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      13 Scary Good Halloween Songs

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      Fill up your holiday playlist with spooky and satisfying tracks from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Sonics, Geto Boys and more.Karen O and Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (being watched … closely).Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,Hello from your guest playlister for the day — I’m Dave Renard, an editor on the Culture desk who writes about music occasionally and tries to keep his record collection from outgrowing its allotted shelf space (currently failing).Let’s just get this out of the way first: Halloween has the best music of any holiday and it’s not even close. Christmas may be the sales leader, but its canon is too tied to a tight list of classics and standards, and if you have the bad fortune to encounter a repetitive earworm like “The Little Drummer Boy” or (shudder) “The 12 Days of Christmas,” there goes your whole day. Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to throw on some soul music while you mash potatoes, but like most other holidays, it doesn’t have much of a musical tradition of its own. Fourth of July, we’ve got Galaxie 500 and what, Katy Perry? (My editor offers a star-spangled dissent, but I think the point stands.)Halloween, on the other hand, has a huge range of spooky sounds to draw from. (If you know the old joke about hell having all the good bands, it’s kind of like that.) My playlist strategy is to surround the typical novelty favorites like “Monster Mash” or “Ghostbusters” with a critical mass of songs that are, you know, actually good. I can only listen to DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince do “A Nightmare on My Street” so many times before I start to lose it. If you think “Saw” is terrifying, try revealing to your teen daughter which songs drive you nuts and then — jump scare! — remembering she can control the sound system from her phone.A bigger pool of shared Halloween favorites makes that prospect less hair-raising. I lean heavily on black-clad ’80s punks, goths and post-punks, like the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, along with ’60s garage rockers and their descendants. But really any song with a creepy edge to it, or lyrics name-checking a wide range of October signifiers, will do the trick. Here are an unholy 13 selections to soundtrack All Hallows’ Eve.I’m a human fly and I don’t know why,DaveListen 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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      Maurizio Pollini’s Final Recording, Made With His Son

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      Maurizio Pollini didn’t think his farewell on disc would be an album of music by Schubert with his son, Daniele. Now, it serves as an emotional coda.The pianist Maurizio Pollini was still exploring, right to the end.Throughout his long partnership with Deutsche Grammophon, Pollini, who died in March at the age of 82, offered invariably accomplished, intellectually alert recordings of repertoire including Bach and Chopin, Schoenberg and Boulez. In his twilight, he rethought music that he had recorded before, not least the last five sonatas of Beethoven — works with which he had previously confirmed his stature in the 1970s, in versions that still sound strikingly modern today.Pollini’s last recording, which was recently released, bids a somewhat surprising farewell. Dedicated to Schubert, it marks a welcome return to a composer whose music Pollini had not taped since the 1980s. But what makes the program so remarkably poignant is that Pollini is joined by his son, Daniele. Each musician first plays a solo work: Maurizio, a taut rendition of the Piano Sonata in G; Daniele, a shapely set of the “Moments Musicaux.” Then, father and son share a single instrument in a concluding, breathtakingly direct interpretation of the Fantasie in F minor, for four hands.And so Maurizio Pollini’s discography ends with one of the bleaker cadences in music, confronting tragedy without flinching. The recording was not intended to be valedictory, though. Made in Munich in June 2022, the Schubert was one of several studio projects that Pollini still had in mind, among them the second book of Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”Instead, the sessions were an opportunity for father and son to work together. It was only their third time doing so. In 2016, they recorded a two-piano piece, “En Blanc et Noir,” as a coda to Pollini’s recording of the second book of Debussy’s “Préludes.” Before that, Daniele Pollini had conducted his father in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, in a filmed performance that made the elder Pollini particularly proud.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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      At 200, Bruckner Is More Popular Than Ever. Why?

