Aurelia Butler

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    10 Songs That Celebrate the Sound of Philadelphia

    Explore the city’s rich musical history with songs from Patti LaBelle, Alex G, the Roots and more.Patti LaBelleMichael Reynolds/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,Over the weekend, I made a solemn vow to the football gods: If the Eagles won the Super Bowl, then the next Amplifier playlist would be made up entirely of songs by artists from Philadelphia. The football gods upheld their end of this bargain — in case you haven’t heard, the Eagles absolutely trounced the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs, 40-22 — so today I will uphold mine with 10 tracks from the City of Brotherly Love (and the brotherly shove).Across all sorts of genres, Philadelphia has a rich musical history and a vibrant musical present. The sound of Philadelphia soul defined the early 1970s (even David Bowie wanted a piece of the action), and its heirs adapted its influence into a neo-soul boom that took off in the late 1990s. Philly has long had a thriving underground music scene, too, as evidenced by its tight-knit indie-rock community and its reputation for eclectic, innovative hip-hop.This playlist is certainly not meant to be definitive. Since I limited myself to just 10 tracks, I tried to avoid the obvious, which is to say you will hear neither “Motownphilly” nor the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme song. Today’s playlist does, however, feature some familiar local luminaries (Patti LaBelle, the Roots) alongside some younger artists (Jazmine Sullivan, Tierra Whack, Alex G) who are updating the sounds of the city for a new generation.I restrained myself from including the Eagles Victory Song, though, so I suppose you will be able to enjoy this playlist even if you are not a fan of the new N.F.L. champs. It definitely hits different if you’re wearing your Kelly green, though. So fix yourself a cheese steak (wit or witout), pour yourself a tall glass of wooder and press play.My style fortified by all of Philadel-phi,LindsayListen along while you read.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In Hospitals and Hospices, ‘Music as Care’ Offers a New Kind of Comfort

    A violinist plays for her father. A singer takes requests. In hospitals and hospices, bedside performers offer a new kind of care.In the five years my father was languishing in a nursing home in Hamburg, I often brought my violin to play by his bedside. I would prop up my copy of Bach with the help of a water bottle and read through sonatas and partitas I had learned as a teenager, when I was considering a career in music.My father’s reaction was hard to read. His gaze was unchangingly stoic during that final stage of his struggle with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Sometimes my mother saw him attempt to clap. After a halting reading of Bach’s majestic “Chaconne” that would have drawn scorn from the critic in me, we both clearly heard him say “thank you.”One day, a caregiver buttonholed me in the corridor and requested that I play in the day room where they wheeled residents for a change of scenery. As it was, she said, they could all hear me through the walls. She might have picked up on my hesitation: Playing in front of any kind of audience always triggered my anxiety.I agreed, mostly for my father’s sake. But on the appointed day, with my audience fanned out in their beds in various states of consciousness, I found myself playing freely. Nurses glided by on soundless sneakers, a lunch cart clattered in the distance; one woman let out sighs. Afterward, I realized that I had never entered into such a state of flow while playing in public. What had been intended as an act of care for the residents had also healed a tiny bit of the rift in my relationship with the violin.Vocke, Okundaye, Sean Brennan, Lara Bruckmann and Tamara Wellons practice before making their rounds at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.Maansi Srivastava for The New York TimesI shared this story on a brisk January morning in Baltimore in the old boardroom at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where I sat in on a peer supervision session of professional bedside artists. These musicians, all faculty members at the Peabody Institute, are part of a nationwide trend to bring the arts into health care settings.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Sly Stone Primer: 15 Songs (and More) From a Musical Visionary

    The Sly & the Family Stone leader is the subject of a new documentary directed by Questlove. Here’s what to know about his brilliant career and crushing addiction.In Sly & the Family Stone’s prime, from 1968 to 1973, the band was one of music’s greatest live acts as well as a fount of remarkable singles including “Everyday People” and “Hot Fun in the Summertime.” There was a shining optimism to its sound, which mixed funk with the ecstasy of gospel, a little rock and a touch of psychedelia — as well as a vision of community and brotherhood that stood out in a period of political separatism.The visionary behind it all was Sly Stone, who wrote, produced and arranged the music, winning acclaim as the author of invigorating anthems and an inventor of new, more complex recording sounds. But by the early 1970s, he was ravaged by drug addiction, kicking off a cycle of spirals and comebacks and sporadic, desultory live appearances. Now Stone, 81, is the subject of “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius),” a documentary directed by Ahmir Thompson, better known as the Roots drummer Questlove, that debuts on Hulu on Thursday.Stone, who was born Sylvester Stewart and grew up in Vallejo, Calif., had gospel in his blood. His father, K.C., was a deacon in a Pentecostal church, and Sly began performing with his younger brother Freddie and younger sisters Rose and Vet in the Stewart Four, which released a single, “On the Battlefield,” in 1956 on the Church of God in Christ label.In 1967, “Dance to the Music” became the first of Sly & the Family Stone’s five Top 10 singles.Stephen Paley/Sony, via Onyx CollectiveAs he learned to play guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and harmonica, Stone’s ambition swelled. In 1964, he produced and co-wrote Bobby Freeman’s No. 5 hit “C’mon and Swim,” and soon talked himself into an on-air gig at KSOL, the Bay Area’s AM soul music powerhouse, where he read dedications in his nimble baritone and mixed in Bob Dylan and Beatles songs to the format. “I think there shouldn’t be ‘Black radio.’ Just radio,” he later told Rolling Stone. “Everybody be a part of everything.”After having a small local hit in the Viscaynes, one of the few integrated groups in doo wop, he assembled Sly & the Family Stone with a lineup of men and women, Black and white. In 1967, “Dance to the Music” became their first of five Top 10 singles. Two years later, they performed at Woodstock, providing one of the weekend’s high points. The days of playing nightclubs were over. “After Woodstock, everything glowed,” Stone wrote in his 2023 memoir.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Names Richard Grenell Interim Leader of Kennedy Center

