The maestro was in a foul mood. And the singer was unhappy. The Berlin Wall had fallen almost a decade earlier, but Leipzig, in the former East Germany, still left something to be desired when it came to an opera star’s material needs.The conductor Kurt Masur and the soprano Jessye Norman — whose album collaboration on Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” was already a classic — had joined the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra to start recording Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” But things had quickly soured.“She and Masur quarreled,” recalled Costa Pilavachi, then an executive at Philips Classics, the label making the recording. “It was a very, very difficult couple of weeks.”With costs spiraling and spirits low, the label eventually abandoned its plan for a complete “Tristan” and focused on excerpts featuring Isolde, a character Norman had never put on record beyond the famous “Liebestod.” But even this curtailed effort was never released.Until now. Those “Tristan” excerpts are perhaps the most eagerly anticipated part of “Jessye Norman: The Unreleased Masters,” coming from Decca — part of Universal Music Group, which acquired Philips years ago — on March 24.Jessye Norman singing from “Tristan und Isolde”Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Kurt Masur, conductor (Decca)The collection consists of three albums recorded with different orchestras and conductors over a period of nine years. One thing they have in common: Norman, one of the most beloved singers of our time, did not approve their release before her death, at 74, in 2019.“When she passed on, I raised with Decca: Isn’t it time to revisit these?” said Cyrus Meher-Homji, an executive at Universal in Australia. The label approached Norman’s estate, which gave its blessing.James Norman, her brother, said in a statement to The New York Times, “There’s no way of knowing whether Jessye would ever have approved the releases per her very high standards, as the subject was not one we ever discussed.”But, he added, they had frequently discussed her philanthropic interests, “and we see the releases as a way to help the estate to advance those interests.”More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Fosse Dancers: The thrill of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’,” a revival of the 1978 musical is, aptly, its dancers. All are principals. No two are alike, not even a tiny bit. And that’s the way Fosse wanted it.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.However worthy the beneficiary, though, should labels and estates sanction the release of material that artists rejected?Sometimes, the label answers with a clear no: Maria Callas’s final studio recording, for example, was judged artistically inferior and canned. And sometimes, an unsanctioned album comes out during an artist’s lifetime. In the early 1980s, Deutsche Grammophon put out a “Tristan” against the wishes of the notoriously recording-shy conductor Carlos Kleiber, leading to the severing of his relationship with the label.After Kleiber died, his estate remained adamant that other material languishing in the vault should stay there. The family of Sergiu Celibidache, another conductor who frowned on recording, took the opposite position, allowing the release of many albums after his death.This question is more familiar in the literary world. Most of us are thankful that Max Brod didn’t burn Franz Kafka’s unpublished works at the author’s request. But in 2006, when a volume of uncollected material by the poet Elizabeth Bishop was published, the scholar Helen Vendler wrote that Bishop would have greeted it “with a horrified ‘No.’”Martha de Francisco, a record producer who worked with Norman (though not on the projects included in the new set), said, “We’re really all the time thinking of what is the artist’s integrity.”But the nature of that integrity is often far from straightforward. Artists’ wishes can be ambiguous or ambivalent. And some observers believe that the value to posterity of certain material can in some cases supersede even clear wishes. As far as the criteria, though, most admit that it’s more or less “I know it when I hear it.”For Norman, approving recordings was a painstaking and protracted process, even when the answer ended up being yes. “She was extraordinarily professional, and an extraordinarily severe critic of her own work,” said Anthony Freud, then one of her producers and now the general director of Lyric Opera of Chicago.That would seem to give weight to her “no.” But those who spoke with her over the years about these unreleased projects suggest that she wasn’t always resolute about them, and that her reasons for not giving her approval were vague or fixable.“She was a great artist, and she had the right to decide what the public would hear and what the public wouldn’t hear in terms of her commercial output,” Pilavachi said. “She definitely did soften: She was less militant when I spoke to her, maybe 10 years ago, for the last time. She was much more willing to discuss some of this.”The earliest of the three projects is a collaboration with one of her champions, the conductor James Levine, drawn from live performances with the Berlin Philharmonic. The repertory includes the “Four Last Songs” — seven years after her sublime 1982 rendition with Masur — and, from 1992, Wagner’s “Wesendonck Lieder.”