The daily gossip: Adele's new album might drop at any moment, Billie Eilish is starring in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and more

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1. Adele's new album '30' might drop very, very soon
2. Billie Eilish set to voice Sally in 'Nightmare Before Christmas' concert
3. Jerry Seinfeld finally agrees that 'Bee Movie' was disturbing
4. Emily Ratajkowski alleges Robin Thicke groped her while shooting 'Blurred Lines'
5. Fans are not happy that Lizzo called Chris Brown her favorite person in the world

published 4 October 2021

1. Adele's new album '30' might drop very, very soon

When the number "30" mysteriously begins popping up on billboards around the world, you know what that means: Adele is back. Though there's no firm confirmation yet about the meaning of the number — which appeared outside the Louvre in Paris, on the Colosseum in Rome, and on the Empire State Building in New York City, as well as in Warsaw, Berlin, and London — it appears to be the title of the next album in the sequence of LPs named after her age, following 19, 21, and 25. Notably, 30 would be Adele's first album in six years and seems to refer to the year of her divorce from her ex-husband. On Monday, excitement heightened when Adele's social media accounts all switched to the same black-blue of the billboards and promoted a website encouraging fans to register for updates. Hello, indeed.

'Twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems, when Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas was released in 1993. Now a whole new generation of teens is getting to imagine living like Jack and Sally, including quite literally Billie Eilish, who is joining Disney's live-to-film version of the classic animated movie that premiered a whole eight years before she was born. Eilish will voice Sally, of course, while Danny Elfman is set to reprise his role as Jack Skellington, People reports. "I'm absolutely thrilled to have Billie joining up with the nightmare crew!" Elfman said in a statement. "This will be a real treat (not a trick)!"The Nightmare Before Christmas will run for two nights only in Los Angeles on Oct. 29 and Oct. 31.

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Jerry Seinfeld has at last admitted that his animated film Bee Movie is "really not appropriate for children." The 2007 film memorably spawned gazillions of memes mostly revolving around the implication that Barry B. Benson (a bee) is in love with Vanessa Bloome (a human woman) — hence the coinage of "beestiality" and co-writer Spike Feresten's hilarious clarification to The New Statesman that there was no "interspecies love affair" in the film. Nevertheless, Seinfeld "apologized for the ambiguity," telling The Tonight Show that the "certain uncomfortable, subtle sexual aspect of The Bee Movie … was not intentional." Seinfeld, who co-wrote the film and voiced Barry, went on to say that "after it came out, I realized, 'This is really not appropriate for children.' Because the bee seems to have a thing for the girl. We don't really want to pursue that as an idea in children's entertainment." True enough — best to leave that to the experts.

It is nearly the end of 2021 and we're still talking about how wildly inappropriate Robin Thicke's 2013 hit "Blurred Lines" and its subsequent music video was. But while critics panned the song and video at the time for "trivializing sexual violence," it sounds like things were actually even more concerning on set. In a new memoir, model Emily Ratajkowski, who starred topless in the "Blurred Lines" video, alleged that Thicke sexually assaulted her during the shoot: "Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt the coolness and foreignness of a stranger's hands cupping my bare breasts from behind. I instinctively moved away, looking back at Robin Thicke, " she recounts. The music video's director, Diane Martel, confirmed witnessing the incident, adding that Thicke had been drinking and "I don't think he would have done this had he been sober."

Lizzo is facing backlash after a video of her calling Chris Brown her "favorite person in the whole f--king world" circulated this weekend on social media. The 33-year-old singer — who was a fully sentient 21 years of age when Brown pled guilty to the felony assault of his then-girlfriend Rihanna — appeared to geek out over the disgraced "King of R&B" backstage at the Millennium Tour, where Brown was a surprise guest of one of the headliners, Bow Wow. Fans were not thrilled, to say the least: "All the people in the world and Chris Brown is your favorite?" wrote one unamused Twitter user. Others, though, pointed out that Lizzo isn't alone in questionably embracing Brown despite his multiple allegations of assault: "Chris Brown being your fave person is just really pathetic BUT 90 percent of y'all faves including mines have worked with that man so don't act brand new with Lizzo," another Twitter user chimed in.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.