Aurelia Butler

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    ‘You Can Never Look Back’: How ’70s Rockers Rebooted for the ’80s

    The year 1984 was a watershed in pop music. The stars who’d made it big the previous decade had to embrace new instruments and MTV or risk being left behind.Don Henley was stuck.It was the fall of 1983, and the former Eagles star was cruising down the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, listening to a working tape of a tune for his second solo album. While struggling for words to one section, he glanced to the left lane and saw a gold Cadillac Seville with a curious decoration: a Grateful Dead decal.That image went right into the song, “The Boys of Summer,” a synthesizer-bathed memoir of lost love that Henley delivered with the kind of cutting, resonant zinger that was the signature of all his best Eagles lyrics:Out on the road todayI saw a Deadhead sticker on a CadillacA little voice inside my head said“Don’t look back, you can never look back”“It was an odd juxtaposition, to see a Deadhead sticker on a car that is associated with conservatism,” Henley recalled in a recent interview. “To me, it was a symbol of changing times.”The music had changed too. Henley was far from alone as an A-list 1970s rocker who had arrived in the ’80s to find a music scene transformed in sound and vision, now driven by pop singles and buzzing with electronics. The hallmarks of mainstream ’70s rock — long guitar solos, bushy sideburns — were out. Synthesizers, drum machines and stylized, eye-popping music videos were in.In most tellings of pop music history, the 1980s were primarily the springboard for a fresh crop of stars like Madonna, Prince and Duran Duran, who embraced and defined the flashy artifice of the MTV age. But the new era also had a powerful impact on the generation that preceded it. For rock’s older guard, even those like Henley, who had scaled the heights of fame, the emergence of a new order in pop was a kind of evolutionary event, and its implicit challenge was clear: Adapt or be left behind.“The ’80s ushered in a whole new paradigm,” Henley said. “We all sort of had to get with the program. Some people got with the program, and some didn’t.”Don Henley came up in Eagles, but realized he had to shift his sound for his second solo album.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty Images More

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    When a Baby Killer Isn’t a Straightforward Villain

    The real-life murderer who inspired “The Girl With the Needle” was “a monster,” said the actress who plays her, “but the movie is also about showing you her struggles.”In 1920s Copenhagen, a woman named Dagmar Overbye was convicted of murdering multiple infants whose mothers had paid her to find adoptive families for them. She confessed to killing 16 babies, though the true number of victims was likely higher.One of Denmark’s most notorious serial killers, Overbye is a character in the movie “The Girl with the Needle,” which arrives in U.S. theaters on Friday and is Denmark’s entry for the best international feature Oscar.Yet the film isn’t a true-crime thriller, and Overbye isn’t portrayed as a straightforward villain. Instead the story is about “finding the humanity in these horrible deeds,” the film’s director, Magnus von Horn, said in a video interview — a tall task considering the deeds involve burning, drowning and strangling babies.How to perform the high-wire act of humanizing a killer?“You focus on the characters,” von Horn said.And you have to cast actors fearless enough to pull it off.Enter Trine Dyrholm and Vic Carmen Sonne, the two leads in “The Girl with the Needle,” and two of Denmark’s most boundary-pushing actors.The movie is based on the story of Dagmar Overbye, one of Denmark’s most notorious serial killers.MubiWe 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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    New Movies and Shows Coming to Netflix in December: ‘Squid Game’ and More