“She was thrilled with the ‘Wesendoncks,’” Pilavachi said. “But she wasn’t happy with one note in one song in the ‘Four Last Songs.’ She wanted us to redo that with Levine and the Berlin Philharmonic, and it just never happened. I had extensive conversations with her throughout the ’90s about it.”There was talk of using the Masur recording to patch the note she indicated. (While memories of her complaint are now blurry, it might have been in the first song, “Frühling,” though nothing in any of the four with Levine stands out as blatantly off.) But the original tapes of the older album turned out to have been recycled. The label couldn’t see its way to releasing the Wagner songs alone, so the whole project stayed in storage.These “Four Last Songs” are sleeker than the luscious version she set down with Masur, while Norman’s voice, even if it had lost some easy opulence, was still majestic and flexible. The “Wesendoncks,” which she had already recorded twice, are excellent: brooding, urgent and lush, the orchestra glistening.Norman came up with the idea for the next project, which brought together three queenly characters: Haydn’s “Scena di Berenice,” Berlioz’s “La Mort de Cléopâtre” and Britten’s “Phaedra,” all recorded with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in February 1994.Pilavachi said Norman had vague misgivings about the Berlioz; Meher-Homji said her complaint in that work was less about her performance than the sound.“By the late 2000s, she approved some of the material,” Meher-Homji said. “She approved the Britten, and she approved the Haydn, but she didn’t like the mix on the Berlioz. And I could understand why. The sound was really hollow; she wanted it tightened up. The orchestra sounded like it was playing in a bathtub.”The mix was adjusted for the new release, and sounds properly balanced, with the Bostonians glittering. Her singing in the Berlioz is slightly more pressed and less plush than it had been with Daniel Barenboim a decade earlier, but she is still fully in command. The Haydn is magisterial but tender; the Britten, blistering and articulate.There is a case to be made that Norman’s objections to these two recordings were minor, and that the performances are worthy of standing alongside her prime work. But that still leaves the “Tristan” — which poses the thorniest questions.In a way, it is the most precious of the set, setting down a role that Norman never sang in full, one for which her capacious but thrusting voice was, in theory, beautifully suited. Its afterlife has also been the messiest of the three albums: The documentation related to the recording is scant and faded, as are the memories of those who worked on it.The similarity between the surnames of Kurt Masur and the tenor Thomas Moser initially caused confusion about who had sung Tristan. More bizarre, when Decca announced the new set last fall, it led with the blazing news that through overdubbing Norman had recorded both Isolde and the supporting role of Brangäne. It took two and a half months for the label to correct itself: Brangäne was actually the mezzo-soprano Hanna Schwarz.Norman, left, performing with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.Lutz KleinhansMeher-Homji said that at some point after the sessions had ended in April 1998, Cord Garben, the recording’s producer, flew to England to play the edit for Norman. “She listened and said nothing,” Meher-Homji said. “There were plans to continue, and she decided she didn’t want to.”Pilavachi believes the troubled recording process had irretrievably colored her view of it. “She didn’t have any objections to her own singing,” he said. “I think she didn’t want to listen to all the tapes, having had such a lousy experience in Leipzig. I don’t think she had ever listened to it properly so that she could say yes or no.”Dominic Fyfe, Decca’s label director, said: “Obviously this was done quite late in her career. We’re perfectly well aware there may be people who react and say this should not have been released. There may be some controversy around it. But I think on balance, collectively, we all felt that the strengths of the recording outweigh many of the weaknesses.”It’s true: There are strengths and weaknesses to the “Tristan” excerpts. Norman’s voice is richly vehement and full of mystery. Her sensibility is lively, even if Masur’s conducting tends to be limp. Her diction is pungent; the tone has her familiar echoey depth — far plummier than Schwarz’s Brangäne — if fewer sumptuous colors. Some longer phrases are heavy lifting; the high notes are not all comfortable; and some of the intonation wavers in softer passages of Isolde’s Narrative and Curse. The album gives great pleasure, but, more than the other two, one can understand Norman doubting it.When Pilavachi would see her in New York, he would ask her about these projects. “She became less negative about them as time went on,” he said. “But when I went back to London and I would follow up, I wouldn’t hear back. Or I’d send her the masters again, but I don’t know if she ever listened to them. With time she lost interest in them.”The liner notes for the new set thoroughly describe the equivocal position the recordings hold in Norman’s body of work. “It’s important that people appreciate that she had misgivings,” Fyfe said.But that context will not be available on streaming platforms. There, these albums will appear as indistinguishable from music that Norman did approve.