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      Seven conductors share what it’s like to lead Anton Bruckner’s monumental symphonies, and why they resonate today.Bruckner, Bruckner, everywhere.There was a time, as recently as three or four decades ago, when this composer was a relative rarity, especially outside Central Europe. His reputation preceded him. He was a religious man alien to the modern world, the author of monumental symphonies that many listeners found monumentally dull.He was a provincial, uncouth, hardly a sophisticate like Brahms or Mahler. There was the forbidding editorial history of his nine (or is that 11? 18?) symphonies, and the lingering unease at his adoption by Nazi propagandists. If Bruckner was never exactly absent from the repertoire, he was long its resident eccentric.Even if some listeners still struggle with this music, though, there has always been a band of Bruckner devotees among scholars, critics and musicians. “There is no doubt that if people once grow fond of Bruckner, they grow very fond of him,” the editor of Gramophone magazine said nearly a century ago. And lately, more and more people seem to have grown very fond of him indeed.Performances of Bruckner’s symphonies seem more common than ever, and not just because this year is the 200th anniversary of his birth. Recordings come out constantly, with offerings that include fresh takes on period instruments and entire cycles from our most esteemed ensembles. It used to be that Bruckner had to be programmed with Mozart to draw a crowd; now he carries enough weight to bring Messiaen or Ligeti along with him. Attitudes have changed; clichés have quietened. Observers once talked of the “Bruckner Problem.” Now, we live in the Bruckner Moment.Conductors have played a major part in this transformation. Many of those working today are not just fond of Bruckner, but truly love his scores. For some, a performance of one comes close to a transcendent experience. Gone are the days when Bruckner was the preserve of the grizzled, graying maestro: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, for example, recorded the Seventh when he was just 31. Studying the music earlier in their careers, conductors have more opportunities to perform it; as technical standards have risen, even unheralded orchestras can give persuasive accounts of works that once posed challenges.So, what is Bruckner’s music like to conduct? Why do his symphonies, the expression of a deep Catholic faith, resonate so loudly in an increasingly secular age? How have these long, complicated works grown so remarkably in stature while our attention spans have become so brief? In interviews, seven conductors offered their thoughts; here are edited excerpts from those conversations.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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      Part-Time Farmers, Part-Time Rock Stars: A Chinese Band’s Unlikely Rise

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      The band, Varihnaz, has gained fans by offering an alternative to China’s hyper-polished, fast-paced modern life, with songs about pesticides and poultry raising.Before setting out on his band’s first national tour, before recording another album and before appearing on a major television network, Ba Nong had one task: finishing the summer harvest.Standing in a field edged by rolling hills, two days before the first tour date in late September, Ba Nong, the frontman of the Chinese band Varihnaz, looked over the yellowed remnants of the rice stalks he had spent the past few months tending.“The land gets to rest, and I get to go play,” he said.Planning around the harvest may be an unconventional way to manage an ascendant music career, but Varihnaz is an unconventional band.For its members — two farmers and a former bricklayer from rural Guangxi in southwestern China — the land and their music are inseparable. Rather than the usual staples of love and longing, their lyrics dwell on pesticides and poultry rearing.Varihnaz means “fields filled with fragrant rice flowers,” in the language of Guangxi’s Zhuang ethnic minority. To fans, the group offers a refreshing break from China’s hyper-commercialized popular entertainers, with music about a simpler, slower way of life, an alternative to the intense competition of modern Chinese life.Ba Nong hopes his music helps people consider shrugging off mainstream expectations themselves. “The more tolerant and developed a society is, the more diverse its lifestyles should be, too,” said the musician, who is 44.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 Music Industry Is Hoping Halloween Can Be the New Christmas

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      Eyeing the big business of holiday music, a few of pop’s major players are trying to expand the market for Halloween hits.When Ashnikko was growing up in North Carolina, their family told them that Halloween was satanic. But for each of the last six years, the alt-pop rapper and singer (who uses she/they pronouns) has observed what remains a fairly unusual tradition: releasing a single tied to a day better known for costumes and candy.This year’s track is the final entry in a seasonal series of gleefully lewd songs now packaged as an EP, “Halloweenie I-VI,” and available on “oxblood red” vinyl. Although perhaps not especially appropriate for a trick-or-treat night with the kids, the set reflects its creator’s idea of the holiday as a space for freedom through the grotesque.“I feel very passionately about Halloween music,” Ashnikko said, noting the day’s roots in the Celtic harvest festival Samhain as well as its prominence in L.G.B.T.Q. history. “It’s camp. It’s carnal. It’s macabre. It’s, like, silly. It’s the only holiday where all of those get to exist at once.”It’s also an $11.6 billion business, one that pop’s major players are increasingly tapping into. Ashnikko’s six “Halloweenie” songs have racked up a combined 100.3 million on-demand streams in the United States as of Oct. 17, according to the tracking service Luminate.The Weeknd, who hosted a haunted house at Universal Studios Hollywood two years ago, has returned with “Nightmare Trilogy,” a maze with a soundtrack from the singer. It opened eight days earlier than in 2019.“Monster Mash,” Bobby Pickett’s enduring Halloween anthem from 1962, has returned to the Billboard Hot 100 the last three years ahead of the holiday. And Billboard estimated last year that the hit could generate $1 million in annual combined revenue.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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      How Jazz Musicians Like Louis Armstrong Paid Homage to Trains With Music

