Aurelia Butler

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    Eurovision 2024: How to Watch and What to Know

    This year’s edition of the international song competition takes place in Sweden. The run-up has been overshadowed by the conflict in Gaza.A Croatian techno-rocker named Baby Lasagna strutting onto TV screens worldwide? It must be time for the Eurovision Song Contest.Since 1956, Eurovision has been pitting countries against each other in a fierce battle of over-the-top pop music, outlandish costumes and go-for-broke stagings. Fans of minimalism should abstain, because at Eurovision, even a modest ballad can be performed with wind machines, fur-lined capes or musicians playing upside down in a gigantic hamster wheel.The format is fairly simple: Each country chooses an act to represent it, and those acts perform live in two semifinals and one “grand final.” After the performances, the audience at home gets to vote and someone is crowned. The combined broadcasts are wildly popular: Last year, they reached 162 million people around the world.Here’s a rundown of this year’s hotly tipped acts, advice on how to watch from the United States and why the event is being hosted in Sweden this year.How does Eurovision work?Malin Akerman and Petra Mede, the hosts of this year’s contest, during the semi-final on Tuesday.Jessica Gow/EPA, via ShutterstockBaby Lasagna is one of 37 acts competing in this year’s edition, which is organized, as usual, by the Switzerland-based European Broadcasting Union, or E.B.U. As the number of participating countries expanded over the decades, the E.B.U. set up two semifinals to winnow the field; the first took place on Tuesday, and the second happens Thursday.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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    Steve Albini’s 10 Essential Recordings

    The musician and audio engineer, who died on Tuesday at 61, gave artists including Nirvana and PJ Harvey an authentic representation of their work at a reasonable price.The Chicago noise wrangler Steve Albini’s signature recording technique was the invisible force that brought alternative rock’s most recognizable sounds to life. Preferring the term “recording engineer” to “producer,” he championed a style of elevated realism that remains as influential as the tracks he captured — most famously drum-heavy albums by Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey and the Jesus Lizard.Those sessions would define his career, but Albini, who died on Tuesday at 61, was loathe to say he had a “sound.” Bands of all D.I.Y. genres — from the famous to the unknown — converged on his Electrical Audio studio seeking what he really provided: an organic, authentic and honest representation of their work at a reasonable price.Albini estimated he’d recorded “a couple thousand” albums in a 2018 interview; his productivity was related to the purity of his process. Albini sessions were done quickly and affordably. Instruments were recorded with room microphones to capture the natural reverberations of the space. Analog gear and one-take recordings were preferred. “Anyone who has made records for more than a very short period will recognize that trying to manipulate a sound after it has been recorded is never as effective as when it’s recorded correctly in the first place,” he told Sound on Sound magazine.Here are 10 songs that demonstrate his philosophy of the studio. (Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.)Pixies, ‘Where Is My Mind’ (1988)For the first record he recorded outside of his friend circle, Albini used the buzzy Boston band Pixies as lab animals for his sonic ideas: loading its debut album, “Surfer Rosa,” with off-the-cuff studio chatter, refusing to use silence in between songs and making the bassist Kim Deal sing the reverb-soaked background vocals on “Where Is My Mind?” in the studio’s echo-y bathroom. In retrospect, Albini said his production touches were intrusive, but the next generation of alt-rock titans found them invigorating. “‘Where Is My Mind?’” later became one of the records that other bands would reference when they wanted to work with me,” he told The Guardian. “Nobody expected it to take off because no underground American band of that generation had even a fleeting notion of commercial success as a goal. People just wanted to blow minds.”The Breeders, ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ (1990)When Albini worked with Deal on her solo project the Breeders, “I instantly preferred it to the Pixies,” he said in the book “Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies.” “There was a simultaneous charm to Kim’s presentation to her music that’s both childlike and giddy and also completely mature and kind of dirty.” The band, often in pajamas, banged out its debut LP, “Pod,” in the first week of a two-week session. “Steve Albini wasn’t interested in ‘perfecting’ a song or a performance: His métier was getting the best sound from the equipment and pressing ‘record,’” the Breeders bassist Josephine Wiggs said in a 2008 news release. “He was utterly pleased with himself when mixing the record, saying, ‘Look — no EQ!’”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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    Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake Beef Crashed the Genius Website