“In a digital world,” Fyfe said, “it’s slightly out of our hands.”James Norman said in his statement, “We did agonize some about approving the release of something about which Jessye had some concerns.” But whatever the ethical quandaries, it is certainly the legal right of Norman’s estate and her label to approve the release of this new set. Now it is up to listeners — and to history — to judge.“Common sense is right to prevail,” said Freud, her onetime producer. “I’m not trying to second guess why an artist might have a problem with a recording. But there are clearly recordings that are of a quality that deserves to be heard, and there are other recordings that aren’t. I suppose logically, to me, the answer needs to lie in the quality of the result somehow. Is it good?” More

We asked Jon Batiste, Arooj Aftab, Mary Halvorson and others to share their favorites.For over a year, The New York Times has been asking musicians, writers and scholars to share the music they’d play for a friend to get them into jazz. Now we’re focusing on Thelonious Monk, the innovative pianist and bandleader whose angular melodies and dissonant chords made him stand out among his peers in the bebop era.Where other pianists played light chords with their left hand and quicker notes with the right, Monk played equally complicated notes with both hands, leading to complex arrangements that traversed the entire scale. But he never overplayed; his use of space between the notes elicited peace and tension equally.“Those clashing intervals, you know?” the Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley once said. “Sometimes he’ll play, like, an F and F sharp at the same time.”Monk was born in 1917 in Rocky Mount, N.C., and his family moved to Manhattan when he was 4. At 9, after briefly studying the trumpet, Monk started playing the piano in church and at rent parties. He attended Stuyvesant High School for two years before dropping out to play on the road with an evangelist. Monk’s big break came in 1941 when the drummer Kenny Clarke hired him to be the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. It’s been said that’s where bebop was born: Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams and others would jam all hours of the night crafting this new sound.Monk’s solo career didn’t really take hold until the ’50s when, as a bandleader signed to Prestige Records, he recorded different ensemble sets with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and Art Blakey, which escalated his momentum. Shortly after he signed with Riverside Records in 1955, he broke through with the album “Brilliant Corners,” an acclaimed LP seen as the true launching point of his career. He played clubs throughout New York City, gigged with the likes of John Coltrane and Gerry Mulligan, then led big bands from the late 1950s to the early ’60s. In 1964, Time put Monk on its magazine cover — the fourth jazz musician in history to appear there.Yet you can’t talk about Monk without acknowledging his erratic behavior. He had mental health challenges and was first hospitalized in 1956; he got into a car accident and was uncommunicative when police arrived. Years later, he was diagnosed with depression. Onstage, he would sometimes get up from the piano and start dancing, leading some to believe these were autistic episodes. Others say he used dance as a way to convey to his band what he wanted to hear musically. Either way, Monk is on the Mount Rushmore of jazz, and deserves all the reverence he gets for shifting its modern sound. Below, we asked 11 musicians and writers to share their favorite Thelonious Monk songs. Enjoy listening to their choices, check out the playlist at the bottom of the article and be sure to leave your own picks in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Jon Batiste, pianist and composer“Introspection”It’s not possible for me to choose a favorite Monk song. At 19, I became obsessed with everything Thelonious and spent a year focused exclusively on absorbing as much as I could. Monk is a world. “Introspection,” from the album “Solo Monk,” is borderline atonal while still distinctively melody-rich. The melody is akin to a nursery rhyme in its playful logic and symmetry, all while whistling overtop a bed of through-composed dissonance. Those chords! The way he constructs the harmony to shift between at least three identifiable key centers creates a trance-like quality to the recording that rides the borders of Eastern mysticism and some obtuse sanctified hymn. The chord voicings are constructed for every note to have a deliberate intention. There’s no room for harmonic interpretation here — if you add or take away any of the notes from his chord voicings, the song risks completely losing its identity. Monk’s way of “super syncopation” is utilized significantly in this tune as well, making his charismatic approach to aligning the harmony and melody a defining characteristic of the composition.He named it “Introspection” ’cause he certainly had a lot on his mind with this one. Very concentrated in all harmony, melody and rhythm. The master of repetition. Over the years it’s the least played Monk tune of all. This is significant given that he is one of the most covered and influential composers of the modern age. I love the “Solo Monk” version because he doesn’t even improvise over the chord changes, he just states the melody twice and walks out of the studio (or at least that’s how I envision it). Sometimes that’s all that needs to be played: the tune.