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      Cissy Houston Saw Music’s Peaks and Life’s Valleys

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      If you’re the sort of person who remains locked in a private, perpetual tug of war over whether the greatest singer this country’s ever known is Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston, perhaps you’re also the sort of person who then spares a thought for Whitney’s mother, Cissy. Cissy Houston died at 91 on Monday, and she could sing, too. Let me try that again: Cissy Houston sang, first with the clarity of something just Windexed then, later, with a tone that acquired some protective, matured texture, some bark.This thought we “who’s the greatest” vacillators spare for Miss Cissy stems from outrageous misfortune: yes, the unimaginable tragedy of losing a daughter the way she lost Whitney and then losing her daughter’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, almost exactly the same way; but also being Whitney’s mother, plus Dionne Warwick’s aunt and a cousin of the opera legend Leontyne Price, in addition to one of Aretha’s homies. How could a member of that bloodline not be in pursuit of music that could garner the sort of acclaim and career they experienced? But Cissy never found it.Warwick cast her spells with a chardonnay glimmer, singing with low-pulse seduction that had some tooth. Whitney was a fighter jet who could dance Balanchine and Ailey. Miss Cissy had power and range and a knack for put-you-in-your-place phrasing, whether the subject was the Man Upstairs or the man in her bed. But what Cissy lacked was good luck — never had original songs as top-shelf as her niece’s or as humongous as her daughter’s.Houston, at left, with the Sweet Inspirations. The R&B group often supplied backup vocals for Aretha Franklin, as they did here at a 1968 concert in New York.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesAfter a few years of significant group work with the Sweet Inspirations and an underrated solo album in 1970, she was trying disco (the “Think It Over” album, from 1978) and, the year before, choir-robed R&B on “Cissy Houston,” an album studded with covers that for all its heat and arched eyebrows could easily have been titled “Mavis Staples,” too. But look: Cissy is really feeling the tunes on that LP, reshaping, reliving, husking them. There’s weariness and want, some funk. She sounds like a woman who just walked in the front door after nine hours on her feet, who faintly remembers what being swept off them was like.Her career began perched at an upper register whose uncanny inheritor is obviously her daughter — the soprano punch-ups and dessert-for-dinner runs. But by 1977, up there, Cissy was often at her ceiling. You can sometimes hear muscle in her climbs, the labor of singing. Some voices can’t wait to get to the skies of a chorus. The alto Miss Cissy embraced seemed to luxuriate in the verses. She always sounded as if the first-floor was as good as the penthouse.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 It Too Late Now to Say Sorry? 8 Songs for the High Holy Days.

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      Apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match.Bob DylanFiona Adams/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,As Lindsay mentioned on Friday, she’s out on book leave for the rest of the month. Starting next week, a series of knowledgeable Times staffers will sub in to provide thoughtfully curated playlists each Tuesday. This week, however, you are stuck with me: a reporter on the Culture desk who has written about Dylan and the Dead, and whose current Spotify rotation includes CoComelon’s “Wheels on the Bus” and the “Encanto” soundtrack (possibly Lin-Manuel Miranda’s finest work).For some of us, this is a week of reflection, repentance and weaning ourselves off caffeine: It’s the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which was last Thursday and Friday, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins this Friday night. There are more superficially appealing holidays; Yom Kippur in particular is a fast day and is not supposed to be “fun.” But I earnestly don’t know what I would do without this time of year and the space it provides to pause and take stock. You don’t need to belong to any particular faith to find that a useful exercise.A High Holiday playlist might appear a tricky proposition. Popular music is not typically a space for solemnity and self-denial. On Yom Kippur itself, sex and nonessential drugs, to say nothing of rock ’n’ roll, are prohibited. But apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match. While we cannot skimp on some of the most obvious artists — hello, Barbra; nice to see you, Leonard — we are also including Stevie Wonder and Outkast.I hope you reflect and enjoy. And, if you celebrate, have a sweet new year and a meaningful fast.Gut yontif,MarcListen 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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      The $550 Million Question: How Does David Geffen Hall Sound?