    The furious exchange of diss tracks and the rush to interpret each song briefly overwhelmed Genius, where users can annotate lyrics to songs.Cole Swain was scrolling through his phone one morning before school last week when he received an alert from YouTube. It was 8:24 a.m. in Los Angeles, where Mr. Swain is a university student, and Kendrick Lamar had just released “Euphoria,” a highly anticipated diss track targeting Drake in the escalating showdown between the two rappers.As Mr. Swain’s group chats and social media feeds blew up, he logged onto Genius, a website where users can transcribe and annotate lyrics to help explain their meaning. A volunteer editor for the site and a fan of Lamar’s, Mr. Swain was ready to dig into the track.But Genius was apparently not ready for Mr. Swain and the crush of visitors. After nearly two weeks of silence after Drake’s diss record, Lamar’s response on April 30 drove swarms of traffic to Genius, causing it to crash temporarily just as fans were clamoring to pore over what the artist had to say.“This is crazy,” Mr. Swain, a 19-year-old who is studying bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled thinking. “Everyone is scrambling to write the lyrics as much as everyone wants to read them.”A screenshot of the Genius homepage. The feud between Lamar and Drake hit breakneck speed over the weekend, with both musicians trading songs packed with heavy punches. All the while on Genius, a small, collaborative corner of the internet built for those who love music, users like Mr. Swain worked furiously to deconstruct the songs as the hype around the releases exploded.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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    Disney, Hulu and Max Streaming Bundle Will Soon Become Available

    The offering from Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery shows how rival companies are willing to work together to navigate an uncertain entertainment landscape.In a rare moment of solidarity, two entertainment giants are teaming up to try to get consumers to stop canceling their streaming services so frequently.Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Wednesday that they would start offering a bundle of their Disney+, Hulu and Max streaming services this summer, a sign of how rivals have become more willing to join forces in order to confront an ever-changing media landscape.The companies said that the bundle would be available to buy on any of the three streaming platform’s websites (Disney owns Disney+ and Hulu; Warner Bros. Discovery owns Max), and that there would be a commercial-free version as well as one featuring ads. The companies did not announce prices or a date when the offering would become available.The monthly retail price for subscribing to commercial-free versions of all three services is currently $48; the plans with ads cost a combined $25. A bundled offering is likely to cost less.Media executives have been vexed in recent years as the extremely profitable cable bundle has come undone by cord cutting, and as viewers have rapidly turned to on-demand streaming entertainment. The transition to streaming has been difficult for the companies, which have been bleeding cash.Disney, for instance, announced this week that Disney+ was profitable last quarter for the first time, though its overall streaming division lost money.Adding to the uncertainty, consumers have shown a much greater willingness to cull and cut streaming services over the last year or so, further confounding executives who have slashed costs and reduced the number of television shows to get closer to making meaningful profits.Disney has introduced a bundle for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. The company has said it has seen good results from that offering.Executives have been flirting with the idea of cobbling together a streaming offering across media companies to give consumers less incentive to cancel. The Disney+, Hulu and Max offering is a significant step in that direction.Joe Earley, the president of Disney Entertainment’s direct-to-consumer division, said in a statement that the “new partnership puts subscribers first.” JB Perrette, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery’s global streaming unit, called it “a powerful new road map for the future of the industry.”In February, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox said they were forming a joint venture to create a streaming service dedicated to their sports offerings. It is expected to debut in the fall. More

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    Settlements Reached in Travis Scott Astroworld Concert Deaths

    A trial had been set to hear evidence that organizers of a 2021 Travis Scott concert knew the crowd was too large and ignored pleas to stop it as 10 people were crushed.A lawyer for Live Nation, the concert company, said in court on Wednesday that settlements had been reached in all but one of the lawsuits over the deaths of 10 people who were fatally crushed during a performance by Travis Scott at the 2021 Astroworld festival in Houston.The disclosure came as lawyers were preparing for the first trial over the deaths. A lawyer for the plaintiffs in that case confirmed that a settlement had been reached with the defendants, including Mr. Scott, Live Nation and Apple, which live-streamed the event.The trial had been expected to present a jury with harrowing testimony about the chaotic conditions at the Nov. 5, 2021, concert and the warnings raised by some of those working there. The victims, including two teenagers and a 9-year-old boy, suffocated in the midst of the heaving crowd while Mr. Scott performed.For more than two years, details have slowly emerged in court filings and police reports, revealing the behind-the-scenes arguments and backstage wrangling that accompanied one of the worst concert disasters in the United States.Some of the organizers of the Astroworld festival knew that the space was too small, according to evidence uncovered during the preparations for trial. Mr. Scott kept performing as people were suffocating, it showed, signaling a plan to continue the show until after Drake had performed despite efforts to stop the show earlier. A police investigation pointed to what the plaintiffs identified as a potential reason: a $4.5 million contract with Apple requiring Mr. Scott to finish the show in order to get paid.Ten people were fatally crushed during a performance by Travis Scott during the 2021 Astroworld festival in Houston. Jamaal Ellis/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressWe 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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    Steve Albini, Influential Producer of Nirvana and Pixies Albums, Dies at 61