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, composer and multi-instrumentalist“Nutty”By my count, Thelonious Monk’s 1957 concert at Carnegie Hall was his 45th time being recorded on anything that was eventually released. He turned 40 years old the month before and was toward the end of his brief, but intense and deeply meaningful, collaboration with John Coltrane. While Monk’s sublime ballads “Ugly Beauty,” “Ruby, My Dear,” “Ask Me Now,” “Pannonica,” “Reflections” and “’Round Midnight” might represent some of his most genius work, I selected “Nutty” from the Carnegie Hall concert because of the depth of sophistication of the composition coupled with the sheer amazingness of his collaboration with Coltrane. It is a masterpiece, complete with disjunctive rhythms in the fourth measure of the form, perhaps most perfectly portraying Monk’s humorous dance style that he often did while getting up from the piano.For my personal taste, the epitome of virtuosity is when artists not only know their instrument and medium thoroughly, but know themselves well enough to be able to communicate highly personal or emotional concepts and stories through their work. “Nutty” is a tour de force of communication at the highest levels. So much happens within these five minutes that is mind blowing to me every time I listen, and I can’t help but to be left in utter awe and gratitude for the lives of these amazing gentlemen who continually chose transcendence and sophistication while the world around them so often chose barbarity.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Arooj Aftab, musician“Reflections”I found my mind kind of walking away from whatever was going on around me when I first heard this tune. I was just smiling and thinking about being at Zinc Bar in the West Village, talking to someone special. And then I kind of came back like, “Whoa, what is this beauty I’m hearing?” It was playing in a scene in some old movie I was watching on a plane. It’s become a beautiful mainstay in my vault of “deeper cuts” and I often head over to the “Thelonious Alone in San Francisco” album to listen to it. I really, really love this one. Every note kind of turns my head upside down and makes my ears smile. I love the way it’s paced, almost like a conversation. Other times it feels like a pendulum. There is an unbelievable amount of swag in the whole piece. I like hearing his voice quietly in the back, too. It perfectly sums up something very sweet and nostalgic, aptly “reflective,” like the “A” is the original story and the rest of what he plays around it is how we feel about the story as the years have gone by.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Andrew Winistorfer, writer and reissue producer“Ugly Beauty”Listening to Thelonious Monk sometimes feels like listening to Monk listening to Monk; he spent much of his recorded output reworking, rerecording and recontextualizing his masterwork compositions like “Ruby, My Dear” and “Crepuscule With Nellie” across multiple albums. His sense of the avant-garde meant not only breaking with established traditions, but also breaking his established songs.Which is why listening to “Ugly Beauty” feels like such a revelation: Here is Monk, on his last album with a quartet (1968’s “Underground”), playing the only waltz of his career. You can hear him roll and flit in and around the tenor work of Charlie Rouse, giving the proceedings a broken, emotional denouement in every key struck. Monk’s playing was always about feeling as much as technical proficiency, and here the entire composition is set up for him to be the emotional ballast, to the point that when he cedes the ground to his band in the song’s middle portion, you feel his return like a gut punch. But it’s not all mood music; he hits chords of dissonance that remind you that though it’s a waltz, Monk is still in there, fighting the fight against normalcy. One of his last original compositions before his semiformal retirement in the early ’70s, “Ugly Beauty” serves as a reminder that the true greats never stop evolving and pushing the bounds of their art.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆King Britt, professor and producer“Evidence”“Evidence” is one of the best examples of shifting time against the meter, and in the process disrupting the status quo. The Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall is otherworldly. ’Trane’s tone (timbre) and blazing response to Monk’s time traveling through meters. A transcendent masterpiece. However, I also love the ferocity of this video of the quartet playing “Evidence” live in Japan, in which Monk’s intensity pushes Charlie Rouse’s solo to truly have a serious conversation instead of a humorous one in which Monk always includes in his playing. Watching the performance also adds to the magic as opposed to just listening — truly seeing them as a unit.