty performed by three gay men dressed as women on a reality competition series outperformed new releases by Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, and P!nk. This is the future liberals want. Or, at least, deserve. The whole thing came out of a Eurovision contest-themed challenge on the U.K. offshoot of the Emmy-winning reality series, which premieres new episodes weekly on the WOW Presents Plus streaming service. Dubbed "Ruruvision"—joining "The RuPaullmark Channel" in the pantheon of the show's greatest pun names—the challenge split the show's contestants into two teams to mimic the countries that perform in the annual international Eurovision Song Contest. Camp is an almost defining trait of the Eurovision competition. This is the contest that turned ABBA into global superstars, after all, and has featured past entries with titles like "Boom Boom," "Ding Dong," and "Haba Haba." It's a natural fit for the Drag Race aesthetic, and the show's spoof song "UK, Hun?" leaned into the nonsense with gleeful abandon. The queens on each team wrote and performed their own verses and did their own choreography and costuming—as essential to a Eurovision/Ruruvision performance as anything else. But the chorus was the same for both. "Bing bang bong / Sing sang song / Ding dang dong / UK, hun?," over and over… and over… and over. At one point the synthesizers just keep crescendoing key changes as the chorus continues to repeat, a further descent into sonic madness with each escalating refrain. If you could listen in to the thoughts in my head at every waking moment this last week, you would hear, well, an anxiety spiral about the ways in which the government has failed us and whether it is even possible to recover from the mental-health freefall into darkness that they are directly responsible for. But also "bing bang bong, sing sang song, ding dang dong…" Just constantly. It is hard to create a song that telegraphs total camp and satire to its audience—if the proper descriptor is cheesy, this song is a Costco-sized crate of spray cheese—while still managing to be a bop. "UK, Hun?" is an absolute earworm. It has claimed squatters' rights in my brain. Evicting it is too logistically complicated to even attempt, nor, frankly, would I want to. I don't remember my life before "bing bang bong" dominated every thought, and I'm better for it. That the song happens to be good? Maybe that actually shouldn't be a surprise. It's co-written and co-produced by Leland, who has worked with Selena Gomez, Troye Sivan, and Ava Max. He's also responsible for last season's Drag Race UK girl-group spoof song "Break Up (Bye Bye)," which charted at number 35 in Britain and sparked a petition for the group that performed to compete in the real-life Eurovision contest, as well as the hilarious Bieber-skewering songs "My Brother's Gay" and "Stink" for the Chase Dreams character on Comedy Central's The Other Two. In other words: this person has mastered the art of a fake genre-parody song so well it actually transcends parody to become a bop in its own right. The winning version of "UK, Hun?" was performed by the group that named themselves the United Kingdolls, featuring contestants A'Whora, Bimini Bon Boulash, Lawrence Cheney, and Tayce, and I just like living in a world in which those are the names of artists with a chart-surging hit song. Because the lyrics are absolutely ridiculous and the song's chorus cycles through your head like a merry-go-round that will never, ever stop spinning, it has birthed countless memes and social media jokes, which has contributed to its popularity. But, at the risk of being insufferable, I think there's a reason that this ludicrous song at this extremely intense moment is becoming so popular.  An important detail is that "UK, Hun?" made its debut in an episode that began with the contestants learning about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and the global shutdown, reeling as they were immediately all sent home. Then it picks up seven months later, some of the queens leaving their houses for the first time to return to the show. "UK, Hun?" is a delightful diversion for us to obsess over while we're all still trapped at home. But, musically, it also very much mimics our own collective, inescapable mania. I'm not saying that's the point of the song. In fact, the song refreshingly flies in the face of such seriousness. Over the last year, we've parsed every new music release for resonance. What does it mean? What does it say about the times we're in? How are our traumas informing how we're interacting with the music? This, however? This is bing bang bong. It's sing sang song. It's ding dang dong. The most philosophical question is its titular one, a casual, tossed-off, "You ok, hun?" Who could really say if they're OK these days. They're probably not. I'm definitely not. But why dwell in the mania when you can sing through it? When you can bing bang bong.
Please, For the Love of God, Watch It's a Sin Look, we're like 50 days into 2021. I know it's ludicrous to call something the best show of the year so far. And it's not like the competition is high. (Is someone going to make the case for Young Rock?)