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      Jazz lovers worldwide know well the passion that Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong had for trains, especially for the elegant Pullman cars that toted them to gigs across the country. Within the velvet-appointed sleeping carriages, African American porters shined the musicians’ shoes, nursed their hangovers, clipped their hair and served them mint juleps and Welsh rarebit — the same service afforded wealthy white passengers.In return, the maestros composed their now famous songs of homage to trains. There’s Duke’s throbbing “Happy Go Lucky Local,” the Count’s bow to the “Super Chief” and Satchmo’s romantic rendering of “Mail Train Blues.” But few fans appreciated the real reason these jazz legends worshiped not just the railroad generally, but George Pullman’s sleeper car: It saved them from the threat of terrifying violence.In that Jim Crow era of racial segregation, Black people were relegated to separate and unequal accommodations in everything from schools and parks to water fountains and restrooms. Just getting out of an automobile or bus to look for a meal and a bed could prove perilous in unfamiliar cities below the Mason-Dixon line. Wrong choices sometimes led to berating, beating or worse, with racial violence reaching new peaks in the early 1900s. Even the music makers’ fame couldn’t fully protect them. Only on the Pullman cars, where they were served by fellow African Americans, could they truly relax while on the road.“To avoid problems, we used to charter two Pullman sleeping cars and a 70-foot baggage car,” Ellington wrote in his 1973 memoir, “Music Is My Mistress.” “Everywhere we went in the South, we lived in them.”Duke Ellington’s band members on a train in 1941. In the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, Black people were relegated to separate and unequal accommodations in everything from schools and parks to water fountains and restrooms. Otto F. Hess Collection / New York Public LibraryThe Count Basie Orchestra did, too. Traveling in stylish Pullmans “was my piece of cake,” Basie recalled in his 1985 autobiography, “Good Morning Blues.” “Lots of times, instead of me getting into my bed, I used to sit and look out the window most of the night as we rambled from one place to another. That was music to me.” More

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      DJ Clark Kent, Who Introduced Jay-Z to the Notorious B.I.G., Dies at 58

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      He was a producer and club D.J. who helped rappers find their voices and fortunes, and who later became known as a raconteur of hip-hop history.Antonio Franklin, known as DJ Clark Kent, a widely respected hip-hop insider for four decades who had influential relationships with many leading rappers, died on Thursday at his home in Greenbrook, a township in northern New Jersey. He was 58. The cause was colon cancer, his wife, Kesha (Vernon) Franklin, said.Mr. Franklin’s career followed the trajectory of hip-hop itself. He entered the scene just as it was taking shape, in New York in the 1980s, and he reached prime time when rap itself did, in the mid-90s. After being a club D.J. for years, he moved on to work as a producer and took jobs with Atlantic Records and Motown.In 1995, he produced a rap classic — and his first hit song — with “Player’s Anthem” by Junior M.A.F.I.A., a group formed by the Notorious B.I.G., who also appeared on the track. The song became a breakout single for the group and introduced Lil’ Kim to the international hip-hop audience.The next year, he produced three songs on Jay-Z’s debut album, “Reasonable Doubt.” His most noteworthy contributions were to the song “Brooklyn’s Finest.” Mr. Franklin provided the vocals for the hook, and he suggested to Jay-Z and his manager, Damon Dash, that they include Notorious B.I.G. on the track. The two somewhat hesitantly agreed — without realizing that Mr. Franklin had already asked Notorious B.I.G. to wait downstairs. The collaboration took place instantly.That kind of behind-the-scenes orchestration was ordinary for Mr. Franklin. In 1998, he saw a young man who went by Shyne freestyling in a barbershop, then introduced him to Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, who signed him to a record deal on the spot.“I practically knew every rapper before they made their records,” Mr. Franklin told the pop culture publication Complex. “They wanted to be familiar with the D.J.s and what was happening in hip-hop. I was happening in hip-hop.”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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      Claire Daly, Master of the Baritone Saxophone, Dies at 66

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      She was celebrated for both her playing and her love of the jazz community. “My life in music,” she said recently, “is the smartest thing I’ve done.”Claire Daly, who was regarded by both her fellow musicians and critics as a standard-bearer on the baritone saxophone, died on Tuesday on a friend’s farm in Longmont, Colo. She was 66.The cause was squamous cell cancer of the neck and head, said the saxophonist Dave Sewelson, a longtime friend.Thanks to her flexibility on an ungainly instrument and her expressive precision as a soloist, Ms. Daly was a frequent winner of critics’ polls from the Jazz Journalists Association and DownBeat magazine.Thanking the journalists’ group when she received its 2024 award for best baritone saxophonist, she wrote in May on Facebook: “Kudos to all the baritone players — we get to play bari! We are the lucky ones. My life in music is the smartest thing I’ve done.”She spent many of the early years of her career playing both jazz and rock in all-female ensembles. Her sturdy playing formed the foundation of the original Diva Jazz Orchestra, which from its founding in 1992 established itself as one of the most potent big bands in jazz, gender notwithstanding.She left Diva after seven years, tending thereafter toward small ensembles. She collaborated frequently with the pianist Joel Forrester in the quartet People Like Us, with the experimental pop vocalist Nora York, and with Mr. Sewelson in the bottom-heavy trio Two Sisters Inc. (its other member was the bassist Dave Hofstra).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