    This month has a ton of new titles arriving for U.S. subscribers, including a Nate Bargatze special and the return of “Squid Game.”Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of December’s most promising new titles for U.S. subscribers. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Black Doves’ Season 1Starts streaming: Dec. 5Created by Joe Barton (known for the stylish series “Giri/Haji” and “The Lazarus Project”), this twisty thriller has Keira Knightley playing Helen, a secret agent so deeply undercover that she is married to the British politician she is spying on — and is the mother to his children. When Jason (Andrew Koji), a man Helen was having an affair with, is very publicly assassinated by London mobsters, Helen’s boss, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), and her close colleague Sam (Ben Whishaw) try to keep the investigation into the murder from reaching back to her and blowing her cover. “Black Doves” is set in a pulp fiction version of England where everyone is hiding something and no one fully trusts anybody — a place where information is currency and people survive on guile.‘Maria’Starts streaming: Dec. 11The third film in the director Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of biopics (after “Jackie” and “Spencer”), “Maria” is a showcase for Angelina Jolie, who plays the opera diva Maria Callas. Set during the final week of the singer’s life, the movie has Callas in a druggie stupor, imagining that she is sitting for an interview in which she reflects on her tumultuous life. Jolie reportedly spent months in opera training, not to learn how to copy Callas’s voice but rather to make sure she could stand, move and breathe like a master.‘No Good Deed’ Season 1Starts streaming: Dec. 12At the start of this dark dramedy, a Los Angeles couple, Paul (Ray Romano) and Lydia (Lisa Kudrow), are anxious to sell their house: a beautiful, century-old home in an upscale neighborhood. A handful of motivated buyers, played by Luke Wilson, Linda Cardellini, Teyonah Parris, O-T Fagbenle, Abbi Jacobson and Poppy Liu, circle the property while Paul and Lydia try to hide their secret reasons for the sale — and their relationship with a dangerous ex-con played by Denis Leary. Similar to the creator Liz Feldman’s previous Netflix series, “Dead to Me,” “No Good Deed” is about people who seem outwardly to be enjoying some material success but whose personal lives are in shambles; privately, they all feel they’re on the brink of disaster.‘Your Friend, Nate Bargatze’Starts streaming: Dec. 24The stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze was popular before he hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time in 2023, but that episode — and a second hosting gig in October — helped boost him into comedy’s A-list. This month, Bargatze will be hosting a Christmas-themed variety show for CBS (airing on Dec. 19 and also available on Paramount+); and then on Christmas Eve, he will debut this third Netflix stand-up special. It makes sense for Bargatze to be delivering new material at a time when families are gathering and looking for something to do. He is one of the rare modern comics whose profanity-free jokes are suitable for pretty much all ages, touching on such universal topics as marriage, parenting and how to navigate the modern world’s sometimes confusing etiquette.‘Squid Game’ Season 2Starts streaming: Dec. 26The first season of the Korean mystery-thriller “Squid Game” became an unexpected international phenomenon, captivating audiences with its depiction of an elaborate tournament in a remote location in which desperate people risk their lives for a huge cash prize. As Season 2 begins, rumors about the game have begun to leak out, and several people are looking to find it — including the former players Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) and Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun). The series’s Emmy-winning writer-director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, returns for the second of a planned three-season run, bringing back the visually spectacular and nerve-racking contests of Season 1. He also adds more social commentary, examining the brokenness of a world, very much like our own, where such a deadly underground competition could exist.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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    Debbie Nelson, Eminem’s Mother, Dies at 69

    The two had a fraught relationship that was immortalized in many of Eminem’s earliest hits.Debbie Nelson, a single mother from Missouri whose tumultuous relationship with her eldest son, the rapper Eminem, provided fodder for some of his early hits, died on Monday. She was 69.The death was confirmed by Dennis Dennehy, a longtime representative for Eminem. He did not say where she died or cite a cause.Ms. Nelson was known for her fraught relationship with Eminem, who through his talent went from being a bullied little boy named Marshall Mathers to a hugely successful rapper. He wrote about their struggles in several songs, including one of his biggest hits.In his rage-fueled, freewheeling 2002 single “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” Eminem has a reckoning with his mother over his upbringing, accusing her of neglect, abuse and prescription-pill abuse.In the chorus, he sarcastically apologizes for making her cry, only to add, “How dare you try to take what you didn’t help me to get?”Ms. Nelson, who sued her son for defamation in 1999 over another unflattering representation of her in his song “My Name Is,” shared her account of their relationship in a no-holds-barred memoir, “My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem,” which was published in 2008.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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    ‘Our Little Secret’ and More New Holiday Movies to Stream

    From “Our Little Secret” to “The Merry Gentlemen,” a roundup of several holiday movies to stream this season.“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” the song goes. “There’ll be parties for hosting/Billions of movies for bingeing.”If the Andy Williams chestnut doesn’t actually mention streaming, that’s only because it came out long before Hallmark, UPtv, Great American Family and Lifetime decided to flood the holidays with movies. But because time is a finite resource, the following selection of new seasonal offerings focuses on releases from the major platforms. And remember: If you see someone stranded in a blizzard once, it’s a plot development. If you see it 10 times, it’s a cliché. If you see it 50 times, it’s a holiday-movie convention — and this time of year, we love conventions.‘Dear Santa’Stream it on Paramount+.This year’s entry in the bad Santa subgenre goes all out. And that’s because the bearded, stocky guy in a red outfit is actually Satan (Jack Black). He has been summoned by young Liam (Robert Timothy Smith), who mistakenly switched two letters in his note to Santa. And now the devil won’t leave until Liam has requested three wishes, which sounds more straightforward than it turns out to be. “Dear Satan” does not fully deliver on this mouthwatering premise, which is surprising considering the movie is directed by a Farrelly brother (Bobby) and the casting is on point — you feel Black has waited all his life to play this part. Still, there are enough nuts for this fruitcake to go down easy.Watch for: gastrointestinal distress.‘Hot Frosty’Stream it on Netflix.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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    5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Brazilian Jazz