    President Trump announced in a post on social media Monday that he was appointing Richard Grenell as the “interim executive director” of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Mr. Grenell, who was Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, is one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks.The president wrote that Mr. Grenell “shares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture” and would be overseeing “daily operations” to ensure there was no more “ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”The appointment was just the latest in a series of moves designed to strengthen Mr. Trump’s grip on the performing arts center in Washington.He kicked off a purge Friday night, when Mr. Trump announced his intent to gut the Kennedy Center’s board and install himself as chairman. He had denounced the center’s programming choices.On Monday, 18 board members and the board chairman were removed from an official roster on the center’s website. The excised members were appointees of Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr. The board’s chairman, David M. Rubenstein, was also removed.Mr. Rubenstein, a financier who was initially appointed to the board by former President George W. Bush, has given $111 million to the center over the years, making him the biggest donor in its history.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Weeknd Hits No. 1 for a Fifth Time With ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’

    Boosted by physical sales and a Grammy performance, the album had the biggest week since Taylor Swift’s huge opening last year.The Weeknd has scored his fifth No. 1 album with “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” posting the biggest overall numbers on the Billboard chart since Taylor Swift nearly a year ago.The release of “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” which the poppy-yet-creepy Canadian star announced at a livestreamed concert in São Paulo in September, was delayed by a week to Jan. 31 because of the Los Angeles wildfires. But then it got a prominent boost when the Weeknd performed a two-song medley on the Grammy Awards broadcast last week, revealing that he had quashed his four-year boycott over the show’s voting process.“Hurry Up Tomorrow,” the Weeknd’s sixth studio album, had the equivalent of 490,500 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. Although the Weeknd is a streaming heavyweight — more than 20 of his tracks have garnered at least a billion clicks on Spotify — the album’s opening-week numbers were driven by unit sales. It sold 183,000 digital downloads, 99,000 CDs and 77,000 copies on vinyl, the Weeknd’s best week in that format. (There were even 1,000 on cassette.) Its 22 tracks were streamed 172 million times.The album’s total number of 490,500 — a composite derived from a formula used by Luminate and Billboard to reconcile the various music formats — was the biggest weekly take since last April, when Swift’s “Tortured Poets” burst out of the gate with 2.6 million.Also this week, Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”) fell to second place after three weeks at the top and SZA’s “SOS” dropped one spot to No. 3.The Grammys offered a modest boost to some of the night’s big winners and nominees. Kendrick Lamar, who took record and song of the year (“Not Like Us”), fell one spot to No. 4 with “GNX,” though its numbers were slightly up. Billie Eilish, who performed but went home empty-handed, saw her LP “Hit Me Hard and Soft” rise five spots to No. 5. And Chappell Roan, who performed and won best new artist, jumped eight spots to No. 6 with “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.” More

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    Breaking Down Kendrick Lamar’s Drake-centric Super Bowl Halftime Show

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeOn Sunday in New Orleans, Kendrick Lamar became the first solo rapper to headline the Super Bowl halftime show, performing a medley of hits, deep cuts and Drake disses.Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jon Caramanica called it both “curiously low-key” and, in the case of the climactic use “Not Like Us,” complete with a Serena Williams cameo, “quite a spectacle — perhaps the peak of any rap battle, ever.”Immediately after the game, on an emergency episode of Popcast, we discussed the way Lamar’s beef with Drake provided the momentum of the performance; the cameos from SZA, Samuel L. Jackson and Williams; the rest of the set list, including an unreleased, fan-favorite track (and no “Alright”); the surprise leak of the show a few days early; the protester who unveiled a flag for Gaza and Sudan; and whether this is finally the end of the biggest beef in hip-hop history.Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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    Watch Demi Moore Transform in ‘The Substance’

    The writer and director Coralie Fargeat narrates a sequence from her film, which is nominated for best picture.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A miracle drug starts to create some side effects in this scene from “The Substance.”Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has been taking a black-market drug that has created a younger version of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley). Her time must be divided between the younger and older versions on a strict schedule, but in this sequence, Elisabeth finds out what happens if she doesn’t respect the balance of that time.She wakes up after Sue’s wild evening to a disheveled apartment and one aged appendage, the result of Sue taking more fluid from Elisabeth’s body to buy more time in her young body. Elisabeth notices that one of her fingers now looks dramatically older than the others.As she runs to the sink to try to wash the age away, the pace become faster and closer. Narrating the scene, the director Coralie Fargeat said, “The idea was all those close-ups that go more and more macro on the finger is to project Elisabeth’s fears and Elisabeth’s thoughts about what’s happening to her.”As Elisabeth calls the Substance company to discuss her “alteration,” she is taunted by a giant billboard out her window that shows her younger self. Fargeat said that she included a shot from above on Elisabeth to “film her discomfort, the fact that she’s now threatened.” This point of view is almost “a face-off with her double, and above her as if she was tiny and oppressed by the situation.”Read the “Substance” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More