But this show is so tragically, joyously, movingly good that we have to use some sort of hook to get you to watch. Because here's the thing: when you say, "Hey, Kevin, what's a good show I should check out?" I know that "the one about the group of gay friends in the '80s dealing with AIDS" is not the answer you want to hear. Still, watch this show. It's one of those things where you won't just get swept up in the emotion of it all, you'll actually be better for having seen it.  It's a Sin debuted on HBO Max Thursday, following a run earlier this winter in the U.K., where it was actually a ratings smash. That the series found such mass appeal there speaks to the sensitive, yet soaring approach creator Russell T. Davies (the original Queer as Folk, 2019's horrifying/sensational Years and Years) takes. It spans the entire decade, checking in over the course of five episodes as a group of twentysomething friends savor liberation and possibility in London while they embrace their sexuality, bond, grow up, fuck, fall in love, and dream. The thing to really drive home about It's a Sin is that there is so much happiness to be found. It's the full emotional experience for a time in LGBT history that pop culture typically only finds space for rage and tragedy. Those elements are certainly pulsing throughout the series, and Davies mines them in ways I've yet to fully recover from after my own binge of the show. It's a journey akin to having your heart torn into pieces, bit by bit, like someone slowly shredding a piece of paper; it's so painful because of the care Davies takes to fortify it first with the joy, the love, and the hope in these characters' lives. It's such a rare pleasure not to have those elements ignored. There's a piece of dialogue near the end of the series that I won't soon forget. It could be seen as a summary manifesto for the series. It's absolutely devastating, poignant in a way that lingers with you, a kind of writing you carry as you move through the world long after you've forgotten most of what you watched in the series, or that this piece of you was influenced by something you saw on TV at all. "It's your fault," the character Jill (Lydia West) tells the mother of one her friends, using her as the case example for an entire society that instilled shame into the intrinsic identity of gay men at the time. As Kathryn VanArendonk summarized in her Vulture review, Jill was arguing "that shame, the sense that gay life was embarrassing and less than fully human, is what fueled the disease's spread." "The wards are full of men who think they deserve it," Jill says. "They are dying, and a little bit of them thinks, Yes, this is right. I brought this on myself; it's my fault." That's why it's important to keep revisiting that time, because it still informs this time. It still informs how many gay men feel today, a cruelty that has been branded like a scar onto an identity. Davies has done gorgeous, vital work with this show. Grab four or five boxes of Kleenex and enjoy.
I Only Want to Talk About Barb and Star From Now On I like to think that Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar—a film in which Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo play codependent friends addicted to wearing culottes who go on vacation and are instead guided by three mystical beings (a talking crab, actual Tommy Bahama, and a sea spirit named Trish) to discover themselves while also averting a deadly mosquito attack—was carefully crafted and baked in a campy little gay kiln for my own personal enjoyment.
It is easy to admit that Barb and Star may not be for everyone. In that way, it is like a friend-bouncer: If someone you know tells you they didn't "get it," that person is no longer your friend.  For the purposes of this newsletter, I must draw your attention to a club remix of Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" that features prominently in the film. In the sequence, the song plays as Wiig, Mumolo, and co-star Jamie Dornan get blitzed out of their minds, hit the dance floor, and have a wild threesome.
Not only does the remix absolutely slap, but it's aspirational. Picture it: The pandemic is over. You're at the gay bar. You've lost count of how many vodka sodas you've had. That dance remix of "My Heart Will Go On" plays. A guy as hot as Jamie Dornan is wasted enough to grind on you. I'm almost crying thinking about it. I kid you not, the thought of just this is what's going to get me through.
The American Idol Audition You Have to See Maybe you didn't realize that Claudia Conway, the teenage daughter of Kellyanne Conway, appeared on the season premiere of American Idol, in which case: I am jealous of you. What I would give to not be remotely aware of any detail in the sentence I just wrote.
Conway's audition obviously dominated all talk of the show's premiere. If I'm being honest, it's why I tuned in and, before you ask, yes I do hate myself. But I'm glad I did because it meant I got to see this audition by Grace Kinstler. (Watch the video here.)  At this point, it would be impossible to qualify how many of these singing-show auditions I've watched over the years, so it is no small praise to say that Grace's may rank among the best I've ever seen. Yes, there was the tragic backstory that the show loves to exploit. But when I started crying (obviously I cried; I always cry), it was because of her voice. My God! Do yourself a favor and watch the video.
The Best News I've Heard This Entire Pandemic The startling, high-pitched squeal you heard on Wednesday afternoon but couldn't figure out where it came from was actually the sound of me learning the news that Paddington 3 is officially in the works. Sorry about that. 
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Friday, February 19, 2021
The ‘Drag Race’ Joke Song That’s Now 2021’s Biggest Bop
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