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      When the New York Philharmonic English horn player and oboist Ryan Roberts performs at the renovated David Geffen Hall these days, he feels naked and exposed, as if he were appearing on a high-definition television screen.“The sound is honest,” he said. “You hear everything — for better or for worse.”The star violinist Hilary Hahn, a frequent soloist, has a sense of comfort. “You can trust your sound will project,” she said.And John Adams, the composer and conductor, said that gone were the days of a concert hall that felt like Yankee Stadium. “It’s such a breath of fresh air,” he said. “You can go for much greater delicacy and subtlety.”Geffen Hall, the home of the New York Philharmonic, reopened two years ago after a $550 million renovation. By gutting and rebuilding the interior, the project was meant to break, once and for all, the acoustical curse that had plagued the hall for decades. Unveiling the new space, the Philharmonic’s leaders declared a new era, clinking champagne glasses and hailing “our 2,200-seat crown jewel.”So, after two years and more than 270 concerts, how does the hall sound?While the acoustics are still evolving, the reviews of Geffen Hall have largely been positive. The hall is more resonant and enveloping, according to more than a dozen Philharmonic players, guest artists, conductors and audience members. But there are still shortcomings. The hall, some say, can be cool and clinical — and at the highest volumes, blaring.“It’s definitely better than it was,” said Rebecca Young, the Philharmonic’s associate principal viola, who joined in 1986. “But I don’t think it’s perfect.”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 Quick-Witted, Self-Lacerating James Blunt Would Like a Word

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      Twenty years after his hit “You’re Beautiful” turned him into an overnight star, the British singer and songwriter takes his music — and his haters — to task.Twenty years ago this month, James Blunt was an unknown singer releasing his first album. The song that rapidly elevated him out of obscurity was “You’re Beautiful,” a lovelorn rhapsody about falling for a stranger on the subway while high on drugs, which hit No. 1 in 15 countries, including the United States. The smash helped turn his 2004 LP “Back to Bedlam” into a triple-platinum success.As Blunt moved from unknown to highly known, there was a surprise reveal: The slight, diminutive man who wrote “You’re Beautiful” had been a captain in the British army, and served in Kosovo. Interviewers soon learned he also had an acid tongue and a quick wit. And in recent years, with evident zest, he’s turned it on people who troll him on social media; his retorts make him sound like a skilled standup comic who specializes in crowd work. (When someone posted on X, “My mom hates James Blunt,” he retorted, “Because I won’t pay the child support?” At this point, only masochists post @ Blunt.)Blunt has released seven studio albums; the most recent, “Who We Used to Be,” arrived in 2023. Later this year, he’s touring Australia, Asia and Europe, with a return to the United States planned for June 2025. An irreverent documentary about him, “One Brit Wonder,” premiered on Netflix UK in June, with distribution in the U.S. still pending.In a recent video interview, he reflected on the 20th anniversary of “Back to Bedlam” from a tiny office in the London pub he owns, the Fox & Pheasant. (The tavern plays his music five minutes before closing, he joked, so people will leave as quickly as possible.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.In the documentary, there are lots of instances of people insulting you. Your tour manager calls you “a narcissistic psychopath.” Your mother describes you as “politely ruthless.” And you are likened to Marmite.I like Marmite.You’re aware that most people don’t?It’s a highly lucrative company, so they must be doing something right.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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      Book Review: ‘From Here to the Great Unknown,’ by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

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      In a new memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” Elvis Presley’s daughter and granddaughter take turns exploring a messy legacy.FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN: A Memoir, by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough“What is the point of an autobiography?”Lisa Marie Presley asks this question toward the end of her incredibly sad memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown.”Presley died of a bowel obstruction — a complication of bariatric surgery — before she could finish the book, having endured 54 years of intense public scrutiny. Her daughter, Riley Keough, picked up where she left off, listening to interviews her mother had recorded for the project. Their perspectives appear in alternating sections — a haunting harmony that builds to a crescendo of heartbreak.The answer to Presley’s question comes from Keough, who is best known for her star turn in Amazon’s adaptation of “Daisy Jones & the Six”: The point of an autobiography — this one, anyway — is to show the toll of fame and addiction.Anyone who’s skimmed tabloid headlines at the grocery store knows the basics, but here’s a quick summary for online shoppers: Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Priscilla and Elvis Presley, grew up without stability or peace, hounded by paparazzi, criticized for her looks, her weight, her drug use, her marriage to Michael Jackson. From start to finish, her life took place in the public domain.“I guess I didn’t really have a shot in hell,” Presley writes.“My mom was really affected by what people wrote about her,” Keough tells us. “She had no siblings to share the burden, nobody who understood what it truly felt like. In a way she was the princess of America and didn’t want to be.”The first third of “From Here to the Great Unknown” is full of nostalgic musings about Graceland, the Presley family home in Memphis. We get a peek at the parts that aren’t on the tour. We learn about Lisa Marie’s tonsillectomy and her baby blue golf cart. She is just 9 when we see her father’s body leaving the house on a stretcher — his pajamas, his socks. We see his entourage picking over his belongings.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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      Cissy Houston Dies at 91; Gospel Star Guided Daughter Whitney’s Rise