“Evidence” is the perfect title, as this song is a testimony to the fearlessness of Monk’s compositions and the magic of his playing. In contemporary music, I compare Dilla to Monk because of his placement of samples, challenging our idea of rhythm and hesitation. So much so, it changed the way drummers play.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Nikki Yeoh, composer, jazz pianist and educator“Trinkle, Tinkle”In the ’90s I was watching TV. An inventor was revealing their latest creation: a suit jacket that could record movement. The clever blazer would “remember” the motions and make the “model” involuntarily move in the same way. My mind wandered — what if you could do this with gloves? How would it feel to experience how Oscar Peterson, Bach or Monk moved across the piano? “Trinkle, Tinkle” is the invisible memory glove and almost the answer to my glove-desiring prayers. So ergonomically written, pianistic in its approach. It embodies ballet finesse, angular jazz-tap punchy stabs, a percussive African ancestral message and a portal into Monk’s movement and mind.I love the 2/4 bar at the end of the A section. The “extra” two beats remind me of when Monk thought the music was “cookin’” and would jump up and dance, a stumbling, twisty-turning dance like a soccer player dribbling the ball, with the utmost grace and purpose, the phrase landing being the “goal.” As with many Monk tunes, this piece is best heard and improvised to, while singing the melody. Just remember to substitute the 2/4 bar with a 4/4 bar in solos. Monk sticks closely to the melody on the original recording. Joshua Redman’s version on his self-titled album is excellent, albeit without piano. In my dreams they called me for that album, but I couldn’t go as my gloves weren’t ready!Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Morgan Rhodes, music supervisor“Let’s Cool One”Discovering “Let’s Cool One” was a complete love-at-first-listen experience. Having only heard “Solo Monk” before hearing this record, my introduction to big-band Thelonious was an awakening. While I’ll always appreciate the intimacy of the live recording on “Misterioso,” there’s something so compelling to me about the “Monk’s Blues” version. Oliver Nelson’s arrangement takes it to dramatic new levels. The upbeat tempo makes the song feel bigger and elegant, giving brass every opportunity to shine while marrying Thelonious’s well-known dissonance with traditional harmonies. The result sounds like a really good conversation between horns and piano — a call and response that holds space for both the avant-garde and the conventional. Monk’s playing is masterful on this one.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Anna Butterss, musician“Sweet and Lovely”I love Monk’s own compositions, but there is something exciting about hearing his interpretations of jazz standards. Monk tinkers with these songs, reconstructing harmony and melody alike until he might as well have written them in the first place. “Sweet and Lovely” is one of these standards that Monk revisited throughout his career — when he recorded this solo performance in 1964, he had been playing the song for over 10 years, and had made some characteristic tweaks to the original. The descending sevenths underlying the melody are classic Monk, as is his refusal to resolve the final chord to where we would expect. The lyrics of “Sweet and Lovely” (which we don’t hear, here) speak of a love with seemingly no complications: “Sweet and lovely, sweeter than the roses in May, and he loves me, there is nothing more I can say.”In contrast to this tone, Monk creates a more melancholy vignette. We first hear him play the melody in a lush, almost stylized, romantic manner, leaning into the warmth of his left hand, but the heavy descent of the bass line adds an uneasiness to the mood. Throughout his brief solo his articulation becomes more pronounced, until the melody returns in insistent, rolling octaves. Monk’s ending doesn’t quite seem to wrap things up neatly — leaving the listener slightly unsatisfied, and perhaps keeping the door open for him to return to this song once again.