    When the term “Brazilian jazz” arises, one might think of bossa nova, or Sergio Mendes (its most popular purveyor), and stop there. But there’s a world beyond those sunny instrumentals and bright vocals, where artists like Hermeto Pascoal, João Donato and Leny Andrade show that Brazilian jazz can be funky, soulful and esoteric. This type of jazz had deeper resonance beyond the oceanfront views it conjured.The origins of Brazilian jazz are often traced to the late 1950s, to the advent of bossa nova by the composers Donato and Antônio Carlos Jobim. Blending samba (a style of music born out of the Afro-Brazilian communities in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia) with American jazz, bossa nova — which means “new wave” — reached its apex in 1964 when “The Girl From Ipanema,” sung by the Brazilian vocalist Astrud Gilberto, hit the U.S. singles chart, and won the Grammy for record of the year in 1965. Yet before the song’s success, American composers like Quincy Jones, Herbie Mann and Dave Brubeck recorded bossa nova albums, which stoked the curiosity of U.S. listeners.Thanks to the contributors below, a mix of musicians, writers and scholars, we get to hear Brazilian jazz beyond the gravitational pull of bossa nova and samba, from its height in the ’60s to the present day. And while you’ll see familiar names pop up more than once, they’re often in conversation with others from the broad space of the genre. Traces of bossa nova and samba emerge, but these selections also take fusion, ambient and psychedelia into account. You can find a playlist at the end of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Jeff Caltabiano, writer and historianSão Paulo Underground, “Jagoda’s Dream”Brazil, a country rich with Indigenous musical traditions, has had an ongoing dialogue with the (North) American jazz tradition since the 1950s. That dialogue has broadened well beyond the breezy straightjacket of bossa nova. The visionary American composer and cornetist Rob Mazurek spent eight years living in Brazil, and has been in musical conversation with the São Paulo-born musicians M. Takara and Guilherme Granado for two decades, with the group São Paulo Underground. Takara and Granado go back even further, having met as teenagers in the city’s punk scene. Granado’s hazy keyboards open up “Jagoda’s Dream,” from the band’s third album, “Três Cabeças Loucuras” (“Three crazy heads”), from 2011. The song was written for their friend’s daughter, with a melody and harmony by Mazurek and an infectious cavaquinho rhythm pattern by Takara. The cavaquinho, a miniature guitar with a bright sound, is prominent throughout. During the recording, Takara played cavaquinho with his hands while playing the drums with his feet. Richard Ribeiro played second drums. The song is a firecracker that represents São Paulo’s creative music scene and its hybrid of sounds. A chorus of voices takes us out, wordlessly repeating the rhythm pattern, about to wake from Jagoda’s magnificent dream.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Joyce Moreno, singer and composerTenório Jr., “Embalo”In the early 1960s, bossa nova was at its peak in Brazil and was also growing worldwide. Some Brazilian musicians who were fluent with both bossa nova and jazz began to organize themselves into instrumental groups, mostly trios, but adding horns on occasion. They created music — samba-jazz they called it — with inventive improvisation, sultry rhythms and creative harmonies. One of the most brilliant pianists to emerge from the samba-jazz movement was Tenório Jr. In 1964, at 23, he recorded his one and only album as a leader, “Embalo,” which is now widely acknowledged a classic of the genre. On the title track, a composition by Tenório arranged by the alto saxophonist Paulo Moura, Tenório’s solo is a gorgeous example of the heights that made-in-Brazil jazz could achieve. Unfortunately, that recording is the only taste of Tenório’s genius we still have. In Buenos Aires in 1976, while on tour as a sideman for the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, Tenório mysteriously “disappeared” in Argentina on the eve of that country’s military coup (a story told in the excellent animated film “They Shot the Piano Player” by the Spanish filmmakers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal). Tenório’s music, however, lives on forever.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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    Is the Awkward ‘Diversity Era’ of Hollywood Behind Us?