    A musician and audio engineer, he helped define the sound of alternative rock while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry.Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered studio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative music in the 1980s, ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey and Pixies, along with hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago. He was 61.The cause was a heart attack, said Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio that Mr. Albini founded in 1997.With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded — as raw as possible — and an even sharper tongue for anything he deemed mediocre or compromised, Mr. Albini was a visionary in the studio and one of rock’s most acerbic wits.On his own, he led the bands Big Black and Shellac, both of which venerated loud, abrasive guitars and snarling vocals. In those groups, and in virtually every project he worked on, Mr. Albini clung to punk’s defiant do-it-yourself ethic with an almost religious tenacity.He also long maintained an impish zeal to provoke and offend. Big Black’s last, most acclaimed album, from 1987, has a typically unprintable title, and he once dismissed Nirvana — the group that later hired him to record the album “In Utero” (1993), at the peak of their fame — as nothing but “R.E.M. with a fuzzbox.”Nirvana hired Mr. Albini to record the album “In Utero” at the height of the group’s fame.DGCWe 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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    Most Wrongful Death Lawsuits Tied to Astroworld Festival Are Settled

    The rapper Travis Scott and the concert promoter Live Nation faced 10 suits after the 2021 tragedy. One case from the family of a 9-year-old victim is pending.Nine of the 10 wrongful death lawsuits that were filed after a stampede at the Astroworld music festival in 2021 have been settled, a spokeswoman for Live Nation confirmed on Wednesday after a court hearing about the latest agreement.Ten people were killed and hundreds more injured as a result of a large crowd surge during a performance by the rapper Travis Scott in Houston on Nov. 5, 2021. The suits alleged that Scott, who was the headliner, the concert promoter Live Nation and other defendants had contributed to the deaths through negligent planning and a lack of safety measures.A lawsuit filed by the family of 23-year-old Madison Dubiski was set to go to trial this week. But a lawyer for Live Nation said in a civil district court in Harris County that the case had been settled along with eight others, according to The Associated Press.In its lawsuit, Ms. Dubiski’s family alleged that the defendants had caused her death by their failure to adequately plan, staff and supervise the concert. “While in attendance at the festival, Madison was trampled and crushed resulting in horrific injuries, pre-death pain and suffering, and her death,” the suit said.The terms of the settlements were confidential.The remaining pending lawsuit was filed by the family of 9-year-old Ezra Blount, the youngest person killed. Lawyers for his family did not respond to requests for comment.Last year, a grand jury declined to indict Scott and five others connected to the festival. A crowd of 50,000 people had gathered for the third iteration of Scott’s event, named after the 2018 album that helped make him a star.Ben Sisario More

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    What Happens Next for Kendrick Lamar and Drake? Let’s Discuss.

    After a week of bitter diss tracks, a conversation about how the rap battle played out for the chart-topping rappers and how their personas and careers might be affected.It’s gotten ugly between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.Over the weekend, the two generation-defining rappers turned a decade of competitive tension into increasingly personal attacks delivered on a barrage of diss tracks filled with taunts, insults, accusations of abuse, alleged inside information and threats.With Lamar’s songs, including “Euphoria” and “Not Like Us,” dominating the online conversation and streaming charts, the battle seemed to cool on Sunday evening, after a resigned-sounding second response this weekend from Drake, who denied some of the most serious claims against him, including pedophilia, even as he doubled down on his allegations against Lamar. Then, on Tuesday, a security guard was shot and hospitalized in serious condition outside Drake’s Toronto home; the authorities said they did not yet have a motive and the investigation was ongoing.As the musical volleys paused, at least for now, the New York Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica and the Times music reporter Joe Coscarelli surveyed the songs, the strategy, the reputational wreckage and where each rapper stands now for an episode of the video podcast Popcast (Deluxe). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.JOE COSCARELLI I don’t think we need to jump in right away to definitively say who we think won this beef, because the fight seems to have been decided by popular vote. Nobody’s really calling this for Drake, right?JON CARAMANICA I think even Drake is not calling this for Drake, because of the tone of what he put out last, “The Heart Part 6.” In the big picture, though, everyone won and nobody won. Thinking about fandom in the stan era, you’re either on one side or the other. But what I’ve realized in the wake of these songs is that Drake fandom comes with different levels of fickleness. His fans are willing to entertain, “Maybe he’s not the person that I thought he was.” Whereas most Kendrick fans are not willing to entertain that idea, despite Drake’s allegations in “Family Matters” that Kendrick at some point hired a crisis management team to cover up that he abused his fiancée, which are quite serious.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