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Mary Halvorson, musician“Crepuscule With Nellie”Thelonious Monk was one of the first jazz musicians I listened to (on an album called “The Composer,” in the form of a cassette tape) as a preteen. At first I didn’t understand it at all, and the improvisations were totally lost on me, but somehow I kept coming back to that tape. What drew me in initially were the melodies. There is a version of “Crepuscule With Nellie” on that album. It’s classic Monk, instantly identifiable. There is so much beauty and strength of melodicism, with rhythmic quirks and whimsy integrated seamlessly, like the most natural thing in the world. You can feel Monk isn’t trying to do anything tricky; he’s just being himself. Underneath the wonderfully twisted logic, it’s still a melody you can sing along to. And once you learn Monk’s melodies, the improvisations unfold from there and enhance everything.Fast forward to 2005: I was happy, as a lifelong fan of Monk, when Blue Note released a live recording from 1957 of the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: “At Carnegie Hall.” This version of “Crepuscule” is spare, as that song often is: essentially just the melody, first with Monk alone, then with the band. It’s a perfect entry point into Monk’s sound. Then, listening to the rest of the record, you’ll hear Coltrane absolutely take off — dancing around Monk’s tunes and then effortlessly plowing through to another dimension. Some of the most inspired moments on that album are when Monk stops playing and simply lets Coltrane go.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Christina Wheeler, composer, musician and multimedia artist“Misterioso”While “’Round Midnight” is Monk’s most well known song, “Misterioso” encapsulates everything I love about his music. This was the first of his blues compositions, which he always wrote in B flat. It begins with a sparse, gentle piano introduction that unspools into a seemingly spare melody of repeating intervals that ascends harmonically. The steady rhythm accents on the two and four, moving with the hypnotic ticktock of a cat clock’s darting eyes or a dog toy’s bobbing head. What I love is how Monk twists the traditional blues structure so subtly, substituting these unexpected minor chords so he can add chromatic note clusters, only to leave the ascending melody dangling on an unresolved note. For me, this amplifies the enigmatic mood of the song’s title. Monk complements Milt Jackson’s limpid vibraphone solo of cascading notes with angular piano jabs. Monk then follows Jackson with a solo filled with all my favorite signature expressions: rhythmically off-kilter melodic splashes counterpointing the steady, 4/4 pulse; flourishes of whole-tone scales that juxtapose quick bursts of dissonant notes; and distinctively empty spaces that emphasize Monk’s flat-fingered, percussive playing. The melody’s reprise bookends the recording with a symmetry that makes “Misterioso” as accessible for dancing toddlers as it is for grown-up listeners like me. Blues is the foundation of jazz, and with “Misterioso,” Monk transmutes the blues so exquisitely and uniquely as his own.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆James Francies, pianist and producer“’Round Midnight”“’Round Midnight” is one of the best-written songs in the canon of American music; it’s a master class in counterpoint, theme and development, and harmony. For me when a song is truly great, most of the time both the harmony and melody can stand independently and still be beautiful. “’Round Midnight” is one of those songs. The melody is so thoughtful that it captures me every time. Hearing it by itself reminds me of when I first heard Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” It also reminds me of hearing Bach chorales for the first time, or Mozart. Each melodic cell develops in a way that truly shows how Monk’s mind was working during that period. The ascending five-note gesture that begins the A section of “’Round Midnight” is one of the most iconic melodic statements in the world of instrumental music; instantly recognizable. “’Round Midnight” is blues with baroque counterpoint and romantic harmony. Perfection.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆ More

Hear new music from Marc Anthony, Ice Spice and Hiatus Kaiyote.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes), and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Justin Timberlake, ‘Selfish’“Selfish,” Justin Timberlake’s first new solo song in six years, covers a thematic terrain similar to Nick Jonas’s hit “Jealous” (2014), but swaps that tune’s bravado for muted melancholy. “So if I get jealous, I can’t help it,” Timberlake croons, in a flatter approximation of Justin Bieber’s more successful forays into mid-tempo R&B. “I want every bit of you, I guess I’m selfish.” A fun, lightly carbonated beat keeps things moving forward — perhaps the only element of the song aware that it’s not quite as deep as Timberlake thinks. — LINDSAY ZOLADZMarc Anthony, ‘Punta Cana’The lilting, understated guitars and pattering bongo drums of Dominican bachata usually carry songs of restrained regret. But the salsa singer Marc Anthony isn’t one for restraint. In “Punta Cana,” named after the Dominican resort town, he’s a rejected boyfriend bitterly monitoring the happy photos posted by his ex — a scenario like the one in Maluma’s hit “Hawái.” From the first verse, he works up to throat-tearing rasps, trying to convince himself that one kiss would get her back, eventually deploying a horn section as his desperation grows. No wonder she’s keeping her distance. — JON PARELESTierra Whack, ‘Shower Song’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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Hosted by Ryan Seacrest, the star-studded ‘Disney Family Singalong: Volume II’ also presents mesmerizing duets from John Legend and Jennifer Hudson as well as Idina Menzel and Ben Platt.