    The past decade’s clumsiest attempts to cram new faces into old stories now feel like a moment, and a genre, of their own.Hollywood has its eras, often apparent only in retrospect. Think back several years: Do you remember packed theaters giving Black-power salutes at screenings of “Black Panther”? Do you remember when an all-female version of “Ghostbusters” was treated as a pioneering development? Do you remember when the writer of a “Star Wars” film described the Empire as a “white supremacist (human) organization” after Donald Trump’s 2016 election? Has enough time now passed to say that was all a bit strange?Looking back, you can see a period when identitarian politics were in cultural ascendancy; you can spot the moments when our media overlords — on their back feet over rage at the crimes of Harvey Weinstein, the paucity of nonwhite nominees at the Oscars, the aftermath of George Floyd’s death — vowed to change their ways and atone for their past. But what was particular to the Hollywood of the 2010s was the way these politics fused with the industry’s insatiable demand for sequels, spinoffs and reboots, giving us a curious and mercenary new invention: the inclusive multimillion-dollar blockbuster. (The BIPOCbuster, if you will.) It’s the same old thing, but with a bold and visionary new twist: fewer white guys.Or at least it was. The moment is easier to see now that it has ebbed. Many of the films it produced seemed to imagine themselves as barrier-breaking productions, landmarks like “In the Heat of the Night.” In reality, they have come to feel more like a niche genre of their own, the way spaghetti westerns or blaxploitation films do — unique products of a particular cultural moment that now require context and explanation to understand. They remind me, more than anything, of 1980s action flicks, a genre whose tropes and ideologies feel almost comically redolent of a specific era, whether the films are good or so-bad-they’re-good. This was the decade of Sylvester Stallone’s going back to Vietnam to try to win the war for Reagan’s America in “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” the decade of flat-topped martial-arts commandos, good cops who don’t play by the rules, gunshots that make cars explode, brawny henchmen machine-gunned by the dozens. But by the time we reached the 1993 meta-action-comedy “Last Action Hero” — an irony-laden genre sendup in which a boy magically gets to become the sidekick to a fictional hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger — you could hear the death knell of the kinds of films Schwarzenegger and Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme had been making for years.Is that what watching “Barbie” might feel like in 10 years — once, perhaps, “the patriarchy” feels like a clearly of-the-moment choice for a Big Bad? The tropes of this passing era are as familiar and easily spotted as with older periods. There is, for one thing, the showy, self-satisfied gender-swapping, as with that 2016 election-year reboot of “Ghostbusters.” That movie prompted enough openly misogynistic and racist backlash to make it look as if it must be a noble endeavor — as if any Hollywood executives who got reactionaries frothing at the mouth must be accomplishing something important, even if all they did was tweak the balance of characters in a dusty franchise.Hollywood was right that audiences were hungry for different stories.Then there are the paper-thin “diverse” characters parachuted into major films — put front and center on every poster but given curiously little to do as the plot unfolds. Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel was set up as the most powerful superhero in the Marvel universe but ended up playing no decisive role in its most important films. (She was later joined by a Black woman and a Muslim woman in the sequel “The Marvels,” another in a series of firsts, but still a throwaway film.) Many attempts to diversify old intellectual property only emphasized how awkward and unwelcoming those worlds were to the kinds of people they wanted to include: The characters could do nothing to change the old logic of the stories they were dropped into.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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    Best Albums of 2024: Charli XCX, Mk.gee, MJ Lenderman and More

    Charli XCX, Mk.gee and MJ Lenderman top our pop music critics’ lists this year.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesConcepts, Craftsmanship, Sensuality and Tidings of ApocalypseThe agendas for 21st-century musicians keep getting more complicated. They can try to out-game streaming and social media algorithms, stoking the celebrity-industrial complex or steadfastly ignoring it. They can lean into idiosyncratic artistic instincts and intuitions. They can channel the zeitgeist or defy it. Of course, listeners have choices as well. For me, there was no definitive musical statement for 2024, no obvious pathbreaker. But there were plenty of purposeful, heartfelt, exacting and inspired individual statements. I gave the top slot to a project that strove mightily to unite a glossy sonic (and online) presence with surprising confessions. But song for song, the rest of the list can easily stand alongside it. And if there’s more than a little apocalyptic gloom in these choices, well, that’s 2024.1. Charli XCX, ‘Brat’ and ‘Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat’The year’s conceptual coup belonged to Charli XCX. “Brat,” the album she released in June, used dance-floor beats, blippy synthetic hooks and meme-ready graphics as she assessed just where she stood as a pop striver in her 30s, more than a decade into her career: pushing, partying, wondering whether to set it all aside to have a baby. Somehow, “Brat” landed as a full-fledged hit — and by September, Charli XCX had rewritten all the tracks and added star collaborators, dispensing hooks while trying to keep a level head about success. Amid all the hyperpop gloss and online chatter, she still sounded honest.2. Brittany Howard, ‘What Now’Brittany Howard’s second solo album tackles the contours of a relationship that is fizzling out.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesBrittany Howard lays out the ragged emotions of a crumbling relationship on “What Now”: numbness, mourning, second-guessing, guilt and furtive glimmers of relief. While the tracks are rooted in soul, rock, R&B, funk and disco, they turn familiar styles inside-out with targeted distortion and surreal, displaced mixes. The songs capture all the disorientation that comes with a life-changing decision.3. Vampire Weekend, ‘Only God Was Above Us’Vampire Weekend’s once-meticulous musical universe gets punctured by noise on “Only God Was Above Us.” Its fifth album grapples with how what used to be called indie-rock can face a new pop landscape, and how determined innovators can keep pushing themselves. The answers include history lessons, quasi-sequitur lyrics and constantly morphing studio arrangements — a running, enlightening battle between strict song structure and an unruly world.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