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      Hailing from a musical family, she won Grammys, sang backup to Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin and helped shepherd Whitney Houston to superstardom.Cissy Houston, a Grammy Award-winning soul and gospel star who helped shepherd her daughter Whitney Houston to superstardom, died on Monday at her home in Newark. She was 91.Her family announced her death in a statement, which said she had been in hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease.Ms. Houston was a gifted stylist whose powerful voice and deep faith made her an influential figure in gospel circles for decades. She won Grammy Awards in the traditional soul gospel category for the albums “Face to Face” in 1997 and “He Leadeth Me” in 1999.Before then, she had been among the busiest backup singers in the record business, providing vocal support for Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley and many others. And for more than a half-century she was the choir director for the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she got her start as a singer in the 1930s.Ms. Houston was the matriarch of a singing dynasty that included her daughter, her nieces Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick and a cousin, the opera star Leontyne Price. She endured the deaths of her daughter, who drowned in a hotel bathtub in 2012, and of Whitney Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, who, in an eerily similar tragedy, was found unresponsive in a bathtub in her Georgia home in January 2015 and died six months later. Whitney Houston had struggled with addiction for many years despite her mother’s intervention.Ms. Houston with her daughter Whitney, right, and her niece Dionne Warwick during the annual American Music Awards ceremony in 1987. The opera star Leontyne Price is a cousin.Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      Chappell Roan Seeks the Line Between IRL and URL

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      For Chappell Roan, who has been toiling in the pop music trenches for several years now, the recent burst of acclaim she’s received has been overdue, affirming and more than a little disorienting. Perhaps the most energizing breakout star of this year, she has songs that center queer romance, a robust aesthetic gift and, most striking of all, an unusually moral sense of how a famous person should be treated.As she’s being embraced, she’s also being tested. The last couple of weeks especially have provided Roan a case study in the difference between IRL and URL fandom — the people who show up to commune with you, and the people who make you the object of their study and chatter online — and which to stake her future on.Last Tuesday in Franklin, Tenn., she took a mid-show breather to survey the 7,500 people who’d come to see her perform at the FirstBank Amphitheater.“I know how hard it is to be queer in the Midwest and the South,” she said. She grew up around seven hours west, in Willard, Mo., chafing against her conservative surroundings. As a young person, she continued, “I really needed a place where people weren’t going to make fun of me for how I dressed or who I liked.”For the night, the amphitheater just outside of Nashville had become such a place. Carved into a rock quarry, the open-to-the-sky venue felt cloistered, protected. A place for intimate but very loud conversation out of view of prying ears and eyes.Fans came to the show in costume: Realtree camouflage, pink cowboy hats, Western boots, frilly dresses, hand-drawn shirts with Roan references. Amy Harris/Invision, 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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      The Cases Against Sean Combs

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicLast month Sean Combs — the hip-hop mogul known alternately as Puff Daddy, Puffy, Diddy and Love — was arrested on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty.The indictment was a striking fall from grace seemingly put in motion approximately a year prior, when one of his ex-girlfriends, the singer Cassie, filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of rape and physical abuse. (That case was settled in one day.) A lawsuit filed in late September is the eighth over the past year by a woman accusing Combs of sexual assault; three other lawsuits have made allegations of sexual misconduct.On this week’s Popcast, a discussion of Combs’s criminal and civil cases, the role of the court of public opinion, and how the entertainment press covers morally complicated figures.Guests:Ben Sisario, The New York Times’s music business reporterJulia Jacobs, culture reporter for The New York TimesJoe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect 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.Soon, you’ll need a subscription to keep full access to this show, and to other New York Times podcasts, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Don’t miss out on exploring all of our shows, featuring everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts. More