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Can you name a Taylor Swift song? No, I can't. I'm sorry.

I took how fast everything was moving for granted. Like, I guess this happens for everybody; this is what happens when you get famous. So I took all of that for granted but I was never like, "I'm the [expletive]." There's no higher blessing: You make people laugh, that's more than anything. That's more than making them dance, making them feel drama. To look around and see that all the good things that came in my life all came from making somebody laugh? That's a beautiful feeling, man. from Eddie Murphy is Ready to Look Back [NYT; ungated]
posted by chavenet on Jun 30, 2024 at 1:40 AM

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[content note: cheap shot] Can you name a Taylor Swift song?
can you talk about being in a film with Beyoncé
posted by HearHere at 3:07 AM

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I don't think I could either.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 3:52 AM

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I guess Eddie has a movie to hype or something, huh?
posted by Thorzdad at 5:31 AM

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"My Boyfriend was a dirty (hound)dog" - hidden track on 2nd album "Fearfluff"
posted by sammyo at 5:38 AM

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He's a complex guy. He seems repelled by fame and driven by it. He says he's not a comedian, but he says he thinks only in terms of what is funny. He says he never thinks of the audience, he says he thinks solely of the audience.

This reporter got a lot of great lines out of him, but I don't think they really uncracked him. I don't think I know him better now than I did before I read this.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:49 AM

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Really, the takeaway I get is that he resists being put into a box and any take someone is too comfortable with hanging on him, he tries to shake it off, shake it off.

Wow, maybe he really should check out some Taylor Swift.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:56 AM

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I don't think they really uncracked him.

Remember he wasn't just famous, he was 80's famous. I imagine he had to build up a very thick shell to survive it all.
posted by fairmettle at 6:45 AM

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a movie to hype or something, huh?
(somebody got) soul, soul, soul ~ Wild Magnolias [discogs; content note: black masking indians/new orleans tourism]
posted by HearHere at 7:04 AM

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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, coming Wednesday to Netflix.

(And I know it's The Old Grey Lady's house style or whatever, but this interview loses a lot from having to use [expletive] all the [expletive] time.)
posted by box at 7:28 AM

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[expletive] seriously:
Oh, here's a good one: There's an interview that you did with Spike Lee in Spin magazine from the early '90s. In there you say that you believe the government bugged your house. Why did you believe that? We found a little microphone in my house, in my bedroom. Did I say the government? Somebody put a microphone in there.
And why would they have done that? Who knows? In the '80s, all they heard in my room was serious [expletive] going on. They would listen to the bug saying, "God damn, you be doing some serious [expletive]."
posted by HearHere at 7:32 AM

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The article mentions that Murphy avoided SNL for a few decades, but doesn't mention the reason, which is that they aired a rather vicious skit (Eddie Murphy, Good Samaritan) about him when he was embroiled in scandal back in 1997. (CW: SNL in the 90s, transphobia)
posted by Umami Dearest at 7:47 AM

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Remember he wasn't just famous, he was 80's famous.

He was so famous that when he recorded a mediocre song in the 1990s called Yeah, he managed to get all of these names to participate (according to Wikipedia):
"Yeah" contains special guest vocals by Aaron Hall, Amy Grant, Babyface, Barry White, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Emmanuel Lewis, En Vogue, Garth Brooks, Heavy D, Howard Hewett, Janet Jackson, Johnny Gill, Julio Iglesias, Luther Vandross, MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Paul McCartney, Richie Sambora, Stevie Wonder and Teddy Pendergrass. It also contains bass performed by Stanley Clarke, harmonica performed by Stevie Wonder and piano performed by Herbie Hancock.
posted by pracowity at 9:03 AM

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Wow, holy DX7 preset, Batman.
posted by credulous at 9:14 AM

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There is a tier of 80's celebrity where you were a) able to make a blah vanity pop record and b) the thing managed to chart. See also Bruce Willis, Don Johnson.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:43 AM

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Her fan base skews much younger.
posted by Czjewel at 10:08 AM

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He says he's not a comedian

He literally goes out of his way to say that he is not not a comedian. He says he is "not a comic", or at least is one no longer.

I did not read this article but did listen to the audio. I didn't actually realize the NYT was printing these interviews. I thought they were just for their audio wing.

The article mentions that Murphy avoided SNL for a few decades, but doesn't mention the reason,

Okay, so this is pretty weird. I listened to the audio, and the Taylor Swift thing isn't there. However, he absolutely mentions in the audio that he didn't do SNL for 30 years because David Spade, on SNL, took a cheap shot at his career.

Why are the audio and print versions different? So weird.

I gotta say, though I have listened to all but one of the interviews in this series, I think for the most part they're among the worst interviews any of these people has done. I used to think Marc Maron was a better than average interviewer, but compared to these two interviewers, he's a interview-god. More than once i've thought to myself, "These people make a living doing interviews?! Why are they so terrible?!" The one with Anne Hathaway was absolutely brutal. It was so obvious she didn't want to do it and would rather have talked about anything but herself.
posted by dobbs at 10:29 AM

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I am oddly excited about sing Axel F and I am genuinely happy he seems to be doing okay. But I have to say, comics filled arenas before he did, Steve Martin is the first one I could think of. Not to say he did not pave some trails.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 12:40 PM

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it would be silly to name a taylor swift song because like she's already named all of them herself
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:14 PM

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i don't like eddie murphy
posted by _earwig_ at 2:39 PM

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The first Bruce Willis album was surprisingly ok.
posted by morspin at 3:41 PM

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i don't like eddie murphy

thank you for posting this. i knew some of these details but not all of them. horrifying. rest in peace, Shalimar
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 12:35 AM

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He was so famous that when he recorded a mediocre song in the 1990s called Yeah yt , he managed to get all of these names to participate (according to Wikipedia):

Maybe that's why his career turned to such garbage in the 90s, he used up every favor, connection, or bit of influence he had in the industry to make this song.
posted by star gentle uterus at 6:45 AM

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Two things I know about Eddie Murphy's music career:

Parodying "Party All the Time" when potty training a child is so brilliant and so obvious that it is discovered independently dozens of times every day by dads and uncles across the English speaking world.

The video for Watzupwitu is more than a little suspect. The elephant is dying, indeed.
posted by es_de_bah at 4:15 AM

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