May 11, 2020
AceShowbiz – ABC celebrated Mother’s Day with the airing of “Disney Family Singalong: Volume II” on Sunday, May 10. Filled with numerous performances from celebrities, this second show aiming to raise funds for Feeding America amid the novel coronavirus pandemic saw Katy Perry stealing the spotlight with her lullaby cover.
The pregnant “American Idol” judge delivered a gut-wrenching rendition of “Baby Mine” from the 1941 animated classic “Dumbo”. What made her performance unique was the fact that she was dressed up in full costume of Dumbo’s mother, while her dog, Nugget, sat still in her lap wearing Dumbo get-up.
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“Best thing on the Disney sing along [LOL emojis] great costume”, “Tweet update: The best thing about quarantine is #KatyPerry and her dog in Dumbo-inspired elephant costumes” and “Your performance brought me to tears. My son’s favorite movie, when he was young” were some of the positive reactions to her performance.

Positive Reactions to Katy Perry’s Dumbo Costume
Not all applauded Katy’s choice of costume though. “She Looks sooooo STUPID,” one viewer tweeted. Meanwhile, another expressed concern at Katy’s dressed up dog. “Poor #dog #KatyPerry don’t make your stay stay in a #dumbo costume,” the commenter wrote alongside a screencapture of Katy’s performance with Nugget.

Some of the Backlash at Katy Perry’s Dumbo Costume
Also delivering a stunning performance on the show were John Legend and Jennifer Hudson. The two Grammy winners teamed up to deliver their version of “Beauty and the Beast”, a classic love song from the 1991 film of the same name. Before their segment was shown, John took to Twitter to tell Jennifer, “An honor to sing with you!”
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Another duet performance gaining praises from viewers was one from Idina Menzel and Ben Platt. The “Frozen (2013)” star and the leading man of “The Politician” belted out their take on another classic ballad, “A Whole New World”, which came from the 1992 Disney movie “Aladdin”.
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Hosted by Ryan Seacrest, “Volume II” also featured an individual performance by Halsey and Rebel Wilson. While the “Bad at Love” hitmaker stunned with her cover of “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid”, the “Pitch Perfect” actress offered her take on “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from the same song.
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This second “Disney Family Singalong” came one month after ABC hosted the original hour-long concert. Its first show featured the likes of Beyonce Knowles, Ariana Grande and Darren Criss among others as they sang their favorite Disney songs from their living rooms, kitchens and home studios. It aimed to entertain people in self-isolation while raising awareness for charity Feeding America.

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In the 40-second remix itself, the 16-year-old hip-hop star are flexing about ‘big checks, big house, fast cars’ and calling out her competition in the rap game.
Feb 12, 2020
AceShowbiz – Bhad Bhabie a.k.a. Danielle Bregoli makes it clear that she’s not a fan of Nicki Minaj even though she released a remix of the Trinidadian rapper’s new song “Yikes”. The teenage star blasted those who called her so just because of the remix.
On Tuesday, February 11, she shared on her YouTube account her own brief remix treatment for the chart-topping song. On the 40-second freestyle, Bhabie flexes about “big checks, big house, fast cars” while calling out her competition in the rap game, “You h**s ain’t nuthin’ like me, see I’m the wifey/ Gave this h*e a little thing/ She started actin’ sheisty.”
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People were rather baffled to learn of her “Yikes” remix, considering that she used to shade Nicki in the past. This prompted people to assume that she had now become a fan of Nicki, and Bhabie wasn’t having it at all. Taking to Instagram Stories, she wrote, “Who ever thinks making a remix of a song makes you a ‘fan’ of the person y’all are dumb as f**kkkkkk.” The 16-year-old rapper later added that those who thought that way should seek help.

Bhabie threw jabs Nicki a couple of times last year. She once accused the “Anaconda” rapper of not writing her own raps, leading to her getting roasted by the Barbz. However, she stood by her claims and hit back, “I forgot that Nicki’s fandom, majority of them are brainwashed and braindead and are just so in love with her that they believe anything she says or whatever.”
Later in September, Bhabie once again stirred controversy when she claimed that Nicki was “salty” Cardi B took her spot. “No one told her to get salty,” she said at the time. “If she took Cardi under her wing and been like, ‘Yeah, that’s my b***h.’ She didn’t have to be all, ‘Ugh, I can’t stand another b***h taking my spot.’ Like sit your salty a** down and just deal with it.”

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